Zoom Zoom

He doesn't manipulate the subject, only the background...if there's any manipulation at all. I think he's most adept at manipulating the viewers to keep them guessing

Ain't no way this is a 1/18 scale model. Looks as real as real can get.

Relax Harry, I fully understand where you are coming from, I'm playing devil's advocate because I've been known to write things before that had unintended consequences when I was trying to make a point or discussion. It's a great topic for discussion or an article. I just know that a lot of modelers have much thinner skin than you or I and don't see critique/discussion in quite the same context.

Not in the least! I've noticed details on his models that don't quite match the 1:1 cars. Doesn't make them any less awesome to look at and admire, and most certainly I don't see that as poor work whatsoever; quite the contrary. But are you admitting that you think someone's work is poorly done because it's not to your standards, and that people who think the work looks great/accurate don't know what they're talking about? It could very easily be construed that way, even if completely unintentional. Ideally this subject (which is an excellent subject, BTW) could have/should have been discussed without veiled reference to a model currently being shown on this forum (and at this point is far from finished), and with some good backup in the form of photographs of how that detail can be done, and has been done, in scale.

Great start! Love the work so far.

Sharpies are definitely a staple in my toolbox. Black for lense edges, trim edges, window masking, minor touchup. Silver for some smaller detail painting and touchup. Red for clear taillight lenses (no need for paint anymore-seriously, the red Sharpie works so much better than any paint for the job), orange and yellow (and mixture of the two) for amber lenses.

Looks great so far

What looks realistic on a model will always be open to conjecture, because again we're talking about a model and not a real car. I love the look of the chassis that started this conversation. To me it looks a lot more realistic than most, purely because of the neat effects from how it's painted and weathered. Most chassis are fugly and nasty, while that one gives it a weathered look that's perhaps been steamcleaned. One of the best builders out there commented on that chassis on another forum, and said it looked "amazingly realistic". Is it truly realistic? Perhaps not...but I love the impression of realism that the paint detailing has accomplished. There are many stages to making a model "realistic"...model cars are anything from a craft to an art form at all levels of obsession, and as such anything goes because they're models giving an impression in scale. I'd rather see people trying new/fun techniques on models and not get caught up in a lot of IPMS-style nitpicking over this or that. I could nitpick a Wingrove model to pieces, but where will that get me?

It was just this morning, how could you forget LOL!

But that wouldn't be any fun, Harry! Now...show us how you think it should look.... Aren't all chassis supposed to be black? *runs, hides again, for the second time today*

Those are awesome! Personally the T-Jets have been my favorite slot racers; they're detailed enough to look good, you can set up one heck of a great track w/o using your whole house, the cars are fast enough to be fun and drift through the corners and not be so fast you can't even see them. I have the really fast HO scale cars, and they're alright...but my favorites are my T-Jets. I've got a few 1/32 scale cars that I've used on a couple of friend's tracks, I just don't get the appeal of racing them...they are really too fast to have any real fun...they're constantly going off-track, you can only hold full throttle for a nanosecond at a time, they traverse a good size course in seconds...I'd rather just look at the car sitting on the shelf vs. bothering to run them. T-Jets have the fun factor that none of the big guys can manage. It's great that there are so many cool optional wheels/tires/bodies/decals that you can get from the aftermarket for them. Here's my favorite T-Jet, a resin AMX with optional Magnum 500's. Runs like a scalded cat, for a T-Jet The Johan kit was built by Paul Matthews, I detailed the AMX to match it:

But it's December already *runs, hides in the corner*

Wow...now that's even better If it's the Italeri...it's the best styrene SWB made (Esci/AMT awful, Gunze is kind of odd). Only issued once, so it's scarce. I finally scored one recently for a very attractive price at our NNL.

Looks decent, I'll wait for the curbside R/T kit. For anyone asking about full-detail, Revell's kit will be full-detail. Wheels look small, tire sidewalls too tall. Visually they look like they're 18's and not 20's.

Nice job; hardly ever see one of these built and it's arguably the only good Trumpeter car kit w/o serious to grievous design/detail errors.

Nice work! The upgrades really work well!

Very cool, one of my all-time favorite Ferraris. Mine got a bit closer to being built when I recently received a new set of road wheels/knockoffs/tires from Harold Bradford/Historic Racing Miniatures. I'd have been happy with the wheels alone, but the tires are so much nicer than the kit tires. Here's a photo if anyone is interested (ignore the wheels on the left; the photo shows what I found at our NNL in November):

I've had no trouble with either Tamiya or Testors lacquer clears yellowing with age when sprayed over white.

Tamiya at least used to have a similar problem w/their clear; if it wasn't applied to freshly-applied color, you had to wait a month to apply or it would crack over time. This is a case where your clearcoat is drying/shrinking over the color at a different rate. That's what Tamiya said was the problem w/their clear. I had a similar thing happen to a model I shot in HOK paint and Tamiya clearcoat; even though I shot the clear immediately, after several days a series of microscopic cracks appeared in the paint. You can't feel them or even see them in direct light, but with side lighting you can see them. They didn't get worse and the model is kept in a case. The clearcoat cracked as it dried since it wasn't chemically the same as the color coat and it didn't dry/shrink at the same rate. Lacquers seem more susceptible because they shrink a lot and are not terribly flexible when dry. Duplicolor may have changed something with their paint. Since you airbrush, you should do some testing. Instead of letting the color dry before applying clear, start applying clear immediately after color. Build it up in very light coats. You can also start mixing clear w/the color for mid-coats; so that the clear is chemically part of the color coat. This should help to alleviate the problem. I use a food dehydrator to dry paint, I do not wait weeks for paint to dry to add other layers or polish it out.

That picture didn't give you the warm fuzzies?

I knew that stripe would work!

Considering the only photo I've seen of the real car showed it in raw c/f without a gloss coat (from a distance it looks flat black), I'd say yours with the gloss coat would look most excellent with the stripe and that would definitely hide the seam.

Try $15.29. They've upped their prices on Revell's standard kits somewhere between 30-40% in one fell swoop. Looks like Tower's discount on Revell is now 10%.

Probably Revell stuff. Tower is owned by the same people who now own Revell. Revell upped their prices significantly over the past year, and some of the newer models like the Shelby GT500 KR are about $22 retail now, while most lesser Mustangs are $17. The "Shelby" and "Bullitt" versions may be so steep because of the licensing. Tower didn't discount the GT500 KR nearly as much as the lesser models, and it looks like they've adjusted their prices so that they're all discounted to roughly the same percentage. Revell cut off most all of the low-priced online retailers, they all have to order from distributors now and not direct (thus adding a middleman who is making a cut) and Tower was the only place to find pre-cutoff kinds of discounts. Now that they have eliminated the low-priced competition for Tower, Tower raised it's prices significantly. Brilliant, eh? Oil and shipping went way up, so did kit prices. Now that those prices are dropping, we won't see kit prices drop. Cheap prices at the retail level vanished when Wal Mart quit selling kits. Honestly, $15-$19 for modern full-detail kits is pretty good. Look at what you get from Fujimi/Tamiya/Aoshima for 2-3 times that amount. There are a ton of simple curbsides by them that are well over $50 apiece now.