Demoncon Spaceship

Well, that was great fun. Was a bit anxious, me being the only modelling table at a comic con, but i was in the creative room, with follk doing wall art, making custom albums, that sort of thing. And i had a whale of a time - had tons of folk coming up, watching me building, but mainly asking about all the models i had on display. I'd deliberately only taken things i'd scratchbuilt and sculpted and the most interest was in how i'd used household items for an awful lot of the basic shapes and for detailing. I also had the build challenge of making, painting, decaling and weathering a craft in just 4 hours. Thought that'd be plenty of time - but never factored in that i'd have to stop what i was doing to explain to people the ins and outs of different craft. Anyway, i'd tipped things in my favour by prepping the main shape yesterday. I went to Tescos yesterday and picked up two £7.00 hairdryers:

Reason being, while we were in a hotel last month, i noticed the hairdryer hanging from the wall and thought"hmmm, with that curved main part and swept back handle, it looks like a Flash Gordon-style aircracft. If i put another handle on the other side, it'd look kind of neat." So i'd remembered that, and bought the two ysterday, cut off and glued one handle to the other dryer and P38'd the join. And that's what i had with me first thing this morning:

But my initial idea of something very Flash Gordon, witha vibrant colour to match went out the window as i figured, what with not too mutch time for the build, i'd have to leave it in the very fast drying Halfords Grey Primer. So, a grim and gritty ship then. Here you can see i've added a rear area:

The main white bits are two sections from the Saturn V kit, there's a funnel for an engine bell at the end of them, some spare Fine Molds X-Wing engine cowls, the usual cable ties in places, the even more usual sticky gems for blobby detail - and a fin up top. Part of why i like scratchbuilds so much is how a craft can evolve and change over the course of its construction. Case in point here - the grill at the front was originally going to be a sort of weird cockpit window but, as i elongated the hull, it looked more and more to me like a submarine and the grill a sort of water inlet, as the craft sucks in water at the front and squishes out of the back, like a squid. Its a submarine then thinks i, and plops an aircraft wing up top to sort of evoke a sharks fin kind of affair. You can see things a bit better at the primer stage:

I was starting to panic when i took this shot as i had less than half an hour to go. At 15 mins to go, i'd done the decaling and weathering and put on a coat of Matt Varnish. At 5 mins to go i was just starting to put on rusty washes. And i handed it over to the guy to put it in the raffle with it literally dripping brown paint. Anway, here it is in the hands of girl who won it in the raffle:

I'm glad she'd won it as she'd been by the table earlier and we had a good indepth natter about original designs and costume building. So, great day that went very well.