I’ve been involved in a project of revamping the 22″ Cutaway Enterprise into something more accurate like the studio model. What I did do was try and get the 22″ cutaway to look similar to how it appears on TV. When I say “look” I’m referring to the majestic/photogenic quality of the structure.
The first thing I did was cram as much original detail on the hunk of plastic as I could. The color seems to always alude me cause it appears whitish to dark gunmetal on TV so I used silver fog spray paint cause it’s gray/blue tinted under ambient sunlight. Believe it or not, none of the lights on the model actually light up. The window lights are white acrylic filled in the holes and black flair in the others. Anyway. The two top saucer navigation lights (red and green) are covered with red and green iridescent paint–when the flash hits them they really lite up. The bussard caps were painted from the inside by a friend of mine. The weathering is a simple technique using black magic or pen ink and your fingers. This also requires a lot of practice but I have it down to a science.
The topside saucer detail had to be drawn with a compass and ruler using pencil because AMT was too lazy to do it right. Here again I rubbed reddish magic marker into one of the rings to mimic what I saw on the Paramount model. All in all not bad for a bunch of cheap innovative modeling tricks and some motion picture photography techniques.
Kenn Wingle
