Model Box Art Part Two

More action packed closeups of the 1/72 Hasegawa Emily.

This G3M2/G3M3 Nell boxtop is probably my favourite.  Doesn’t appear to be signed, but has a rather extraordinary “you are right there” feel to it.

Again there’s that illusion of floating, and the depictions of the crew are unusually vivid.  If it’s not Koike’s work (I suspect not), it’s certainly worthy of inclusion in the same bracket.

Just a couple reasons why you can never have too many model kits! 

Model Box Art Part One

One of the best answers to the not-infrequently asked question “Why so many model kits?” would have to be “The box art!”  Most of us modellers can probably recall the fascination these colourful boxtop paintings held for us as kids, and it’s likely the agonizing decision of which ONE kit the allowance would accomodate was helped in no small measure by which one had the best box art.

Airfix knew how to grab ya! 

Whoa!

Sometimes it’s just the overall look of the box too – I vaguely remember being able to buy models at the drugstore (!) several blocks from our house, and it seems to me it was there that I first encountered the Tamiya 1/35 WWII figure kits I loved to build and paint during my latter childhood phases of modelling, before other things came along.  Their four-figure Afrika Korps boxing is the one I really remember; the art was nothing too special, but something about it grabbed me.  It might have been my first encounter with a Japanese model box, and doubtless all the Japanese characters fascinated me.  I liked the Tamiya logo too, and the whole thing just seemed to have an irresistible air of mystery to it (Shizuoka City, Japan?  Where is that?)

I can even call back the feeling of that afternoon, sitting at my desk with the old gooseneck lamp, gluing, painting and (helmet) decaling the figures.  I was entranced by the diorama photo on the instruction sheet, and loved how the figures went together. 

It was just coming on dusk as I reached the decal stage; my mom was cooking in the kitchen, and I remember the particular pattern on the small bowl I borrowed from her for warm water to activate the decals.  To this day the sight of the Tamiya logo on a kit box strikes a chord with me, and they certainly have their share of fine aviation art too.

These days I’m more likely to have Hasegawa kits kicking around, since their 1/72 line seems to be a little more extensive, and it’s hard to miss some of the awesome box art on these things.  Their star artist for many decades has been Koike Shigeo, and recently I had some fun taking close-ups of a few of my favourites.

This kit looks pretty venerable; the grossly overscale raised rivet lines kinda give it away as a tooling first marketed back in the 1960s, but Hasegawa keeps on reboxing it to this day.  This unusual yellow boxtop is an example of Koike’s adventurous use of colour, which is apparently one of his trademarks.

Today’s current boxing of the same massive sprues sticks a bit closer to a realistic light, while creating a similar illusion of the aircraft floating in a sea of air (as opposed to merely “flying”).

Personally I think the H8K Emily is one of the most fascinating Japanese planes, which explains why I have two of these monsters and will one day find myself trapped in a world of endless, excruciating sanding and rescribing.  For the moment it’s a lot easier to play around with the camera:

Apparently I've maxed out the available file storage for one post, so I'll continue with part two.

Hasegawa JASDF F86F Sabre 1/72 WIP

Nyutabaru Airbase, Kyushu, Japan, March 1961 – Radar reports unknown contacts approaching from the northwest. Flight Lt. Kamiko Tomoyuke is raring to get airborne…but what’s this?

A Russian plot - his plane is in pieces!  In fact it appears as if someone has yet to even build the cockpit or wheel wells.  Bakayaro!

This JASDF boxing of the Hasegawa F86F Sabre in 1/72 looks to be a pretty old kit.  Judging by the raised panel lines and rivet detail, minimal cockpit, and complete lack of wheel wells (merely indicated with more raised lines) the tooling might even go back as far as the 1960s.  What the hell, even though WWII Japanese planes are really my thing, I couldn’t resist getting a JASDF Sabre because it just looks so cool.  So one night a few months back I decided to build the thing…and upon coming to grips with the kit’s limitations, decided to go ahead and scratchbuild in some of the missing detail, undaunted by lack of experience.  I figure enough will be seen through the canopy to make it worthwhile as the Sabre canopy is mostly one big convex piece of glass with no framing to obscure all that effort. 

Back in the day, Hasegawa figured that an instrument panel decal (but nowhere really suitable to affix it) and a skinny floor/front & rear bulkhead part (mainly there to glue the pilot figure to) took care of any necessary cockpit detail.  Today we know we can do better.  First thing was to make a tracing of the instrument decal, transfer it to styrene sheet and make a mounting piece for the decal.  Then I built the floor out to the sides, added forward and aft bulkheads, and cobbled together a sort of “bench” on either side of the pilot as a base for the various consoles.

I decided I kind of liked the pilot figure in this kit so started painting it up right from the start.  As an experiment I used Tamiya acrylics as I’ve always read they don’t hand brush well, but they seemed to go on nicely here.  Maybe getting good coverage on larger, flatter surfaces is more problematic.  The uniform was XF-13 and the boots Testors Gloss Black, with Humbrol Matt Black for the ejector seat.  For the face I custom mixed what looked to me like a Japanese skin tone using craft acrylics, and it turned out OK.  The visor was done with Tamiya Smoke, then carefully coated with Future for a glossy shine.  Since these photos I’ve repainted the gloves with XF-14 and the oxygen apparatus the same X-2 as the helmet.

Meanwhile the wheel wells had to be routed out.  This would have been a little easier if I hadn’t already glued the wing halves together…funny how I always start out thinking this will be a quick build, then immediately start reinventing the wheel.

Matter of fact, I’ve been reexamining my obvious AMS* in light of the recent 1/144 Hamp build.  Much as I enjoy the torture of attempting to invent a method for transforming the tiniest bits of plastic imaginable into something resembling a radial engine, it was getting a tad bit frustrating.  By contrast, 1/72 seems refreshing…it’s easier to see what I’m doing, and I can actually hold the part I’m working on with my fingers instead of constantly using tweezers.  Sometimes you have to give yourself a break.  No doubt 1/48 and 1/32 modellers are shaking their heads, and I do have that 1/48 Tamiya Rufe I’d love to break out sometime… 

*Advanced Modeller’s Sydrome – a fairly acute condition that renders the well-intentioned modeller just about incapable of building a kit right out of the box without improving, upgrading, scratchbuilding, and generally re-engineering the thing.