Interesting...

Hmm.

The past few days have been incredibly hard for me. I've been working incredibly hard on my chair model, and using a brand new material which I have never worked with before. Let me explain more.

Since my chair design in real life is made of plywood, the appearance of the chair is like a shell sitting atop a set of legs. Due to certain complications in the production of the real full scale model, I have to create a 1/4 scale model, which still has to retain that shell-like structure. That was the challenge: to create a shell structure with the existing methods given to us.

One way was to make it out of balsa wood. I would have to make a mould of the chair and wetting the balsa before pressing it into the mould and hopefully it would not break. It would be very high risk.

Another way was the using of a vacuum-forming method. Once again, a mould would be required but a sheet of plastic would be heated and then vacuum-formed over the mould so that the shape could come out. It would not produce the desired effect, but it would be better than nothing.

The third way would be using the vacuum-formed shape (once the plastic cools and hardens into a shape which is very close to the real shape of the chair) and coat the interior with a layer of substance which would harden and eventually form the shell-like shape which I desired so badly.

Trouble was, the third method required a material which I had no idea how to procure.. until my lecturer literally delivered it under my nose.

The new material which he introduced to me was originally meant to be used in place of the 'traditional' wall putty, which cracked very easily and was a bitch to maintain. However with the arrival of this new material, I managed to completely (and I'm not trying to boast here) revolutionise the way models are being made in IDC. The material I used was a polyester putty with hardener, which would eventually harden into a solid that could be sanded down and painted with ease. With this new material, I easily created the effect which I so desired.

According to that same lecturer who provided me the material, I was the first student utilise that material in such a manner. I had taken a huge gamble with this material because I had no idea whether it would stick to the mould or it would come out easily. I had applied the putty and allowed it to cure overnight in school, and the next morning, my wildest dreams were realised.. and I went on to create IDS modelling history XD.

So now my model is receiving it's first coat of base paint, which should dry within the hour in the saturday afternoon sun. I still have to bend the legs and produce the p-boards. What a life. Until next thursday then :)


Cheers,

Crawldaddy