Update!

I updated the Gallery page a little. I was struck by the lighting on the professional photos Billy Leliveld showed on the papermodelers forum (and of which I also showed some here) and yesterday I tried to do the same with some of my models which are displayed in a space situation. I used my pretty little Lumix LX7 on a tripod, a blackish background and a very bright LED flashlight (a Maglite to be precise). The background I used was the biggest black surface I could find, the portfolio case I have for large sheets of paper. It just is ribbed like cardboard boxes. And that showed on the pictures here and there. It looked a little like an eighties video clip. Horizontal lines galore. Luckily I know my way around Photoshop a little. I talk too much. Look at the new pictures in my gallery here.
Here's one for appetite.

More Tardis fun

This weekend I got a broken alarm clock and today I took it apart. I am always on the lookout for small cogs for making rivet lines on my models but the teeth of these wheels all were flat and not pointy, so I couldn't make use of the cog wheels as such. 
But when I took the clock apart, looking at the spiraled springs immediately took me back to my previous build. So I made a little display for my Tardis model.
More after the jump.

Apollo Command Module 1/20 [1] Beginnings.

Time to start the model of the decade. It actually has already completely used up all existing superlatives so I cease to try and add more to it now. Ken West's Apollo capsule is on the cutting mat.

After getting a grasp of how big the model would become, I decided to reduce the size but I still wanted to be able to do as much detail as possible. I chose 1/20 as my preferable size. A lot smaller than the original model but still a large model. I started printing out some pages and today I made the first cuts.

We start with two parts simultaneously to make it more interesting.

While I am starting with the heat shield, I also am doing the instrument panel. As far as I can remember, this part and the hatch are the most elaborate parts with the highest amount of details. In fact, you can consider them little models on their own.

So here's a couple of photos to get started.

It will be a lot smaller than the original build would be.
The finished capsule will measure about 17 cm across.

Let's start with the outer ring of the heat shield.

 More after the jump.

Finally, PK does a rant on printers.

I don’t get anything as far as printing stuff is concerned.

All I want is a 1/12 paper model, originally intended to fit on A4, to be printed at an A5 size, so I can fit two pages on one A4 sheet, and thus resized so it will be 1/20.

If I print a single page, reduced to 1/20, solo on an A4, I have to do this at 60%. This make perfect sense to me.

If I put two pages on one single A4 sheet (which, in my theories, makes the pages A5 sized), the printer dialog box claims the reduced pages are 97%. This makes NO sense to me. 97% of the original size? 97% of an A5? What? This is not clear in any way.

To reduce a page from A4 to A5 takes 71% already. So in the dialog box the setting should be automagically set at 71%. That would make sense. Now I just have to guess new percentages to print the pages at my desired scale. That took me some more ink than I intended to spend. Of course I got there in the end. But only by comparing to the originally reduced print (@60%) I already had.

Now I learnt I have to print the pages at 90%, with the printer set to “no border” to get the exact size I intended to get.

Thinking a little further, this indeed may get the page size up to the original 60% (the pages already being reduced to 71% without incorporating this number in the dialog box) so I get the final result but it should be easier, more intuitive.

This is not making my life any easier. But then I suppose it might not be intended to make my life easier. Printers belong to the weirdest group of household appliances. Why?

I'll rant about that after the jump. (-;

The little dilemma's of a paper Kosmonaut

Now that we have finished the last inbetweenie it is time for at least one big project for the coming times. And I have decided upon the wonderful Apollo capsule designed by Ken West. But since I apparently cannot build anything just straight out of the proverbial box, but preferably a little smaller (or a lot) I also need to do this with the Apollo. Now I just am wondering on which scale I should use. How much detail do I want to keep? I reduced the control panel in a test print to 50%, so 1/24. In this scale I will probably have to lose the finger guards of all the switches. The next test I did was at 75%, which would turn the model into a 1/16th sized object. It will give me all the details but it just is a bit too close to the original size. The path in between would lead me to 60% and that would make it 1/20. 

To give a sense of scale: the smallest panel version is about 10 cm across, the middle one is 12,5 cm and the upper one measures a little more than 15 cm.

What will it be?
Of course, I will keep you all informed.
--PK

Time. For an inbetweenie.

Does a thrumming metallic sound and the apparition of a large blue box ring a bell?
Fine. Although I am not a frequent television watcher, when I do, I often watch BBC shows and I also like Doctor Who a lot. And must say I am very pleased with the Twelfth Doctor. I really think Peter Capaldi is perfect for the role. I know I might offend some of the Who fans here, but I think he's a better fit for the part than Matt Smith ever was. So in celebration of the thirteenth incarnation of our favourite renegade timelord, here's a little Tardis I built this week. It has been built from blue paper, so no need for colouring and all that. Here's the end result, some pictures of the build can be found after the jump.