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I have found that I get really discouraged at my own work. If I do something to mess up a kit, either make a mistake in the build, or just do a messy job at building, I get really unhappy and seem to want to give up on that model. I've got many that are in their boxes for that reason. I haven't got any that were badly engineered, at least not yet.
I’m the same way, but over time I’m learning to accept that no model will be 100% right to its builder and that fixing the flaws or mistakes, that are either already present or that you make, turn you into a better modeller and improve your skills. Fixing gashes, scratches, bad paint jobs, misalignments, etc, is valuable experience, and over time you’ll start to be happy with your repair jobs. I have a flak 88 that to me looks amazing now, but if you saw the in progress photos you wouldn’t think it’s the same model. I had primed and painted the entire thing carefully, with camouflage, only to see after that I had missed 4 very large and obvious seam lines because I had initially thought there were weld lines on the real thing. I took off the paint and primer completely from those parts, repaired the seams, and then re-did everything.
When doing models now I see it as my objective to physically manipulate the work in front of me in any and all ways necessary to make it look good. Sometimes that means a ton of repairs to stuff that started out just fine.
Associate Editor
