ismaelg Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Hello, While more than 90% of this was done in 2022, it was officially finished in 2023. First week of January and I am already at 1/3 of the number of last year's completions. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/emoticons/default_smile.png Darth Vader's TIE Advanced X1 There are far better kits out there, but I had the old AMT/ERTL kit from 1997 laying around. It is supposed to be 1/36 scale. The molds date back to 1978. This kit has been released a gazillion times as MPC, AMT, ERTL, Revell, Kenner and others. In summary, this is probably the worst kit I've ever completed. I honestly think it was not meant to be assembled. Heavy moldings Nothing lined up Gaps? or canyons? But The Force made me continue. Rescribed panel lines. You can see here the left side done, right side yet to be touched Tons of putty. And I mean gobs of putty! This model has the most putty of any of my builds. Fortunately the interior is hard to see. Vader's figure is... maybe an approximation? This mess of a kit was eventually forced into submission. I mixed my own paint using gray, sky blue and silver. It better be enough because I can't replicate that again! The kit is almost unbuildable. I also found out (just like George Lucas and his team did in 1976), photographing these is quite a challenge. The movie guys made the right call using a very light blue in their model because with the black background, it looks more silverish and metallic. Had to take pictures in different backgrounds trying to get it right. At the end, I used white background that was darkened in Photoshop. Pretty much box-stock but I added the 4 exhaust ports with scratchbuilt aluminum tubing rings. Gobs of putty were required for this project. This ship only appears for a few minutes in the original movie. I took a few artistic licenses but always trying to stay close to the original. Light weathering. After a six month battle, this is the end result: Darth Vader's TIE Advance X1 Laser blasts and stars courtesy of Photoshop Hope you like it. Thanks, Ismael Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Trojan Thunder Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Looks great, you did a great job getting it together and sorting out the gap issues Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Benner Posted January 9, 2023 Share Posted January 9, 2023 Looks good, wonder if when ILM built the TIE bomber model out is this kit, they also said this is a terrible kit? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
niart17 Posted January 9, 2023 Share Posted January 9, 2023 Awesome job on this. I've heard that the molds on this thing are getting pretty out of shape, that's likely the cause of so many issues. But you wrestled it in to a great build. Bill Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ken Cartwright Posted January 9, 2023 Share Posted January 9, 2023 Yes, really good work correcting all of the issues with that kit - it looks great! And adding one more release to your list, Round 2 has it now, and they have made some improvements, including to the Darth Vader figure, but it still has many of the same original issues you had to fix. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Ikon Posted January 31, 2023 Share Posted January 31, 2023 It's not the model, it's the modeller, and you have certainly wrangled that into submission! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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