How to Scratchbuild Spaceships from Styrene / VX-7 Tutorial

[@cosmostheprotogen]

This was very lovely and contained a lot of good info! Good job with the narration, I really enjoyed how calmly you explain everything.

[@exanime]

Just found you.. instant subscribed!... loved the narration BTW, you have a friendly, non-intimidating cadence that makes the vid a pleasure to watch... extra perfect for an intro video

[@tompelach4842]

Keep up the narration! Its really helpful to hear the process as well as see it.

[@herpenderper]

First time narrating? Could've fooled me :) You're doing just fine. I like it!

[@maxroach3101]

Hey! I never comment on videos, but I just had to say how awesome it is that you took the time to give us all a tutorial on this. I've been lurking around this hobby for a while, and because of this video I've decided to give it a go :) iI there any way you would be able to go into some detail about how you take a model/image and turn it into a bunch of 2D polygons that you can cut out/weld together? The 'pre-build', planning portion of this kind of project would be good to understand! I appreciate your work and always look forward to your uploads ❤️ super underrated channel, you'll make it big in no time.

[@Sublight_Drive]

Sweet! Glad you’re thinking of giving scratch building a try!! I might do a video about how I come up with the panel designs but only if I can describe a step by step way of doing it. As it is, the way I go about it is very dependent on the ship itself and the kind of reference materials I have access to, and sometimes comes down to “well that shape looks about right” If you do build a VX-7 I’d love to see it!

[@earlware4322]

@@Sublight_Drive If you could explain how you go from artwork/2D images to panels to cut out would be VERY helpful. That always seems to be my greatest weakness. When I used to scratchbuild models it was always flyimg by the seat of my pants. I had a vague idea what I wanted and relied heavily on what bits of plastic I could lay my hands on. This would cause some aggravation and lead to many a stalled project. (Most ended up in a shoebox at the top of my closet.) If you could explain how you go about converting a flat image into a 3D shape I am sure it'd help out many would-be scratch builders.

[@johnkelley9877]

Great looking models and I like the narration. Scratch building is one of my favorite hobbies. Thanks for sharing this.

[@GTRichardson7]

Love the narration! and especially for your first time with it you did a great job of sounding both authoritative and cordial. the VX-7 gives me major F-Zero vibes and i'm here for it! would love to see you tackle some F-Zero ships! might have to pick up the plans soon (in the middle of a project at the moment, but this would be a great way for me to put my toe in the water of scratch building!)

[@Sublight_Drive]

Oh heck yeah, some F-Zero vehicles could be fun, you gotta love those early 3d games where everything had a maximum of 25 polygons. I'd love to see it if you end up building a VX-7!

[@chriscox3227]

The narration was great, really interested in the why as well.as the how 👍 The white and blue ship version reminds me of Jazz from Transformers, which is just Prime 👌

[@Lamefoureyes]

This is seriously great. You've really gotten me to think about what I can do to make display pieces for the different memorabilia that I have, like you did for that coin.

[@jerrybailey5797]

Great tutorial, nicely done , your narration is consice and clear 👍

[@mattfrench2120]

Have a look at a hand tool called a "nibbler" for greeblies. Usually used for cutting into metal, but makes perfect rectangular chomps out of styrene, ala star wars greeblies

[@TesseracMedia]

I enjoyed watching this. Thank you for explaining some of this stuff.

[@BPCustomCreations]

This is a wonderful guided entry into our hobby 👍very well done! I'm partial to the voiceovers as well

[@alessiodecarolis]

REALLY nice tutorial, in the past I scratchbuild some sci-fi stuff with a similar way, only using carbon paper & graph paper.

[@j453]

Narration is better. Thank you for the vid, cool stuff 👍👍

[@daggius]

great job. blue and silver one looks dope

[@mikesmith2905]

Liked the narration

[@rkool2005]

i like narration on videos it adds a bit more personality to the video

[@neilnagel9857]

Ditto that. I like the videos either way but you are already way better at narration than lots of the other channels out there.

[@jasmineiii3966]

this is great ^^ love your videos, inspired me to get started on making this kinda stuff myself!!! i want to start out with Ankhita's ship from citizen sleeper! and, i love the audio, u have a nice voice, but i think its mastered a bit low, industry standard is between -7dBFS and -12 dBFS ^^ had to crank up my volume to hear u

[@Sublight_Drive]

Oooh Ankhita's ship would be a great first project, it's very blocky. You might have trouble getting reference pics but that just means you can improvise and no one can call you on it. Thanks for the tip re: the volume, I really don't know anything about sound editing.

[@orangutanlibrarian]

I'd love to see your process for making the template. Really nice channel, thanks for the motivation.

[@noahk7985]

It would be neat to see you build the ship Archimedes from the Watchmen comic or movie

[@mariomontalvo7670]

This video is great, really liked having the list of tools and materials to get into. Could I ask, what is the computer program you use for the sizes of the ship from the concept art video, could you make a video on that part of the process?

[@jasperr.2322]

Awesome narration! Do you think you could make the Watchmen ship from the Archimedes series? Always wanted to see it. Thanks!

[@Sublight_Drive]

First I want to make the Watchmedes ship from the Archimen series it's a classic

[@SAOS451316]

It's a nice little ship! The narration is fine but I must say that leaving the whole can of solvent open like that is a little distressing lol. Do you know the soda can bottom method? You'd lose less solvent to evaporation with it.

[@Jacksonhoch1]

Would you be able to do a tutorial/overview of how you make the designs? I would love to do this kind of thing, but I feel like it would require designing it before building, to plan it out and make a pattern, and I don’t entirely know how to do that.

[@vincentvandevorst5575]

Thank you for this, been really excited to get more insight into your process. Also wanted to ask, during all that sanding how many times did you knock the fins off? Because I would've definitely knocked the fins off.

[@Sublight_Drive]

None, actually! I mention it in the video, but the weld on makes for a surprisingly strong connection. It takes a decent amount of effort to separate them once it’s dry. It helps that I didn’t really bother sanding the engine section much, too.

[@georgemartinezjr]

Good idea with the Duck Tape you must have Done Architectural Model bui l ding

[@NicholasKonradsen]

i always find it funny when model makers talk about how much sanding they're doing, especially from the perspective of an instrument maker, when every single surface gets sanded with multiple grits of sandpaper, and then with micromesh pads! be grateful you don't have to do that! I envy you...

[@Sublight_Drive]

Ha! I guess I should be grateful. Paint and topcoats do a lot of work towards the final texture, so I don’t need to worry too much about more than two or three different grits, at most. I think it was Adam Savage who said that sanding is the thing that unites just about every different discipline of builders and makers. We all eventually end up sanding what we make, no matter what it is.

[@Bazookatone1]

To make the templates, is there some special soft ware, is is a 3D CAD program like Sketch up or something, or can you just visualise it well in your mind and then draw the necessary 2 D shapes yourself?

[@georgemiller2129]

I prefer the non-talking videos, but I understand why some of these should have talking. Do you prefer the smaller ships, like fighters and tugs, or larger ships like Star Destroyers and Galactica?

[@markmras6040]

Great video! Where do you get your weld on?

[@spinafire]

This would be a great video to get an Amazon affiliate account for. You can put Amazon links to all of the products you use and make it easier for viewers to get the same styrene, etc, that you use while getting some kickbacks.

[@kybris87]

wonderful! could you also show your digital process please? i'm bad with adobe and could need some help! thanks

[@kybris87]

or is there a more specialized, simple and free program?

[@Sublight_Drive]

@@kybris87 I prefer using the Affinity suite of applications. They're similar to Adobe in terms of features, but MUCH cheaper (and have less predatory business practices)

[@kybris87]

@@Sublight_Drive thank you.

[@silviacorrege8490]

nice, what program do you use to make the designs to cut?

[@Sublight_Drive]

I put them together in Affinity Designer, which I also used to make the instructions (those aren’t in the video, tho). The pdf I put on Etsy was assembled in Affinity Publisher, but that was mostly just to make sure it printed properly.

[@dach829]

Similar to cutting glass

[@NiteReepa]

I think the narration was spot on, sounded like you'd been making narrated videos for years, and this being a tutorial, wholly appropriate. Regarding the video's where you're just doing a build, and we're watching along, I actually enjoy the fact that it's just got light captioning, and sways the theme/atmosphere of the video in a very chill, calm and relaxed direction that I at least really appreciate. I'd love more narrated tutorial videos, and I'd love more non-narrated build videos 👍

[@earlware4322]

Well said, I wholeheartedly agree. I find narration during tutorials very helpful to explain the process and convey more info directly from the creator. For simple build videos, low backgroumd music and a few helpful texts onscreen every now and then is fine.