How to Kitbash a Miniature Spaceship Model!

Model maker and effects artist Fawn Davis is one of my favorite people in the world. We both cut our teeth together in the model shop at Industrial Light and Magic back in the day on films like the Star Wars prequels and Space Cowboys. We asked Fawn to come to the cave to demonstrate the building and kit bashing of a concept spaceship model using a technique called slump casting. Hi my name is Fawn Davis and I'm going to show you a technique for model making called a slump. There's a lot of different ways you can create shapes and model making. This is one of my favorites because it's very quick and for spacecraft which is what we're going to do today it creates a really nice aerodynamic shape because of the way that the form is created and you'll see why here in a minute. So I'm going to draw out a design for a completely original ship I'll just design right here and then we'll slump the plastic which is just heating it up and drooping it through a wood pattern and then we'll cut out the pieces and make it into a spaceship. So I will start with the pattern. I kind of have an idea of what we want to do. The material going to be using is a black 16th inch styrene. So I just have to stay within the boundaries of that material. So I've just got a piece of paper here I'm just going to draw half the profile. Let's see I just did a little sketch here. I'm going to do something that's the main fuselage. I don't have to worry about getting it symmetrical right now. And then I'm going to have it dive up kind of like a pontoon. And then we have it arched back a little bit like that. That there's the shape that I've drawn. I'm going to see what it looks like by folding it in half like this. Oops. Folding it in half like this. Right on that center line. And then I'm just going to take some scissors and cut out that shape. Also really cool is if you cut these out with scissors it keeps all your shapes tangential. Like everything about this technique is kind of self-correcting. It's one of my favorite things about it. It's kind of a retro 50s style thing there. Now I'm just going to take this and I'm going to spray mount it to a piece of plywood. So I've got these pieces here. They're pre-cut. They're the same size as the styrene sheets that I'll be using. I'm going to stick it right down in the middle of this sheet. And it looks like that. Now I just cut away everything that's paper. First I'm going to basically I want to be able to sandwich the styrene between two pieces of plywood. So I've got a really stiff piece here that's going to be structural. And then this second piece is just a cheaper piece of plywood that I'm using that will just help sandwich the plastic so it doesn't just fall through the hole when we do the slump. And I'll just start by drilling a hole so I can get the jigsaw in somewhere. Just pick a spot. Something you learn about doing slumps too is you actually create your pattern just a little bit bigger than the actual part you want to make because you're going to lose some material there. So you notice it looks a little kind of chunky. That's intentional because I want it to feel a little more sleek when it's slumped. I'm just kind of in the habit of doing it. And you can see this pattern is very, very easy and quick to make. So you can fail a few times and make some really cool stuff just by practicing. You know, make a bunch. Okay, so now I've got my pattern. I'm going to go ahead and mark the left side of this. Because there's a good chance that I didn't cut this perfectly symmetrical. So when I create the top and bottom of the spaceship, I'm going to want to know which is the left side because I'm going to flip the pattern for one side of the spaceship and then the other. And they'll match perfectly when I put the two clamshells together. This is my good piece. So I'm also going to mark the good piece bottom. I've just got to sandwich my styrene between these pieces like so. Now vacuum formers usually used in a different way than we're going to use it today. Usually you put a piece of plastic in this frame. You put a pattern down on this platen. You heat the plastic and you drop it down on that platen and turn on the vacuum that sucks all the air out. Today we're going to let gravity do the work for us. So we don't even need the frame. What we'll do is we'll take this piece here. And I've marked bottom so I know which way it should be facing. And I'm just going to clamp it up here. It doesn't have to be lined up perfect or anything because all we're doing is heating this plastic and allowing gravity to just do the work. While this is heating up, I'll go ahead and explain my thinking for this pattern is I want the top of the spaceship to be a little less of a slump. So it'll be less of an arch on top. And then the bottom, I want it to kind of have a bigger belly. So I'll let the, I'll take one slump. I'll let it go a little further than the other. You can see the plastic's heating up. It's going to tighten up. It's going to bow a little bit and ripple and then it'll start to drop. Now you don't have to use a vacuum former to do a slump. You can use any kind of heater. You could even use a toaster oven. You just need something to be able to heat the plastic. If you're careful, you might be able to do it with a heat gun. I've never tried it before, but, um, you know, it's, it's just getting a shape out of it. So I don't see any reason why a heat gun wouldn't work if you were consistent with it. It's a pretty forgiving technique. All right. So this is, uh, you can hear there is cooled off and nice and rigid. So we're going to take this down and let's see what we got. And we're going to do two of these because this, this one, I believe will be the bottom. Great part is I don't have to decide right now. Now, um, it's going to take the part that's marked bottom and we're going to flip it around this way. Um, so that if my cutout is not symmetrical, they'll still join perfectly. And like, so the dust doesn't actually hurt anything. I just get tidy sometimes. This time, I'm not going to let it droop as far. Cause I want this to be the top of the spacecraft. This one, I did a little experiment. I actually stretched the plastic a little bit more in the nose so that it would droop more. Seems to have worked. Just invented that technique today. That's what this stuff is like. You're always looking for a way to cheat whatever system it is you have. All right. So that's, that's hard now. Drop this one out. We have our second slump. So I've, uh, put the two pieces together. I clamped them together and I went through with a dremel and kind of shaved all the edges nice and clean like that. Um, and I've marked the center line down the middle because the next thing I'm going to do is make this easier to work on and, uh, make the two pieces into a single unit. Um, I've got a block of wood with a hole drilled in it, um, in all directions. And then we're going to put this right in the middle of the inside. So since I have the center line marked here, I'm going to go ahead and look at where I want to put this block. Drill a hole right through the middle. That's basically so I could see what the middle is from the outside to the inside. That's all that is just an indicator. And then I've basically put that block in so that there's a gap in between. You could see right through there. And that's because I'm going to put greebles and details all around the inside of that. And then one of my favorite things to do too is, uh, this is a nibbler, they call it. So it just, um, takes a little bites out, but it takes bites out that are shaped like rectangles. So it's a really, again, just a really fast way to create interest. So you can see I'm just taking little bites out. I also like to play with asymmetry. You know, I always get into storytelling, uh, when I make things. So you can imagine that they created these little notches for some type of technology or weapon or... So you can imagine maybe there's a sensor in a gun or maybe it's a light or who knows. It's feature tech, right? So now that's, that's going to come in under the nose, which will stick out further, which is kind of just a fun design. I'll go ahead and do the same on the two ends here. On the back, I might do something special. This is when I start looking at greebles. Um, if you don't know what greebles are, they're detaily little bits that you often see on, uh, um, uh, mostly spaceships, but you'll see it on, um, all kinds of miniature work. Um, it's basically instead of having to create each individual little detail part in a model from scratch, um, you just kit bash, you steal parts from model kits that were intended for something else. So I've got a whole bunch of model kits here. Um, first we'll put in a little wall inside and then we'll glue a bunch of greebles to that and that'll kind of fill in this area. Um, and I'll nibble away little bits of these shells to, um, accommodate those greebles and make it look like they have purpose. You don't just put a bunch of busy stuff on there. You want it to tell a story. So it looks like it's a, it's a piece of electronics that ties the front to the back of the ship. Maybe it's a fuel thing. Maybe it's a, um, for life support, you know, so you kind of make up a story while you're putting it all in. To me, that's like one of my favorite parts. Lots of fun. Okay. So what I've done here is I've gone really crazy with the nibbler and, uh, really broke up that edge. So it looks a lot more interesting. So you can see that just kind of adds some scale to it and some interest. And then I've also, um, taken the nibbler and taken out kind of a chunk back here that we'll be able to put in a thruster. So that'll become the thruster for this. And, uh, definitely from here forward, just kind of looking at how we're going to be detailing it and what kind of greebles and stuff we're going to use. So I've got a whole pile of model kits here. Um, these are always, uh, big favorites, uh, for something big scale. And that is, um, battleship parts. So these are all parts from a battleship. So there's like, you know, conning towers and vents and all kinds of really good pieces in here. Uh, lifeboats don't actually look like lifeboats if you use them out of context, which we'll do. There's some cannons that we could throw on here. Um, so that'll be great. And then to sci-fi it up, we've got a Japanese spacecraft model kit here, some cannons inside here. So that's the Japanese spaceship, battleship parts. Model ships come with, um, these little lifeboats, but on, uh, in the context of the spacecraft, you'll never know it's a lifeboat. It's just kind of a cool aerodynamic shape. And these are also, uh, favorite kits of mine. These are, um, parts from a World War II cannon. Uh, these kits come with lots and lots of little pieces that can't be identified easily unless you're very familiar with cannons. Um, that's one of the reasons I like to use them because it has so many little pieces. Uh, the, the cannons are also fairly inexpensive for the number of parts you get. And, um, you know, we try to avoid using things like transmissions and radiators and things that people can recognize because, you know, they've seen them on their car. So that's why I'm always looking for greebles that, um, are not familiar to people. So the cannons are great. And then this is just one more cannon kit. Um, because we want to make engine thrusters, I've actually been eyeballing these hubcaps. So, um, I've got this little plastic tube in here that is just a tube until I put one of these hubcaps on it. And then that looks like more like a thruster. So that's how we're going to spice this up. Uh, for this stage, I've mostly been focusing on the interior trench. So I have all the edges that have been nibbled to look like they're, um, you know, part of a massive construction. Um, and then the inside, I've really just been choosing lots of little tiny pieces that feel like they can add scale. So everything on the engine looks like, um, like an engine component. It's very linear. It all looks like it feeds, um, you know, some kind of, um, you know, thrusting mechanism with fuel lines and things like that. And then a very important thing about this design is you don't want it to feel like, um, it's hollow because it is actually hollow. So one of the things that I did is I just put a little bit of, um, greebly detail on the bottom of this piece that overlaps with what's on the lower section so that when you put this together and you look through, you never see all the way through the ship. So you want to be able to have that blocked off. Because then it really feels like there's this massive city underneath this body. And that really kind of sells the scale of this and makes it more interesting to look at. Okay. So I think I've got enough greebles in there, uh, for now. No, I'm going to call it done. Uh, one of the things that they often say about miniatures is, um, it's the same saying that they use for painting. A painting is never finished. It's abandoned. Uh, that's definitely, uh, miniatures, same exact thing. I feel like I could do this for another several days, um, but I don't think you want to sit through that. Um, so you'll also notice I cleaned up a little bit. Um, I always hear the voice of one of my old supervisors in my head from ILM, Michael Lynch. He always said, if you can't find something clean your way to it. And there was a point where I couldn't find the tweezers. So I just cleaned up until I found the tweezers, um, which meant I completely cleaned the table. Um, I've got greebles on the bottom. I've got greebles on the back. Um, I think the only two things I want to do to this, to just kind of take it to that next level is put a few scribe lines in it. I'm not going to go too crazy, um, just to give it some interest in the broader flat areas. And then I'm going to do, um, chipping. Uh, so it's not paint chipping, but little chips of styrene strip, uh, just putting little squares and rectangles around of different sizes all over the, um, broad flat areas. We don't want to take up that negative space, but we do want to break it up a little bit. Um, and it'll, it'll make it look more finished. So, um, that will be the next step. Okay. So now we are closing in. I'm going to take some, this is just sign vinyl, uh, that I've cut into a bunch of little rectangles and squares, um, that they use for making signs. And this is for more panelization, but larger panels that are super, super thin. So I'm just going to put a few of these on, and this is for just some fine detail. Again, this is the kind of detail that just doesn't show up until the light kind of hits it the right way or whatever. And then the great thing about this is you put a couple of these around and then you could use the same vinyl squares to cover your screws. And it'll just look like some of the detail that you have on the, on the ship. So you can see here on the bottom, there's some of those squares of vinyl. All the chips are on there, all the score lines. We've got all the greebles inside and out. We are now ready to prime it. So I'll prime the two interiors first, screw it together and then do the exterior. All right. So this is always the moment of truth, putting primer on it. You know, and this is also usually not necessarily the last step because you can always go back and do some things like I would probably add a little bit more detail inside the trenches. And I would have to go back in and redo the score line. Some of the score lines kind of went away with the paint, but what the paint has done is really, really tie everything together. So all that messy, like multicolored plastic that was in there before has all been turned one color. And then that's when you really kind of see the catalyst of all your greebling and work. So you can see that's the conning tower made up of many parts from many different kits. Again, my favorite kits, cannons, World War II cannons have an amazing number of really interesting parts that don't look like they're from anything. The slump is obviously the main reason we did this today is to show you how quickly you can come up with what looks like a very complex and time-consuming shape through the use of slumping styrene plastic. And the rest of this is pretty basic stuff. It's just greebling, chipping, vinyl for scale panels, and just having a lot of fun and getting really creative. As you can see, it is not symmetrical because I wasn't really going for symmetry. This is an alien technology that does not care about your human symmetry. So that in and of itself made it really fun and playful. There's a lot of reasons to make models. I actually, you're going to find this weird, but I do this stuff for a living. I still love to go home and make a good model kit. So it's just very rewarding, especially when you create something original and unique like this. I will say, if you've learned something here today and you're experimenting with this, I would love to see what you do. So I'm at Fon H. Davis, which is F-O-N, is how I spell Fon, on all social media. And if you build a model, please send me pictures of your model. I would love to see what you do with slumping and how you come up with unique designs using this technique. It's a lot of fun. So thank you for joining me today. This was a really, really great time. I hope you enjoyed it too. Fon is one of my favorite humans in the world. I feel like we grew up together and it is such a delight to watch him give a master class in exactly the kind of model making that we cut our teeth on in this industry. If you'd like to see this build even closer, well, we also filmed it in virtual reality as part of the TestedVR series. You can watch it right now either on the TestedVR app or on MetaQuest TV. Links and details are in the description below. Thanks for watching.