Well, I tried...

I had to get a second one since I messed up the first one. I'll probably put the first one together and then airbrush the whole thing silver as one of these types of models we had seen in TNG.

Anyway here is my attempt at the Polar Lights TMP Enterprise:

 

Not bad. Did you paint the whole thing white first or is that just the raw plastic color?

 

It came white. The first one I got came that weird blue. I started to airbrush it a mix of white and silver to give it a shimmering white and it worked until I ran out of paint and couldn't get the mix right so............

This one came with the decals to put the aztec markings on it but I've seen it done and it looks too busy on it. So I just left it white and painted the areas the general color for the TMP version.

 

Awesome Model of a Awesome Starship

 

That blue one was one of the collectible versions from the first run. Since you said this is your second build, I'm guessing you built the blue version, right?

 

I started the build. Some parts are together and some parts are painted but I started airbrushing a silver-white for the main hull color and now I cannot get the exact mix right and some parts have windows so I cannot repaint it all over again. AARRGGHHH. So I may just put it all together and airbrush the entire thing silver, windows and all.

 

Use Elmer's Glue on a toothpick to mask the windows. It's tedious but it works. Then you can spray the whole ship and just use tape to adhere to the dried glue blobs to pull them off after the paint is dry.

 

Thanks for the tip. I never though of that. I'll probably repaint the whole thing white so I don't run into the same problem. I may now try to make the NCC-1701-A.

I wish I had better modeling skills. I've been building models for years now but never got as good as I would have liked. Plus I don't have a steady hand. My wife did a bit of the finer or smaller painting on this one.

 

Scotch blue painters tape. You can leave that stuff stuck on for over a week and it will still pull off clean.

Also head over to the forums at www.starshipmodeler.com and browse the Trek modeling section. Plenty of people there who have finished 350's and are working on them. Lots of ideas and tips.

 

This is why I jumped on the CGI bandwagon the minute it hove into view. I made models for years, despite the fact that I clearly lacked the skills and abilities needed to make them any good. You can be as shakey as you like when working in Lightwave, it doesn't ruin the model.

 

Sweeeeeet ride.

 

Bingo.

Plus, unlike a physical model, a digital model won't sag under it's own weight, warp in the heat, crack, fade, turn yellow, get dusty, or get dropped.

 

That's a better job than I could hope to do with my PL kit... good work, man.

 

Thanks. Here are a few better shots with a bit of tweeking of the paint scheme:




I did a few more tweeks on the painting but I don't have a photos of it since that final tweeking.