Next up is the beginnings of a new project from Ward Shake:
I've been working for several years, on and off, on several projects related to the cult sci-fi film "Dark Star". I've done a ton of research into that film's models, and how the film was made, and so on. (I enjoy research projects almost as much as building models.) Print magazine articles from the 1970's and 1980's were sought out, studied in depth, and compared. Tom Seiler was kind enough to supply me with great copies of his excellent archival-style photos of the Dark Star spacecraft, as it sat (somewhat modified) in Greg Jein's offices in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Over 250 DVD and LaserDisc screengrabs were made by me -- clean and almost uncompressed -- and studied in painstaking detail.
I've learned a lot of new tricks, by doing this all on my own. Well, almost on my own: Tom Seiler and David Merriman have cheered on my "behind the scenes" efforts, for some time now. (And a few folks at a Yahoo! Group dedicated to the Dark Star film have offered occasional support, even though they are not modelers. Mark Dowman helped the most, amongst those folks, in giving me some early screengrabs and some usable but iffy copies of Tom Seiler's photos.) D
One research tidbit that fans of Dark Star may think is pretty nifty: I have positively identified (and confirmed in several different ways) the exact 1970's AMT kit that Dan O'Bannon used as the basis for his model of the film's "Thermostellar Triggering Devices" -- that is, of Bomb's #19 and #20. It is AMT kit #T507 as shown in the supplied photos: a Fruehauf brand trailer model, turned upside down and backwards, to which O'Bannon added lots of other kit parts and decals. (You heard it hear first, folks!) I went down a lot of dead ends, finding this kit's identity: but the decals clinched it, and some other things confirm it. (I've even seen untrimmed sprue in one place in the film!)
The news of probably the most interest is that I'm working on drawing up accurate, full-sized plans or blueprints of the Dark Star spacecraft model. No kit manufacturer to date has gotten that ship's contours right -- some didn't even get the basic shape or proportions all that correct -- due to the great difficulty of doing research into this model. That's soon to be a problem of the past.
I've drawn up two revisions of my working drawings, in full studio scale, to date. The first set mainly seemed to be right within a quarter or half inch; or so it seems now. The second set, seen here in the pics, are presumably right (in most easily-understood areas) to within one eighth of an inch. I hope!
The photos and captions should explain the rest. Enjoy!
Ward Shrake