The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

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

I've been spending time over the last few weeks research the backdrop to the Firefly. The ship is HMAS Sydney ( number III and also referred to as R17). Apart from this aircraft carrier which had a long career and went through many changes there was also a previous ship from earlier in the war which was lost with over 600 hands in a battle with an Italian cruiser. This means I've looked at a lot of pictures trying to find appropriate and useful images. One of the best is a from a similar viewpoint as the box art:



One of the significant details that is wrong in the artwork is the deck crane is wrong. In fact it looks like they are assembling it. Though I'm taking my lead from the artwork I've got to work out how to make it work in "3D". I've been working mostly on the computer so far drawing details over the artwork to place where they appear behind the Firefly. The island will be largely realized in card with painted details. I need to trade off details or else I'll find myself building a 1/72 HMAS Sydney.

There are a low of figures in the scene some will be fashion of the RAF personnel set and the rest reproduced as cut outs direct from the artwork. The deck is in the middle of painting and I'll post some pics shortly.

Here is the painted deck with my paper proof of concept superstructure. This is just to check size, composition and the forced perspective. Looks pretty good though my funnel is a little short





The Firefly will be a little lower when the stands base is remove and I mount the upright into the board. Canting it over to starboard will also help reveal the underside as in the boxart. Like the J2F6 the base is raised up a couple of inches to help force the the low viewpoint.

A slight correction James the Sydney lost with all hands was off the West Australian coast in action with the German raider Kormeran. While in the Med.under Capt. John Collins she sank the Italian Bartolemeo Collieoni. Please excuse any spelling errors.

Dai

DH-Drover wrote:A slight correction James the Sydney lost with all hands was off the West Australian coast in action with the German raider Kormeran. While in the Med.under Capt. John Collins she sank the Italian Bartolemeo Collieoni. Please excuse any spelling errors.

Thanks Dai, serves me right for skim reading wikipedia late at night.

I hope this isn't too late, James - I just got the Airfix 13th catalogue, and it has the full Roy Cross artwork for this:



I can send this to you as a hi-res file if you want.

@Paul, I actually found the full image online an hour after posting but not as big as yours. Most informative. Could you please email a higher res version I use really use it for printing some of the crew etc out.

@Brews yes the whole artwork has a green almost Sky tinge to it especially the printing for the red stripe boxing that I have. I might go back and add those yellow patches in the sky to my backdrop.

Anyway plenty to do must crack on!

Chugging along with the superstructure the last few nights. The has been made out of paper card and foam board. Everything is cut with the forced perspective. It's been fun in the most part and taken me back to when I was very young and spent all my time building things out of card ( from cereal packets then) stuck together with the ubiquitous UHU.

Just the detailing to add now which will probably require plastic and odds'n'ends scavenged from around the house.

I've decided to add all the figures as card flats. This mean I can add them all and gets round the scaling issues.

Hats off to you sir, that is brilliant work

Regards
Tom

Great work James , looking forward to seeing this in a fortnights time

Thanks for the encouragement guys. Apart from the crane I think it's ready for paint! A few extra details will be added later.

Got this all paint this afternoon and evening. A quick blast with Halfords primer and then lightened with a quick coat Light a/c Grey. Details using paint, colouring pencils and marker pens for the windows. Chap's cut out from Paul's nice hires image.

Great stuff, James... the perspective looks excellent, and the little guys work remarkably well!

bestest,
M.