Hey guys, it's Adam from testing with another one day build I am going to be Scratch-building and kit bashing today I know we've done little bits of this in the past untested but as a model maker my primary Job was to take drawings from an art director like this and then fashion them out of what we had in the shop We weren't using pre-existing kits, so we would take sheets of styrene and rent shape and other materials and make what the art director had drawn and that is What I'm going to do today, I realize I had never shown you guys some of the techniques for working with styrene in this fashion It's going to be a localized build. I'm not going to leave this table I have pretty much everything I need right here for this build. So let's get started This is my inspiration, this is my this is my art directors drawing this I would get something like this one I was working on episode 1 & 2 I'd get something like this from Doug Chang And I wouldn't get more angles. I wouldn't get layouts. I wouldn't get blueprints I just get a single drawing and I'd have to extrapolate from this drawing to build a three-dimensional object So I'd spend maybe a day fleshing out the basic shape and then I would kit bash and add details as the art director required this drawing is actually it's like my fantasy right to have Moebius be my art director This is a picture from one of Mobius graphic novels that I took a photo with my phone a few weeks ago And it's perfect for our purposes today. It's boxy It's fairly simple But it will still allow us to go through most of the major techniques of working with styrene now Styrene is a plastic material. You can get it in any hobby store It comes in different sheet thicknesses Oh 200 400 600 800 I have a lot of different versions of it I think I'm gonna start at the basic body with Oh for oh here one of the things that's amazing about Mobius is he communicates so much with such simple lines and When you look at this drawing really closely um more and more detail and implication of detail becomes apparent and that's that's just really Brilliant art direction and it makes my job a lot easier So we're gonna start by flushing out the basic form of this One of the first things to figure out is your scale my scale today will be Admiral Ackbar this three and a half inch figure so you can make all your Itsatrap jokes to yourself because that's the last time I'm saying that phrase it is a little over spoken But with Akbar as my guide, that's a good title for an autobiography with Akbar as my guide. I Can see the back of this is curved a little bit Control panel here That's steeper angle And that comes across This is parallax. So it probably comes out to here. Oh, right, right, right So with styrene you don't need to use band saws And other cutting tools to cut styrene a single exacto blade is plenty because styrene does this really? Beautiful thing and that when you score it and I'm not going all the way through when I'm making these cuts I'm literally just going about halfway through when you score it you can Pop it on that score so you give it a little bend a little bit in the other way a little bend a little bit in the other way a little bend a little bend in the other way and It pops off now. I do end up with a little bit of imperfect flash there, but I'll deal with that later however, I need two of these shapes because this is a a Box, so I'm not gonna use this and trace it for my second shape. I can actually score right to it with my Exacto blade and I will be about as close as you could possibly get You have to think about styrene is as you end up with off cuts you save them all because they can all be useful So now I have two parts of my box and they are very close to each other I'm gonna use a sanding nail file just to make sure they're exactly like to pull up This technique right here is pretty much how all the spaceships and all the movies you love or bill if they were physically built You know you'd make a wooden frame But your main body would often be styrene because it's so well You'll see later; why styrene is a perfect base material for this kind of construction. So one of the things about this drawing is I can't see the top of what these two guys the machine these two guys are Sitting in I can't see what the top of it looks like, but that's not a worry It just means that I have to figure out what it looks like and rather than if I make it just a solid sheet I kind of Paint myself into a corner of having to detail it up I'm actually going to cut make it a frame So that I can build some depth into it if I choose if I decide not to I can simply cover it with another piece Of styrene, you'll see what I mean. All right. So let's do that that comes I'm gonna show you a cool technique. You're gonna really dig I'm gonna cut out this square But I'm gonna cut a square out of its middle and I'm gonna do it using only an exacto blade Let's do that at point four inches, so So I have a square scored out of here but how do I pull that square out of here? Well this way I draw a star through the middle of it from corner to corner and corner to corner So this is how to cut holes out of the center of a piece of styrene so I start to manipulate this Along these lines. Oh, yeah a little bit of separation there. That's useful Just gently keep bolt there we go. See that see what's happening. Yeah. That's how this goes So awesome Up Till you hear that tell-tale crack means you're living a righteous life Okay, here we go One two Three Four five Six, yep, there we go. And I end up with a nice styrene frame, okay I want to save these cuz these connect well, you'll see how useful these can be later on so we have our two sides And we have our top All right, you know Okay. Now I need a bottom and the bottom is gonna be the same width as the sides. So it's simply going to be This long Some of my old colleagues at ILM can build this way so fast, it makes your head spin I'm looking at you John Goodson now that I have Four pieces I can start to assemble this thing. I'm gonna use these guys as gussets For some mechanical advantage to this guy Working with styrene. Here's a tip get a tin can preferably a diet soda tin cans so it's not sticky Cut the bottom of that can off Now you've got your tin-can bottom This is a perfect styrene dispenser and every model maker I know has one of these glued to a piece of card in their kit because what you do is you take this and you take some weld on number three, which is the weld bond for styrene and you pour a little bit into the top of your tin can and then that is my styrene dispenser and I'll show you how How I'm gonna use it, so I'm gonna put a couple of gussets on this We're gonna put four gussets on this frame and I want to glue them so I take a brush I dip it in my state my weld bond glue and I just brush it along the side there and then Do it both sides. It's a weld bond. This means that it actually melts both sides of the equation So now I can leave that there I do it again over here I can be I'm being a little bit rough about my internal construction You can certainly get as anal as you like about this but one of the things that's great about styrene is it hides a ton of crimes as you say there's lots of forgiveness within the process of working with styrene So if you do something rough up front, you can hide it or mask it or sand it away or melt it later Well, look at that. Oh my god. It's like we're doing carpentry with plastic. It's exactly like we're doing carpentry with plastic Once a seam is already set You can go back in and just keep on putting a little glue to its side just to make it nice and solid Now I'll do this one over here. Look at that. We're we're already on the way. We're on our way Yeah, it's happening. Okay, so this is the bottom and I went like that to that So I'm going to I know there are needle applicators for styrene glue But I prefer the brush the needle applicators can actually spread too much material and I know that they're like highly precise but Still for me, they really can be a little indiscriminate, let's say oh Yeah, I mean seriously with just a couple sheets of Oh 4o styrene and a Bottle caps worth of well bond and you can have an entire day of so much fun One thing is when you're using the weld bun Try not to get it between your finger and the styrene because it's a really good way to permanently put your fingerprint in the styrene Also weld bun is a highly volatile solvent And it doesn't smell awesome unless you're me in which case I think it smells awesome Now one of the other really cool things about styrene is it doesn't just come in sheet form In fact, there's a company named evergreen that makes styrene in a million different shapes and sizes They make Engler and make round that make oval they make square I'm gonna use a bunch of evergreen for detailing on this and every good model shop has a large rack of this stuff at the modelers disposal Just like normal styrene. You can cut it with a knife there. It goes really easily and it glues with all the same techniques Okay. I'm at a reasonable place where it's time to start cleaning up my edges now if you look carefully at this you'll see that I've glued a lot of these edges proud. They overlap a little bit that was on purpose that gives me some slop I'm gonna start sanding that slop out All right, so I feel like Akbar seems really happy in the seat I have to add more structure to the underside of this, but you can see How this has literally been one hour That is one hour with a single eight-and-a-half by 11 sheet of o4o styrene and a paintbrush full of weld bond and an exacto blade That should give you some idea of the amount of potential there is in this material It is one of my favorite ways to build things and I submit that That was faster to build it this way than to design it in CAD and laser-cut it. Aha. I said it that's like a challenge Now I have my two parts I'm going to join them together, but I have these two surfaces these interiors here that are gonna be difficult For me to handle after I've glued them together So I'm gonna actually run a little bit of detailing inside these two surfaces here and here before I glue this together, so The other thing that I want to do is and this is another great technique. I can cut a hole in the styrene construction Just with the exacto blade using the same technique. I'm gonna be a bit sloppy about this because This is a behind-the-scenes hole. No one will see it So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time trying to be pretty about it. I'm not gonna get fancy pants and another way to cut out a hole is just to keep on cutting until you go right to the start that also works just Great Go Okay, so Detail, I want to add some strip here. All right, I've done some detailing I am now ready to attach these two puppies to each other and Let's just see I'm just gonna get them into the right position Clamp it down with my hand and then paint the edges with styrene glue blink and blink And Boink that's fabulous. I'm pretty psyched. I like how this is turning out. All right, so that's the main body of our ship Ackbar seems like he's very happy there Don't you agree? I think so So it's now time for me to start to add some de - Actually, it's not time for detailing yet I've got to place it on a on a stand see it's it's held up by this weird arm and That's something I want to get right? So what I need is I need a Alright I need this arm to come out of something so it's probably like a slot here I've now added a bunch of styrene and strip and as you can see I've hidden a lot of the crimes of this piece That means I've made the corners look much better than they originally did when I glued them but I still have these wide plains of unbroken space and although mobius is drawing includes that I need to add some stuff to break up this panel and that's why I'm gonna go from 040 styrene to 020 The 040 is means it's 40 thousands of an inch thick about ten sheets of paper. The 020 20 thousands of an inch thick about the Thickness of a paper match So I'm gonna start cutting some panels out of 020 and laying them on here, and then it's gonna really start taking shape Okay, I'm gonna show you one of my favorite little techniques with styrene I want to add a little repeating detail I'm gonna add a little bit of right here. So here's how I'm gonna do it I'm gonna get rid of this blade, which I've been using the whole afternoon and use a very fresh blade with a super sharp point These are very small pieces of Oh - OH styrene and I can pick it up with barely any Effort with the tip of this super sharp blade so I pick it up with that tip I give it a tiny dip in styrene. I place it where I want and bang it's glued I do it again right do this one dip Glue and I still have you have a little time after you drop it to place it So then I can do another let's try another one over here You can put these anywhere you want Maybe it goes right there You see how it's all of a sudden starting to add real detail. Now, I've got this sort of spaceship II panel I'm gonna actually add some little more surface detail to it by giving it that And you really do have time to kind of use the exacto blade To place it This is what's so great about styrene. Just the amount of precision detail you can add without a tremendous amount of effort is really awesome I'm really happy with how this is shaping up. I have this big expanse here There's no part of the drawing that shows me what happens in that expense I'm going to cut a panel out like a spaceship panel and I'm gonna walk you through some of my thinking about that panel so first, I'm going to sketch it out the rough size, which is gonna be probably on the slope that About like that okay, so I don't have to be that exact Now I've got this panel and it's gonna go here and it's gonna break up that space but I'm not just gonna do that I actually want to take a couple of notches out of it So I'm gonna pull a notch out of the bottom first to do that. I'm just gonna give myself a little reference line and Again, I'm not gonna try and worry too much about being super bilaterally symmetrical Because few things in the world are but I am gonna cut it on a diagonal That's a very Star Wars maneuver to cut a notch out with diagonal sides that right there It doesn't doesn't it starts to feel right away like you're in a dystopian fantasy Okay, so there we go. Look. Yep, all of a sudden I'm starting to see something that feels kind of right now I might just leave it like that. But you know what? I'm also gonna cut out just the corner because I'm not sure that I wanted to have four perfectly square sides Yeah, Oh, actually, that's really nice. I'm gonna do the same on the other side And I'm just doing this by eye it's really not necessary to be super super Exacting about it because my eye isn't looking this and going oh that port is wider than that part That's not what you do. This is a story about a thing. It's a we don't know what this is We don't know what it's for. It's from some other universe But that feels kind of right. Yep. I'm gonna add some more of my little styrene I'm gonna add some more of my little styrene googlies greedless Belize is the name that George Lucas gave to these types of details So one of the things I'm using as my guide and this kind of detailing is just what feels right to my eye But also I've screwed up enough builds like this to know not to spend too much time on a single side of my construction So I do a little bit here and a little bit there I want to tell a story about this being a device, but I don't want to get too caught up in really particular stuff I don't want to get too symmetrical So I'll do off sided stuff like this lopsided great over here, but not over here All that kind of stuff is really important because life is not bilaterally symmetrical. It's a really good idea to just keep on moving around the construction and Changing things up here and there and really seeing where it takes your eye All right, so I'm gonna put a little thing there. Yeah, that feels right And put another one right next to it boy. Do I feel like Bob Ross right now? You didn't put that anywhere you want because it's your spaceship. You can dictate where it goes You can go anywhere you want I? Want to go to a planet full of jell-o flowers? It's totally up to you Nope, lost it How many times have you leveled something like that All right, I Now have the basic structure of this ship completed we're about Six hours into this build I've got it up on a soldered brass arm on a nice heavy steel base So it can't move anywhere now. It's time to do some of the real detailing and that's where kit bashing comes in I've actually got a couple of kids. I want to throw it here. I have a beautiful Eagle transporter I know this is like a classic but Pieces from this model are all over the alien Spacesuit and so it holds a special place in my heart and I think I might do some detailing inside this open chamber from this character Yeah, I also have a second kit which is another Classic there are parts of this. This is the Anzio any mini craft Hasegawa? There are parts of this kid In every space ship you have ever seen in the Star Wars universe I have not kidding. This is on the Millennium Falcon it's on the slave 1 Anzio Annie here is a Very very fertile fertile kit to kick back from I don't think I've covered this on Untested before but I said there are parts of this kit on every Star Wars model and it's true There is a part that is an amazing part and it's right here this little tip It's an amazing part because it's got a dome and that means it kicks light and light kicking off Your model is a great way to draw your eye to certain details And because it's small it actually this works in kind of almost any you could glue it to the side of a prop pistol or I used a whole bunch of these on the hero large to pocus city building in Episode two We use it all over space cowboys in fact We built a miniature and space cowboys it they built a full-sized version of the set We built in miniature and made large versions of this and I 11 it's called the ug the universal greedly because it's never not the right choice to make and I am going to put Probably three of these right here on the dashboard of my ship This little creepy right here that's totally on the Millennium Falcon All right, I can keep on doing grieving all day And seriously, I would very much enjoy that but I think that we have successfully shown how versatile styrene is as a modeling material of kind of surpassing excellence This is about seven hours. That's a one day build that took place in a day And to show you what the finished project looks like I am going to hit it with some gray spray paint primer, which is always where everything comes together All right, this is my favorite part honestly is the primer ties everything Together and that right there is a suitable vehicle For the Admiral and that is a one-day build of how styrene is the soul of space ship model Nope I'm not gonna say it I'm not gonna say it
