The Little World

And more correct than even he thought.

Phil Flory is making some bite-sized videos for modellers to introduce them to basic concepts – and right at the start of this series he has advised people to sit down with the instruction book and plan out their build. Good, good advice, and something that no-one else ever said.

I now follow this and have added a few more thoughts to it:

a. Do as Phil says and mentally walk yourself through the build with the instructions open and the parts to hand on the sprue trees. Look for identification numbers and letters. Look to confirm the shapes of the parts.

b. Look at the instructions in regard to the parts themselves, colours to paint them, and decals to apply. Some makers have several codes going on there all at once – a decal may have a circled number while a colour is a plain number or letter. The part may have a different typeface. It can all get confusing.

I take a coloured pencil and put a dot of appropriate colour beside each colour instruction. Admittedly I am trusting the kit maker to know better about what the part should look like…but I can always go to the net or books and get confirmatory colour information.

Or go to Britmodeller and watch the fight.

c. Plan what to do each day. If you can decide which day you’ll shave, which day you’ll have a drink, which day you’ll shell Liege…you can plan what each day will yield on the model. Then when you do, it will be deliberate work and you’ll go to bed satisfied – you need not take all your joy at the end of the build. Make little rewards each day.

When you have the feeling that you are in control, the rest of the world is bearable. Of course it is the same dreadful place that it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, but if your model is going along well, you are deriving value from it.