I'm 70 year old and I have lived most of my life in LA working in film and TV as a filmmaker, VFX artist, Special Makeup artist, actor and more.
I continue today at my film studio in Ventura where I have for the last 10 years made films, film effects, creatures, models, and many other creations that fall under the "Maker" category.
Yesterday all I did was work on the model. I managed to get most of the lighting into the saucer section, all but the impulse engines.
I closed up the nacelles successfully and attached the pylons complete with the power wire running through them.
It was my hope today to connect the entire model together in one piece but I have been fighting a very bad back pain due to sciatica. And Mary is a little under the weather. So we are resting at home and tomorrow I should be able to assemble the model.
There’s still a lot to do after I do. Filling all the gaps, sanding them smooth. Touching up the hull color and adding 100’s of decals.
By now many of you are probably getting bored with the constant updates on the Enterprise build. These models take lots of time to make and consume everything else around them like a black hole until they are done. In the meantime I thought I’d show you something else from my work to break things up a bit.
I’d like to share with you two films I did over the last few years. At the time they were more controversial than today in light of the evidence and information being released by our government and science with regards to other intelligences in the universe and possibly visiting here.
Both are based on personal experience and the third in the series (being finished as I write this) is also related in a way most wouldn’t suspect. Bottom line is for me all these phenomena are connected and related because of our deep connection with everything that exists around us, from this Earth to the furthest reaches of the cosmos.
They are listed on the Film page of this website but I doubt few ever notice them. So I’ll post them here on the front page. They are honest and in no way claim to have the goods on this subject. It’s just what happened and has happened to millions of people. None of us know what we don’t know. But I’ll tell you for sure, “But Something is There”.
Not much to tell today. I spent the day helping Mary build a table we needed for the shop and then a couple of hours on the Enterprise.
I glued shut the nacelles after I got the little blue LEDs placed that I was missing. I also gapped one of them with Tamiya putty. It really fills the gaps and blocks the light leaks well.
It’s my hope today I can attach the pylons and move on to the last of the light effects on the saucer section.
Needless to say the day was spent on the Enterprise. I had to work out all the wiring and how it would travel from the saucer section to the engineering section with the least amount of clutter.
All the wiring for this phase was non-board driven. In other words, only the lights that have no blinking or flashing. Today I’ll start routing those. In the end I should have no more than 6 wire cables traveling through the brass stem to the board and main power.
The nacelles will be closed up today and attached to the pylons and the pylons to the engineering section.
Because of the difficulties of posting this on the blog related to pictures the newsletter is hosted for free on Buy Me a Coffee. Click on the link to read about this last weeks and all the things we did.
Yes there was more work on plastic models yesterday and it will remain that way until next month when this model needs to be done along with one another that’s not started yet.
I had to pack in 4 LED’s, three resistors and a bunch of other stuff into this tiny nacelle and it took 4 days to do it. Not to mention the single LED attached to fiber optics that acts as the strobe lights that blink very brightly. I managed to capture it on a blink in one photo.
The second nacelle will be done in one day and hopefully the engineering section done as well. It will be easier to work on as it’s a bit more roomy.
I had a mail call yesterday and a very special package arrived from New Zealand from my friend John Warren of MVD resins. He makes fine resin bodies for vintage racing cars from the gold era of racing no one else has.
This is the 1/32 scale Maserati 250 F I spoke of before and this will make a delicious project to work on at home in my slot car cave.
In addition to that my 1/24 scale 917k Porsche will be my next build for the hard body races in Buena park. Like the Mclaren I recently built this will have a scratch built chassis in brass. This will all keep me busy for a while.
I have been asked by many, “When will you make some new masks sculptures?”. My answer to that is be patient, I have to finish these modeling projects for a friend first and my racing season. Then I’ll get back to it.
I spent the day getting tires on the Fiat(the old racing tires were dangerous), shopping groceries, and working on the Enterprise E.
It was pleasure to get away from scribing windows. I did tests to get the nacelles lighted in the best way possible. I first tried the small strip lights that Randy Neubert put in the lighting kit. They were a bit sorcy and showed the individual blue dot LEDs on the strip.
So I tired his original concept and used thin plastic tubes he sent along and mounted a bright 3 mm LED at either end of the tube and that worked so well I was dancing!
I lit up the bussards in red using his diffusion and that worked well too. Now that that’s done I can do the other nacelle and install the strobe lights.
Needless to say my life at the studio has been a broken record the last week or more until I have a bad shoulder from repetitive motion doing all these windows but they are all scribed now!
This means I can move on to things like lighting the nacelles and placing anti collision and NAV lights in the model. Close it all up and blocking the light leaks.
So I was packing up the Battlestar Galactica model yesterday. It took awhile because it has to survive a great deal of rough handling before it gets to Arizona.
I packed it in bubble wrap and more bubble wrap. And put it in a box and then put it in another box surrounded by peanuts. I have done this in the past with very successful results on the receiving end.
After that I finished off the day working on the engineering section of the Enterprise E scribing out more windows. I should finish this task today and I can move on to assembling this model.
I came home and finished things off with more CAD studies as I prepare to make my own model kits available to the public.
Lastly before the evening closes my favorite time at the track with shots and laps. These are the cars I ran. Two of them I built from scratch. What a hobby.
