Welcome to the Fantasy Factory

I’ve got some of the smaller pieces of the Big-E in work, and wanted to update my progress. The first section that I tackled is the Arboretum. It’s like a little park tucked away in the secondary hull of Enterprise. There are very few pictures of it, model or screen, so imagination is pretty much the name of the game.

This pic shows the unadorned part. The part came with some triangular points sticking up from the base; I guess they were supposed to be evergreen trees. A little work with the Dremel, and they were gone. There were also some add-in parts meant to be deciduous trees, but looked like sticks with cotton balls on top…tossed ‘em.

I then added some detail to the interior walls, courtesy of Paragrafix’s excellent brass photo-etch enhancement set. A lot of the pieces here will show up as the model progresses. I love the look that the wall pieces add.

Next up, I hit the whole thing with some flat black primer. Because the model will be lit from various places, I’ll need to black out the backside of most everything, to allow the light only where I want it.

After that dried and cured, I hit the whole piece with my airbrush, using Tamiya’s Desert Yellow acrylic. I chose the color simply because I thought it added a nice warm tone to the ship’s interior. I then detailed the pond areas, and began laying down my gravel path.

Gravel? What the heck am I talking about? You’ll have to wait until the next post!