Model-Building Tasks Me No Like

1. Masking splinter camouflage, such as that found on the Ju-87D I'm currently working on. I end up with tiny strips of blue and yellow tape stuck to my entire person. I once masked and painted a Swedish AJ-37 Viggen in that funky 1970s Swedish take on splinter, and it drove me quite, quite mad.

2. Masking canopies, and for much the same reason as masking splinter camouflage, only I use Bare-Metal Foil on canopies and end up with tiny bits of silver foil stuck to my entire person.

3. Scribing panel lines. I dislike this so much I just don't do it unless I absolutely have to, and since Western Civilization doesn't depend on me scribing panel lines, I never have to. Some people seem to really enjoy this kind of thing, but to me it's like grinding sand between my teeth.

4. Zimmerit. I don't like painting it, I don't like applying it, I don't like trying to decal over it, and I don't like spelling it. Needless to say, I don't build a lot of German armor from the grand era of Zimmerit.

5. Photo-etched parts. Yeah, they look good once they're on and painted, but I find the process of cutting out, filing, bending and attaching photo-etched parts irksome, to say the least. If a model comes with photo-etched parts, I use them, but I don't go very far out of my way to find extra photo-etched parts.

6. Pre-shading. I see this as an expression of technical skill and artistic talent and not something that a model needs for the sake of realism. I appreciate the skill of the people who do it, and do it well, but I can't say that it produces a model that is any more accurate or realistic than one that isn't preshaded.

7. Accenting panel lines. This is closely related to #6. A while back FSM featured an AC-130 on its cover that was a particularly well-executed example of accented panel lines. It was truly magnificent work viewed as an artistic technique, but grossly unrealistic in the real world. Look at photographs of real airplanes taken from a reasonable viewing distance and try to see panel lines at all. Chances are that you can't.

8. Heavy Face Shading. Figure painters paint heavy shadows on their figure's faces to compensate for the fact that light sources aren't scaled, but it's an easy effect to overdo. The modern style (again, mostly because it demonstrates technical skill) is to have extremely heavy shadowing and highlighting so that the figure's face starts to look really weird and stark. Judges at contests like heavy shading because it gives them lots of good brushwork to evaluate, but I don't think it's very realistic.

9. Aftermarket tracks. Seems like a lot of effort to go through for a tank model, to me anyway. If a model has really bad tracks, it usually has other problems, and fixing the tracks isn't going to really fix the model. If the model already has reasonably good tracks, I don't see the need to replace them.

10. Flattened aircraft tires. I think they look strange, personally, and if I were the crew chief of that particular aircraft, my first act would be to send someone out to properly inflate the tires. I can see sanding a small flat spot on the bottoms of the tires, because they aren't completely inflexible, but heavily squished tires just look weird to me.

So what do I like?

1. I like finishing stuff. Having long-term projects hanging around on the bench for more than a couple of months makes me mildly crazy.

2. I like basic assembly. I like gluing stuff together and making a structure out of a bunch of parts.

3. I like filling and sanding seams, gaps and other flaws.

4. I like airbrushing. I don't like cleaning my long-suffering airbrush, but I like using it.

5. I like decaling. The more decals a kit uses, the more I like it.

6. I like building unique figures out of piles of arms, legs, torsos and heads. It's an easy way to produce figures that are reasonably suited to their situation without having to do a lot of surgery.

7. I like painting figures. I'm not very good at it, but I like it.

8. I like scratchbuilding stuff out of whatever comes to hand.

9. I like making dioramas, though the larger they get the less enjoyment they give me.