Friday 11 January 2013

Some musings...

I added the headlights to the Mazda last night and it's looking much nicer.  Need to paint the details on the case and add chrome foil to the edge.  Hopefully I can do this without any mishap... made a few mistakes in the past and pulled paint off with the foil... so fingers crossed.
I also painted the concrete base to the post box, and that's now finished.

I will do some more work on the car at the weekend and also start to rough out a display base for the smaller Showa cars... a back street with a fence, post box and street lamp.  Nothing complex as it's really a base for a car rather than a full-blown diorama.

I have decided to expand the scope of the blog and to include cars seen in Japan today, but still in 1/32 scale.  This will allow me to feature Airfix's BMW Mini Cooper S (displayed in a street setting with an Aurora Models Japanese girl leaning back on it casually.  Yes, I have this one all worked out in my head haha.
There aren't many other models I can use like this, and I don't intend to buy die-cast models and feature them... I'll save that for 1/43 scale.  (I already have a Tokyo taxi in the form of a Toyota Crown Comfort in that scale, and what a lovely model it is.)  There are some battery-powered Wagon R kits available, but they have opaque black windows, no interior detail and feature quite soft surface detail... more like unbuilt toys really.  Quite a shame... although they would make decent background props in photo-shoots where they wouildn't be in such sharp focus.
I'm still surprised that only Arii and Airfix are still in the 1/32 game.  Most of the Airfix range are old, with just a handful being modern kits (inspired by the Scalextric range, which are owned by Airfix's parent company Hornby)... likewise the Arii kits are old LS and Otaki models.
Gunze Sangyo did a range of beautifully produced American cars of the 50s and 60s, but they're pretty hard to find now, while Lindberg have some of the ancient Pyro kits in their range such as the lovely 1952 Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe 'Fastback' and 1949 Ford Tudor.
Monogram had some, but I don't know how many of them are still available, likewise Revell (both US and German arms).

In 1/35 we have the Honda Super Cub scooter from Diopark and the Toyota Hilux (in various armed guises) from Chinese company Meng.  This WILL make its way into the blog, but will be finished as a hard-working Japanese vehicle (hopefully you get the option of right hand drive).  I know they are 1/35, but on their own that slight difference in scale will not be an issue.

So, 2013 should see the first finished model on this blog... a long time coming, I know, but I have a few modelling genres I enjoy working in and I get easily sidetracked... ooh, nice Martian War Machine, hahaha.

Another photo update on Sunday.  Thanks for looking in ^_^

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