Finally finished this never-ending, miserable POS model. I can't believe it's taken almost a year to get this far; in retrospect, I should have stayed with the shorter fuselage.
The paint job was one disaster after another, for no particular reason. The paint is mostly Future with blue or black ink, or with acrylic aluminum color, mixed with iridescent acrylics. Nothing unusual there, but it just kept separating from the primer or having other issues.
As I took these pictures, I dropped the ship and it scratched the finish.
Par for the course; it's "battle damage", including one decal that once again lifted up. Oh and of course, it was sunny until I went outside to take these pictures. I may try it again tomorrow (or next week, since it'll be raining soon) if the model survives that long.
The aluminum decals read "Hidden Variables" plus the date (2012 12 27 - I was optimistically hoping to have it done yesterday) in two of the simplest forms of
Marain:
"Battle damage" - the "grain" in the pictures is from adjusting the brightness and contrast. It got dark in a hurry:
Managed to get some sunlight. Unfortunately, the cool iridescent effect isn't obvious at all in these pictures:
The Back Story -
Like "Clear Air Turbulence" (from "
Consider Phlebas") the "Hidden Variables" was an Ex-Hronish ship, converted into a small cargo ship. Smaller than the CAT, it was newer, built in 1130 so it was only about 200 years old at the time of the novel.
Unlike similar cargo ships that skirted the line between pirates and legitimate vessels, the "Hidden Variables" was crewed exclusively by Culture citizens, who felt that being part time space-pirates would be a fun thing to do. The crew was exclusively humanoid - no drones - which was unusual.
In 1331, during the Culture-Idiran war, they decided to become upstanding Culture citizens and took part in the evacuation of the Vavatech Orbital. It was in a service bay near the "Clear Air Turbulence" when that ship decided to make its exit, and was slightly damaged in the excitement.
After Vavatech and the Culture-Idiran war, the "Hidden Variables" continued in relative obscurity. In 1421, it was within 100 parsecs of the Sun; the closest a Culture ship (or tenuously Culture connected) had come to our Solar System until 1977 and the events in
"The State of the Art".
