Moebius Battlestar Galactica Build WiP - Final Update

So, up are the final build photos I took. 

The Landing Bays are complete.  I glued them together with MogPog, clamped them together, and called it a day.  Next is installing and securing lights in the interior of the model. 

As seen in previous shots I cut holes in the Landing Bay Garages so as to give the area a spot light effect kind of like what is shown in the TV show.  Well, not quite that subtle but good enough to bring some life to an otherwise lifelessly detailed area of the model.  To do this I once again sanded the tips off of the LEDs and then taped them in place using Electrical tape.  I'm sure that you could use other material.  I was going to go all the way and build the LEDs Epoxy tombs but shyed away from that idea for this build.  Also, if I was more ambitious I would have made a clear lens insert to hide the lighting hole.  I purposly took this shot with the LED exposed so you folks could see what I did.

The landing bays and engine lights are installed.  This is turning into a rats nest fast:

LED and Fiber Optic for Engine Pods.  I could have used shrink for this but stupid me forgot that I had some big enough:

And one final shot with most all wires in place.  The fiber optics were the hardest part.  Since they only bend so much I had to use a hair drier to heat them up and bend them to my will.  Otherwise the fibers are so stiff I would have snapped them. 

The top cover is secured with MogPog and secured in place.

Rear Engine compartment.  Here I used a generous portion of reflective tape and also stuck a stretched out cotton ball in the compartment to difuss the light.  The final effect is pretty interesting.  I didn't glue this piece to the model for two reasons.  1) it gives me a clean starting point to pry the model apart if I ever need to open her up.  2) It allows me to pull out the cotton ball if I get tired of the effect.

I'll see about getting the final build photos up tomorrow.

If you haven't guessed by now this project is pretty much done and this WIP is really a recap of what I did.  I do not really do anything this fast.  I could be this fast if I didn't have kids or an Xbox.  But then again what fun would that be, right?  I'll finish up the WIP stuff by tomorrow and then throw up the final product.

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So, now that most of the painting is complete it's on to the details.  And there are a lot of details.  Thankfully I didn't take that many photos. 

First up is the lighting for the Gator head.  The head is made up of five parts.  Thankfully I only need to worry about the top three.  The top hull was painted black inside with cheap acrylic black paint.  For some reason this stuff does a pretty good job blocking light where the more expensive stuff does not.  As you can see from the two photos I inserted the LEDs in the holes cut into the bottom of the top hull and secured with MogPog Glue.  I use Mog-Pog for a few reasons.  First, it isn't instant like CA glue is.  Two, CA tends to make things brittle like Fiber Optics.  I didn't want to take the same chance with the LEDs.  This stuff dries clear.  And finally it is pretty strong once cured.  The only real downside is that it can take a few hours to a day to dry depending on location and amount used.
In the photos below you can also see the reflective aluminum tape.  I used quite a bit of this stuff throughout the project. 

Once I finished this part I glued center part of the Gator head to the top hull and secured everything together with MogPog.  The middle part of the had is where the crew quarters and everything else with a window is located on this ship.  As you will see in the final photos I kind of screwed up on the final assembly.  On the Orko model a glued a piece of paper over the portholes to diffuse the lighting.  I didn't realize that I skipped this step until after the glue had cured.  I could have pried the pieces apart but I ran the risk of damaging the model.  It doesn't look bad as is though it could look better.  Most likely I'll be the only one who ever notices. 

Next I turned my attention to the decals.  What a pain these decals are.  The landing bay decals are larger then they really need to be.  You'll never see all of this detail once the landing bays are fully assembled.  At best you can see the runway from end to end.  The runway decal is also very thick and bittle.  I have never placed one of these without ripping it.  Finally, you do need to be careful with placement.  Since the landing bay opening are off center to the main structure you need to be extra carful to line things up properly before sealing the decal in place.  Moving the decal can also lead the ripping. 

I placed the decal, put the top on, adjusted the decal, put the top on, etc until I had proper placement.  You could also measure where this thing goes and light it up based on those measurements.

The only other two decals I used are the fleet insignia and the Galactica decal on the top hull.  These were standard decals.  The only thing I don't like about the fleet decal is that the lines in the image are slightly off from the scribed panel lines.  However, this won't stand out unless you are really close to the model.   Then again, she's starting to come together. :)

And back to the landing bay.  I decided to rework the landing bay ribs.  As I pointed out a few days ago gluing the landing bay ribs to the the top of the landing bay was a dumb idea.  So, I removed them and glued them to the decal where they belong.  I used MogPog since it dries clear and won't eat the decal below.  I also used generious portions of Aluminum tape on the inside of the top hull (More so than what is pictured here), along the bottom of the support beam for the ribs, and I even went back and covered the top of the Support beam with reflective tape.  Later in the build this proved to be a wise choice.  One of the bulbs went out due to something stupid I did and can't fix. 

You will also notice electrical tape around the base of the bulbs to block any light leakage up into the landing bay arms.  There is still some light leakage however you can't see it unless the room is completely dark.  So, no big deal in my book.

Oh, and there is one final thing that you may or may not have noticed.  All of the LEDs in this build have been filed down flat.  The folks I purchased the LEDs from suggested that to getter a wider angle of light transmission to file the lense down to flatten it out.  You can see an excellent example of this in one of the photos above.

Next the parts start to come together.

It's a water-based wash using acrylic paint and adding liquid dish soap to allow the excess to be wiped off easily.  If you have any Polly acrylics, the ratios are usually 6:3:1 for the water/paint/soap.  I haven't experimented with Tamiyas or any other acrylic brand, but I'll have to make a new batch soon and will post the results here since I haven't noticed anyone else doing so.  The soap is what allows excess or mistakes to be removed easily.

While it's not as good as oil-based washes for bringing out panel lines evenly, it works pretty well for aging spaceships when you want a more uneven look.  It's the technique I used to bring out the lines and add depth to the engine on my Reaver ship in the No Aftermarket GB.

Before:

And after.

Just so you know, the smudges trailing the panel lines and such for slight scorch marks was done with weathering powder.

The big thing to remember is to use this on a glossy surface since the pigment will sink into a flat surface and cause spots that won't come off easily or may be permanent.  As long as you have that glossy surface, you can slap this stuff where you want it and rub off the excess with a slightly damp Q-tip when it's dry  ( too wet can remove too much and allow bubbles to form with even the slightest agitation ).

One more thing: the soap makes stirring the wash for use preferable to shaking the bottle, if that's what you usually do since the bottle can be filled to the top with bubbles if shaken.

What exactly is a slugde wash?

Have you ever tried a sludge wash?  The water-based approach might get what you'd want from a wash without the concern about chemicals, and it's also easy to clean up if it turns out that you don't like the results.

So, now that the internals are taken care of its time to move onto the painting.  So, I base coated the model in my own custom super secret shade of blue, grey, black, white.  Yes, I screwed up on the color mixture so I found that I had to play with the shade a whole lot.  Anyway, what I got was a light grey with a blue tint.  It is good to know that even if you screw up a color there is no reason to loose hope that you can't achieve the right color.

I won't bore you with photos of the base paint.  Next, I wanted to add more depth to the model than I had with the Orko battlestar.  On that project I was relying on lighting to cast shadows in the recesses and between the ribs.  I also glazed the model with a polyurithane dark stain. 

For this one I want to add some color variations and light weathering to give the model more character.  I have seen other builds where the modeler paints all of the ribs a darker shade than the armor panels.  If you look at the TV show you will notice that some times the whole ship is a single shade of grey and sometimes it looks like the ribs are intentionally darker than the lighting would normally allow.  I will still rely on lighting to help with the shadows however I was left with a problem of how to do the light shadows and weathering.

I had a few choices:

1) Magic Wash or Glaze
2) Pastel Wash
3) Oil Wash
4) Dry brush the model with either powdered pigments or ground up pastels. 

I tried the Pastel wash on a test model.  It looked terrible.  The pastel powder simply left a granular looking haze on the model.

I wanted to try the oil wash but I don't have a mechanism to deal with the chemicals involved.  However, if I did I probably would have gone with an oil wash.  I've seen a few examples and they look amazing.

I will still do the drybrush with pastels later in the project but didn't want to do the whole model like this.  So, eventually, I settled on the old stand-by Magic Wash/Glaze.  I didn't want to do this since I knew it would make a wicked mess on a model this size. 

I added a drop of blue ink, black ink, some future, and some water into a cup.  I then simply glazed the whole darn thing.  I stopped worrying about the mess.  Below is what the parts looked like after the glaze dried:

Once everything was dried I picked up a brish and the bottle of base coat that I mixed and dry brushed the whole model.  This is the results:

The model looks a lot better now.  These are early photos.  Some parts I rewashed and redrybrushed.  From a distance of about a foot or two the effect looks really good.  I did do something else here that caught me by surprise.  I did something known as pre-shading.  Model airplane models use this trick to add shadows to the panel lines of airplane wings.  Essentially, they spray black or some other dark color along the panel lines without worry of mess.  Then they paint over that with the base coat and any successive coat.  The idea is that the parts that are black will show darker paint then that parts that don't have black under then.  And if everything works out they will have more natural shadows than they would if they black lined the panel lines or applied a wash.  But then these same modelers will add a wash.  Either way the post glaze dry brush really toned down glaze and gave me that complexity I was looking for.  Is it perfect?  No.  But its good enough.

Really beautiful work.

I have seen a few builds with the guarage kit PE.  However, for some reason the builders seem to think slapping a decal over the top makes them look more authentic.  I disagree.  I would rather see them painted with some highlights and lighting.  Or, if no lighting then you can always paint the lighting effects.  I've seen a build with that too.  It looked pretty good too.  If you have any photos of the PE in the guarage before full assembly of the maine hull and after I would very much like to see them.

I found this:  http://bruce-domain.blogspot.com/2011/02/admg-part-4-accurizingdetailing.html

Then he went and ruined these with decals.  I'm simply not sold on these "paint by decal" builds.

This guy seems to have used all of the aftermarket parts and some ofnhis own: 

http://www.therpf.com/f11/3rd-lighted-galactica-done-107548/index2.html

Yeah, those recessed areas for the bays are a pain.  It took 3 steps over 4 days for me to get those secured, and I'm not even lighting the thing!  The one really bad thing in an otherwise nice kit.

Whenever I get around to the "really nice" 2nd pass at the kit with PE etc, I'm hoping the detail set's parts for that section will cover the gap on that lower seam.

Update:

So, I'll save you the everything has a base coat photos simply because it doesn't add anything to a WiP post other than show that I did the step.  Now, there were a few items that I wanted to improve.  You may recall the photo below:

First I wanted to improve the spotlight effect cast by the LEDs.  And second I wanted to clear up the ugly little parting line that you can see running along the bottom edge of the landing bay garage.  There is also an ugly parting line running along the top edge of the landing bay garage as well but I can only fix one of them with the build technique I adopted for this project.  Besides, who is ever going to see the top parting line anyway?  If I so chose I could have purchases a photo etch garage detailing kit that would have magially made these parting lines disappear without any filling or sanding on my part.  However, that was another $30 that I was not willing to spend.  This model can become super expensive if you opt for all of the aftermarket add-ons.

Finally, I wanted to address the light bleed issue that is evident in the above photo.  As I pointed out last time I did indeed find a solution.  Mission accomplished. :)

So, I glue the garage bays to the bottom hull and filled in the parting line with epoxy.  Why Epoxy?  I didn't have any puddy.  As it turns out it was a very good thing I chose to use Epoxy instead of puddy.  I originally used CA glue to attach the garage bays to the bottom hull.  I then placed the top hull section into place so as to set the parts in their optimal positions.  This worked wonderfully until I removed the top hull section and continued working on the model.  For some reason the garage bays started to fall inward.  So, I gently pried the two garage pieces back into position and built two epoxy support beams to hold the bays at their proper angles.  Luckly the modeling epoxy I used for the filling was flexible enough to allow the movement.  My expereince with puddy is that it would have cracked.  The support structure I created with Plumber's Epoxy which becomes very stiff and rigid in a short period of time.  You can see these new structures in the photo above.

You will also notice that each garage section has two holes in it.  This is for the Red LEDs that will light the garage spaces.  The result was a more diffused lighting however if I do a third model I will try some additional techniques to further diffus the lighting.  Or maybe try something totally different.  Who knows.  For now though they will do the job nicely.

My interest is piqued - perhaps to learn about lighting rather than that same old weathering that seems to be over represented on most forums. Keep 'em coming!

Looking good!

I have one of these in the works for "practice" myself.  Just sticking to straight-from-the-box with that one except for the photoetch nameplate when the set comes in. Like you did with the "Columbia," I'm going to use the "Atlantia" nameplate to let this one be a "different" ship from the Galactica that I plan to light up and use the rest of the PE parts on.

I want to pick up one of those kits...now I probably wont light it..that kind of stuff is far beyond me..but the New Series when it was on was my Favorite show on TV! I watched the Original as a kid and liked it the new series was leaps and bounds BETTER! Ive wanted to do a newer BSG Viper,Raider and or Battle Star for quite a while so I will be watching this build.