When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by model displays in Museums... I always thought it would be the best job in the world. Sadly every time I've had the opportunity to produce something for a Museum display, I've always cone up hard against the fact I'm not as good a modelmaker as I fancy I am.
During my recent trip to Japan, I was in touch with my lifelong pal, Kerrie Dougherty. As BIG Gerry Anderson fans, we managed to leverage that interest into paid employment. I became a film miniature modelmaker and she was head of the Powerhouse Museum Space section. She has since gone on to the Australian Space Agency in Adelaide, but is still keen on displays for public education. A few years ago I made some large models of Australian Space hardware for her Adelaide displays.
Always keen for representations of Australian Space hardware, she asked me to look out for any kits in Japan. I managed to score two Japanese built satellites, an Explorer 1 rocket and a 1/48 scale kit of Voyager. Having enjoyed it's guest appearance in Star Trek The Motion Picture, I was looking forward to putting this kit together...
I have to say it is the fiddliest kit I have EVER made in my life and an expected romp turned into five excruciating hours of wresting with tiny girders and widgets. Amazingly, I didn't drop a single piece on the floor! ( the plasma detector array breaking off doesn't really count!) My hands didn't shake or lose grip, but I did wonder if my eyes were finally failing me!
Painting the long Magnatometer boom was extremely difficult with copper rungs and yellow edges. This wasn't helped by the fact the entire length also twists!
Anyway here are some piccies for your enjoyment. The pics really don't do the fiddly intricate nature of this model justice!
Now I know why, when the Klingons destroyed one in Star Trek 5, the SFX crew just blew up a photograph rather than an actual model!
The finished kit (minus copper paint on the whisker antennas) with Earth display stand Alien Grey figure for scale (no, seriously. Those Japanese have a sense of humour when it comes to whether anyone will play Voyagers Golden record) Hasegawa also included a nice embroidered mission patch as a bonus.
The all important gold disc in all its vacuum metallised glory.
"Hey Moonbasers! It's a Golden Astronaut alien!"
"Triang Space-X missed their chance there..."
Well, back to the kitchen table, I have two more kits to put together before I can deliver the lot!
Have you made a Voyager?
Looey
Oz
Not made a Voyager, but did animate a few shots of a CG one, flying past Jupiter, for a TV documentary.
ReplyDeleteAlso made a slightly futuristic version of the International Space Station, orbiting Earth, again CG, for a science programme called Horizon.
Both effects were done in the late '90s, when I briefly ventured into CGI.
Was that around the time Ron Thornton was using Lightwave, before he went off to work on Babylon 5?
DeleteThere was a strange cable commercial awhile back:
Deletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VaDI6kE_Aac
Did you do that one?
Also nice:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/ran-across-this-old-commercial-from-1985-for-a-hyatt-space-hotel.307276/
Looks like RegulaOne
It was after Ron Thornton, in the late '90s, but his work on Babylon 5 certainly gave some of us the incentive to have a go at CG, also using Lightwave.
DeleteIn the end, it didn't work out for us, as productions were too unrealistic in what could be achieved for the cost, and many of the CG effects people were promising the earth, to get the work.
Fortunately, I was able to fall back on my 'real' effects experience, including model work, for over 20 more years.
I made a little metal kit of Voyager once, one of the most fiddly things I've ever built.
ReplyDeleteNo way would I tackle a complicated kit like that, with all those tiny little thingies just waiting to break off! Besides, I can't imagine why anyone would travel all the way to Japan and purchase boring "Real Space" models when the Japanese are famous for their wild Science Fiction Models? Or was "Real Space" the assignment? To each his own I guess! SFZ
ReplyDeleteJapan... I came for the robots, I stayed for the boring space probes!
DeleteThey were a favour for my GA Space friend. She'd asked me to build a full stack Zero-X for her own display. My up front price was a Bandai wind-up Spectrum MSV which she dutifully sent me.
However, building a full Zero-X in 3D has proved to be a bridge too far. I have a passable MEV and a brace of Rock snakes, but the rest of the ship has proved very difficult, due to all the complex curves of the main engines etc.
My four "boring real space models" was a way to repay Kerrie, so I could get on with my puppet film!
Funnily enough, ive been looking at this kit in ebay and considering buying it. its good to see !
ReplyDelete