News/Weblog 

       

Site Features

Getting Started in the Hobby

Model Categories

Sunday, October 11. 2020

Together, Session...GO!

A couple years ago, a discussion of weathering a military Jeep on the Model Cars Magazine forum included the throwaway comment "who ever heard of a clean Jeep?" The response, recognizing the humor but also noting reality, was "By God, the United States Army." I've tried to keep that in mind whenever I work on a military vehicle: if it's no longer an official vehicle, all bets are off...but if it's still in active service, it better be clean. Maybe some road dust, or a bit of wear and tear if it has seen a lot of use, but still generally clean. I applied that philosophy to
Posted by Bill at 18:29 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, September 26. 2020

Good Luck with Your Future Ride, Space Man!

I've picked up a couple of Testors' "Lincoln Mint" diecast kits, but the Sex Drive GTO is the first time I've actually completed one. Assuming it was a fair example of them, they're...OK. Not bad enough that I want to sell off the others I have, but not good enough for me to seek out more. It makes a pretty decent display item, at least.

Posted by Bill at 23:02 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, September 19. 2020

TERRA FIRMA, The Woman from PLANET EARTH

After making my Zone Rider, I wanted to give myself a little push and see if I could do more with a figure than paint and part omission. The result was Terra Firma, and while there's still a lot of room for improvement I think I finally understand the challenge of figure painting.

Posted by Bill at 14:13 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, September 12. 2020

Yee, You Got Some City Miles on You...

Men in Black remains one of my favorite comic-based movies, even if the franchise it launched hasn't retained the quality of the first. Still, #3 was pretty solid in no small part thanks to Josh Brolin, and it was nice to see that his Agent K was driving a blue oval even back in the day.

Posted by Bill at 12:47 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, September 11. 2020

A Scene from Moonstruck

The World Trade Center as seen in the movie Moonstruck

New York City has always had a bit of a rough reputation. Britannica refers to it as "foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil, arrogance, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it;" in her column "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" (a.k.a. "Wear Sunscreen"), Mary Schmich gives the advice to "Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard." Movies have generally followed suit, using the city itself as shorthand for the antagonists - whether it's the negative energy manifesting in a river of liquified evil in Ghostbusters 2 or the more mundane but just as frightening power wielded in Wall Street.

But New York is also home to over eight million people, living lives on a much smaller scale than the city itself. Moonstruck was such a story, focusing on two families and their intertwined lives. Not as gang members or part of some syndicate, just as people. It was still a uniquely New York tale - the city was arguably as much a character as Cher or Nicolas Cage - but it was not the malevolent force so often seen in films. Among the scenes showing this softer side of New York were several shots of the full moon over Manhattan, with the Trade Center standing tall among the other buildings.
See more scenes ➡

Posted by Bill at 03:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, August 29. 2020

I Want a Car...Chicks Dig the Car

I've talked a fair bit about bad movies here...unappreciated brilliance, goofy but enjoyable, and true stinkers. But there is one more subset, and it's one where I feel legitimately bad for the people involved: the bad movie with spectacular production. The kind of movie that clearly had some very talented people do some amazing work on the sets, props, and general universe, only to have the finished film drop the ball. Think Ghost in the Shell or Mortal Engines. Or, in today's case, Batman & Robin. Fans still joke about the costume with its Bat-Nipples, but no one has said that they hated it because it was badly done. Clearly, the production team went all-in to create the best looking movie they could...it just couldn't stick the landing (thanks, studio interference).

Posted by Bill at 23:33 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, August 14. 2020

Do You Want to Set Up Base Camp or a Buffet?

There's a lot about the Lost World "Snagger" that doesn't make a lot of sense, until you consider the merchandising powerhouse that accompanied the first film. All of a sudden a vehicle that holds four characters in easily accessible seats plus a place for a dinosaur ∗and∗ an action feature seems much more reasonable.

Posted by Bill at 22:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, July 31. 2020

Natsumi...Don't Miss

Truth be told, I hadn't planned to include this one in my current crop of projects. But as I was looking through old pieces I had set aside, I found this and realized that it fit my "remakes and adaptations" theme perfectly: not only was the animated You're Under Arrest based on Kosuke Fujishima's manga of the same name, the No Mercy OVA was itself a spinoff of the main series.

Posted by Bill at 18:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, July 17. 2020

We Will Fight On Our Honor...What is Right, We’ll Defend

By far my most ambitious 3D project to date, the Spiral Zone monocycle was also my first foray into using Master Box's figure kits. I'm very happy with the results in both cases, so look for more of them in the future!

Posted by Bill at 22:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, July 4. 2020

Who're We Chasin'?

Legend has it that Steven Spielberg saw Castle of Cagliostro sometime in the early 80s, and remarked that its car chase was "one of the greatest chase sequences ever filmed." While that claim has been so far unproven, I can say from personal experience that while I've only watched the whole movie once, the chase scene never fails to get me to break from whatever I'm doing for a few minutes.

Posted by Bill at 23:17 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, June 20. 2020

I'll Just Threaten Them

Of all the Ride armors featured in Mospeada/Robotech, I always liked the design of Houquet/Rook's VR-038L the best. Unfortunately, thanks to a dumb theory that only recently seems to be falling away (largely thanks to the #WhereIsBlackWidow and similar social media campaigns), toys and replicas of that bike simply didn't exist. A bit of custom reworking to the VR-052F fixed that problem, though.

Posted by Bill at 23:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, June 5. 2020

Klaatu Barada Nikto

Although it hasn't been in my stash quite as long as the recently-completed Prowl, Gort has been in waiting for an embarrassingly long time. At this rate, I'm starting to think that my 2021 theme ought to be blowing the dust off some of these older projects!

Posted by Bill at 23:22 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, May 25. 2020

Memorial Day 2020



Posted by Bill at 14:09 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Sunday, May 24. 2020

Yes, Well, I'm Running the Show Today if that's All Right with You...Let's Go!

When I first saw Tekkonkinkreet, I knew I had to get myself a model of Kimura's ride. Unfortunately, the only option for the correct Mitsubishi Galant at the time was a very old Nitto kit that was light on detail but heavy on price. My procrastination paid off, though, because before I dropped any cash on one Hasegawa released their brilliant new tooling.

Posted by Bill at 13:58 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Sunday, May 10. 2020

Well, I Would Like to Have My Car Replaced

Not in the budget? Here, have a miniature version of it instead!



Posted by Bill at 21:51 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
(Page 1 of 84, totaling 1249 entries) » next page
Content and images ©1998-2010 spencer1984.com unless otherwise noted. | Questions? Send an e-mail