 |
The Deflector
24 June 2006
This time around I am tackling what I consider one of the most important areas of the model that I want to get just right. The deflector dish area of the ship is very noticeable, since it is a large area in the front of the ship that is going to be lit blue. Two particular effects I wanted to achieve where the ring of small lights around the rim of the main dish and the two concentric black rings around the housing.
So, I started with the housing first. I primed the whole thing grey, and then masked it so I could paint the concave portion behind the dish with Rustoleum chrome paint to better spread the light around. The clear dish actually fits into the housing by about an 1/8" so I also masked the area so it would remain grey as well. To accomplish the ring effect, I first tried painting the housing black from straight down, then the white from the sides. The rings are inset deeply enough that this actually worked to a degree. However, it proved impossible to get an even enough coat of Gloss White without covering up part of the black in the rings. So, I painted the whole thing white, and then scraped the white paint away from the rings with an Xacto knife. This produced a decent look, but I decided to touch up the outer ring with a small brush and black paint. In the end, it probably would have been better to paint them this way from the beginning!
Left: Fully
primed.
Center: The inner edge of
the "bowl" area was also masked.
Right: Now that it is painted chrome, the area should act like the
reflector in a flash light.
Next, it was time to work on the clear dish itself. First, I "frosted" the dish with Rustoleum glass/plastic frosting spray. The purpose of this was to achieve a more even glow to the dish when lit. If left clear, the light from the LED would be much too directional. Interestingly, this one clear part incorporates several areas that are going to be opaque in the final model. Undoubtedly, this was a step taken by PL to reduce the number of parts and complexity of the model, but it means that a little bit of careful work was required to get the look I wanted. So, after the disk was frosted, I used black paint and a small brush to light-block the dashed ring of lights along the perimeter of the dish and a couple of rings on the dish itself. This detail is actually raised on the rear of the dish, making it easy to paint via dry brushing. On the front, though, there are two bands that need to be painted that run around the dish between the dashed area and the central part. To avoid getting paint on the areas that I wanted to remain clear, I used liquid mask to cover them. This was my first experience with the stuff, and it worked pretty well! After it had dried, I sprayed the whole area black for light blocking and then painted the outer band Flat Aluminum and the inner band Duck Egg Blue.
Left: Here's
the dish frosted. Notice how the translucency distributes light.
Center: The raise area behind the dish has been light blocked with
black paint.
Right: To avoid getting paint on areas that were to remain clear, I
used liquid mask.
The deflector housing is covered in some rather intricate aztecing. The set of masks that I got from CultTVMan includes masks for this area, but thanks to the Hobbytalk board I managed to stumble upon a better solution. Instead of painting the aztec pattern in this area, I would use decals. A gentleman by the name of Matt Fletcher came up with a very precise set of graphics that replicate the markings on the deflector housing and strong back of the Refit Enterprise studio model and they are available for free downloading at the Starship Modeler website. After I downloaded them, I printed them out on special 8 1/2" by 11" white decal paper. However, to prevent the ink from smearing when the decals are immersed in water, they have to be sealed with a clear lacquer first. I wound up printing several sheets as I played around with color and quality settings, and it looks like I'm going to be incorporating different parts of each sheet into the model.
Left: These
are the printed decals before they were sealed.
Center: Here is a close-up of the one that I am thinking of using the
strong back areas off of.
Right: This is the same sheet after being sealed. Note how much
darker the colors appear.
This was my first time working with custom decals, and I think the result is very nice. One thing that I noticed is that the colors of the decals actually change a bit when you spray on the lacquer. Also, you have to make very sure that you get the entire decal sealed. I had to redo a couple of areas on my deflector housing because I thought I had sealed the decal well enough, only to discover that I missed an area when the ink ran. Overall though, I think the results were worth the hassle. These decals allowed me to achieve a much neater and more subtle effect that I could have ever hoped to achieve with paint. I would like to thank Mr. Fletcher for his fine work and Mr. Zangrando for making it available to all of us on his website.
Left: Here is
the housing and the decals that will be going on to it.
Right: The decals really give the hosing a really nice look that is
subtle yet detailed.
Once the decals where applied, I decided to play with the lighting. I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about my philosophy on the deflector lighting. The ship's deflector was almost always blue, except for certain scenes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TMP). In that movie, the ship's deflector had a copper glow while she was on impulse power, and it didn't turn blue until right before she went to warp speed. While she was at warp, the dish remained blue. However, in subsequent movies, the deflector always glowed blue, no matter what (the only exceptions being the stock footage from TMP that was re-used at the beginning of The Wrath of Kahn). A lot of really nice refit models I have been seeing are using two different LED's in the dish to represent the two different lighting colors seen on the studio model, with an amber LED used to represent the copper glow. For my model, however, I am planning to represent the ship traveling at warp speed. Thus, I am planning on having my dish only glow blue (plus, I like the look of a blue glow a lot more!). For this lighting test, I tried two blue LED's of differing intensities to see how each looked.
Left:
This is the glow with the low intensity (300 mcd)
LED.
Right: The brighter (2600 mcd) LED was a little too bright.
The first step was opening up the whole in the part to accept a 5 mm LED. After that, I prepped the LED's by filing the rounded convex tips flat and then used a drill bit to actually give the LED a concave surface. These steps, combined with the frosting of the clear part, really help to more evenly distribute light around the whole of the dish. I under-drove both LEDs during the test (that is, used less current to light them than they are rated for). However, even though it was significantly under-driven the brighter LED was just too bright for my taste. Not only was the hot spot in the middle larger, it actually hurt to look it! In contrast, the glow effect from the lower intensity one looks very nice in person, and in the pictures I think it is almost dead-on to how the deflector looks in the movies.
Left:
Combined with the hosing, the glow is very convincing.
Center: The outer rim of dashed lights shows up well in this shot.
This is what I was going for.
Right: Note how the concave bowl of the hosing focuses light on the
rim.
So, that is one more step complete! The process wasn't entirely smooth; it took me a while to work out exactly how I was going to paint the housing, and there was a bit of a learning curve involved with the decals. About the only thing that went as planned was the lighting. Even so I'm quite happy with how my deflector came out.
Andy Rucker