Category: Miniature Philosophy
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Classic Without Being Classy
The decision to squeeze yet another year out of an old mould must be agony for the planners in a big scale model factory. But of course it can be eased by the realisation that the price for the old tat will be paid in new money. There will be the cost of new box…
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Spend Half Your Time Learning How To Do It Right
Then spend the rest learning how to recover when it goes wrong. All kits have flaws…if not in the box, then in the buyer. Something will go awry in the build. If you are fortunate it will be small and early, and you can fix it before you go on. These are the times that…
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Who Judges The Fantasy Model?
And how do they do it? Okay, if you are tasked with reproducing a model of a Willy Ley space ship as seen on a 1950’s Disneyland show, it is still fantasy – but the responsibility for the imagination has been taken out of your hands. Ley and Disney are the ones setting the pace…
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The Old Kid Modeller
As a young kid, your scale model building is limited by one thing: money. You have little of it and are largely dependent upon birthdays and Christmas to supply you with your kits. You may have desires, but you recognise that you’re going to be building whatever you are given. If you are articulate and…
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Leonardo Da Vinci’s Cartoons
No, you fools, not the ninja turtles. The real Da Vinci and the preparatory drawings he used to do in chalk and charcoal before launching out onto canvas and oil paint. Think you can pick one up for a bargain price? I mean it’s just a chalk sketch, right? How much could chalk cost…? You…
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No, I’m The King
You have to be Princess. It’s my game and I write the rules. I think I have discovered where the concept of scale model exhibition committees was developed. Sort of like a Dungeons And Dragons game where reading the rules takes up most of the evening and eventually you just want a drink. Perhaps there…
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Trying To Get That Exclusive Prototype
And hoping that it is one that everyone secretly always wanted to build. This can be the only explanation for a number of short-run kits that flow out of Eastern Europe. There can be only a few individuals on the planet that dream of building failed designs that are both ugly and insignificant. Even driven…
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The Tsunami
It started as a fountain of knowledge – then a pool of information – then a flood of images. Now we have a tsunami and modellers are being drowned at their workbenches. I mean the internet, and specifically the Google images page. The go-to when you are looking for either inspiration or confirmation. You want…
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If You Don’t Want To Have A Good Time…
Tell us now – we’ve got kits that we’ve been saving for just such an occasion… As a kid, I saw kits in shops that I knew were a mistake. The shop might have been a hardware store in a Canadian bush town, a news agency in an Australian country town, or the leftovers in…
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To Paint Or Not To Paint
That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to coat the photo etched brass parts of your kit with the same paint as the injected plastic ones and let them sink into oblivion or to leave them unpainted and declare your skill and investment to the world. For those of my clubmates who might feel I…
The Little World 