Edrolfo Leones’ 2001 Pod

Posted on April 4, 2012July 3, 2017 by Steve Iverson

Here are photos of my latest modeling project. This is the 6″ resin kit from Captain Cardboard, that I lit up and painted over the course of the year (I started the project in January, 2001 and finished last September). It’s not as detailed and precise as I would have liked the end result to be, but with my limited modeling abilities and my busy schedule, this was the best I could do.

Some caveats: I took the pictures with my digital camera, so the quality and resolution aren’t great. Also, I took the pics in my dining room using the built-in flash, while others I took with ambient light to get as much detail as possible. The drawback turned out to be the difference in color temperature between my flash and dining room lights versus the micro white LED lights I used in the headlights. This is why the pictures give the impression of blue tinted headlights. In-person, the LEDs look pure white and very convincing.

The other problem you’ll see come from glare and reflections since I was too lazy to remove the model from the plastic case. Nonetheless, the images came out well enough to showcase the details on the model.

This pic shows how bright the backlit control panels inside the cockpit are by the “Explosive Bolts” sign on the door. The backlit control panels are lit by three 100 mm long miniature fluorescent lights. The same light source offers enough power to give HAL’s “eye” on the front of the Pod a nice subtle glow.

I used 3 mm white LEDs for the headlights that offered enough of a wide-angle light source to ‘fill’ the headlamp reflectors. Two brass telescopic rods were used to mount the model and base using epoxy resin. I painted the model with satin white enamel paint and used flat black for the accents.

This photo used the camera flash to give a better exposure for surface detailing, but underexposed the lighting. I used the textual slide-on decals that came with the kit along with decals from my other kit-bashed projects. The stock decals seemed to work well.

The headlamp reflectors are painted with silver enamel spray paint. I used red reflective tape cut up into tiny strips to use for the red accents around the claws. I chose this technique instead of attempting to paint difficult pin stripes.

I chose to leave the door closed in my display to show the detail of the door’s exterior. I do like the way the door was designed to open and close. I really wish there was another after-market kit to build out a seat and matching human figure to seat inside.

Probably the most challenging part to work on was the ‘foot step’ at the bottom of the door. The instructions require you to build this an the ‘shelf’ at the front of the Pod from scratch. The foot step was made up of a rectangle and two triangles that needed to be glued to the Pod’s surface without showing seams. The silver propulsion exhaust rims around the edge of the disk were hand painted with several coatings of paint. I also accurized the stock kit with the raised detail (two circles and a rectangle) near the left edge of the portal.

Here’s an interior close-up featuring the door and signage. Both were stock cutouts that shipped with the kit. The backlit control panels are a little overexposed. They do look pretty real in person. I used a real piece of thin glass for the portal window instead of plastic. This resisted scratches and made it easier to clean.

I got the kit before the white metal versions of the claw arms. The stock claw arms aren’t terribly bad. I did spend extra time sanding off the ridges and adding more detail. I also accurized the stock kit with the raised detail (two circles and a rectangle) near the left edge of the portal.

The ridges surrounding the portal window were a little rough from the kit. I used some sandpaper techniques to smooth out the edges, but it wasn’t perfect. Luckily, the ridges look very precise painted black.