marijn van gils wrote:
Considering how much attention aircraft modellers put into removing seams, I'm often surprised how little attention ship modellers often place in this aspect.
As both an aircraft and ship modeler, I'm active in, and see, both worlds. In my opinion, aircraft modelers, as a group, are much more precise, demanding, and accomplished than ship modelers. They're simply better modelers when it comes to the fundamentals! Yes, there are some incredibly good ship modelers but, as a generalization, aircraft modelers are better and armor modelers may be the best.
Part of that may be the scale and complexity. The scale of aircraft and armor leaves everything out in the open, plain to see - you'd better be seamless! Also, the far greater complexity (business) of a ship tends to "hide" poor seams and make us lazy. Aircraft are smooth and simple and have nothing to "hide" the seams from the eye - again, when the seams are that obvious and open, you'd better make them invisible!
I'd like to see ship modelers up their standards for basic construction techniques.
I also build aircrafts and ships...and because I try to put the same attention to a clean construction into the ships as in the aircraft the ships take a lot longer to build. I have a Trumpi 1/350 carrier that so far almost used up half a tube of putty and lots of evergreen stuff. The quality of most ship models is not up to the quality of aircraft kits, not to mention the details. There are exceptions meanwhile...treat yourself with a Dragon Gearing class and be positively surprised!