I wish I had thought to photograph this as a OOB review. For those who don't own this kit.....it's awesome. And LARGE. Who'da thunk that the Vulcans would be tooling around in Galaxy class sized starships way back in the 22nd century? It's a sizable chunk of resin, and it's a good thing that the model is cast in hollow halves. Shame the ring isn't, but....I've heard rumblings that SC might try to revamp that feature in the future. But the main ship comes in 4 large pieces of resin for the body, a single big ring, and a couple bags of opaque and clear resin bits and bobs to make up the details and the secondary mini ship. A quick wash, some careful gluing and clamping, and the main hull goes together in a couple hours.
I painted mine by using Krylon red primer. Once I saw the color, I liked it so much I decided to use it as the base coat. I started with the mini ship....
It's funny.....I almost wish SC would market this separately as a kit by itself. It's certainly big enough to call a model on its own. Here it is after I applied a final coat of base, some gloss, and a wash of metallic ruby:
From there, I went on to work on the base coat of the main ship. Again, it's been given a few coats of primer red, then future gloss, then applications of the ruby metallic color:
The ring is next. I masked off most of the ring, then airbrushed in some Testors aztec deep blue (it's a new stuff for airbrushing) mixed with some acrylic fluorescent blue. I'm hoping it will help the color "glow" a little under actinic blue lights (more on that in a bit). Once the blue was in place, I went back with my brush and base color and re-colored the ribs with red.
Now, here's the plan. I am going to pick out some of the details in the ring with white, then coat over with clear blue. The stand is a gesso'ed panel painted black, and the support is two 3/8 clear acrylic rods that will have blue LEDs shining up thru them to make them glow. The rods end in 1/8 inch tabs, so the holes in the model are very minimal. I will add some extra blue spotlights to the stand as well to try and highlight the model's ring. This might take some doing, but I'm gonna try.
Here's a mockup of the stand for right now:
Still a long way to go on this, but I'm really enjoying the lines of this model. I'll be using the "aztec panel" decals, and I've decided to glue the ring in place when it's done. The paint scrapes a LOT when you let the ring swing freely, and since I don't plan on displaying this in any other configuration, I might as well glue it. I may just lightly tack it so I can break the bond in case I need to pack it and ship it, but otherwise...that ring is stayin' UP.
Cool ship, though!
