As a great fan of comic strips and graphic novels, I've been thinking of starting a Group Build dedicated to figures, aircraft and other vehicles featuring in that type of literature...
It's not just about scale modeling, but also, mainly, about learning something about other cultures, comic strips, characters, plots and the like. Because if I have a big interest in comic strips, I'm mostly refering to the so-called 'Franco-Belgian school' of this specific art form (of which Tintin and Asterix are probably the best known examples).. I am much less familiar with the US and the Japanese type of comics/graphic novels, just to name two other very popular 'sub-type' of this genre of literature... But I'm quite open-minded and would gladly hear 'first-hand' accounts from fans of those other kinds of comics...
This GB would take place sometimes between the summer of 2005 and the end of the year. Everything is allowed provided it does appear in a printed form somewhere in the world AND participants provide some kind of background info about what they are modeling ('biograpies' of characters and authors/illustrators, recommended read, specific info about the particular vehicle modeled, on top of the usual 'work in progress' reports and completed model pics... At the end of the GB, I would collate the info and the pics onto a website, a kind of virtual museum dedicated to the artform...in scale...
By 'printed form', I mean illustrations published in a book or a newspaper or magazine type of format; this means that things such as Peanuts, Pif, Tintin, the Smurfs/Schtroumpfs, Garfield, the Simpsons, Star Wars, Buck Danny, Blake and Mortimer, Spiderman, Batman, Corto Maltese,... are all eligible. However, subjects must appear as close as possible as they appear in the printed form (your 3-D interpretation of what you see on paper of course!)..
Anyone interested..?
Leopold rail gun, F-16 and SAL 'Kolibri' in 'Le Canon de Kra' (Yoko Tsuno)
Jeep, Moon rocket, Hiller Commuter, DC-6, Lysander, Moon tank,... in 'Objectif Lune' and 'On a marché sur la Lune' (Tintin)
Espadon in 'Le Secret de l'Espadon' (Blake anf Mortimer)
WP-30 (aka Junkers G.38) by Miyazaki