SCALE MODEL NEWS

A TRANSFORMERS CAMARO COMES TO THE Texas town of Killeen, as Mat cruises by, camera at the ready. Mat Irvine:  There you are, driving down an Interstate, when you need a pit stop. There's a Walmart, but what's going on in the car park? It happens to be an auto show, and that cries out for a visit. And that's more or less what happened to me in the town of Killeen, Texas. One of the three Walmarts in the city was hosting an auto show, featuring a special display ( below ) of this banana yellow Chevrolet Camaro.  What was particularly interesting from an SMN perspective was that many show cars, including this one, also had matching miniature versions, displayed on the vehicle or alongside.  The car that immediately caught my attention was the late-model Chevrolet Camaro, tricked out as Bumblebee from the Transformers movies. The assembled toys and robots laid out of the Transformers rug ( above ) added an extra sparkle to the show.    This Camaro was an ...

The new and upcoming Transformers: Age of Extinction  movie gives science-fiction model makers another chance to get into robots and robotics. The scale model kit makers mostly steer clear of movie tie-ins, not so the toy manufacturers, giving us a chance for some excellent kit-bash projects. The trailer for Transformers: Age of Extinction shows that the newest in the series will move to a somewhat darker flavour, no bad thing at all if it takes the viewers to a slightly more adult place. What's on the market for model makers? Mostly toys, even if this Optimus Prime robot from Takara Tomy is called a kit.  It's certainly not a styrene injection item along the lines of an Airfix Mosquito, but the components are cleanly moulded and most importantly, the whole appearance can be massively improved by the addition of traditional detailing and weathering techniques. The bright shades are best toned down, and the metallic parts can be resprayed in aluminium or bare metal. The whole ...

SMALLSPACE COUNTDOWN: The smallspace “model show for all things space, science fiction and fantasy” will be held this Sunday, July 1, and among the sci-fi stars on display will be the original K-9 robot dog from Doctor Who. Old and new robots The robotic dog stars at smallspace courtesy Mat Irvine ( above ), who has also co-written with Mike Tucker the seminal book BBC VFX . K-9 at smallspace is the original dog, but a newer one was created for an Australian TV series. Here are a couple of pix from the TV series, and note how advanced our canine mechanoid now looks. Detail-up model There are plenty of K-9 collectibles around, but injection kits are hard to come by, that’s for sure, so for model-makers the best bet is to start with a ready-built, then use it as the basis for a superdetailed display model. Kit-bashing from the ground up is another possibility, and if you go this route, then something entirely new might be an interesting route to take. Deadly dog The Sydney-based ...

Science fiction fans generally have something of a love affair with robots. Whether they are small and helpful (R2D2), tall and shiny (C3PO), or deadly enemies (Transformer Decepticons), there seems to be just ‘something’ about a mechanical man that appeals, even more so if it’s a dangerous clockwork killer. And in Texas, designer-photographer Adam Voorhes has joined in robomania with the damaged machine-man shown above (top), its mobility-aid an old-fashioned wooden crutch under the arm. Adam’s even given a title to his creation: ‘Something seems to be missing’... Japan is ground-zero for robotics, both real and fictional, and robo-culture there is sometimes obsessed with them. Magazines such as the excellent Hobby Japan run big features, and Euro-comics such as the UK’s 2000AD run strips based on robo-themes. The diorama here shows an excellent ABC Warrior from the strip of the same name, wreaking havoc while on display at a model show. We recently reported on the T700 robot to 1:18 ...