I’m a big fan of the space fantasy film, The Black Hole, and I’ve blogged about it several times on here in the past.
One post I did was back in 2019, when I blogged about looking forward to building my newly acquired MPC Cygnus kit, which came out in 1979.
I like the unique design of the Cygnus spacecraft. While there’s no shortage of similes from people describing the ship, to me as someone who lives in a seaside town it always put me in mind of our local pier.
The U.S.S. Cygnus, which is described as half-a-mile long was first envisaged by one of the Black Hole’s art directors, Bob McCall, who came up with some stunning pre-production paintings. At that point the ship was named ‘Centaurus’, and Bob drew it as a white slab-sided craft.
Production designer, Peter Ellenshaw, who was in charge of miniature effects wanted something different from the usual solid sided spaceship design, and sought a more translucent look. He did, however keep McCall’s basic design.
When it came to the filming miniatures, two original 1/16 scale Cygnus filming props were built, each 12 feet 31/2 inches long, and made from intricate brass lattice framework with numerous illuminated sections.
Like a lot of modellers, I like to incorporate lighting where I can, as it can sometimes add little realism to my photographs.
As the kit doesn’t have a clear plastic hull, illuminating the kit to make it look more screen accurate is limited. Also, as the model was originally manufactured missing an entire forward module section, screen accuracy was never going to be it’s strong point.
That being said, it’s still a fun, if quite fiddly model to build. From behind the scenes photos I’ve seen showing the original prop’ it’s generally just a plain bluey-white, relying on lighting to give it definition. I wanted to add some colour and took some inspiration from illustrations in The Black Hole Pop-Up book!
Masking and spraying needs a bit of thought, working out what parts are going to remain yellow, blue and finally, black. Then it’s painting the lattice-work which takes a steady hand and a fair bit of patience.
Finally, some additional piping which doesn’t actually come with the kit, and some added painted detail.
The kit even comes with a tiny Probe Ship and ‘Palomino’.
In part 2, some photos of the Cygnus near The Black Hole.
