Saturday 29 September 2012

Epic Scale Sci Fi Modelling

I'm indebted to my friend Ian for putting me on to this. Published by the makers of Scifi & Fantasy Modeller, and the same size,thickness and standard of reproduction too, this is a BRILLIANT collection of scratchbuilt articles by the very talented Gary R. Welsh. Its a testament to a good book when you flick through it and you could happily study any page you stop at. Which is the case here. But it creates a problem, at least for me. I always prefer to read something from start to finish, rather than the best bits first and the rest later. I'm only part of the way through it at the moment and we've had an excellent "how to" guide, followed by Gary's lovely Space Tug article:
Very informative and a very enjoyable read. Next we've a stunning Blakes 7 Pursuit Ship project:
And that stunning word again for the authors incredibly in-depth charting of his Star Wars Medical Frigate recreation:
Trouble is, its TOO informative. Gary goes to incredible lengths to detail each and every stage of this mammoth build, even down to naming the donor kit for every part and its lavishly illustrated, coming in at an incredible 318+ photos to illustrate it. I'm about halfway through it at the moment and, must say, i'm finding it a bit of a slog. Of COURSE i want indepth articles on how models are made from scratch (that's after all why Bowerhouse was born) but there's SO much to do, that's SO similar to what's been done in the last few pages, that i'm starting to yearn for something different. It'll be a different matter i'm sure when i get to Gary's painting stage but, right now, i've a hankering to jump to the next article, a variant on this ship, and then what looks best of all, this excellent looking craft:
Looks great, and appears to be one that i could easily emulate. We'll see. A brilliant book, heartily recommended.