Aurora-class Lantean Battle Cruiser from Stargate Atlantis (cardboard mockup) - Build Log

Описание: This time I dared for my scariest project, building an Aurora-class battle ship! I always shyed away from tackling the Lantean ships as there were no good screen graps (too dark) or good renders available. I never felt I could give this project enough justice with too poor source material. So unfortunately this model ended up a bit wonky, I realized too late that the renders I found and used as template have all slightly different design features and different scales. So I tried to incorporate design features from all models and tried to adjust the scale accordingly.

The whole mockup is about 35 cm in length, some parts ended up a bit wider or shorter than they should be, but I'm still quite pleased with it; it certainly looks like a Lantean design. Now I can also show you how I built up the internal structure. The internal skeleton is made from intersecting plates from 1mm grey cardboard, fixed together with superglue for initial grab, then reinforced with PVA/white glue. On top come fine strips of smooth, sealed 0.5mm white cardboard to form the outer shell, I dubbed this my "skin-and-bones technique".

Furthermore, I break down the entire structure of the ship into small sections with simply geometry. These can be designed in Adobe Illustrator very quickly, printed out and pasted onto cardboard to be cut. These simple sections can then by glued together to form an increasingly complex geometry. The rough structure is done quickly, about 1 1/2 weeks, the surface details however are much more time consuming, easily 2-3x that amount.

For painting, the entire mockup was first covered in several passes of "gunmetal grey" ("Geschützgrau" in german) as a surface primer. Following that, the cockpit window, as well as the rear drive units were masked and painted in "window blue" ("Lichtblau" in german) and "neon yellow" respectively. For the orange surface sections I lightly brushed a heavily watered down "neon orange" over selective areas and details. To finish off, I used dark grey wash over everything to tone the bright orange and givered every a weathered, tarnished appearance.

I never thought, when I started model building decades ago, I would be able to do something like that one. I was never really confident in my paint skills and I still am worried I will ruin my mockup once I touch it with a brush. If I look at my inspirations for building and painting (Youtubers @Nerdforge, @North of the Border, @Luke Towan) I see that I still have a long way to go. I'm really relieved this built didn't end up in the bin^^. I hope you will enjoy it, too. Have a nice weekend everybody.

Music: Cinematic Piano - Aleksandr Shamaluev