Corporate Probe "Adrian Bruce"

I hope Adrian doesn't mind.

See, I went to his website like I had been doing for years, because, in addition to comics and animation and game-piece design, he builds ships, too. And I can always count on him to have some interesting designs. This time particularly.

His Corporate Probe Ship I found fascinating for several reasons. It has an interesting overall shape. The main fuselage is, as seen from the front, a series of overlapping rectangles, the longest of which is offset from, but balanced by, the smaller ones. And... It's buildable!

I found the engines to be non-trivial, so I copied them only to a point. I made four components, each a section of curved plastic glued to flat plasticard, filled the ends, then sanded-off (The belt/disc sander is your friend.) two of the corners. Glued them to plasticard boxes, and affixed a toothbrush holder to the front. The wings are a miniature cassette case, cut in half, decalled with something from a helicopter kit. The rest of the body is plasticard.

I originally painted it a series of military colors, but I couldn't get the paint to be smooth, so I repainted it regulation Testors Light Gray. When I went to my favourite hobby store, Hobby Maker, they had some non-military Testor's enamels, so I was able to get a richer blue than the usual Insignia Blue and Navy colours for the asymetrical accent section.

All in all, I like the way it came out, though Adrian's was much better. I hope he doesn't mind.