Thursday 28 February 2008

The airship Hyperion

My latest project is a 1/300th scale 'scratchbuilt' model of the airship Hyperion from the Disney film 'The island at the top of the world'. See;


The airship is also featured at EuroDisney in Paris and is modelled as part of the main restaurant complex, similar to this illustration;


My first job was to draw the airship - as;



The illustration was taken from the Wikipedia page;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_airship

The main envelope was constructed first from 'blue' foam which was cut to profile and then plan. I then carved the rough shape with a modelling knife and sanded the shape with medium and rough sandpaper.

I was not to fussed about a final finish as working with 'blue' foam it is very difficult to get a smooth finish.

I then painted the envelope with PVA glue and white acrylic paint, sanded smooth and repeated the actions about six times, before painting with white acrylic paint and Klear (Future in the US)

The rest of the construction can be seen in these photos;










In truth, once the envelope was constructed the rest of the model was very easy, the only hiccup was the attachment of the small window bars to the bottom of the envelope

Painting is moving on apace - and here are a some work-in-progress shots;

There is still work to be done, but these photos show the model nearly finished, I hope that you like them

Tony

2 comments:

Republic Defender said...

Very nice, I really like your level of detail to the airbag (is that the correct term?) Anyhow very nicely done. I would really like to see some of the early photos of the build.

I can see it now, a whole fleet of air ships of the line.

Anonymous said...

You did a great job on this tiny model, I've been studying the Hyperion as well and will be tackling a four foot version shortly, drawings are done, just a matter of cutting out the parts and getting to it, anyway I can email you to talk further?

Cheers,
Will