Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Wing Commander Saga => Topic started by: Herr_Koos on December 12, 2009, 03:55:50 am
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Hi again,
Let me start with a bit of background: I'm a long time model builder. I started off with plastic kits and I've since progressed to scratch-building my own designs from balsa wood. My collection includes five WC ships (which I'm quite proud of, I might add ;) ). Building something from scratch as opposed to using a model kit obviously means you have to draw your own plans to work from. This involved hours of taking measurements from the game manuals, and even from in-game screenshots to get the look right. It was great fun, but my eventual results weren't as accurate as I would have liked.
Suffice it to say, your latest update blew me clean out of the water! Those drawings are exactly the kind of work I laboured for hours to produce. So, here's me, begging on my knees with tears in my eyes: Please, Sir, can I have some more? And from different viewpoints (front, side, top)? And for more ships? Pleeeeeeeaase? If I could in any way gain access to the source material you use to produce these superb designs, I would be eternally grateful.
Humbly yours,
A big WC fan.
EDIT: Here is a link to a Picasa album of my ships. Let me know if it works.
http://picasaweb.google.com/SchutteJ2/WingCommanderModels#
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Hello there,
thank you for your kind words. Unfortunately, there are no plans to create any additional drawings at the current stage of the development. It might be an interesting side project once we have more ressources available.
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If i understand correctly you are not looking for artworks like these in particular but for any sort of 'blue prints' which you can use to take measures from, right? In that case i could easily provide you with some ortho screencaps of the models i made (hellcat, excalibur, thunderbolt, longbow).
Let my know if you're interested!
Regards Roman
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Hi,
Thanks for the replies! I would be very much interested, thank you. Are the in-game models a 100% match for the drawings in terms of accuracy? The WCIII and IV models were a bit off, but I assume this was due to limitations in the game engine. I'd be very grateful if you could send me some samples.
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The drawings are derived from the game models so they should match. how accurate the models are is a bit difficult to tell though. Of course we are trying to stay as close to the original as possible but good reference is sometimes rare...
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I understand completely. I any case, I would very much like to take a look at what you have available. Many thanks, and keep up the great work!
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I sent you a pm :)
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Received and replied, thank you.
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Herr Koos, would you mind posting an image of one of your WC ship models? I'm curious to see what they look like... :)
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OK, here goes:
Banshee from WC IV.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Excalibur, circa WC IV.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Hellcat V, also the WC IV version.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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And finally, the Vampire from WC Prophecy. One of my favourites!
[attachment deleted by admin]
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I also have a partially finished Pakhtahn bomber, which I don't have any pics of.
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Hey, those are pretty cool!
I think your Hellcat is probably my favorite. I'm assuming that those are made of solid balsa, not a frame with a balsa/fabric covering layer...
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They look pretty nice indeed.
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Thanks guys!
The Vampire fuselage is solid balsa. With the other ships I tried to save wood and weight by using a box construction, i.e. the insides are hollow. Its fairly easy to do since most of the ships in WC 1-4 are angular, with plenty of flat surfaces. Prophecy is a whole other story, though..
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Really cool looking ships. Good work!
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Looking great indeed. Out of interest: what's their scale?
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Well, scale in this case is "whatever works", to be honest. I tried to stick to a 1cm=1m scale, thus roughly 1:100. The problem is that Kilrathi ships tend to be so much bigger than Confed ones that they very quickly scale to outrageous sizes. On the flip side, if you build the big ships to manageable size, the smaller ones tend to look minuscule by comparison. So I tend to tweak the scale a bit.
In any case, all the ships pictured range between 20-30cm in length.
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I like the Banshee the most I think.
About the scale. Yes Kilrathi fighters are pretty big but that makes them easier to shoot ^_^
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I like the Banshee the most I think.
About the scale. Yes Kilrathi fighters are pretty big but that makes them easier to shoot ^_^
True enough.. Trouble is they shoot back! :D
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How long does it takes to plan / build a model? Days? Weeks? Months?
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How long does it takes to plan / build a model? Days? Weeks? Months?
It depends, really. I built most of these during my varsity days when I had plenty of free time on my hands. :p Also, some ships are obviously more complex than others. Typically, several weeks at least. Construction can be fairly quick, but I tend to spend a lot of time on the polishing and shaping of each individual component to make sure it looks right and fits properly.
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Hi all,
I see my uploaded ship model pictures have disappeared! Is this due to the forum reload? Would anyone be interested in me uploading them again?
By the way, I still think this mod is awesome and can't wait to see the finished product.
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I see my uploaded ship model pictures have disappeared! Is this due to the forum reload?
No, it is quite normal. Attachments die after a certain period of time (was it maybe 30 days?), so they're really not meant for any permanent/long-term storage of important information. You'd do better to upload the images to some image hosting service and then posting links to those pictures.
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Understood, thanks!
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I added a link to my ship models on the first page of the thread. Here is is again, in case you don't feel like going back there.. :)
http://picasaweb.google.com/SchutteJ2/WingCommanderModels#