[PhilipMarlowe]

Recently picked this up off John May's site, I always thought the Nebuchadnezzar was one of the cooler sci-fi hardware designs in recent memory, and this Alfred Wong-sculpted kit does it justice. Though she's only six inches long, there's a lot of pieces and detail on this puppie. The casting of the resin pieces is VERY good, on par with Ian/Stargazers Serenity. Other than a small amount of flash and a little mold-part lines, clean-up is minimal. No instructions, my only quibble with the kit, but with a little thinking and comparing to pics on John's and Alfred Wongs sites of a built one, I think I've got it all figured out. I'll post more construction pics to make clear what goes where, it ought to make it easier for the next guy!

 

[terryr]

It's certainly unique. I neevr saw a vehicle 'fly' like that before.

 

[Griffworks]

Looks nice! That's been my only problem w/pretty every MMM kit I've purchased, too - no instructions. While some kits are relatively simple and don't require them, some stuff requires it!

 

[John May]

Sorry about the instructions, but I can't seem to get someone to do them ?
And I am not an illustrator by no means.
But this will help those that are building the kit.
Looking forward to seeing your progress.

​

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

Alfred has added some more pics to his site, his photo's show what guns go where clearly, and show off the detail nicely:

http://www.alfredsmind.ca/commissions/samples46.html

 

[Lloyd Collins]

Who needs instructions! Nothing more adventurous than to figure how it is to fit together. Even with no instructions, I have never had any problems, figuring out how to build any MMM kits.

Looking forward to what you can do with the model, Scott!

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

Here's a pic that will help you figure out the gun placement. The quad-barrelled gun goes on the lower portion of the nose, the two-barrelled gun with the half-circle hatch detail behind the barrels goes on the upper portion. Both have locator pins and holes, you'll probably have to trim the pins on the guns(or deepen the holes), mine were a little too long to let the guns sit flush. The two leftover double-barrel guns go on the turrets on the rear top and bottom, I'm leaving them off for now since they're a little fragile and would be easy to break where they are located.

Everything fits together real nicely!

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

Ok, time to attach the propulsion disc. There's 20 of them. I found the locator holes on the dic themselves were waaay too shallow, I deepened and enlarged the holes on each with a 5/64" drill bit in a pin vise. I dryfitted each one, and attached them with some thick CA, you'll want the extra cure time to be able to adjust them. Make sure the two notches on the disc are at the top and bottom. Your ship will be much more awkward and delicate after they're attached, I did the disc on the bottom first:

After those dried, I drilled a hole behind the belly gun turret and CA'd in a piece of 1/8" brass rod. This ought to make handling and painting down the road a lot easier. Now that I can stick the brass rod in foam, it's easy to attach all the top disc and mount the belly and rear gun.

About ready for priming.

 

[Griffworks]

Looks good, Scott! :thumbsup: I'm gonna have to seriously consider one of those!

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

First coat of primer, you can see the detail a lot better now!

Have to work out my basecoat color, I made an interesting discovery when I went back to check the Matrix DVD for reference, in the entire film the Nebuchadnezzar is onscreen for less than thirty seconds! There is one good "beauty" shot before the first Sentinel scene that shows it good, I'm going to add the U-shaped crest of bright red tipped antenna behind the wheelhouse Alfred didn't bother with, I think they'll jazz it up a
bit.

Any Matrix fans know of any good shots of the miniature? I didn't find much with Google and it's hard to make out the hull color in the few brief shots.

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

With a basecoat, I used Duplicolor Auto Acrylic Lacquer "Dark Bronzemist". You can sorta see the antenna crest I added.

 

[Lloyd Collins]

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

The lighted "rings" on the hoverdisc are a real pain in the posterior, even with my spiffy new Tamiya magnifier and an Imex detail brush. Without it they'd be impossible. And of course with the dark bronze it's going to take multiple coats of white, this is gonna take awhile. Oh well....don't have to like it, just have to do it.

 

[Lloyd Collins]

How are you going to do the blue lightning?

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

A little more work and weathering with metallics. Instead of hand painting the 'hover-disc" lighted areas, I probably would have been better off doing it with decals, those disc are smaller than a dime, even with a magnifier and Imex brush it's hard to keep them looking neat. I did the red "lights" by applying drops of red acrylic with the point of a toothpick.

The metallic bronze does not photo well!

 

[Shaw]

It looks beautiful.

Alfred has added some more pics to his site, his photo's show what guns go where clearly, and show off the detail nicely:

http://www.alfredsmind.ca/commissions/samples46.html

And its even more impressive now that I get some idea of the scale... Wow! :thumbsup:

 

[Lloyd Collins]

A real beauty!
For the blue rings, I would use blue stain glass paint, over the white.

 

[Shaw]

I can imagine that would make for a nice effect.

 

[John May]

WoW !! :dude:
I like to see this model at a show, I think you would do well.

 

[PhilipMarlowe]

I still got a little touch-up work to do, but she's basically finished. I'm really happy with the base, my wife made me a decal from a screengrab of the Neb's plaque that I applied onto a piece of sheet styrene painted bronze, and our own Four Mad Men designed the Nautilus-inspired "N" logo.