Hehe , thank you. I was, of course, being a bit facetious...I do think I'm pretty good, but I was mostly putting on thereUraniun235 wrote:I get the feeling this model will be great for total n00bs that just want a pretty model to look at (myself, namely) without having to invest hours and hours and hours into trying to paint it (I am absolutely godawful at "arts and crafts" stuff, I am so uncoordinated) and glue it together.What's more, as seen in the photo below, all major parts of the kit will light up, and all parts necessary to do the lighting will be included in the kit! In addition, the complex "Aztec mottling" color scheme on the surface of the ship will be pre-printed on the plastic, so you won't need to struggle with masking tape for hours to complete a great-looking Enterprise!
seanrobertson, while I respect your "kick-ass" modelling ski11z, I for one will jump at the opportunity to have a n00b friendly, decent (compared to the literal toys I have right now) model that will take minimal effort.
I know what you mean about wanting an accurate replica to display without the slave labor-type effort required to build the model, give it a flawless airbrushed base coat, paint all of the details, pick out the shadows, etc., etc. When I started modeling in early '98, I was essentially the same way.
I was no good at painting stuff whatsoever. I was clueless as to the differences between acrylic and enamel paints--you name it I didn't know it!
I figured it out in about a year, though, and started doing somewhat decent work. The problem I really started to tackle in my second year of modeling is what I fear might prove troublesome with the Bandai E-A...seams.
Even the best Tamiya models usually don't have parts that fit *perfectly* flush all across. There will be small gaps that make an otherwise great model look a bit substandard if they aren't dealt with.
So, you have to putty those seams with modeling putty to hide the seam. Trouble is, the putty is a different color than the pre-printed hull. Whoops...how do I deal with that? Painting a small portion of a model is oftentimes rather difficult; furthermore, paint will definitely stand out on a model that is molded in color, with no actual "paint" as such on the surface.
Admittedly, though, the gaps have to be rather large to look bad from, say, standard oggling distance--about 3 feet away (?). And I don't think Bandai's kit will have that problem. It'll probably be a winner, but I do sorta wish they'd just included a kind of frisket mask with patterns cut out for the aztecing, so it could be airbrushed on. I could take relative newbies like you and make you fairly proficient with an airbrush in about 20 minutes , so I do not think it would really make the kit much harder for beginners to get into.
That's me, though, full of my own quirks
The Polar Lights' E-nil and NX-01 will be standard old model kits. I think the E will be relatively small, under a foot in length. The NX is supposedly 1/350th scale--or whatever correlates to over 25" in length. It might make for a very good model, in spite of the fact that it is the Akiraprise and all that jazz.