During the design of the Falke, the only figure available to Master Kow Yokoyama at that time were the 1/20 scale F1 Models. This is why the Falke Pilot’s pose looked so familiar on certain angles even with added on details such as pressurized suit and vest. From the box, both the Pilot and the standing female figure were molded in flesh tones which would help in painting. As the Pilot’s legs, torso and head were molded in halves this, makes lighting easier. The hollow body means I have more than enough space for threading the wires through.
I will be modifying the Pilot as if he is testing the Falke for some newly repaired mechanical feature or experiment. However, his hands and other details needs to be modified to make it look more convincing.
Both figures for the Falke are presented in this single sprueThe Pilot can either have an exposed head or, a helmet with a visor. I chose the latter for lighting purposes. For the standing female figure, her face is quite nice. As you can see, the Pilot’s legs are in two separate halves, which is great for threading cabling through and into the helmet. It was also a little annoying to glue them together and sand the excess plastic until they start to look like pants.
The Pilot can either have an exposed head or, a helmet with a visor. I chose the latter for lighting purposes. For the standing female figure, her face is quite nice.
I needed the Pilot’s right hand to be able to reach and touch the Instrument cluster’s square button so I had to modify it. Using a rotary blade, I cut at the elbow 3/4 of the way and used flame from a cigarette lighter to soften and melt the plastic into position. I added two drops of thin cement to glue and seal any gaps I have missed.With the elbow now in the right position, the Pilot’s hand must be in the right position too. This was done by using the same rotary saw to cut the hand cleanly off at the wrist, twist it at the right angle, then dab some thin cement and join it back.
THE PILOT: LIGHTING THE VISOR
Because the helmet/visor is hollow, this is a great opportunity to light them up like those sci-Fi helmets you often see on Sci-Fi concepts and such. The concept is very simple; use a LED to light up some fibre-optic strands.
The helmet is made up of three parts. A 3mm diffused reddish orange LED would suffice. For a better light spread, you can substitute it with a 0806 SMD led instead as they have excellent light spread. I have soldered a 100 ohm resistor and heat-shrink the LED. The main purpose is to put three fibre-optic strands in the Pilot’s visor and have them catch the light from the LED. I did not use a pure red LED as I think at this scale, the colour might be too intense.The 3mm LED will be placed at the rear of the helmet. I am going to open a hole before the visor part to allow for the LED’s lights to shine through.Do not widen the hole too much or you run the risk letting the light bleed through and underneath the visor (but it would still look cool, with a reddish glow on the cheeks)Using a 0.75mm drill bit, make three holes on the visor. The centre hole will point forward as it is directly in front of the LED. The side holes would be pointing at a slight angle towards the LED in the middle. Later, they will be filled with three Fibre-optic strands. To understand what I meant, you can refer to the diagram below.This is a top-down diagram of the Pilot’s helmet (not according to scale). The 3mm LED is placed at the back of the helmet. Three holes for the fibre-optics are drilled at the front of the helmet. The middle hole is direct while the left and right holes are from an angle. This is so that they can ‘catch’ the light radiated by the diffused LED effectively.After gluing the LED with a hot-melt glue and closing the helmet, a simple light test revealed no light leaks. Look at the escaped light beautifully highlighting under the visor. I have let this gap alone. After panting, the paint and matte coat would have absorbed the light, leaving only a faint trace.If you look at the helmet’s triangle hole again, the big 3mm LED is almost protruding out and that is why I do not recommend a 5mm LED. This is due to the LED’s light radiation properties, more so if it has a clear lens. Drill a hole through the body and under the right calf to allow a path for the wires to exit the figure. The calf is the only method to hide the wires since the Pilot will be viewed from the top. The Pilot’s shoes are solid.
THE PILOT: DETAILING THE FALKE PILOT
In the previous part, I have shown you how to place a LED inside the Pilot’s helmet. Now, it’s time to give the Pilot even more details and deal with some edges. Although the figure was molded in halves, there are some noticeable gaps and edges where they meet and so, with the Hatch opened, these errors will be very obvious.
Using Aves Apoxy putty, I filled and smoothened the gaps on the Pilot’s calves and shoulders. With the remaining putty, I made a map pocket for his thigh, a candy bar and also, some weird action figure (this was not put into the model at the last minute). Aves Apoxy is fun to use as it does have some kind of plastic properties which reacts great with styrene glue. But with Aves, you need to work fast! After a day of curing, it would be sandable or glued.So, I waited until after about two hours have passed, at the time the Aves is slowly hardening. I created some stitch lines around the ‘pocket’ and defined the lines for the ‘clear window’. As insurance, I put three drops of thin cement between the map pocket and the figure.Once the figure is ready, I gave it a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1000 Grey. Amazingly this primer can also help block most potential light leaks! Here is the light test with some very short fishing lines. During this stage, I did not have the actual fibre-optic strand but the 1mm fishing lines are encouraging. They work well but only for short lengths and so, I will use them instead.
THE PILOT: PAINTING THE PILOT
The first base coat in the Pilot’s suit was Mr. Color #121 RLM81 (Brown Violet). I did some shading using the same paint by spraying on more layers. I added a little bit of Mr. Color #137 Tire Black to the remaining mix to get a darker matt green to differentiate itself from the pressure vest.I accidentally mixed too much flat base to the clear coat, I got this fuzzy looking result. It is great for a frozen figure but the scale is wrong. But what is great is that it created cracked surface.I used Gaia Notes Neutral Grey IV for the helmet’s overall light grey tone followed with a thinned Tire Black for the visor. The dark visor will allow the observer to focus onto the three reddish orange lights. Both helmet and visor were coated with clear gloss and highlighted with Tamiya Panel Line brown. I added some styrene strip to simulate the seat-belt as if its coming from the seat.I downloaded a simple Map (London’s East-End in 1673) from the Internet, resized it and printed it out in low-toner mode. After cutting it to shape, I used white glue to stick it to the pocket. When the glue dried, I gave the paper a protective gloss coat as if the map was inside the pocket which has a clear window.For the candy bar, I got the design from the Internet since I hardly eat any Mars Bars nowadays. I used Inkscape to resize the image to roughly 1/20 scale. The candy bar was painted with Mr. Color #41 Red Brown. For the bitten area, it was mixed with a little bit of white to give the chocolate a creamy and ‘bitten’ look. Once the wrapper has been cut out it (cut out a little longer width-wise), was folded over the bar and kept in place via white glue. For the closed end, I crimped the edge. It took two coats of clear gloss to protect the paper. When everything is dry, I used white glue again to position the candy bar on the Pilot.This is the size of the ‘action figure’ and the Mars Bar. the idea came to me in a last minute inspiration. This always happens when I have extra putty leftover and they are almost starting to harden up….The map and the candy bar finalized on the Pilot figure.How can a fully helmeted Pilot eat a candy bar?
Anyway, in the next chapter, I am going to work on the Falke’s Cockpit and tell you why this section is so important.
