Meerkat Six upgrade

[Darth Marmalade]

Greetings!

After seeing Colleen and Shawn Crosby again at Worldcon, with their amazing H-Wing, I decided it was time to work on my own Star Wars car some more. It's currently in the Road Squadron gallery as "Rebel Jetta", and the gold Rebel insignia on the hood has become very worn since 2002.

I've been chasing rust, testing paint colors, and trying to work out a design, which just wasn't coming to me. Tonight I did a little virtual painting, and I think I'm on the right track now.

The trouble was, I was imagining a beautiful stripe across the side of my ugly little car, and it wasn't happening. Then I remembered how things are done in the Star Wars universe, and designed an ugly stripe. Somehow, beauty emerges. Check it out:



You'll notice a real orange-and-silver stripe on the trunk -- that's test paint. There'll be more white, black, and silver on the final design, but after several days of fretting over this stupid stripe, I'm finally happy with where this is going.

[Darth Marmalade]

Got enough done today to post a progress picture. This is an unaltered photograph:



It needs a lot more work, but it's to the point where I can mask off sections and do a little bit at a time. All the fussy bits around the windows and door handles are done.

The other side isn't nearly as far along.

I wanted to put the as-yet-unnamed astromech on it for the photo, but I forgot.

[Drago Lordist]

sweet pic man! that's how I started lol

[Darth Marmalade]

More progress. Now it's unequivocally a Star Wars car (and I remembered to put the astromech in the picture this time).

[Drago Lordist]

sweeeeeet!!!!!!!

[Darth Marmalade]

I suppose I should really start a new thread in the "News" section... until I need some more help.

Did some lettering:



And the passenger side, with lettering:



The letters are magnetic signs, not because I have any problem with painting them on the car permanently, but just because the magnetic signs were easier to do with the tools and materials I have available.

I still need to fix the rust holes behind the rear wheels, figure out what to do with the bumpers, make some skiffy hubcaps... and the roof needs its orange stripe, too.

[Obi-Shawn]

Ya know- I kinda like the rust. Can you clearcoat it with spar varnish, and stop it from continuing to rust while leaving it for the cool factor and a reminder from whence the car came? Consider it "battle damage".

And I'm really digging the graphics- nicely done! I like that you can suss out "Meerkat" even if you don't know aurebesh.

And now the important question-

What Star Wars toy are you going to incorporate into the design? I'd expect no less from the STM car...

[Darth Marmalade]

I was kinda wondering about battle damage. I don't have enough confidence in my Bondo-ing skills to imagine that the rusted areas won't still look a bit rough after the holes are filled in. There's also a mangled area on the right front corner where somebody hit the car in a parking lot outside Indianapolis on the first day of Celebration II in 2002 -- it's most visible in the older photo in the Road Squadron Gallery. I want to pick it out with a blast mark, but that'll require more spontaneous artistry than the mask-and-spray techniques I've been using so far. It'll be a learning experience.

The graphics are two different not-quite-Aurebesh fonts: on the back, "www.startoysmuseum.org" is written in "Engli-Besh" by Erikstormtrooper :

www.erikstormtrooper.com/index.html

And "Meerkat 6" on the sides is done in "Imperial Code" from Iconian Fonts (also linked from Erikstormtrooper's page, but here it is):

www.iconian.com/

Both are an unusual mix of upper- and lower-case letters -- but with fonts like these, cases are just there to give alternatives. I'm very happy with how these turned out.

And ah, yes, toys. Right now, the only Star Wars toy in the car is a Jar Jar water squirter that I picked up at a yard sale about six years ago -- I set him on the dashboard, and he's been there ever since. About two months ago, just as I was beginning this adventure, a local Wal-Mart had an enormous bin of Darth Vader masks marked down to ten cents each -- I briefly considered just buying a couple hundred and gluing them all over the outside of the car. I'd like to include some of the ships that inspired the paint job -- RotS Jedi Fighter, X-Wing (of course)... and I only recently realized that I'd chosen the Snowspeeders' color scheme.

I will have to ponder this some more. The appropriate toys will present themselves, I'm sure.