Romulan FireBird

7/1/11

The Romulan Bird of Prey is one of the iconic classics of Star Trek TOS. That simple design and garish paint job!

But as a model to build it’s pretty damn boring. It’s just a few pices to glue and a big ass decal. So I am taking the kit and upgrading the design a bit. I don’t want it to look out of place in the original show universe. Have to keep the clean styling but with a few more interesting details.

Here’s a video of the completed model. A bit about the build below that.

In the pics you see I’m adding siding to the  hull. This will be shaped down to show the angle of the actual ship. The model is very inacurate on this point. Also adding a bridge dome, a new-bigger tail fin, and a couple of scoops. The fin and scoops came from a BatBoat kit I had laying around and the dome is the lower half of the dome on the robot from Lost In Space.  Click to enlarge pics.

These are the only major structural changes I’m making to the kit. The rest is styling changes done in paint. Below you see proof of the rule that there will not be any flaws in a perfect putty job until after you apply primer. I think primer causes the flaws… anyway… fixing them and will begin paint soon.

And now the preshading is done for the upper hull. The lower doesn’t get shaded.

And now I’ve got the first few thin coats of paint. I’ve also done some trim color on the leading edge of the wings and around the bridge dome. But it gives you an idea of where I am going.

All that remains is my Bird of Prey paint job on the bottom and a few detail trim colors. With my shaky hand it may take a while to get that paint done right…

Masked off, but pattern and painted red and yellow

Apply some decals left over from Enterprise and Vulcan Shuttle builds plus some custome decals.

I downloaded a Romulan Font from a fansite and typed “FIRE-BIRD” and “Romulan Star Empire”. I did not use a English/Romulan dictionary. Close enough.  Other changes, I added a sub-light drive and shuttle/cargo bays to the back of the ship. Also, it bugged me it was so plain so I added Green Stripes and words to the ship hull and nacelles.

Here are the photos plus some “glamour” shots at the bottom pasting in photoshop.- ENJOY! {see below where the ship gets it’s name from}

Hope you liked my ship.