Finished: Project II/19

Some projects of mine have just flown from the beginning to the very end at a rapid pace, powered some cosmic inspiration. Some of those have ground through with a murderously steady but slower progress throughout their lifecycle. Then some, such as this one, have been burdened with a more pulsating heartbeat, as these posts that have spread over a number of months have maybe hinted at. What caused this to happen with this exact project, I really could not guess or point a finger at. It was especially confusing, as I had been pretty excited about getting to fix this model.

Maybe a part of the blame lies on this being an already built and painted set, just maintaining and "only" repainting it. Or it could be caused by this year being so packed with so much other stuff that things have gotten prioritized a bit unfavourably for 'Mumblings.

The renovation process ate about half a year from my calendar and I spent - this one included- an eye-watering count of 27 postfuls of text. I took 139 work in progress photos and 15 of the finished model. The actual time used I didn't dare count, because the oversimplified 26 * 0,75h = 19,5h was not what I used, for this thing that sounded so very quick, easy and simple when starting.

The final photoset

While taking photos of the smaller models I've often lamented that I didn't have a good setup for taking photos. So far simply setting up some A4s as a flat background and flooring have been a good enough of a hack, but this beautiful spacecraft build by Sienar Fleet Systems was way too large for anything like that anymore. I really should've bought one of those light tents, as I was itching to get one earlier this year.

Well, no sense crying over spilt milk. I went for the just about only neutral background I could find in the house and set up the shuttle for posing. The light environment was woeful to compensate the flatness of the background, of course. All I could do was to hope that the reader forgives me my weirdly, unevenly and frantically set up backup lightning, as I didn't want to ruin my photos by using the flash at such extreme short distances, either. Afterwards I just gimped out some smudges and unnecessary seams from the background, before cropping the remains.

git diff shu_ondiv

I felt that it would be a good idea to show a side-by-side comparison of the versions 1.0 and 1.1. Of course both of them had a different background style, the photos had been taken with cameras of vastly different quality, from who knew what angles and as the icing on the cake the pics had been edited in different ways. Ondiv's original first version also wasn't properly documented and there were few photos of her, even fewer of those were even tolerable. So the comparison was going to be pretty much feeling-based.

#001
v 1.0	v 1.1

#002
v 1.0	v 1.1

#003
v 1.0	v 1.1

#004
v 1.0	v 1.1

Honestly, I felt that the new version looked better than the previous one. I also thought that had I started from scratch instead of working iteratively I'd gotten a much, much better final product and I was not only referring to the jaunty angle caused by the misaligned landing gear.

So I've apparently learned and developed my skills somehow over the years. Judging that was left for the viewer, I was content to lock myself inside my own bubble.

What about the Lambda-class T4a shuttle in Lego?

A few years ago I bought myself a couple of larger Lego sets (75093 "Death Star final duel" and 75094 "Imperial shuttle Tydirium" that was full of evil space terrorists). Even though I've taken photos and written some posts of my Lego kits, some of the more essential sets such as these two have somehow fallen through the proverbial cracks. In case you hadn't guessed, a part of the paintjob's inspiration came from the Lego sister, I was happy to admit.