Wardenstein
Member
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2021
- Messages
- 16
Hi all. I'm a new person here. I'm not exactly sure what to say about myself, so forgive me if I ramble on, at random, for a while. I'm an older male -- (not quite age sixty, as of this writing) -- who is fan of a lot of different kinds of models: with "vehicles of all types" being one big long-time interest area of mine; and "figures" (to include the occasional monster or animal or cartoon character) being another.
I have been a fan of scale models, in general, ever since my father first showed me some things he was working on, when I was very little. At age three I was completely convinced that the Korean war era jeep model he had assembled and painted, from a 1960s era kit, just HAD to have been the real thing. I can still clearly remember (gently) losing a "logical" argument to that effect, even though I had pointed to the treads on the rubber tires as "proof" that someone, somehow, through some magical process, had to have figured out how to shrink the real thing down to a size where even I could hold it in my hands, at that age. There was, as far as I was concerned, no other way that much detail could have happened.
Around the early 1970s (at around age eight-ish) my father took me to a hobby shop called Jack's Hobby Castle (in Cleveland, Ohio, USA) and introduced me to the owner. My dad picked a kit that interested him, on that day, and that he hoped I would end up being interested in -- but it was way too difficult for someone of that age to put that many road wheels together, one after another, by himself, so I mostly watched as my dad assembled what I believe was probably another Korean war era kit: an open-topped, multi-gunned tank kit. I'm assuming now that it was probably an anti-aircraft "Duster" tank kit. That kit later led to others, with me doing more and more of the assembly work, by myself, over time. I had a slate-topped desk that used to be my grandfathers, to work on. I ended up making the hard top look like a butcher's block, over time, from cuts from X-acto knives. And of course ended up spilling paints on it, from time to time, too. That desk was probably my one most favorite spot in the house where I grew up: drawing there, reading books, and building kits. I was doing it on "begged" money, of course, for a long time -- given my age -- but at around age twelve I was told I would have to start cutting grass and shoveling snow (and dog poop, at times) for people in the neighborhood, to earn extra money, to support my kits-and-paints-buying habits. I never had the actual finished kits on display, in my room, for long: I was forced to "get rid of" old ones, to make room for new ones; as I am sure was likely the case for a lot of people from my generation. But as I was mainly interested in the process, more than the finished item, that didn't bother me too much.
I was kind of shocked, in my Junior High School years, when kit-maker Revell announced their "Master Modeler's Club". They wanted lists, from kids like me, of any kit they had built. It was all on the honor system (probably a market research ploy, in a sense?) and they didn't care what company made the kit: they never asked "did you actually paint these, or just assemble them?) ... so my guess is that they apparently just wanted to know what kids my age found to be worth buying and working on, so they could best cater to that market. Anyway, the reason I was shocked was I had never sat down and counted how many kits I had worked on. My initial impression was that Revell must have been out of their minds, thinking any kid could have or would have built 75 kits (which was their upper category or ranking) but I kept remembering more and more kits. I had to do post-build-up hobby store research, to try to even figure out which company had made "Birds of the World" kits; which ones had done the animal kits I'd built a few of; which companies did the 1:1 scale handguns, and so on. (Jack was good at buying kits from his distributor, that others stores couldn't get kids to buy; or so he once broadly hinted. Something about "you younger kids that don't have much money" still wanted kits, and you're more open-minded than most, as to what types of kits are worth buying.) With two weeks of work on the list, I could look at how many kits I'd bought, and it made perfect sense why I had been forced to throw some finished ones out, to make room for new "done" ones. to my astonishment, I could see Revell's "75 kits built" wasn't as insane a goal as I had initial thought was the case. I wish I had a copy of that list now: it stated that I had built about 200 total kits, between ages 8 and about 14 or 15. (No, I didn't "go outside and play" as much as other children! I was too busy building, and eventually painting, with Square-Bottle Testors paints, the third or fourth version of Fokker triplanes and Albatros models, and Sopwith Camels, and the like -- mostly in 1:72 scale -- in paint jobs that I had seen in books and/or in hobby or history magazines, and etc.)
At around age 15 or 16-ish various parts of my life changed. I was no longer around that cool desk, or that cool hobby shop. Money was even tighter than when I was younger. And I found other interests -- (cars, computers, video games, and so on) -- and I went on the customary "hiatus," away from the scale modeling hobby: the same common type of hiatus that a lot of other people seem to also engage in, at certain parts of their lives.
That lasted until roughly the mid-to-late 1990s, when someone I knew (Brian Criner) showed me one of Tamiya's latest offerings, still in the box (a WWII Corsair aircraft model) and some of his built-up (and painted, of couse) aircraft kits. Some of the "real world" detailing of such models blew me away: molded-in ejection ports for each of the guns in the wings, as just one example. No kit of my youth had ever had that much detail included -- but then again, the kits I bought in the 60s / 70s were two dollars or sometimes even lower. The hobby had changed: both in quality, and also in raw costs.
I started attending meetings of the IPMS chapter that Brian Criner belonged to (The "Planes of Fame" group, out of Chino, California) in the late 1990's -- but I wasn't yet back into building anything. I mainly just went to monthly meetings, and to contests held in the Southern California area (including SCAHMS shows, when I could make it there) but I mostly "just looked". I eventually picked up some kits -- ("forgive me, for I have sinned," I'll say to the historical modelers out there, who might be reading this: because my kit-buying-and-building interests at that time were generally sci-fi subjects) -- but I always kept an eye on what the historical modelers (vehicular and/or figure) were doing. I'd buy lots of books, and magazines, and the like, on the historical side; but I mostly built fantasy subjects, in that late 1990's to early 2000's period. I met a lot of super-talented modelers, at various contests, and I really enjoyed seeing what they had worked on. I loved being able to pick their brains, about how-to info, too!
Eventually, I got good enough to win a few contest prizes at local contests; and occasionally I'd win something at the regional contests in that state -- but I was mostly interested in the constant learning, and seeing what was happening. I was always (arguably) more interested in the processes involved, than the "ranking" of contests. I loved to see the skill of others on display! I think my most fun, at things like TamiyaCon events, was taking notes when the big-shot builders were giving small seminars, in the parking lots, to "keep the troops entertained" while the judging was going on, inside the buildings. To me, the "prizes" were the knowledge that certain things could be done; and that the knowledge about "how" was obtainable.
Around 2003 I moved out of that state, and into one (New Mexico, USA) where IPMS contests and clubs didn't exist (local to me, at any rate: the nearest ones I knew about, back then, were maybe 230 miles away, give or take; and that was one-way, not the round trip travel distance) so my interests sort of shifted. I wanted to know more about how people scratch-built. I was always fascinated with reading about it, or picking people's brains, when they knew how it was done, but I hadn't really done much beyond kit-bashing, to that point. I began adding internet personalities to my list of "favorite authors" that I was studying the craft from or with, "from afar". I wanted to know a lot more! At the tail end of my learning period, I wrote a few things for "Internet Modeler" but a lot of that has gone off of the internet, over time. I had a "tip" or two published in places like "Scale Auto" or "Fine Scale Modeler" magazines, in this period, but I hadn't yet written anything "article length," for an actual printed publication, then. But I was getting closer and closer, over time, to where I could do that.
Around 2009-ish I had learned enough, through a LOT of what I think of as "deliberate study; and deliberate reflection; and deliberate practice" that I wrote my first full-length, paid, hobby article. It was in issue #13 of "Sci-Fi & Fantasy Modeller" -- which is a publication out of England. (I still lived in America, but email and the Internet let me write for that "overseas" publication.) Over time, I ended up writing I think it was fifteen articles for them. (It sucked, when they closed their doors, a few years ago -- or I would most likely still happily be writing for them!) At about the time SF&FM was closing down, I also wrote three articles (all on the same topic) for a historical scale modeling publication, called "Seaway's Ships In Scale". My plan back then was to get my obligations to finish off a five-part series, with Ships In Scale, first; and then get back to writing for SF&FM, but as it turned out, Ships In Scale quit publishing at about the same time (give or take) that SF&FM made that decision. It's tough out there, for magazines to survive, these days! Anyway, those few articles about the CSS Manassas (an early American Civil War ironclad), I believe I had sold all the rights to, not just the ones related to the "first publication" -- so I can't share copies of those three historical articles. (If anyone wants issue numbers, I can look that info up.) I did recently get permission from the publisher of SF&FM, to share whatever articles I wanted to, that I'd written, online -- so I did post four links to a sampling of the lengthy and detailed SF&FM articles I wrote, on the "Post your Articles or Step-by-Step tutorials" section of this fine web forums. If anyone wants to see examples of that kind of published articles, be advised that the links to those fantasy articles should be over here:
https://www.planetfigure.com/thread...stics-using-electrically-heated-tools.387419/
I'm still learning -- and happily so! If I tried to sum up what I'm doing now, it's sort of like when I was picking the brains of talented modelers like David Merriman (an ex-navy diver and professional scale modeler, who mainly works with radio controlled submarine models, and sometimes sci-fi subjects) so that I could continue my learning processes. I very much enjoy the constant "problem solving" and "lateral thinking" aspects of this hobby. There is always one more challenge, just around a corner! And one more. And one more, after that. I never really gave figure modeling a huge learning period, and my painting skills, while improved since childhood, could definitely use an upgrade. So I'll be learning from folks here, and elsewhere, as I do whatever is next, on my scale modeling journey. I'm planning on learning a lot more than I currently know, about sculpting figures, and painting them. (And there's nothing wrong with "enjoying the scenery"!)
-- My name on these boards: "Wardenstein" --
-- My real name: "Ward Shrake" --
I have been a fan of scale models, in general, ever since my father first showed me some things he was working on, when I was very little. At age three I was completely convinced that the Korean war era jeep model he had assembled and painted, from a 1960s era kit, just HAD to have been the real thing. I can still clearly remember (gently) losing a "logical" argument to that effect, even though I had pointed to the treads on the rubber tires as "proof" that someone, somehow, through some magical process, had to have figured out how to shrink the real thing down to a size where even I could hold it in my hands, at that age. There was, as far as I was concerned, no other way that much detail could have happened.
Around the early 1970s (at around age eight-ish) my father took me to a hobby shop called Jack's Hobby Castle (in Cleveland, Ohio, USA) and introduced me to the owner. My dad picked a kit that interested him, on that day, and that he hoped I would end up being interested in -- but it was way too difficult for someone of that age to put that many road wheels together, one after another, by himself, so I mostly watched as my dad assembled what I believe was probably another Korean war era kit: an open-topped, multi-gunned tank kit. I'm assuming now that it was probably an anti-aircraft "Duster" tank kit. That kit later led to others, with me doing more and more of the assembly work, by myself, over time. I had a slate-topped desk that used to be my grandfathers, to work on. I ended up making the hard top look like a butcher's block, over time, from cuts from X-acto knives. And of course ended up spilling paints on it, from time to time, too. That desk was probably my one most favorite spot in the house where I grew up: drawing there, reading books, and building kits. I was doing it on "begged" money, of course, for a long time -- given my age -- but at around age twelve I was told I would have to start cutting grass and shoveling snow (and dog poop, at times) for people in the neighborhood, to earn extra money, to support my kits-and-paints-buying habits. I never had the actual finished kits on display, in my room, for long: I was forced to "get rid of" old ones, to make room for new ones; as I am sure was likely the case for a lot of people from my generation. But as I was mainly interested in the process, more than the finished item, that didn't bother me too much.
I was kind of shocked, in my Junior High School years, when kit-maker Revell announced their "Master Modeler's Club". They wanted lists, from kids like me, of any kit they had built. It was all on the honor system (probably a market research ploy, in a sense?) and they didn't care what company made the kit: they never asked "did you actually paint these, or just assemble them?) ... so my guess is that they apparently just wanted to know what kids my age found to be worth buying and working on, so they could best cater to that market. Anyway, the reason I was shocked was I had never sat down and counted how many kits I had worked on. My initial impression was that Revell must have been out of their minds, thinking any kid could have or would have built 75 kits (which was their upper category or ranking) but I kept remembering more and more kits. I had to do post-build-up hobby store research, to try to even figure out which company had made "Birds of the World" kits; which ones had done the animal kits I'd built a few of; which companies did the 1:1 scale handguns, and so on. (Jack was good at buying kits from his distributor, that others stores couldn't get kids to buy; or so he once broadly hinted. Something about "you younger kids that don't have much money" still wanted kits, and you're more open-minded than most, as to what types of kits are worth buying.) With two weeks of work on the list, I could look at how many kits I'd bought, and it made perfect sense why I had been forced to throw some finished ones out, to make room for new "done" ones. to my astonishment, I could see Revell's "75 kits built" wasn't as insane a goal as I had initial thought was the case. I wish I had a copy of that list now: it stated that I had built about 200 total kits, between ages 8 and about 14 or 15. (No, I didn't "go outside and play" as much as other children! I was too busy building, and eventually painting, with Square-Bottle Testors paints, the third or fourth version of Fokker triplanes and Albatros models, and Sopwith Camels, and the like -- mostly in 1:72 scale -- in paint jobs that I had seen in books and/or in hobby or history magazines, and etc.)
At around age 15 or 16-ish various parts of my life changed. I was no longer around that cool desk, or that cool hobby shop. Money was even tighter than when I was younger. And I found other interests -- (cars, computers, video games, and so on) -- and I went on the customary "hiatus," away from the scale modeling hobby: the same common type of hiatus that a lot of other people seem to also engage in, at certain parts of their lives.
That lasted until roughly the mid-to-late 1990s, when someone I knew (Brian Criner) showed me one of Tamiya's latest offerings, still in the box (a WWII Corsair aircraft model) and some of his built-up (and painted, of couse) aircraft kits. Some of the "real world" detailing of such models blew me away: molded-in ejection ports for each of the guns in the wings, as just one example. No kit of my youth had ever had that much detail included -- but then again, the kits I bought in the 60s / 70s were two dollars or sometimes even lower. The hobby had changed: both in quality, and also in raw costs.
I started attending meetings of the IPMS chapter that Brian Criner belonged to (The "Planes of Fame" group, out of Chino, California) in the late 1990's -- but I wasn't yet back into building anything. I mainly just went to monthly meetings, and to contests held in the Southern California area (including SCAHMS shows, when I could make it there) but I mostly "just looked". I eventually picked up some kits -- ("forgive me, for I have sinned," I'll say to the historical modelers out there, who might be reading this: because my kit-buying-and-building interests at that time were generally sci-fi subjects) -- but I always kept an eye on what the historical modelers (vehicular and/or figure) were doing. I'd buy lots of books, and magazines, and the like, on the historical side; but I mostly built fantasy subjects, in that late 1990's to early 2000's period. I met a lot of super-talented modelers, at various contests, and I really enjoyed seeing what they had worked on. I loved being able to pick their brains, about how-to info, too!
Eventually, I got good enough to win a few contest prizes at local contests; and occasionally I'd win something at the regional contests in that state -- but I was mostly interested in the constant learning, and seeing what was happening. I was always (arguably) more interested in the processes involved, than the "ranking" of contests. I loved to see the skill of others on display! I think my most fun, at things like TamiyaCon events, was taking notes when the big-shot builders were giving small seminars, in the parking lots, to "keep the troops entertained" while the judging was going on, inside the buildings. To me, the "prizes" were the knowledge that certain things could be done; and that the knowledge about "how" was obtainable.
Around 2003 I moved out of that state, and into one (New Mexico, USA) where IPMS contests and clubs didn't exist (local to me, at any rate: the nearest ones I knew about, back then, were maybe 230 miles away, give or take; and that was one-way, not the round trip travel distance) so my interests sort of shifted. I wanted to know more about how people scratch-built. I was always fascinated with reading about it, or picking people's brains, when they knew how it was done, but I hadn't really done much beyond kit-bashing, to that point. I began adding internet personalities to my list of "favorite authors" that I was studying the craft from or with, "from afar". I wanted to know a lot more! At the tail end of my learning period, I wrote a few things for "Internet Modeler" but a lot of that has gone off of the internet, over time. I had a "tip" or two published in places like "Scale Auto" or "Fine Scale Modeler" magazines, in this period, but I hadn't yet written anything "article length," for an actual printed publication, then. But I was getting closer and closer, over time, to where I could do that.
Around 2009-ish I had learned enough, through a LOT of what I think of as "deliberate study; and deliberate reflection; and deliberate practice" that I wrote my first full-length, paid, hobby article. It was in issue #13 of "Sci-Fi & Fantasy Modeller" -- which is a publication out of England. (I still lived in America, but email and the Internet let me write for that "overseas" publication.) Over time, I ended up writing I think it was fifteen articles for them. (It sucked, when they closed their doors, a few years ago -- or I would most likely still happily be writing for them!) At about the time SF&FM was closing down, I also wrote three articles (all on the same topic) for a historical scale modeling publication, called "Seaway's Ships In Scale". My plan back then was to get my obligations to finish off a five-part series, with Ships In Scale, first; and then get back to writing for SF&FM, but as it turned out, Ships In Scale quit publishing at about the same time (give or take) that SF&FM made that decision. It's tough out there, for magazines to survive, these days! Anyway, those few articles about the CSS Manassas (an early American Civil War ironclad), I believe I had sold all the rights to, not just the ones related to the "first publication" -- so I can't share copies of those three historical articles. (If anyone wants issue numbers, I can look that info up.) I did recently get permission from the publisher of SF&FM, to share whatever articles I wanted to, that I'd written, online -- so I did post four links to a sampling of the lengthy and detailed SF&FM articles I wrote, on the "Post your Articles or Step-by-Step tutorials" section of this fine web forums. If anyone wants to see examples of that kind of published articles, be advised that the links to those fantasy articles should be over here:
https://www.planetfigure.com/thread...stics-using-electrically-heated-tools.387419/
I'm still learning -- and happily so! If I tried to sum up what I'm doing now, it's sort of like when I was picking the brains of talented modelers like David Merriman (an ex-navy diver and professional scale modeler, who mainly works with radio controlled submarine models, and sometimes sci-fi subjects) so that I could continue my learning processes. I very much enjoy the constant "problem solving" and "lateral thinking" aspects of this hobby. There is always one more challenge, just around a corner! And one more. And one more, after that. I never really gave figure modeling a huge learning period, and my painting skills, while improved since childhood, could definitely use an upgrade. So I'll be learning from folks here, and elsewhere, as I do whatever is next, on my scale modeling journey. I'm planning on learning a lot more than I currently know, about sculpting figures, and painting them. (And there's nothing wrong with "enjoying the scenery"!)
-- My name on these boards: "Wardenstein" --
-- My real name: "Ward Shrake" --
