Hoodlum90 Looks great! I really like the base.

Konrad Limmer Amazing work Greg! Really cool

Martin Oostrom Mission completed. Well done (as usual)

Greg Baker Thanks guys! Much appreciated... and I'm really glad someone likes the base.

J W Oh Greg, you completed this project within your tight deadline mostly by not trying to do it 'perfectly'. Like I said before, a master ... of yourself! So, something else I've learned from my 'Mates here. Cheers

Nils Steyaert nice work

Donald Dickson II Wow! Well done! And that base is awesome! Great job all around especially considering the time constraint.

Greg Baker Thanks guys! Voting has started in the GB, so wish me luck!

Martin Oostrom Love it. Others are just jealous

Peter Jenssen Looks cool, I love the Tintin stuff.
Always wanted to make a model of l'Icorne myself...

Greg Baker After much humming and hawing, I've decided I need to cheat a bit on the cockpit. I knew the nose was a bit sharper than it should be, but it would require major, life-threatening surgery to try and fix... so we'll just have to live with it as-is. But by consequence, the cockpit is really too narrow for a 1/72 3-man crew. I guess i'll Just have to use the 1/144 seats that came with the kit. So, in that case, the cockpit will rudimentary and I plan to try and tint the windows to obscure vision. I usually hate blacking out the windows, but oh well.... just nobody tell Choppa it's out of scale...

Spanjaard it will look fantastic at the end

Greg Baker So... I declare a do-over!

I stalled out on the cockpit because I could never really get the 1/144 B-1 to look like a 1/72 scale private jet. So it sat and sat on the shelf of doom. Then, vowing to return to my stalled projects, I picked this one up and then, after remembering why I put it down... I decided to return it to the project I'd originally bought the kit for... Saki's B-1 bomber from the manga series Area 88.

Luckily I never throw away interesting bits of plastic. After a bit of a search, I found the bits I'd cut off in my spares box. A bit of glue and we're back in action!

I do still want to build the Carreidas jet... but I'll need some more planning on that one.

Julian Herrero aka Yuri Phantastic

Martin Oostrom I object your honour. I reserved a seat for a Tintin build. Not some warmongering item!

Greg Baker Thanks Julian... as for you Martin... stay tuned. There are plenty more Tintin builds to come. I just really need to clear off my "shelf of doom" as it's starting to look like a graveyard.

Martin Oostrom Very nice Greg. Said it before: love your work

Greg Baker Thanks Calvin and Martin! I finally got the shell to sit properly on the chassis, so it's starting to come together now.

Greg Baker We're into the home stretch on this one now. Got the front grill made and installed. Had a little trouble with the headlights, but chances were not good that they would get better so I stopped playing with them while I was only a bit behind. Basically just finishing up the scratched up luggage/rack.

JOHN THOMAS Hey Greg, Have you tried to light up your little cars? That would be cool, like your Big Bugs

Greg Baker Thanks for the suggestion, John. I'm not sure I have the patience to try and light up one of these little cars. This one is now done, but the final steps to install the windows nearly destroyed the whole project. I had to repaint the shell 3 times because I kep buggering up the install and the paint around the windows was a mess. It was very difficult to get the front and rear windows to be just the right size/shape to fit snuggly and allow for the relatively serious curve.

Once they were in, everything else just came together. I suppose I should be glad since I was able to fix up some of the issues with the headlights in the process. In the end, I'm quite happy. It actually does look like a 1/72 scale Peugeot 403 to me.

Es-haq Khosravi Lovely!

Greg Baker Thanks Es-haq!

Spanjaard it looks really good Greg, certainly

Spanjaard Greg, maybe you could add a diagram of the circuits,components, etc. And the list of specific components. It would help to those who want to replicate

Nam Soo Lee Oh, shit. so many LED works. lol

Greg Baker That's a good idea Spanjaard. I've actually been working on a blog strobez.ca that features all my project builds in more detail so I was planning on giving detailed instructions of how I went about this project there. However, there's no reason I can't post the circuit diagram and components list (and arduino code) here for anyone who's interested.

Hey Nam Soo... check it out! I added two more LED lights. The settings are a bit off and need to be adjusted, but the proof-of-concept seems to work. I bought one of those cheapo plastic fibre optic lamps and started doing some surgery on it. The main problem is that it's not easy to bend the fibres without damaging the internal core that carries the light.

Youtube Video

Spanjaard nice blog

Greg Baker Thanks for visiting the blog Spanjaard!

Added just one update pic. I got the eyes installed and then I installed the feelers. It sounded so simple... I glued the ends of some fibre optics scavanged from a cheapo dollar store lamp to a couple of white LEDs, then drilled a bunch of tiny holes in the mouth piece and fed them through and painted them all with clear yellow Tamiya acrylic. What a nightmare in practice though.

My first attempt to glue the fibre optics to the LEDs using a clear bit of tube was a disaster. I used hot glue which was apparently hot enough to melt the fibres (Duh!). I used white glue on my second attempt but then feeding that mess of spaghetti through a bunch of holes was a real pain. The fibres are a bit brittle and prone to snapping off at the most inconvenient moments.

Oh, well. I got it done, not as many (or as bright) as I'd have liked, but fooling around any further would have led to dangerous levels of frustration and Ohmus may have been harmed in the process... and the likelihood of satisfactory success was remote. It is what it is.

JOHN THOMAS Just more cool stuff, great work

Peter Hardy More magic from the Mystic East!

Spanjaard looking pretty good

JOHN THOMAS Greg, very cool project and I really like your wood base

Peter Hardy What makes you think we have it? Just because Kerry wears white cotton gloves to open a model box and wraps his sprues with glad wrap that doesn't make his OCD does it?

Greg Baker Thanks John! I thought they deserved an upgrade from the Pringles tops... especially after the paint started falling off.

As for Peter... the white gloves don't count, but painting all the pieces alphabetically does.

Peter Hardy Kerry?

Michael Hickey Cool

Martin Oostrom Do you have any idea hoe hard it is to paint alphabetically when the parts are numbered? One needs a special conversion table for that!

Peter Hardy Would you like me to send you a copy of the one Greg sent me?

Spanjaard very nicely done.

Greg Baker I know I've posted ample pics of the "build-in-progress", but I decided to create separate albums of 6-8 pics of the "glamour shots" of the completed builds. I re-did the bases on almost all my Tintin builds to create a standard "template", so expect to se a re-visit of all my older builds appearing soon.

Peter Hardy Remote control Greg?????? No pilot? Has Tintin been waylayed and the plane has gone without him?

Greg Baker Let's just say I leave room for the viewers to imagine themselves at the controls... also, I'd go mad trying to make tiny little 1/72 Tintin figures for all my builds, and I like my sanity too much to spend it all on that.

berni Nice work but how did you realize the lettering on the bases?

Greg Baker Thanks berni. The lettering on the bases is just simply some homemade decals using a "Tintin" font.

Peter Hardy Greg! I have a solution! Do the top of a small parachute in the clouds below!

Es-haq Khosravi Great job!

Greg Baker Thanks Es-haq!

Peter - that made me laugh. Perhaps just a pair of boots stick out from the clouds?

Greg Baker Oh my dear... I just realized the decal on the base reads "KawaWAsaki...." <cry>

Martin Oostrom Greg has discovered a long lost Japanese plane manufacturer. Their last chairman was a dr. Livingstone (presumed)

Miro Herold Something another, but well done.

Greg Baker Something another indeed... sigh.

Spanjaard well, you have another option... make a couple of figures in your computer, and print them multiple times in 3D.... A new skill to master Greg

Greg Baker I'm not sure my inkjet is up to that task...

Spanjaard ha ha ha, if does, let me know, i will buy the same model

Peter Hardy Thank you Ronald! Perhaps a two dimensional Tintin Greg? Just head and shoulders? The plane would still be the focus and the two dimensional figure would underline that. His little white dog in the other seat? Sorry Mate, but it really does scream "work in progress". Detracts from a very good dio and model.

JOHN THOMAS Greg, very cool

bobinspokaloo Yes, bob...its a monoplane!

U know...I just sorta saw it it quickly and made the assumption there must be another wing coming.

Nice work...lots of fun with the base!

Thomas Bischoff looks much better now

Martin Oostrom You also cut the prop the wrong way?
Very nice as always Greg.

Greg Baker I cut the prop the wrong way? What does that mean?

Martin Oostrom In the book Tintin cuts the prop by hand. But the curve is the wrong way, so when he fires up the engine, the plane moves backwards. Then he cuts another prop by hand

Greg Baker LOL! Yes, right! Your comment makes more sense now. I didn't think to do that... now I'm regretting it.

Peter Hardy I gotta read more comic books!

Greg Baker I tried Wim's suggestion and it worked well. I used PVA glue diluted in water and the wrapped the tissue paper around the barrel. It took a few attempts, but seemed a more forgiving choice than the 2-part putty (which was plan "b" . I'ven't painted it yet, but so far so good.

I also masked off and painted the red circles. The tape and red paint looked an awful lot like bandages (see pic), so the whole time I was worried that Peter was going to call the model abuse hotline on me... No models were injured in this operation.

Peter Hardy Sorry Greg, I have cancelled the call. I will have a little practice with the PVA glue trick. I hate it when Wim is right!

Wim van der Luijt Don't get used to it Peter my success to fubar ratio is pretty average

Greg Baker And... we're done! This was quite fun build... my first tank! All in all, I'm quite happy. The weathering wash might've been a bad idea... makes it look much more "real world" than "comic book", but all of my Tintin projects are like that... so... consistency. i guess.

JOHN THOMAS Greg, just more outstanding work

Greg Baker Thanks John! I did my best!

Peter Hardy Very good Greg!

Wim van der Luijt turned out great! another one to be proud of....

Greg Baker Well, that was easy.

Martin Oostrom Don't clamp down on the green. Paint it different shades of green until you're green at the gills. One of them will be green, uhm i mean right.

Greg Baker A pretty straightforward buil. About the trickiest part was painting little white rectangles for the flag decals to sit over. It's really much more of a "bit player" than most of my Tintin-related builds, but the low price, easy-to-find kit, correct scale and beautiful fit made it an easy addition.

Martin Oostrom She's nice nonetheless!

Hanno Kleinecke This was my first ever and is still my favourite Tintin album, great result Greg !

Thomas Bischoff I love your Tintin builds! This one turned out very nice again

Spanjaard very nice Greg

Greg Baker Thanks guys! I'm very happy that people are following along. I started getting so many little Tintin builds I decided to up my game a bit on the bases... including labeling them so I don't forget! Once I upgrade all the bases, I'll take a "family picture" of them al together.