Princess of Mars 1/1000

[Frank3k]

I'm fascinated by the old pulp magazine covers of the 1930s and 40s. Frank R. Paul was the king of the Science Fiction pulp illustrators. Here's a Google search with some of his artwork.

I wanted to make a model inspired by his work. These were the inspirations:





I had a couple of ancient 1960s vintage stands from Lindberg 1/72 aircraft kits, so I combined them with the rocket engines from the Glencoe re-release of the 1950s Lindberg UFO kit and some styrene for wings and rockets. This was the result, a year ago:



From such auspicious beginnings, it went down hill in a hurry. The old, brittle plastic cracked and was attacked by the primer. Then the paint job came out like cack and I shelved it for a year.

I recently decided to finish this. I fixed what I could, primered it and started painting. It was a struggle all the way, with the paint, paint masks, plastic, decal fighting me all the way. It's no beauty, but it looks OK from several feet away:

I bumped the antenna on the tail... par for the course.


The rows of squares are windows. One set is black and one is dark blue because I managed to screw up 4 of the 6 window decals I printed - three black, three blue.


"Princess of Mars", with passenger windows and bridge windows.


The glass beads on the engines are from my wife. The antennas are stretched sprue, super glued into the holes. They were both centered but at the last minute, one of them decided to migrate to the edge of its hole.




This last picture shows the Princess of Mars and some 1/1000 and 1/700 figures I designed and printed years ago. You can see one 1/1000 scale guy (about 1.8mm tall) standing up on the white double stick tape:


I'm glad this is finished; it has come so close to flying off my balcony many times. I think next time, I'll just print one of his designs. Thanks for looking!

[Kerick]

Looks pretty good to me! Ya just gotta love those colors from back then. Classic!

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Very creative reuse of the model kit stands to build something that looks so much like the craft depicted in the illustration. 

That 1:1000 scale figure is still amazing to see. 

[Madhatter]

I love the Art Deco design of this. Despite the issues you had, I think it looks fantastic!! Great colour scheme too. I'm glad you persevered with it because the end result is so worth it
MH

[Frank3k]

Thanks guys. If I do another Paul-style design, it won't be using old plastic!
Jeff - I made those figures back when Print-a-part was around. They were re-absorbed by the parent company and the costs went through the roof. The only way to print something like this now is to find someone with a resin based printer. Painting a 1/1000 figure is the easiest thing ever - tiny brush, one swipe with flesh tone, one swipe with uniform color, another for boots and maybe a touch on the head for hair. It's hard to see, but some of the other guys are painted like redshirts.

[elmayerle]

Beautiful!!  That could almost be the liner from Spacehounds of the IPC (yes, I do enjoy old-fashioned space opera - Smith, Campbell, Williamson, et al.).  I could see using a B-36 fuselage to do one of those tubular designs.

[Camthalion]

Neat ship.  Nice work

[Dr. YoKai]

 A worthy homage to the Artist, Frank.

[Weaver]

That looks great despite the problems: nice one!  :)

Beautiful!!  That could almost be the liner from Spacehounds of the IPC (yes, I do enjoy old-fashioned space opera - Smith, Campbell, Williamson, et al.).  I could see using a B-36 fuselage to do one of those tubular designs.

Or a B-29 of course, although they seem somewhat thin on the ground at the moment. Another surprising source is old diesel locomotives that have 1930s/1950s styling.