I finally finished my entry for the Miniature Magic campaign. It's the Halcyon kit of the Narcissus escape shuttle from the first alien movie. 1:144 scale. Here comes the pics.










The kit was a pleasant build, exept for the nose, which was quite awful. The angles of the nose pieces didn't match the angles of the front fuselage in anyway. To fix this properly, one must cut the whole nose apart and re-assemble it. Great amount of puttying and filing expected. I just built a 2mm extension to the nose and puttied the gaps and sanded smooth. Now the diffetent shapes don't show that badly.

The cockpit was extremely spartan, only very simple seats. In fact, nothing fancier is needed, as the smoked canopy makes the area very dark (and the cockpit interior is to be painted dark grey), so I made no efforts to improve it.

Other than the nose, assembly went smoothly. Well, the thrusters' egdes should have been rounder, which is better done before attaching them to the fuselage. I didn't sand them, I noticed that issue after they were attached, so I applied putty to the seams to smooth thing up.

The model was then primed and then I sprayed it gloss white. I tried to do a preshade affect on the panel lines. I got it right only on the belly, so I accented the panel lines with lifecolor oil colored wash and wiped off the extra with q-tips dipped in future (future removes that stuff like magic). Due to some orange peel and heave coat in some spots, some panel lines didn't come out that great so I used a thin marker pen to draw them. Other details were also accented with lifecolor wash and wiping with future.

I wasn't sure if the decals would work properly after more than a decade but they worked perfectly and snuggled down to the panel lines with a little micro sol. The last thing was to remove the masks from the canopy and the rear hatche's window and attach the front thrusters. The rear window got some spray due to sloppily applied masking tape and there were some smugdes. I think I'll paint the whole window black because there's no way to remove the paint smugdes without damaging the clear part.

But there it is, my first campaign entry on Armorama.


Ps. Should I put a pic in the campaign gallery myself, or is it done by the people running the campaign?

Edit: july 13th 2017 - another build thread migrated from PB. Wow, editing a twelve years old message, probably my personal record so far!

Hi Emiritus,
Congrats on your first campaign entry on Armorama. And what an entry!!! Very beautifull, great work, nice detail and original subject.
Well done!

You can upload the pictures in the campaign gallery yourself. In the same way as you upload pictures in your gallery; only difference is you choose the campaign gallery to upload to.

Paul

Looks good, is that a thumbprint on the second photo (engine housing) or part of your orange peel problem? I've got one of these, but have yet to build it. Any problems with your build beyond the nose?

Normally, you upload a photo or two into the campaign gallery yourself. It is easier for the campaign leader to determine who actually completed the GB and is awarded the ribbon if all the photos are in one place. Also name your photos sequentially (if adding more than one) so your photos stay together and you don't get double counted.

First of all, thanks for the comments.
Okay, I'll upload a couple of pics to the campaign gallery.

That thumbprint looking thing on the engine is probably the orange peel showing after drybrushing the thrusters. Also, there seems to be a curved scratch there.

Sabot, if you're planning to re-shape the nose, this review has drawings of re-shaping the nose section:: http://www.starshipmodeler.com/other/oc_narc.htm

Edit: Uploaded a couple of pics in the gallery