Building a 'Classic' SF Spaceship, Part-1

A Report to the Cabal:

I had the good fortune, over a decade ago, of meeting Stephen Hickman, one of today's finest Fantasy and SF illustrators. His work, particularly his renderings of futuristic hardware, is of the 'classic' form: the aerodynamic, curved lines of spaceships as they were conceived in the early 1950s -- spaceships as THEY SHOULD BE!

Steve is a student of the style and as such has been strongly influenced by the work of Mac Raboy, who's interpretation of the Flash Gordon universe, some fifty years ago, has done so much to give form to what we now regard as the classic spaceship.

Recently, Steve sent me some concept sketches of a Raboy influenced spaceship he sketched up, something we agreed to work up as a limited run display model kit, for ourselves. Steve would design the ship and build a master of the display base. I would work up the ship itself.

Things just don't pop out of a replicator!

No, to make something you have to have a plan, son!

First job is to establish the physical characteristics of the model, what it has to do, and how it is going to do it. Then, to establish a building methodology: How and from what to build the masters and tools, and then what and how to build the kit parts. Only with those determinations in hand could I start fabrication with any reasonable assurance that the process would go reasonably smoothly.

Steve produced an amalgamation of Rayboy ship designs and came up with a vehicle that sat horizontally on a three-point landing gear. And this immediately told me that the model kit parts would have to be of exceptionally light weight: cast resin was out, even hollow roto-cast items would be too heavy for the delicate landing gear elements to support without being subject to even the slightest of handling accidents. It was clear that the hull, wings and outboard pods would have to be fabricated from lightweight fiberglass cloth saturated with the minimal amount of epoxy resin -- a process practiced and well understood by those who build and operate GRP model aircraft.

Steve sent me a working sketch over the Internet. I then sized the thing in a Xerox machine till it had a length overall of sixteen inches -- an arbitrary size, but about right for what we both agreed to be a 'reasonable' size for such a display piece. For my needs I have to render drawings of the discrete items (hull, wings, outboard pod) of exacting line form and thickness -- features lost during the enlarging process. I produced plastic sheet templates of the major feature forms and used those to produce shop 'working drawings' that would be used as I turned the hull and pod masters on the laths and cut out the wind from Renshape 40 model builders medium. here you see some of the tools I used to outline and cut out the templates.

Part of the methodology outline is presented here. When scratch-building a model you have to ask yourself the basic questions, the answers to which indicate how and from what you will build the masters, tools, and eventual model parts. What is the Purpose of the display -- what will it do? What are the Considerations - what has to be incorporated to achieve the purpose of the display? How will things be build and from what? These question, in the hands of the experienced and wise Model Builder, such as myself, beget common sense answers.

Steve Hickman, in my not so humble opinion, is today's best SF&Fantasy illustrator. This book, a photo survey of his work, is a gold mine of interesting figure, dress, alien life forms, and vehicle designs. Long out of print, I'm sure you'll find it offered by a book finding service. Worth the hunt and bucks, I can assure you!

The Man! I like this guy: a plain talking, assured, and friendly guy. We initially met at a local SF convention where we were both speaking. Steve, incidentally, did a series of 'spaceship' art for the United States Post Office a number of years ago. The guy is 'old school' in his subject and approach to his craft. This guy works in all sorts of mediums and produces photorealistic paintings. Damn ... this guy is

good!