1/72 Bandai A-Wing – The “Jakku Bandit”
If it seems like I've been somewhat quiet of late, well, I have been. In part thanks to a combination of work, travel, work travel, and being glued to the…
Tamiya’s New 1/32 F4U-1D Corsair – Quick Thoughts
UPDATE: Additional photos, some formatting fixes, one or two additional thoughts
Tamiya’s next 1/32 kit has broken cover, and I believe Marcus Nicholls deserves credit for sharing the first photos of the new F4U-1D Corsair chilling at the Tamiya booth at the Shizuoka Hobby Show.
While the -1D is hilariously being greeted with yawns of disappointment, I find it fascinating in a number of regards. And so, as I’ve done in the past, I wanted to share some quick thoughts and speculation about Tamiya’s latest.
One Precedent Holds
Tamiya has a now well-established history of releasing new 1/32 scale kits at the Shizuoka Hobby Show in odd-numbered years. In 2009 it was the Spitfire, followed by the Mustang in 2011, Corsair in 2013, and Mosquito in 2015.
Less than a week ago, I was wondering whether this precedent would hold. The new Shizuoka kits typically make themselves known a couple of weeks before the show, but this year April came and went with no news.
But it did hold. Kind of. We do have a new 1/32 kit debuting at Shizuoka in an odd-numbered year. We do not, however, have a new 1/32 subject. (more…)
Gratitude
There seems to be an awful lot of negativity swirling around the modeling community at the moment. And I certainly bear at least some of the responsibility. Kitty Hawk, it seems, has become a lightning rod for a fissure that has riven the hobby since I came back to it, and doubtless long before then.
So taking on a build review of the Su-17 was bound to cause a stir. And straight-up anti-recommending it, even moreso.
I probably could have predicted the way things would go. There are plenty of people in this hobby who can’t seem to understand that kit quality and user ability are two completely separate things. It’s not like scratchbuilding intuition and airbrush experience come in the box, bagged up nicely next to the decals.
Call out a kit for being bad? They attack your ability. That’s the way it goes. And I’ve written about it before.
Ultimately, it’s the same shit in a new dress. It all comes back to the same “modeler vs. assembler” broken record. God forbid we acknowledge, respect and even celebrate the spectrum of preferences and talents that are encompassed by this hobby. Instead by all means let’s reduce it to some meaningless binary bullshit. Let’s deflect any critique of kits, of paints, of decals, and throw it all back on the modeler (exception: bashing Trumpeter for accuracy issues).
Anyway…
As fun as wading through sludge can be sometimes, and as hilarious and pathetic as Facebook protest groups can be, I thought I’d swim upstream a bit and talk about the things I’m grateful for in this hobby. Or a few of them at least. (more…)
Review: 1/48 Kitty Hawk Su-17M3/M4 Fitter
You know that old saying "you attract more flies with honey"? It's false. If the conversation that's swirled around this build review is anything to go by, you attract more flies with a steaming pile of garbage.
Judging kits and the judges who judge them
Kitty Hawk’s new 1/48 Su-17 has hit the market, and now that the plastic’s in the hands of various reviewers, thoughts are starting to trickle out.
My own copy – destined to be the third subject in the Contributor-Funded Kit Review series – should be arriving on Monday. The timing is fortuitous – my long, long build of Tamiya’s F-14 Tomcat is in the home stretch and should be wrapping up probably Sunday or Monday, so I’ll be able to crack into the build review pretty much the moment the Fitter shows up.
Personally, I want this kit to be awesome. I’m pulling for it, and I’m pulling for Kitty Hawk.
But I have my reservations, because come on, this is Kitty Hawk we’re talking about. They can do some good detail, and they can do some good kits as well (I really enjoyed the AH-1Z Viper), but more often than not, they shoot themselves in the foot with somehow overdone-but-poorly-thought-out engineering and the aggravating fit issues that engineering causes.
Anyway, that’s where my head’s at. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. But apparently I don’t even have to do a build review at all! Because in a guest post over on Scale Model Soup, Red Star Models’ Paul Cotcher has proclaimed that any negative take on the kit is not only something he disagrees with, but is also, get this – incorrect.
Subjective vs. Objective
Okay, first of all, I’m not really sure how an impression of a kit can be incorrect. We’re dealing with inherently subjective takes. Like film reviews or car reviews. There are some objective points – how long a movie is, who stars in it, how fast a car goes from 0-60 and so on – but there’s so much subjectivity wrapped into it that it’s not a matter of correct or incorrect.
Even accuracy…no kit is 100% accurate. Something will be off. So it becomes a question of inaccuracy tolerance, which is a subjective thing. The threshold for what you’re willing to accept may be different from mine. Hell – mine varies based on the subject and how many fucks I give about it. I can live with an A-7’s intake being a bit too “square”, but I will get pretty punchy about small goofs on a P-47.
Different Strokes
I’ve written about it before in a number of ways – but, basically, different people like different shit. When you think about the four main “pillars” of any kit – detail, accuracy, engineering and fit – you have people who literally only care about accuracy, and you have others who are interested in engineering, or only have eyes for fit.
There’s also what I’ve taken to calling the “Primer Divide”. Think about what you like the most about modeling. Does that aspect come before or after you lay down primer? Some people love the building and scratchbuilding aspects. For me, it’s painting. I do enjoy building, but it’s definitely more of a means to an end. So a kit that gets a scratchbuilder’s juices flowing may leave me completely turned off, and vice versa.
Again…it’s subjective.
“Here’s Why You’re Wrong”
So why does Paul declare negative takes on the Kitty Hawk Su-17 incorrect? In his own words:
Here is why the negative point of view, relatively speaking, is incorrect. Let me make this VERY simple:
You ready?
Gonna be hard for some of you to comprehend, but…
IT’S NOT THE OEZ/KP/KOPRO/KARAYA/EDUARD KIT.
End of discussion. Somehow we’ve gotten ourselves into the practice of comparing every kit to some idealized non-existent kit that can never be achieved.
Okay, I’m going to make this distinction right now.
Just because a kit is better than a shitty, older kit, does not mean that it is a good kit. (more…)
Once More Unto the Breach
I think there must be some kind of modeling corollary to Murphy's Law that says "over the course of a build, something will go wrong". Looking back, I feel like…