Thoughts on IPMS and Contests
” It is damn obvious what style model is preferred at these events…Build what you are so sure the judges want to see.“
This past Saturday our yearly show and contest was held here in Houston. In years past I’ve found numerous excuses to skirt entering the contest myself, but it’s been a goal to kick the fear and excuses and get entered. Even if I had only one entry. (I was not comfortable taking the Mig as it’s in Russian markings, and well…screw Russia).
One of my excuses in the past for not putting plastic on the blue cloth covered tables for all to see is this idea I had that IPMS hates weathering. And obviously, I likes the weathering. So, that’s going to guide my thoughts here.
In the past I’ve been admittedly critical of IPMS. Especially unfortunate and dishonest having not had first hand experience. Now, I can’t speak for all contests. Naturally, no two set of judges, nor their preferences, are going to be the same. Take a model to one show and win Best of Show. Go to the next and not place. I’m sure this happens.
I’ll start by just laying out what happened. I entered my recently finished 32nd Phantom. This kit is weathered. Specifically, it is weathered as an amalgamation of a modest set of references; picking unique aspects found on a number of period aircraft.
The Phantom won second in 32nd jets and the Wild Blue Yonder Award (awarded to best U.S. Aircraft). This confused me a bit because the airplane that beat me out for first in category was another Phantom. In U.S. markings…
And this is where I think some of the criticism of IPMS judging may hold a hint of truth.
What was the difference between mine and the winning Phantom? Weathering.
I am modest about the quality of my work, but I have to be honest in saying that this build is easily my best construction work. Unlike everything I’ve built in the past there honestly is not a little flaw somewhere that bugs me. Anything I’m unhappy with on this one is in the finish.
My understanding of IPMS contest judging, that construction is the critical component, suggests that my build was worthy of first place; and I was essentially told this.
There was nothing wrong with the winning Phantom. It was flawlessly constructed. All the problems I’m aware of with the kit were effectively solved. But, again, the difference was finish. The only “weathering” the winning Phantom had was a panel line wash. It matched the style of every other category winner; meticulous construction, safe painting and a panel line wash.
The Phantom that won absolutley deserved it. What appears to have given it the edge is that overall the judges preferred the aesthetic of that build over mine.
Why does that not bother me? Well it goes back to the reasoning behind a lot of the bitching you see from some individuals that fail to place at these things.
It is damn obvious what style model is preferred at these events. If you know that, and you’re building to some other standard or preference in the finish, just shut up when you don’t win. ,
If I (or anyone) comes to the conclusion that heavily weathered models are at a disadvantage at these events and they want to win medals then they should finish models in the appropriate manner. Build what you are so sure the judges want to see.
A lot of those who heavily weather will tell you that paint and finish is an artistic endeavor. I don’t disagree. Art is subjective and clearly the judges of a lot of these events just don’t like your art. Complaining about this would be like a Degas enjoyer mocking a Vermeer enthusiast. We just like two different things.
Boo hoo your beat to death model didn’t place in a competition you knew wouldn’t favor it. Honestly, I’m surprised mine got any recognition. And I’d been fine with it because I already suspected the weathering would doom it. (Another reason the Mig stayed home)
The nail in the coffin here is the conversation I had with the president of our IPMS chapter. The special awards (like the one I won) are sponsored by a single individual; he sponsored the Wild Blue Yonder award. That’s how I got second in category but got best U.S. aircraft beating out the first place in category. He told me directly he preferred mine but the judges as a whole picked the other. He did not specifically mention weathering, but that was the only difference. It’s a safe assumption.
Like my friend Chris at Beckers Models said in a recent video, the model contest is like an art show. It’s a place to share your work with others. It’s the only reason I took my Phantom. Expecting nothing and being pleasantly surprised. I’m not medal chasing, but winning was nice. If you are interested in winning then give the judges what they want.
It’s perfectly valid to not want to build to “contest standards.” I don’t want to do that routinely, so I’m going to weather models. I’m going to take them to shows and hope to be surprised even more.
I’m not even saying some criticism of how these results shake out in favor of less weathering are not valid in some cases. But it goes too far. Bottom line: by complaing about it you’ve acknowledged it happens. So maybe stop trying to shove a square peg into a hole you know is round? I saw and heard absolutley nothing to suggest to be the bias against weathering is anything beyond preference. That is to say, I don’t Bieber weathered models are at a disadvantage because these judges think it’s unrealistic.
The formula for winning is there. Use it. Or don’t.
Perfect kits are great, but…
Sometime around 2010 I’d been back steady building for about 18 months when my approach to the hobby took a major shit. Up until then I had been impatient, haphazard and kinda just sticking parts together and getting typical mediocre fare.
The tides were changing, though, and a lot of it was the result of engaging with the hobby on the internet; a first for me at the time. Because of my passive approach to building and just getting things on the shelf to admire from the couch, I had fallen into the trap of fearing big, expensive kits. I was firmly rooted in the 48th world of Tamiya and Hasegawa WW2 props.
One day I happened across a rather well documented build of Tamiya’s recent (at the time) 32nd Mustang. The quality of the work was inspiring, but what really intrigued me was the quality of the online documentation. It was there for all to behold and it set me on a path. No longer was I going to fear these kits. I wanted to build, and present them, to a similar standard.
Building Tamiya’s 1/32 F-4E Phantom II – Part 1
At the height of Covid back in 2020 I was wrapping up yet another build that had lingered on my bench for some time; interrupted by multiple periods of little interest in the hobby. That kit was Trumpeter’s 1/32 Mig-29 with a metric ton of resin aftermarket. When I completed that build I was as satisfied as I’ve ever been finishing something. In the background I’d been messaging with a modeling friend, Simon, about what to do next. Inevitably, Phantoms came up as they always should when discussing new projects. Now, Simon and I are large scale builders. So, naturally the discussion turned to the Tamiya kit. I mentioned that it was one I had built (back in 2002 when released) but that I’d like to have a second go. However, I had reservations. The kit has some known accuracy and engineering issues. The former I care much less about. The second issue is one that’s given me pause. Simon convinced me, however, that the kit was workable, and here we are. I’ve covered my thoughts in a YouTube video you can find here, so here I will give my written account.
Bear with me as I am in the process of rebuilding a more professional photo solution. Current shots are from a cell phone, but I’ll be posting more polished photos in the future.
The Initial Slog
The first issue I wanted to address in the build was eliminating the raised panels Tamiya molded onto the fuselage. I’ve become a bit bored with the discussion of what happened here, but there is some debate about why Tamiya did this. Either way it needed to go.
There’s nothing extraordinary in the process here. I would say that what I did to preserve detail was to scribe panel lines and punch rivets deeper as I sanded. I’d sand a little, redo those before they were lost and repeat. You could also just completely eliminate and replace detail at the end. This may very well be more economical, but I have little confidence in myself getting it right that way. The proper tools make this tedious process less painful.
That was out of the way, so I could focus on actual construction, and while I don’t always start in the cockpit on builds, I did here. This is where I ran into an annoying problem.
Placing the cockpit tub into the cockpit you can see what Is bothering me here. This is something I honestly never noticed in completed builds I’ve seen around the internet. Now that I have dealt with it, I can’t unsee it when it hasn’t been corrected. This was easily solved by some cutting and building back up with styrene.
In the second picture above you can see that something fishy is happening. This is where I probably got a little silly. I had the Avionix F-4J cockpit on hand. Not being able to find anything suitable for the Echo model I opted to use the front pit of the resin set and to scratch build some details on the rear to compensate. I also used the resin sidewalls in both cockpits.
Once painted and popped in, and especially with canopies attached, I am satisfied. Not the best scratch building we are going to see, but effective?
Three more minor yet fixable issues remain before it’s smooth sailing.
First, the big bugaboo with the kit (the one thing holding me back more than anything) was the undersized exhaust in the Tamiya kit. Again, some speculation as to how this happened, but it doesn’t matter. These cans out of the box are painfully obviously undersized.
Well, why not use aftermarket? I will almost always opt for aftermarket exhaust cans on a 32nd jet model. The problem here is what was available until recently seemed to have copied Tamiya’s sizing. The Aires and Eduard sets are also undersized. Reskit has now produced a set for the kit that I can confirm is the correct size. However, this wasn’t available when I started the build, but there was another solution.
A company by the name of QMT makes a number of parts for Tamiya’s and Revell’s 1/32nd Phantoms and it just so happens the exhaust intended for the Revell kit solves the failing of the kit, and until Reskit, other aftermarket producers.
The second nagging issue that pops up in every build of these kits is the awkward fit of the vertical stabilizer.
Some suggest the way to fix this is to file down the flange on the fuselage part that inserts up into the stabilizer as seen below:
Doesn’t work. I nearly cut the entire thing off it hopes it’d help. Refer back to the picture showing the gap. It’s clear that the profile of the fuselage and the bottom of the stabilizer do not match. I fixed this fairly easily with filler. Not a major issue at all. Certainly not worth not having a 32nd Phantom on your shelf. Like some kind of psychopath.
The last major construction issue is one that I again see on a lot of builds floating around the internet. That is the heat shielding. This is a single piece in the kit and it’s undersized and fits poorly. I think too many people fall into the trap of thinking they can paint this seperate and simply screw it on at the end, and sadly this is apparent on too many builds.
The gaps are clearly visible. Again some styrene. If you notice the brackets drawn in pencil on the fuselage, this is where the fuselage piece and the heat shield have a minor step in either direction. Now, I can’t say this is inherent to everyone’s kits. It’s possible there has been some warping due to heat or whatever. But it needed to be fixed.
No, this issue isn’t something you’re going to find on a modern Tamiya kit. It’s also not one to warrant a rant and rave and moving on to a different kit. It’s an annoyance. It’s a time suck, but…basic modeling skills? Just be warned, if you want to slap this on after painting at the end, you need to check and double check. Minor cleanup that would obliterate paint and cause redoing sections may needed.
What’s Next?
I did not build, or photograph, the work in progress pics of this build with the intention of sharing them publically; they were meant for people I have private discussions with. That said, I’m glad my motivation to blog and video has returned, and future projects will be better curated.
Keep that in mind in the next post. I will overview some of my thoughts and process on painting and weathering the kit. And hopefully some photography strobes will show up so we can stop shooting models like it’s 2001 on FSM.
Back for Good – Finally Enjoying the Hobby.
About seven years ago I started this blog as an extension of my modeling activity which at the time largely took place on various forums. At that time it was merely a creative outlet to share my work and the occasional thought on the hobby. My underlying motivation was to improve my modeling by virtue of wanting to produce builds worthy of publishing on such a site. While platforms like forums, and later Facebook, were driving forces for my own improvement, my desire to put forth as “professional” a blog/site as I could is largely responsible for my growing diligence in making my builds to the best of my ability.
Sadly, at some point I lost that vision. I became much more cynical toward the hobby and it’s community in general. In truth, it was a very vicious spiral out of control that ultimately led to my extended absence. I turned this blog into an outlet for constant ranting and striking out at the industry and community. Frankly, as I now look back on many of my rants I’m quite disgusted with just how bitter I’d become.
The blog didn’t devolve into this cesspool of negativity by just existing; it just became an outlet. When I left Facebook going on two years ago now, I heard rumblings that I was disenchanted with the hobby. I must admit that is 100% accurate. The reasons are numerous, and getting into the particulars of why it happened would only perpetuate the negativity I look to avoid moving forward. Suffice to say the majority of my falling out of love with my favorite hobby was a direct result of who and what I let those around me make me into. I am not proud of any of it and as it began to weigh on me it made me resent the hobby as a whole.
Now having had good separation from all that, and the time for personal growth and dealing with things beyond the hobby in the real world, I am back building and loving it like never before. I’ve recently completed a kit that serves as a good example of just the kind of thing that was dragging me down for so long: the Tamiya 1/32nd F-4E.
The Phantom has always been my favorite airplane. I’ve built a few over the years. Mostly in 48th scale. Having built the Tamiya Echo when it first released, revisiting it with a new set of skills and higher standards was something I routinely contemplated. Unfortunately, I let peer pressure put me off. And it wasn’t just this kit. A lot of projects I considered were dismissed because people in my inner circle deemed the kit unworthy of time. Again, just the negativity. Where for some any little hiccup with a kit/build is enough to file it away in the closest recycle bin. Some people are perfectly content to live that way. I am not. I was not. But I needed to be the “cool kid” that found myself somehow above the general modeling public for not lowering myself to building less than stellar kits.
The Phantom does have some issues. I cover these in a YouTube post mortem. However, none of them warrant complete dismissal of the kit if 32nd is your preferred scale and Phantoms tickle you in…places. To be perfectly honest, I am now fully in the “basic modeling skills” camp. I’m sorry, but moving forward my own perceptions of the worth of a project will be my only guide.
I look to rekindle the blog/site to share my future work and serve as a memorial for past works. I am currently culling all the negative posts and severing my connections wit them. I have no interest in the debates of past over the legitimacy of this or that product or technique. I’ll share my thoughts and I won’t hold back anything I find challenging or what have you, but pissy for the sake of pot stirring is well in the past. Furthermore, I will not respond, or give a platform to anyone stirring shit here for any reason. It might be hard to believe coming from me, but I won’t be baited into being the person I’ve fought so hard to put in thr past. I have no intention of returning to Facebook; it proved to be way too toxic for my mental health far beyond just my activity in modeling circles. Here and my YouTube and Instagram will be my outlets henceforth.
As I cull garbage I am also finding the site to be very broken in areas and it’s going to need to be completely overhauled. I hope you join me in my newfound joy with the hobby and bear with me as I continue to straighten this place out.
Jim
Aftermarket is a Mental Disorder
Let me just begin by straight out saying, no, I don’t think you have a mental disorder for using aftermarket. Inevitably someone is going to read the title and get all incensed before reading the post, if they ever read it, so I thought I’d clear that up.
However, I do think in my case there’s some deeply clinical affliction in my own personal addiction to aftermarket. Over the past couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about this; much of it spurred by my recent purchase of a resin set that cost me 150% of what the kit it is meant for did. And the aftermarket didn’t even stop with that set!
The Zactomodels Mig-29 upgrade set for the 1/32 Trumpeter kit is a lovely product. If you’re interested in a review, I made a video you can find here. But despite the loveliness of the resin, and the admitted upgrade the pieces are to the kit, is it going to make the build more enjoyable?
And thats my problem. Of late most aftermarket that’s gone beyond just simple seats and wheels has been more of a drain on my builds than a stimulating factor. I said in my Zacto review linked above that AM for me is a means to more, or better, detail. That is always my biggest motivator in acquiring these pieces. The Zacto set fits that requirement with most of it’s pieces, but a couple (the nose in particular) is more of a correction for misshapen kit parts. Coincidentally, it also appears to be the piece thats going to cause the most work. No extra level of detail. Just more work for more accuracy; something I don’t even care about.
So why am I going to put myself through the extra work? Some abnormal psychology created in adolescence probably. I remember the first time I realized aftermarket was a thing. After navigating my tween and teen building years surviving off Kmart and Toys R Us purchased kits, I found myself in a hobby store that stocked resin and photoetch. My desire for that resin Verlinden set for a Hasegawa Bf-109 was likely driven by a desire for modeling elitism (in my mind) as much as it was all the intricate detail that the kit had left out.
Who doesn’t fondly remember their first set of aftermarket parts?
I will just tell you, that didn’t end well. The kit was never finished. But that didn’t stop me from becoming obsessed with hoarding every little bit of resin or metal available for a kit even if it wasn’t always possible. From being a kid with limited financial means to a college student struggling with the first years of marriage and trying to survive, the reality was often trying to make craft acrylics work on Revell kits rather than amassing AM for high end kits. However, that stage of life has passed, and here we are.
Take a look at my last build. My Tamiya F-14 arrived with an Eduard Big Sin set and some resin seats from Quickboost. These parts made the kit more work than I intended for what was supposed to be a mojo building exercise. I had to take a belt sander to the QB seats so they wouldn’t sit too high, and the Eduard pit tricks you into thinking it fits. However. if you aim to close the canopy you’re left to learn that it spreads the fuselage enough to make that join ever so janky.
Yet I’m still amassing aftermarket.
Look, I feel when you’re in the manscale realm that certain aftermarket is mandatory. An injection molded ejection seat isn’t going to cut it. Wheels from a kit, especially when vinyl, just don’t live up to the scale requirements. If the Zacto set has taught me anything, it is probably that resin exhausts are equally mandatory.
But there needs to be a line, and with this Mig build, I think I have successfully drawn it. Full resin cockpits seem to be more trouble than they are worth. Ditto to wheel wells. My need to put some aftermarket into a kit is still there. There’s still this underlying psychosis that tricks me into thinking my models are less worthy of attention if they come straight from the box. And as long as there are no shrinks specializing in aftermarket response to intervention, I’m fucked.
Tamiya F-14 Build: Canopy Fix
In The Scale Modeler’s Critique group we have a mantra; fix that shit. It really is the underlying ethos of the whole group. You’re expected not to gloss over your issues, or say “ah well, I’ll do better next time. No. We expect you to work your ass off and make your problems not problems.
I have to admit this is hard for me sometimes. When an issue with a build reaches a certain level of work I get lazy, and my mind often starts wandering to different projects.
With the Tamiya Tomcat I encountered an issue with my canopy; created solely by my own boneheadedness. I contemplated moving on, but instead I focused my ADHD instead. To help with doing so, I chronicled the process, so I thought I’d share.
The problem
Simply put, using the Eduard Brassin cockpit when I knew I wanted to close the canopy was just sheer stupidity. First, it’s just really hard to see, so the detail is wasted. More importantly, it’s just a wee bit wide enough that it screws with the forward fuselage assembly. This made a smooth join with the canopy a pain, so when I removed the initial masking and found the inside of the canopy to have accumulated splooge, I just couldn’t not address it. The join was shitty. The masking was shitty, and the inside was…shitty.
You Get One Dream Kit. What Is It?
I’m sure I’m not the only one to lay in bed at night with a cigarette and a glass of single malt daydreaming about my dream kit. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just weird. Maybe no one really takes the hobby seriously enough to put much thought into what could be? I don’t know. But I personally have put a good deal of thought into this, and I waffle a lot. But I finally think I’ve made up my mind.
When the Funk Hits
Just in the past couple of weeks, I’ve finally emerged from what seemed like a months-long state of zero enthusiasm for model building. I don’t think I had touched a model and made any significant progress since before Thanksgiving.
It happens. I’m not sure it happens to all of us, but over my seven years or so back in the hobby I’ve had a few of these periods, and I’ve seen it affect a few of my peers.
As I emerged from and spoke about what I was going through at The Scale Modeler’s Critique Group it was suggested to me that I do a blog post about burnout, and how I cope with it. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do now.
In Defense of Weathering Products and How to Maximize their Value
Recently I received another blanket dismissal of my use of prepackaged weathering products as a “waste of money” that somehow made me a sucker to the vast “weathering product conspiracy.”
Well clearly that’s just silly. Look, you can do lot’s of things with just some bottles of enamel paint and tubes of oil paint. That’s great too. That used to be the ONLY way to do these things. If you hold on to those ways because it works for you that’s great. There is no right or wrong.
However, if you’re like me you like convenience, and will pay for it. If you’re on the fence about these products this may be for you. I thought I’d take some time to share some examples of how I use them, but I’d also like to suggest some ways to use them you might not have considered.
Continue reading “In Defense of Weathering Products and How to Maximize their Value”
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