The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Looks great. The Airfix boxart is a bit of an oddity with its markings - there SHOULD be an underwing serial but as you are following the boxart, you have dodged a bullet.

I can confirm that on the Mk.5, the aerial mast is canted to starboard.

Cheers Paul - I've been 'working from home this morning' and found time between getting up and getting to the computer to finish the final touches bar the blurred prop.

I have to say I've bee slightly disappointed with the fineness of Aeroclub's marked up knitting elastic - especially when I've tried painting it. So instead I've returned again to my early detailing days, in fact the earliest when I used a hair to add an aerial wire to my Spitfire Mk1. I now have the benefit of two shades of hair, ginger and dark brown/black, obviously the former has little use in modelling

Just some quick on the bench shots for now I'm afraid:



and as is should be viewed:

Very nice!

An oil wash on the wheel hubs would add some depth.

stunning build

Cheers guys.

PaulBradley wrote:An oil wash on the wheel hubs would add some depth.

I had given them a wash of dark grey but when I saw this pic I realised I could be more heavy handed, looking at photos the cut outs are almost black on some a/c.

Looks the part !!! Great job !!!

Finally had time to make some sort of start on the diorama. I'm still sketching how to set it out but one of the first jobs I could do was work out how big is should be. Here's my very rough and ready approach.

Firstly I scanned the boxart and then print it out at various different scales.

The art has the viewer as if on the edge of the deck watching the Firefly take off. Holding up the model to my eye I felt that this worked as roughly a foot (30cm) away.

I placed my scaled versions of the boxart on the table and holding the model a foot away from my eye. I then assessed how far away from each of the images I had to hold the model so it matched up with the Firefly in the picture.

These distances would be how far I'd have to place ship backdrop at the corresponding scale from the model.



The distances ranged from over a foot to about 2 inches. Obvious over a foot is too big and 2inches would make the diorama rather cramped. I settled on the image that gave me a model backdrop distance of approx 4 inches which would allow me to add the crane object on the left in the midground. The image is actually very close to the original boxart size about 8inches across. With the addition of some space left and right; the Firefly is quite tight in the frame as they say, I reckon that I'm looking at a diorama about 12inches across and 8inches deep.

Just read through this thread - lovely build Mr Perrin. Looking forward to seeing the finished diarama.

Stamford wrote:Just read through this thread - lovely build Mr Perrin. Looking forward to seeing the finished diarama.

Cheers very much. Currently playing with bits of cardboard

Wonderful job on the Firefly.

Jim

Great build, and a fabulous diorama idea. Roy Cross would be proud!

Shep

Thanks fellas. I got on with task of creating a backdrop today and so cracked out the water colours that I've never really got round to using.

Looking at my copy of the box art the sky's got a slight yellow/green tinge, basically if RAF Sky! It's probably down to the printing on this red stripe edition by with will help tie everything together. Washes of deep blue to pale green were applied to a strip of card 9x24 inches. I then blocked in the clouds in a very pale yellow green and then added shadows with a greyed variant of the palette. All done in one go took about 15-20mins in all.

Brilliant! That’s proper art, that is... and inspiring to those of us who are still fiddling with their backdrops!

bestest,
M.

mattbacon wrote:Brilliant! That’s proper art, that is... and inspiring to those of us who are still fiddling with their backdrops!

Cheers Matt. I haven't messed around with washes since I used to hang out in the school art room at lunch times - one of having hayfever's few pay off.

I had hope the card would have been thick enough not to wrinkle though. Back in the day we used to pre-stretch our paper but I didn't have a big enough board or that special tape we used I might think about getting them copied and printed.

JamesPerrin wrote:.... I haven't messed around with washes since I used to hang out in the school art room at lunch times....

Crikey so that's the pong then....

Great work James, top skills as usual...

CHeers
Jim