by Rod Lowe

Originally I was planning to build this AMT/ERTL Spock kit as a standard out of the box model, but when I discovered that one of the arms was missing, I decided to convert him into a Borg.

After a little re-posing and shaving his head, I followed the theme of this competition and glued everything I could find from the spares box to the model. This included wire, styrene sheet and strips, cardboard, shapes made out of two-part epoxy putty, leftover parts from tanks, planes, cars & sci-fi kits, and some interesting electronic “greeblies” I found inside a couple of old cellphones.

I added some lighting effects using fibre optics and LEDs. There are 16 lights in total, 8 steady and 8 blinking, although the blinking lights unfortunately don’t show up in the photos. The LEDs, circuit board and 9V battery are located in the base of the model which can flip open to allow access to replace the battery.

The head and hand were painted with Tamiya flesh mixed with some sky grey, and the veins drawn in with Tamiya black weathering pastel. The body was painted with a Tamiya dark metallic grey / semi-gloss black mixture and shaded using an enamel wash and pastels. After a few coats of Future and Dullcote I added some subtle highlights using Tamiya silver weathering pastel.

Overall this model took 7 months to build, light and paint and I’m pleased to have him finished just in time for this competition.

Image: Right/rear view

Image: Front/left

Image: Left/rear

Image: With 'real' Spock