My New Modelling Philosophy (Or, "What I Didn't do on my Summer Vacation")

Well this is a long one, but it's been a long time coming and it probably should have a warning attached to it."Caution: may contain traces of venom, spite, personal details and/or sheer undiluted cynicism. Not to be read under the influence of depressants, anti-depressants, resin dust, styrene cement fumes, or country and western music." Actually I don't believe anything should be done under the influence of country and western music, but that's just my opinion. I'm amazed the entire population of Nashville hasn't offed itself long ago due to excessive exposure to songs about pick-up trucks, dogs and infidelity. Especially those dogs that drive pick-up trucks to their mistresses. But that's a whole other rant.....

So I seem to have come out of a really long dry spell when I just couldn't be bothered building models. In fact, I was starting to think I was done with the hobby. Finito. Kaput. Looked at my ridiculously huge collection of kits, books, magazines, decals, detail sets, paints, tools, etc., etc., and wondered whether I shouldn't just start selling it all off. I shudder to think of the thousands of dollars/pounds I have invested in this collection that, let's face it, I'd have to live to be around 800 years old to actually build. And for what? To have a bunch of toy tanks and airplanes sitting on my shelves gathering dust and repelling women - not that I ever have any of that rare species over, but if I did I can only imagine the reaction. "Oooh, gosh, look at those.... Did you make those? Gee, look at the time. I've gotta go. I'll call you...."

Call it a crisis of faith if you like. At first I figured it was because the wife left and I was pretty damn depressed about that. But life goes on and eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the depression went away and life started to feel somewhat normal again. But the desire to sit down and stick bits of plastic together just didn't return. Occasionally I'd force myself to pick up a model that was nearly complete and try and finish it but I just couldn't get into it and I figured that forcing myself to do something kind of defeated the purpose of a supposedly relaxing diversion from life's woes. I tried starting a new kit with the intention of a quick & easy out-of-the-box build to get me back into it. My workbench is now littered with the hulks of quick & easy kits that never got past step 3 of the instructions. Maybe a completely different subject would get me out of the doldrums. Couldn't think of a different subject I really wanted to do. To sum up, in 8 months I did less than 2 hours of modelling.....

You have to understand, I've built models since I was a kid. Through thick and thin, when life seemed particularly shitty or when it was all going swimmingly, I built models. It was fun. It was something I could do to amuse myself. It was a temporary diversion from reality. So I had to ask myself, why was this low point any different? Granted, it was probably the lowest point I've ever been through (first time with an ex-wife), but still, I'd had bad times before and models were always my diversion. So why did it seem like I'd never build one again this time? Why was I so cynical and completely uninterested with the whole thing? It took me a while but I think I discovered the reason. And you may not like it....

Aaaagghh... make it stop!

Why had the fun gone? Hobby saturation. The magazines, the club meetings, the shows, the constant deluge of new and often unneccesary aftermarket products, and yes, the internet (and no, the irony of that last one is not lost on me!). This hobby has become a monster. It's become bigger than the sum of its parts, blown way out of proportion to what it's all about and so full of all-knowing "experts" that I just couldn't stomach it anymore. I stopped visiting the discussion boards on ARC and Hyperscale a long time ago because the armchair experts turned me off. These people seem to think that building models makes them part of some elite brotherhood that puts them on par with the great and powerful. Like the guy who posted the teary eyed message on the ARC discussion board about the F-14 that had gone in somewhere. I'm sorry, but just because you stick plastic models of F-14s together doesn't give you any kind of comradeship with the people that fly and maintain them. Yes, it's tragic when people die, but if you think they'd bat an eye because of a rumour that an F-14 modeller had died from glue fumes you'd be sadly mistaken. Get a life people. It's a hobby. You build plastic airplanes. Thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of the people who actually are - or were - in our armed forces, the closest you'll ever come to a real combat situation is a drunken brawl outside your local 7-11.

So I've stopped going to club meetings and I've stopped buying model magazines, unless there's something particularly interesting and useful in them. Let's face it, most of the mags these days are nothing more than monthly catalogues of all the new products out there. And oh, the new products.... Looking through my back issues of Scale Aviation Modeller from late 1999 to the present the listings of new stuff that came out every month is mind boggling. Picking a copy up at random, the February 2001 issue lists 33 new or reissued kits, 40 photo etched sets, 10 resin detail/conversion/correction sets, 11 paint masks, 53 decal sheets (giving you a total of 157 specific aircraft to model plus generic sheets of national insignia, stencils and lozenge camouflage). And I didn't bother to count the upcoming kit releases. Nor am I mentioning the numerous ads from companies listing yet more products and upcoming releases. That's just one month and one magazine - and there's been 18 months worth of new products since then, and who knows how many months worth previous to it. The mind reels....

Don't get me wrong. We've never had it so good since the cottage manufacturers arrived on the scene. The stuff that's coming out of the Czech Republic in particular is amazing; far beyond what I could hope to scratchbuild and very reasonably priced. But I can't help thinking that it's all going out of control. Everybody and their dog is putting out aftermarket add-ons and decals and a large proportion of it is really unneccesary. Do I really need to lash out more money than what I paid for the base kit on a resin correction set that frankly I could do myself with a bit of putty and some filing and sanding? Will anyone really notice if I don't correct an inaccuracy that amounts to a few thousands of an inch here or there? Well, actually there are some sad bastards that will notice but only because some even sadder bastard on the internet told them to.

A case in point: I spent countless hours on my Hasegawa Zero. I converted it to an A6M5c with the outboard machine guns made from stainless steel tubing and the perforated jackets taken from a Tom's Modelworks etch set. These were meant for WW1 Lewis guns so had to be cut down to size for the Zero. The underwing rocket rails were scratchbuilt and the bulges and cartridge chutes for the machine guns were added. I shoehorned in a complete Eduard photo etched cockpit (repeatedly because it didn't fit well and various parts kept springing out) and wheel wells and removed the control surfaces so I could reposition them. The decals were from Aeromaster and the canopy is a Falcon vac-form. And you know what? It looks no better or worse on the shelf and I'm no more or less proud of it than the Finnish M.S. 406 that I built straight out of the box with the kit decals.

And do we really need yet another 10+ sets of decals for Luftwaffe aircraft or F-16s or F-15s or F-14s or Mustangs, or, or.... There are other subjects out there, and there are companies that are giving them the attention they deserve - let's give those companies the attention and the exposure they deserve for tackling subjects that are outside of the constant stream of 109s and 190s. Is it just me, or is anyone else sick to death of seeing swastikas and pointy-nosed jets? It seems particularly ironic that with the phenomenal selection we have available today, I keep seeing the same subjects over and over again.

All the resin in the world won't help you if you can't build...

Man, am I sick of hearing that word, "accuracy". Accuracy is everything it would seem. A few millimeters out here, the wrong shape there and a kit is slammed for its inaccuracies. Where did this all-consuming fanaticism for scale accuracy come from? I have no idea, but I wish it would go back there. The eternal quest for the perfect model. Perfection is directly proportional to the amount of resin and photo etched brass you can cram in a model regardless of the fact that you haven't mastered basic seam filling, your stabilizers aren't on straight and you can't paint to save your life. So you spent hours correcting the kits deficiencies and detailing it with every aftermarket accessory you could lay your hands on but you painted it with a roller and used Betty Crocker frosting to fill the seams. Congratulations - you have a detailed, accurate... toy. But it's not a scale representation of an actual full size object. Basic building and painting techniques pale in importance next to the gods of accuracy and detail. My Messerschmitt may be well built and finished but heaven help me if it isn't painted the "correct" colour, or hasn't been finished with the latest Aeromasturbator decals. Oh, and while I'm on the subject, if I have to endure one more article on a 1/48th scale Bf-109, Fw-190 or P-51 Mustang I'm gonna take up needlepoint.

Don't even get me started on some of the latest finishing trends that everyone seems compelled to inflict on their models. Pre-shaded panel lines? I have seen very few models finished with this technique that haven't looked completely toylike and overdone. And black washes stuck in every recess available. To quote from an email I got from a like-minded individual regarding my Scale Colour rant: "In my opinion, far too much emphasis is placed on panel lines these days". Absolutely. I've seen some really ambitious and beautifully built projects on the net that, in my opinion, were ruined by surrealistic panel lines and weathering that would bog a tank down, let alone an aircraft.

So this is my new modelling philosophy: I'm turning this back into a solitary hobby, like it was when I enjoyed it. I'm going to build models the way I want to build them and I don't care if they're a couple of millimeters out here or there, they don't have pre-shaded panel lines or the colour isn't "scale", or if I haven't spent 10 times the price of the kit on aftermarket accessories and decals. If I want to go to town on a kit, correct its faults and detail it until my eyes fail then I will. If I just want to get it done and can live with the result, then so be it. If a kit has such a glaring inaccuracy that it doesn't even resemble the full size prototype, then yes, I will correct it if I can. But if, like the Academy Spitfire, it looks like it is supposed to, then I'm not going to lose any sleep over any faults - real, imagined or rumoured.

I don't want to go to anymore shows or meetings because, to be frank, some of the people that attend them look like they only ever venture out in public for hobby shows and meetings and only then for the sole purpose of imparting their devine knowledge of accuracy and scale colour. And if I may be brutally honest, a few of them need to spend more time bathing and less time on internet discussion groups debating the wheel well colour of an aircraft that was scrapped thirty years before they were born. Yes that sounds awful and snobbish, but there it is. And I don't want to buy monthly lists of products I can't afford and don't need. Lists that are briefly punctuated by actual modelling articles (what the magazine is supposed to be about, I'm told) that all too often feature the handiwork of a modeller who, once again, hasn't even grasped the basic concepts of building and finishing before attempting to move straight on to "advanced resin and photo etched applications".

And I'm really tired of seeing letters from readers who are convinced the hobby is in its death throes because kids today aren't building models, kit prices have gone through the stratosphere and IPMS isn't attracting new members. Ironically, this is one of the factors that convinced me not to renew my IPMS UK membership. That and the fact that the magazine they put out contains more about the politics of the society itself than anything else, including actually building models. A bit like having a lantern to warn you of a stack of bricks, and the sole purpose of the stack of bricks is to hold up the lantern, if you see what I mean. News flash: Certain types have been saying the same thing ever since this hobby started to take on a life of its own - about the time it started being called "the hobby". Pick up a magazine from the early seventies and you'll read the same thing: the hobby is dying. Bollocks. It was bollocks then, and it remains so today. "The hobby", as it is so reverently called, is alive and well. It survived the oil crisis, it survived the video game revolution, and it holds its own against football fever here in the UK. Prices have grown out of all proportion and belief and we all bitch about it, but somebody must be paying those prices because the stuff keeps coming out and the prices keep going up. The days of the 98 cent kit and the 10 cent bottle of paint are long gone. Get over it.

I'm not saying I don't want to correspond with my fellow geeks anymore (yeah, sorry guys and gals - we are geeks in a geek world, but hey, that's not a bad thing). I enjoy a good old natter about modelling with anyone who'll listen or can read an email as much as the next guy. But I do want to remove myself from the gargantuan monster that has grown out of a simple relaxing pastime as much as possible. And this may only be a temporary solution, but it's working for me right now. I'm building again, and more importantly, I'm enjoying it again. Isn't that what it's all about?

Oh, one more thing. I really hate articles that end with "Happy Modelling...." Grrrrrrr..... ;-)