Lamborghini Aventador - 1/24 Fujimi

[JamesPerrin]

I hope you've tuned the radio to Radio4 for the Archers.

[mattbacon]

Of course! Though, personally, I liked the Greek dancing..

A good milestone tonight:


The chassis pretty much snaps into place, supported on two pins at the back and tabs at the front. I wouldn't like to do it too often before finishing (the rear pins are slim), but you can see that it does all go together nicely.

Moving along:


I'd suggest removing the pins that hold the grilles in - they have flanges that locate them perfectly well, and the pins prevent them slipping in fully (the engineering on this kit is superb, but the tolerances are so tight that you can only just get away with painting it before assembly, and a clearcoat that has any thickness causes problems...)



If you WANT to have the engine bay opening, you'll have to rework the cut lines (the part that is separate in the kit is the whole upper rear quarter panel... in real life the panel lines you can see around the window bay, with the T-shaped bit on the right in this image, mark the engine cover opening). I've fixed the separate part down, and I will delineate the opening part with the way I highlight the panel lines. If you DON'T open the engine bay, then as you can see, it looks OK, even without the window blades.



The main assemblies. After the mock-up earlier, I'm confident that they will all fit together nicely. I've read good things about the fit of the window glass into the body, so I'm hoping that progress will be speedy...

And finally...



The two moments in the Top Gear supercar challenge segment filmed at Imola that put an "action build" of this kit in my mind were the glowing brake discs, and the "blue flames" spitting from the exhaust, which really emphasised what a barely-tamed fire-snorting beast the Aventador is. This car is all about presence, and even though it has all the tech (like the McLaren and the 458), it's somehow vastly more "dramatic". If I was buying one as a daily drive, it'd be the McLaren; if I was buying one as a weekend drive, it'd be the 458; but if I was buying one for pure, balls-out, in-your-face fun, it'd be the Aventador. So, this model isn't complete without blue flames. I've been thinking about this for a while, and then I spotted an abandoned soap bubble blowing kit that the kids had left lying around, which was contained in a cylinder of pale blue plastic, as you can see. After some experiments, I discovered you can melt it and mess with it with cocktail stick. A bit of Citadel white, and some yellow ink, later, and this is where we are. They are trimmed to fit into the exhausts, but I'll do that late in the build, so I don't knock them off!

Next up, the lights. There's some complex detail painting to do there...

bestest,
M.

[Jagewa]

Oh yes, you are the man!

[JamesPerrin]

For Matt's next build it will actually smell of burnt rubber.

[mattbacon]

...well, if I leave some of the newly-arrived 6000-grit Micromesh taped to the bottom, THIS one will smell of burnt rubber! I don't know what's with this batch, but it blinkin' well stinks...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Slow but steady progress today.



These rear lights are a pain! OK, I've made life more difficult for myself by needing to show the darn things actually on, while braking, but they are very complex even without that added wrinkle. I think that today's LED lights and Xenons will need a whole different approach from what we're used to. No longer is a transparent part that you can paint the back of silver and colour in lenses where needed enough. A large part of this light unit is black plastic, and as you can see the "indicator" and "stop light" elements have several parts. I've yet to see how it works in real life, but the "sideways-Y" parts appear to be both brake lights and indicators (with a rather cool > >> >>> effect).




With the blades in place, my feeling that the engine is detailed enough was confirmed... YMMV, obviously!



...and this is where I'm at tonight.

Home straight tomorrow, I reckon...

bestest,
M.

[Beowulf Shaeffer]

that is looking seriously awesome

cracking colour too

[Motley]

Now that is a lovely looking kit, and that colour is just brilliant

[mattbacon]

Thanks, guys...

Making good progress...



The headlights require some complicated painting! I decided not to go for the recommended "silver" for the main light. I had a look at the Xenon's on my car, and several others in the local supermarket car park, and it's much more like a grey "eyeball", which is what I've tried to do here. The white "Y" really IS a white painted shape in the black housing, and the little lenses are silver tips on a black tube. This is an unforgiving close up... and it looks fine from a reasonable distance.

And another major milestone: the chassis and body are now together...



It snaps into place quite well. I'd attached the doors to the body before fitting the two together, but I think in retrospect that's better done afterwards. The photos exaggerate the "edge glint" on the windows. It's hard to know what to do about that. The windows do just stick out of the top of the doors -- no frame, no tint, just plain sheets of glass. Maybe a black edge would have toned down the reflection, but there isn't one in real life.

Just detail work to do now, before I add the flames, and work on the base...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Well, thanks to a nice chap on another forum for spotting that the engine bay window surround is black, not body coloured! Fortunately, the blades were glued in with Formula 560 PVA, so after softening it with some strategically applied water for an hour or so, I could pop them off again. 20 minutes of masking and three minutes of spraying later, and here we are:




...it certainly looks much better to me.

Otherwise, it's more or less time for decals, with just the windscreen wipers to add of the detail parts...




Tonight I'll get the flames on!

bestest,
M.

[JamesPerrin]

The engine cover does look better mount in the black frame.

[mattbacon]

Thanks, guys... apologies for the picture-heavy post!



As you can see, the beast is now spitting blue flames. The blue is actually transparent, although the lighting doesn't show it to best advantage. The number plate is a correct Italian one from http://www.licenseplates.tv/european-plates.html;, and the number is deduced from many viewings of the Top Gear film and the plates on test cars in Evo and Top Gear magazine. Because I'm a sad number plate obsessive, I've also discovered that Jeremy drove two different Aventadors at Imola. If you look really, REALLY carefully, there's one that has a front number plate, in shot very briefly in a couple of sequences, and one that doesn't (the one he drove in the majority of the film). I suspect that after he cooked the brakes, he took out one of the Lamborghini Academy cars, which was conveniently the same colour...





Construction of the car is now complete. I need to do the decals, and fine-tune the surface finish, but I'm pretty happy with it now.



The base is just getting started. The track is a texture from an open source track from a race simulation. A nice track-designer chap called Ennis Fargis provided it for me after I sent him the Google Earth KMZ file for the corner at Imola I was after. I then blew it up and motion-blurred it in Photoshop. It needs to be mounted up properly, and I'm still debating exactly how to present it. But it is achieving exactly the effect I was aiming for...

I'm away from the bench for a couple of days now, but I think we're on the finishing straight!

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Finally done...







A beast:


A couple shot from a more "people-sized" perspective, which gives a better impression of what one looks like to a bystander in real life...



Family portrait:


On the track:


There's still some more work to do on this display concept, but it's why the Stig is in the driver's seat, so watch this space...

bestest,
M.

[JamesPerrin]

Vroom Vroom!

Looks like it's going like stink even without the blurred track, that colour doing a lot of the work.

[mattbacon]

Thanks, James... here are a few more action shots... I still need to work out how to do some more convincing flames. Thanks to Ennis Fargis for the track base image, which is a real Imola corner from a race simulator. I processed that in Photoshop before making the base.






All of those are just photographs. This one has a little more help from Photoshop so the wheels are moving...



bestest,
M.