Starting out in the hobby

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When first entering the world of modeling, what was your first area of interest?


  • Total voters
    26

Roc

A Fixture
Joined
Dec 29, 2003
Messages
7,920
Location
Philadelphia, PA.
I thaught it would be interesting to share with each other, what was our first area of interest.

Mine was building ships, the first model I ever built and painted was the Revell US Constitution.


Cheers
Roc. :)
 
I started with historical military figures. My first was the Airfix Collectors Series Number 1, the plastic kit of the British Coldstream Guard of 1815, issued in 1971. I then went on to buy the whole series plus scores of vehicles, tanks, planes, ships and other Airfix kits. I painted about one-tenth of them and still have many, many boxes of unpainted, unconstructed Airfix kits as well as part-finished kits and spare parts, now long dissociated from their original kit. I haven't constructed/painted an Airfix kit for nearly thirty years!
 
I built whatever kits I could afford that looked interesting. Ships, tanks, aircraft - whatever!
I always had hundreds of toy soldiers and started painting them when I realised how really abominably bad the 'Britains' type soldiers were painted.
And the detail of them was embarrassing!!
I don't really want to start a heated debate here but I really really really really hate toy soldiers - and am astounded at the prices that they fetch!!
Now I call myself a figure painter as my ship building and aircraft modelling are hampered by the lack of suitable subjet kits (RAN ships and AFC aircraft)
Carpo
 
Great threat Rocco,

I starting with Airfix airplane's when i was just a little kid.
After that houses for the modelrailroad.
Then i got interest in motorracing and i build Formula I cars and Racingbike's.
When i was in my early 20's :eek: i startet to build large wooden ships as the HMS Victory, Bounty, Cutty Sark and alot more. All the familly get his ship. So when everybody got one i stopped this.
Then i become a modelflyer with RC gliders. Then i moved to another part of our small country and i sold everything.
At then my second hobby come's first. Do your own fotoprint in colour and Black and white. Men, i still love the smell of the chemic's.
Beside's the photographie i made some AFV to make tabletop picture's.
So when i was doing that i get more and more fun in painting the crew of the AFV.
Because i wasn't satisfied with my results of painting figure's i visit a workshop off Gino Poppe and from that moment on (about 3-4 years ago) i have done nothing more than painting figure's.
I believe this is the hobby that drive's me crazy, because there are so many beautifull figures and so limit in time to paint theme all :lol:
BTW: Photographie is out ( i go digital) and after a said period in my life i had no longer room for the DOKA.
SO ALL I WANT IS PAINT LITTLE MAN (WOMAN).

Marc
 
Like most of you, it was aircraft for me, too. My enrollment in the Civil Air Patrol sparked that interest. I've built most everything else, and I keep finding myself returning to aircraft.
 
I guess my absolute first experience was with an airplane, it was a Swedish "Tunnan" airplane from Revell. I was probably 6 or 7 years old. That was the one and only plane I built, after that I started going to hobby shops with my dad and started doing armor instead. My brother gave me a set of Tamiyas Panzer Grenadiers and after that I was pretty much stuck on figures. Several years later when I started going to shows (about age 14) I did pretty much everything, but after looking at Mike Blanks figures I decided to pay more attention to mine. I would say it wasnt until 1999 that I completely focused on figures and started sculpting seriosuly about 2002-2003. The rest is history!
 
I still remember my first model kit, aged seven, a Fairey Swordfish torpedo plane. It was a biplane and I stuck the wings on upside down, I still make similar mistakes today.... ;)

After that I used to save up any money I had to buy whatever was in the local shop window which was usually Airfix 1:72 scale tanks from WWII.
 
I have always been interested in military miniatures. It all started with the several hundreds of Marx toy soldiers I had. The first figures I ever built were WW2 figure sets from Tamiya and Italieri. What's interesting is the number of people that are armor and aircraft converts.~Gary
 
Hi Guys

Good question, I have to say my main interest when i started was the dreaded AFV’s of WWII, but what better way to start to use paints and washes than a tank, unfortunately my interest in air powered rifles also increased at this time and many of my first efforts ended up with severe battle damage..... :lol:

thankfully I am into painting figures now

Dave
 
Personnaly, I come from armor.

My firts kit was a Tiger 1 from Tamiya. I was 11 years old or less, I don't remember. Next, I build some others Tanks but finally what interesst me the most was the figures, which were in the kit.

My first figure set was a Tamiya one ;)

Laurent
 
I was 8 years old. There was a toy store on 5th street below Girard Ave in Philly and I was mesmerized by the plastic toy soldiers in the window. They were so cool because the riders could be seperated from their mounts. Lot of cowboys and indians and some soldiers wearing what years later I would learn a shakos. At 9 years old I used my Gramps household paint to give them different looks. In 1951 my mom died and my pop took me to the wilderness of southern New Jersey. At 12 years of age I found a hobby shop in Haddonfield but no toy soldiers. The Aurora plastic models caught my attention ( aircraft ) and it was a constant fight with my father for 69 cents or a $1.00. In my mid-teens I discovered the virtues ( or lack of them....which I prefered ) of young girls and there went the hobby. It wasn't until marriage years later and the birth of my son that I went back to model aircraft. There was a hobby shop at the Cherry Hill mall my wife and I looked into in 1969 and I watched the owner actually painting a miniature ( an I/R figure ) and I was simply hooked knowing I could do a much better job. I knew people would be impressed....no! ....ASTOUNDED by my artistic endeavors. They would admire me and wish they had half my talent. I would become FAMOUS....a Personality!!!
When I was finished with my miniature I was delighted with the large bright blue fisheyes and the neat demarcation lines. A couple years later I went to my first MFCA show ( where I knew I would recieve thunderous applause and widespread recognition ) and the first thing I saw was a mtd Curassier with helmet on sword's tip, froth coming from the charging horse's mouth. It was titled "Vive L' Emperor"
by S. Paine.
So I put my "stuff " quickly back in my car realizing I had a lot.....a BIG lot to learn!......
and I'm still learning....
 
For me, THIS is where it all started.

FOUR183.jpg


Used to fancy I was the guy with the F-102 :lol:. Still have the catalog in a closet somewhere. Never got the F-102 though! :(

Q.
 
I've started with planes, but 15 years ago in poland there was no choice- there was only warious paper kits and meybe 10 plastic kits of1/72 planes. any airfix or mathbox kits are really treasure- unavailable in our shops and cames only from foreign friends or family.
 
I built my first aeroplane at theage of 6, and then went on for some years to build almost anything, but for some period mostly ships.
This shifted to 1/35h tanksin my early teens, of which I also painted the figures that came with the kits.

In my mid teens, I discovered the publications of François Verlinden, which opened a whole new world for me, and his work (and Phil Stutcinskas, Lewis Pruneau, Bob Letterman, and others...) made me want to build dioramas. It took some years to figure out the weathering techniques in those magazines and get going, but by the end of highschool I build my first couple of dios.

In the beginning of university, I finally found the modelling-club I am still in (KMK), which added a whole new dimension to my hobby: besides the added social life (I was modelling in complete isolation before that) and learning a lot from fellow members, it also became possible to travel to hows and competitions, even international!
I also never let my girlfriends get in between me and my modelling, so I never took "a break". If they weren't too hot on it: pity, but there's more fish in the sea... Luckilly, most were very understanding and my wife now is even more than supportive! :) So, even though I am only 28, I have been modelling continuously for 22 years!

I shifted from AFV-dioramas to figures during the last year or so, but I feel that essentially I am still doing the same thing: making dioramas, even if they are sometimes one-figure-dioramas. I have always treated the figures in my dios as equally important as the tanks, also taking a year of from tanks in 2002 to do some single figure projects. In did my first sculpts during that year, which gave me suddenly unlimited creative freedom. I never looked back...


Cheers!

Marijn
 
Probably tried them all. My dad bought me my first model in the 60's. It was a WW1 German monoplane. The old Airfix baggies type. I made planes, ships and even most of the Aurora monsters in this period. But armour was always my favourite.

Like John, I discovered the other sex and gave up the hobby from about 15 to 27. Then I underwent surgery and was off work for several months. Picked up a Tamiya tank (a T-34, I think) to keep me occupied. That got me involved in a local club and built a lot of Brit and Soviet armour.

Friends kept telling me that I should go to this great model show in Chicago!! Since I usually threw the figures away, I didn't see the point of going all the way to the Midwest for a figure show. I was finally convinced to make the trip in 92 and the rest is history. I haven't finished a tank since.
 
I remember my first models were the 1/72 scale Airfix Cutty Sark and the Me 109E. Basically built 1/72 scale stuff for a few years until I discovered Tamiya's 1/35 models (my first was the Kettenkraftrad). Stayed with German AFVs for most of my modelling life until I discovered the "planet" in Oct 2003. The rest,as they say,is history. My 2 cents worth. Cheers !
Kenneth.
 
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