Sci-Fi & Fantasy model show pictures

Cafe Society
1

This past weekend a local hobby shop, Galaxy Hobby, held their annual science-fiction and fantasy model contest, Sci-Fan. Not a big contest, 64 entries; certainly nothing to compare to Wonderfest (500 entries), but a lot of fun anyway–mostly an excuse to get together and talk about models.

And to try to wow the gang with something new and wonderful.

One of the classes this year was the “make something from this helicopter” class, in which Galaxy handed out kits of Kaman Huskies, with the command to make something cool out of it.

Here are a couple pages of pictures, courtesy of Galaxy’s website:

Yours truly entered; my models are:

1st page:
Row 4, column 4 Metalina
5,1 The Bride (from a comic book)
6,5 Vickers Gomphothere (This is my helicopter model–you guys on the Dope helped name it)
8,1 Vanship #7
8,2 Barnes Wallis’ Swallow speculative airliner from 1949
12,3 Mars or Bust!

2nd page:
1,1 Kid Colt, Outlaw
1,2 Vicki the Biker
3, 2 thru 3,4 Vanship #7
4,3 The Gomphothere, again
5,3 Vicki, again

I won a couple prizes, and had the embarrassing experience of pulling my own name out of a hat for a door prize–in retrospect, I should’ve tossed it back in and drawn another, but I was so excited… :smack:

2

It’s cool to see the Star Blazers models.

3

Holy crap you and a bunch of others must put in a lot of time on some of those! I think I like the Gomphothere best, if only because it looks like it’s crushing one guy and menacing another. Also because I can’t figure out how you got that from a helicopter!

Are all those made from kits, or do you have to fab your own parts & pieces? Especially curious about that for the 2 huge busts. Yours was very good, but the other one in row 5 really grabbed my eye.

4

I am amazed at what modelers can do. I put together a bunch of models when I was a kid but I was pretty sucktacular at gluing the pieces together and painting them.

5

Surprising enough, neither of the busts (I assume you mean the tan-and-orange alien and the vampire further down the page) are all that large. The alien is maybe ten inches high, and the vampire maybe six. Both are resin kits, pretty much straight from the box; the alien, for instance, is one piece. (His base is a piece of cactus “skeleton”. :slight_smile: )

Others are a lot more work. For instance, the tan snarling creature at 5,2 is an original sculpt–I think he said the original was sculpted in clay, and what you see is a resin copy of the master.

I personally tend to be somewhere in the middle; I never build anything straight from the box–I always modify it some way or another, sometimes pretty extensively–but I’ve never sculpted anything from raw materials yet.

6

Incidentally, the helicopter-based models are:

My Gomphothere http://www.galaxyhobby.com/Contest/2008%20photos/DSC02127.JPG
The tan Dune Ornithopter http://www.galaxyhobby.com/Contest/2008%20photos/DSC02126.JPG
The Mars explorer bust http://www.galaxyhobby.com/Contest/2008%20photos/DSC02128.JPG
The deep-sea exploration submersible http://www.galaxyhobby.com/Contest/2008%20photos/DSC02129.JPG
…and the BSG tanker (!) http://www.galaxyhobby.com/Contest/2008%20photos/DSC02097.JPG

7

I’d be disappointed if the modeler didn’t use a model of the Yamato as the basis. :slight_smile:

8

Yeah, I liked that one a lot. He did a great job with the coloring and finish.

[/quote]
Others are a lot more work. For instance, the tan snarling creature at 5,2 is an original sculpt–I think he said the original was sculpted in clay, and what you see is a resin copy of the master.

I personally tend to be somewhere in the middle; I never build anything straight from the box–I always modify it some way or another, sometimes pretty extensively–but I’ve never sculpted anything from raw materials yet.
[/QUOTE]

Wow, that guy has some talent. Not the least of which was figuring out how to get that thing to be self-supporting. It’s all akilter and the head is gihugent.

9

I’m not real familiar with the Star Blazers stuff, but I do know there are a lot of Space Battleship Yamato kits out there. And someone told me that one of the ships at the contest was a super-Yamato from some followup series.

10

I meant a model of the WWII battleship.

11

Yes, the Andromeda. But there was also a Gamalon ship.

12

Ah, the Gamelon must’ve been the one that looks like a diesel locomotive. Someone told me that it was supposed to be kilometers long, and that there were supposed to be millions of them?

Myself, I thought the model was poorly scaled; visually it “read” as though it were maybe the size of a locomotive. Not to impugn the model builder; he did a good job; the fault was with the kit.