I posted a few of these in General discussion. Someone said I should do a piece for the Aircraft forum so here it is: I hope it's not too much...
Mini "egg" version of the recently departed "Nine-o-Nine" (R.I.P.)
Same kit, but I decided to honor a different ship "Fuddy Duddy" (I took some liberty with the "2nd Patches" chin turret detail)
I was getting model fatigue working on two 1:48 "WWII Heavies", B-24D "Strawberry ***" and a restoration of a manned B-17G I have been working on for 25 years. I found these kits at Hobby Lobby for $13 USD and thought "what the heck!"
Even though they are snap-tite kits, the fit was awesome and I was impressed with the amount of detail for such a cheap "kids" model. The first one, "Nine-o-Nine" was the kit built straight out of the box (with a few painted accents). It was so much fun I decided to build another bird just to see what she'd look like in foil. I was going to go with a similar aircraft from the 447th bomber group (or "BG") "A Bit O' Lace", but I thought "Fuddy Duddy" was a better choice for a "cartooney" plane. Both from the 447th with that distinctive yellow tail and those bright green stripes.
Apologies: OK so as far as I know, none of the ships in the 447th had shark's mouths painted on their chin turrets. I just thought it would be cool so I "borrowed" the trick from a plane called "2nd Patches". I figued since it was a characture of a B-17 anyway, I might have a little fun.
For the shineys:
I usually use Micro Scale's aluminum foil adheasive with regular household aluminum foil, but this time I wanted to try out Bare Metal's product so I went with a sheet of the "Chrome" foil.
I used Alclad's awesome chrome paint for the gear, wheels and spinner machines (as well as some of the canopy where I couldn't get the foil to work right.
For the non-shiney bits:
I used Testors gloss yellow for the yellow bits, and Testor's gloss green lightened with flat white for the stripes. I had a heck of a time peeling off the masking tape from the foil once I had painted the stripes. I still need to find a better way to mask-off on the foil jobs.
A tip for overspray over broad surfaces: I found the product called "Press'n Seal" by Glad. It's like a heavy duty seran wrap with a mild adheasive in micro bubbles on one side. it works just like painters plastic and it doesn't peel off paint or foil. It lightly adhears only when you apply pressure to it, It works great to protect from overspray and it was way easier to work with than tape.
For the decals & markings:
I used what I could from the Nine-o-Nine kit, star & bars on the fusilage and the wings and for the big "V" I trimmed up the top-side wing stripes from the original decal set. For the BG designation and the tail number I used Testor's clear decal paper and made my own. The Elmer Fudd nose art posed a different problem: since I couldn't find any nose art decals that would work for that weird scale, (1/144 was just too small) I drew my own in AutoCAD, scaled them to fit and printed them out on the decal paper. That worked perfectly.
The only thing I would do different regarding the nose art would be to print them on white decal paper instead of clear and just bite the bullet cutting them out. Either that or I will brush on some white primer before I place them.
To set the ink and for the actual decal "skin" I didn't go and spend a heap on decal bonding spray - I just used some good ol' Testors "Dull Cote" spray I had laying about and the results were awesome.
The next kit I am going to purchase will be the Meng Kid's B-24J. I'm going to foil it and do the "Dragon and it's Tail"! I already have some ideas on how to "cartoon" up the decal in CAD!