speedgraflex wrote:Hey Ken—Your life-work-responsibilities are demanding but you have found a way to crank out some amazing work regardless of this. As far as your masking skills go, you are definitely leveled up on this project. Your affinity for a used without being abused finish is being showcased here. There was a moment I remember well from an acting class: the instructor made us slough through an old series of monologues—that shit was dusty—until our last assignment. That was our pick. I remember choosing a scene from Donnie Darko and afterwards the teacher said, “What a difference it makes when you personally connect with your material,” and that is I feel what you are doing here. You’re a master of weathering effects. I don’t use that word lightly either so let me repeat so it will sink in: a Master. Let the clear coat cure and catch you on the 1/32 side next, bro.
Bruce, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. When I was reading your comment and came to this:
“What a difference it makes when you personally connect with your material,” and that is I feel what you are doing here.
I went back in my mind to when I was working on my last Corsair, and it occurred to me that while I love that subject, I didn’t have much of any personal connection to it. Not at that time. This has changed, of late, but back then, no, I didn’t have a personal connection to it. I’d just seen examples of what other people had done and I wanted to try it. I thought “hey, I bet I could do that.” That was it. And that wasn’t how I arrived at this project and where it’s at now. Not at all. And that is indeed a big deal for me.
I do feel personally connected with this project. It started with the airframe scratching this it h I had, it continued to develop with the sheer enjoyment of assembling it, and it further developed when I sat down and went through the mental catalog of my own ideas and methods and developed a vision all my own for this project. And again, you called it! I imagined-up a used without being abused finish and I executed it. I’m glad to have hit that mark. That’s what I was going for. And it all came out of my brain, and that image was cobbled together from just old photos of real-life Zeros I looked at, and using my imagination. I wasn’t reinventing something somebody else did. I was just doing what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it, on a subject that I became incredibly fond of.
You always articulate this stuff way better than me. I guess that’s why you write cool screenplays and me, well, it’s mostly just technical documentation and stupid memes these days HAHAHAAA!! But again, in all seriousness, thank you. What you write up there made a lot of things coalesce for me. And I needed that to happen. I feel like reading your take on it distilled a lot of things down into a flexible framework of styles and method which I wasn’t 100% cognizant of before.
I have a direction and a style. Only, I wasn’t aware of all of that until you noticed it and pointed out WHY it works.
Personally connected.
Thank you.

