Preparation work started with removong the 20 large ejector-pin marks on each side of the Tardis' interior. Some of these will be visible on the completed model, some won't. So, of course, they've all got to be filled... Out with the Mr. Surfacer....

The clear parts need, as ever, to be coated with Future. So I took them out of the bags amd examined them. Most of the Tardis interior parts have mould separation lines which will be visible on the completed model. So they have to be removed....and polished clear again.....  out with the 3-way nail buffer.... Then into the Future and uner the dust-cover...

Next up was priming. A couple of hours in the garage with Halfords Grey Primer, clothes pegs and blu tac on a sunny Sunday, followed by sanding and polishing to restore a smooth surface. 

Next job was to paint the Tardis components blue. It will be impossible to paint the interior once the kit has been completed, so I decided to do at least the basic spraying befoe assembly. Here the interior sides have just recieved their second coat of Humbrol 25:

In fact, Humbrol 25, the colour provided with the kit, bears little resemblance to the blue of the old Police boxes. The closest match I could find was Humbrol 181 Glossy Sea Blue, which was delisted several years ago. I have two tins in my paint racks, but I need those for,er, USN subjects. Luckily, Redlands Hardware, the LHS over the road from my house, which has a good stock of delisted Humbrol paints, still has some, and I was able to get a couple more tins this morning.

To give the main Tardis parts three sprayed coats of H.25, inside and out, took a whole tinlet, and then some. The kit gives you one potlet of rifle-target acrylic. Probably enough to give the exterior one thin coat. Little Johnny will be well fed up.

In my local art shop, I found a fine-tipped permanent marker pen in almost exactly the right shade of purple for the decoration on Martha's vest.

To be continued...

Yesterday, I finished painting the main components. I pre-shaded the walls, base and roof in black, and then reduced the shadowing with more H.25 on the inside and H.181 Glossy Sea Blue on the outside. I then protected the outside with three coats of Future, because I'm going to give them a wash of black ( or maybe very dark blue) oil paint. The flash here:

exaggerates the shading.

The kit instructions suggest that you brush-paint the Tardis' parquet flooring...  I chickened out, found some parquet flooring on the internet, copied and printed out as much as I needed (10cm * 10cm, if you're waddling down the same route):

Painting the internal fittings was fun, preparing the parts less so. There were lots of mould seams to be removed from the clear plastic parts, and the alignment pins on the base unit had to be removed for a better fit. The instructions would have you paint the internal fittings H.28 overall (except for the bits that are supposed to remain clear), with H.110 supports:

I used H.118 for the supports, and sprayed the inside of the clear parts with Tamiya acrylic green. The base seemed to have an organic character, so I painted the 'creeper' thingies in various Citadel acrylic greens, leaving the clear green to show through in places. Perhaps the most impressive piece of the whole unit is the centre core. It's formed by rolling a rather unimpressive-looking piece of dayglo green paper round a Microbrush, inserting this into a clear plastic core, and then into a further piece of clear plastic tubing. Somehow, it then acquies the most amazing iridescentflorescence...quite stunning!

Here are a couple of close-ups of the centre console:

I'm annoyed about the misalignment of the supports and the console. This was almost entirely my fault, and I hope it won't be too noticeable on the finished model. The moral of the story is, of course, test-fit, test-fit, test-fit! - ideally before applying paint!

To be continued...

cmtaylor wrote:

Fir the pin-striping, why not try pinstriping decals as used fro Model Railway rolling stock?

Now, that's a thought! I wonder if they do them in pale blue-grey, about 0.5m wide?

Cheers,

Chris.

Quick update - I had intended this to be a detailed WIP, but I've been too busy with other things over the last couple of weeks. Anyway, here's the completed TARDIS:

on a simple base (bases and dioramas are not my strong points). The Doctor and Martha are about a week off completion.

Cheers,

Chris.

The Doctor's finished. I painted him with a combination of Humbrol and White Ensign enamels, Citadel acrylics and oil paints for the flesh. The trickiest parts were the pinstripes and The Doctor's overcoat.

I did the pinstripes by spraying the whole suit very dark grey, and then masking off all but the areas where I wanted the pinstripes to go. I then sprayed this light blue-grey. When I removed the masking, I thinned down the pinstripes further, but only in the areas wheich would be visible on the completed model, using an acrylic version of the main suit colour. I then used standard figure shade/ hghlight techniques.

The problem with the overcoat was that I lack the modelling and painting skills to paint it and the rset of the Doctor's body as one item. Therefore I had to paint it as a number of separate items, When I test-fitted it to the Doctor's body, I found that the fit was less than excellent, and that quite a lot of filling and sanding was needed.

In this, I had to ensure that the rest of the painted model was not damaged, which involved some quite tricky masking and then re-spraying to ensure that the result was 'seamless' - except, of course, wher there actually were seams on the real thing!

Here are some piccies:

Martha's still got a couple of days' work until she's finished.

Cheers,

Chris.

Nice job, and quick work too.

I was amused to see the good Dr wearing Chucks. Fashion and comfort. Cool.

Cosmic J wrote:

I was amused to see the good Dr wearing Chucks. Fashion and comfort. Cool.

I printed off some badges for his boots. Unfortunately, they're hidden up his trouser legs!

Cheers,

Chris.

Progress on Martha was faster than expected, and she was completed today:

Building and painting her was probably the most enjoyable part of the whole exercise. Doing a reasonably competent version of the pattern on her vest was a challenge. I tried a number of methods, but ended up painting it freehand onto a piece of clear decal (this took three attempts), and then cutting the decal into six pieces to fit over her, er, complex three-dimensional curves...

Painting her jeans was fun, too. Over a base-coat of airbrushed medium blue, I applied fading with carefully dry-brushed layers of light blues and greys, and finally some white to pick up the highlights. I then applied standard shading and highlighting techniques to her jeans as a whole:

Her bag and jacket were a challenge - not so much the painting, but getting them to stay in position. Martha's arms are made of vinyl, and when I first completed the figure, her left arm, and the things she was carrying with it, stuck out at a very unrealsitic angle.

Test-fitting showed that her coat would fit snugly against her left thigh. However, supergluing the jacket to the jeans just resulted in a paint-to-paint bond, which fell apart as soon as I stopped pressing the two together. In the end, I had to remove all the paint from the connecting areas of her jacket and her jeans, and superglue the bare plastic surfaces together. This caused quite extensive damage to her oil-painted left hand, which I restored by applying oil paint directly onto the vinyl. I'm still not totally confident that this will prove a long-term solution...:

Finally, the flesh and hair tones. Martha was only the third dark-skinned figure I've ever painted (the first being the bow gunner on the Tamiya 1/35 PBR, the second being Kieron Dyer from the notorious Airfix Euro 2004 Footyblxer sets (well, at least we qualified that time...) It wasn't as hard as I expected. I started by mixing up some 'normal' flesh-tint from oil paints, and then added burned umber until I had acheived the right basic shade. From then, it was a question of darkening (with burned umber) or lightening (with the basic flesh tint) as required.

Her hair was more of a challenge. Basically, it's black. Over a full-on lamp black base, I added burned umber and alizarin crimson in semi-dry-brushed layers, until I had achieved something like the level of highlight and contrast I was looking for, and then quit while I was ahead:

The tattoo of a butterfly on Martha's right shoulder, BTW, was done with a Humbrol insignia blue enamel and a fine brush, painted directly onto the oil paint, after having practiced a couple of times on paper.

Final piccies of the complete model and base tomorrow.

Cheers,

Chris.

It's finished!

It was a fun build - most of the time. The figures in particular. The TARDIS itself was something of an uphill struggle. I'd offer the following comments to ayone thinking of building it.

• Don't bother filling in the internal ejector-pin marks. You can't see any of them on the completed model.
• The card insert for the interior needs to fit tightly into the rear left-hand corner of the TARDIS. Repeated test-fitting pays dividends here. When you're happy with the fit, use lots of double-sided sellotape to fix it securely in place.
• You don't need to go to town detailing and painting the interior console (though it can be fun if you do). Not much of it is visible through the door, especially if you're fitting it so that it operates the switch for the electronics.
• If you're going to position the Doctor where the model suggests he should go, then you don't need to paint (or indeed use) the external telephone cupboard parts. He stands in front of them, and prevents the cupboard from being opened. You can glue it firmly in place.
• The roof unit is problematic. If you leave it loose, not only is the fit very, very loose, but the way the spring loaded latch which holds it in place operates ensures that it will be off-true.
• In my case, the electronics didn't work anyway, and I didn't really want them to. The model will be on display in a shop, and I want as few excuses as possible for the punters to want to touch it.  Therefore I  simply glued it in place at the correct angle, but for the average builder in the target market, this probably won't be an option.
• I've read that one option is to unscrew the roof unit, disconnect the battery box, solder longer wires in place, feeding these through the base of the TARDIS, and into a new battery box in the base of the whole model.
• Fit of the major components on the TARDIS is very, very, poor. Envisage using a lot of gap-filling superglue to hold everything securely in place, and then non-sanding filler/ white glue to hide th numerous gaps. Seriously. The quality of fit on this model makes the Airfix 1/72 Concorde look good.
• The model as a whole really needs a base. As he is, the Doctor won't stand up unless he has a base, or is leaning against something. This is especially so if you're thinking of modifying the electrics as suggested above.

Looking at the positives, though, the vinyl stickers, though they look a bit naff at first, work well. They've also got a lot better colour density than current Airfix decals.

The vinyl body parts hold superb detail. The hair is particularly excellent. The kit-provided acrylics won't stick to the vinyl without an enamel undercoat, though, which, again, may well provide a lot of frustration for the target market.

The instructions are superb, especially the painting notes. These explain clearly some fairly advanced painting techniques, and give even a modeller with limited experience a fighting chance of producing a realistic and attractive model. The approach could well be copied by other manufacturers.

Would I build another one? No, but not because of any modelling issues, but simply because I'm no great Doctor Who fan. However, Airfix have announced another two ‘Doctor Who' sets, including one with a couple of daleks. If Howleys want me to build them for the shop, I'll be happy to oblige. It makes a change from overall Olive Drab, after all....

Here are some final piccies:

Cheers,

Chris.

I'm a Doctor Who fan since the fourth (Toma Baker) in the 70's so I couldn't miss this kit.

First the compliments: 

You've done a great job on the T.A.R.D.I.S.: it looks real ... well as real as a T.A.R.D.I.S. could look!
The pinstripe suit also turned out veeery nice.

Now the critiques:

I know the instructions say that you should dry-brush the figures too, but in that scale it's not a good thing since it looks like dust and not like highlights.
There are various techniques to get volumes on figures the most with spread are blending with oils and coating with acrylics.

The iris in the Doctor's eyes are too small the effect you get is that he looks scared. An easy method is to paint a vertical strip of paint (brown, blue, green etc.) and a black dot in the center.

Besides these observations I think you a very nice job and your LHS might manage to increase the sales. 

Thanks for that, Klaus.

Painting the TARDIS was an involved and time-consuming process; I'm glad you think it looks OK.

As far as the figures are concerned, I wasn't too happy with the eyes, either - they've never been my strong point. I'm re-doing them as you suggest, using acrylics. I take your point about the dry-brushing on the Doctor's overcoat, too, so I've soflty blended in some Citadel Dwarf Flesh which has, I think, taken the edge off the rather stark effect I'd achieved previously. I'm happy with Martha's faded jeans, however, so I'm keeping her as she is.

I did in fact try the oil blending technique you suggest on Martha's bag, and I'm not convinced that I've achieved a sufficient degree of contrast, but didn't want to go further for fear of over-doing the effect. I think I might try airbrushing highlights in future.

Cheers,

Chris.

Nice build, I picked mine up yesterday, your build log has been very helpful. THank You.

Terry Burke.

rosey wrote:

wow the tardis looks great. hope they issue more dr who things

Airfix have announced a Dalek set for later in the year, as well as another set based on the "Voyage of the Damned" episode.

Personally, I'd like to see more of Martha A set - or series - of Doctor's Assistants through the ages, perhaps? 

Cheers,

Chris.

And yes, sales of Dr. Who sets at my LHS have taken quite a boost. On average they'e selling one a week now, when they sold barely one a month previously. 

thanks for the information and the great pics of your work.  daleks would be neat to do, and  sara from about 30 years ago.  Oh and maby the amazon woman as well.  Love your work.

Amazon wom... LEELA!  I think you mean Leela.  Yes, she would be a nice subject.

I would like to see a series of The Doctors each with his unique TARDIS console.

I'm very interested in the "Welcome Aboard" kit, I'll have to try to get one. 

Now that I've finished mine I understant why you said that painting the TARDIS was time consuming ... I'd say more PITA!!

Just one pic to share my work (no thread stealing intended):

it came out very nice and looks like it was worth the extra effort. i hope it boosts their sales.

it's just a shame most of the pictures didn't load (says they are missing)

Great looking build up.

I REALLY need to get off my rear and build up mine. It's such a super kit.

WOW! Very sharp job Avus. Love the wood grain effect you got on the TARDIS and great job on painting the Doctor pinstripes and all.

And thanks for kicking Chris's tread back to the surface since it was posted before I joined the forum and I never got to see it. I've got one of those kits somewhere in my stash and really need to get around to it someday.