| My 1988 video "On the Street" is semi-autobiographical, in that I would spend time as a child building model kits. The first model I remember was of a submarine, which my father helped me build. I was soon transfixed with real space rockets, the (then) concept space shuttle and models from the Gerry Anderson television show, "Space:1999" in 1975. Then "Star Wars" came along and this photo of me from 1978 should tell you how crazy I went for it. |
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| I kept building models into my teens. I was very interested in Japanese animation (highly unusual for a Cape Bretoner in the mid-80's), which produced lots of model kits overseas. I would spend hours perusing the mail order catalogues of the U.S.A.'s Galactic Trade Commission and used the money I earned from oil paintings to order as many Japanese anime models as I could afford. When I moved to Halifax for college, I kept building a few models, but they were of real-world subjects like cars, aircraft and trucks. When I moved to Toronto, I got out of model building, but still collected the un-built kits. I used eBay to locate many of the anime kits which were sold-out in the 1980s, and amassed a pile of boxes of vintage kits... which I eventually sold off en masse to a collector. That was my journey with model building. I hope you enjoy this gallery of my models, which I photographed as a teen and young adult. |
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| This is my kit of the Minerva from Japan's "Crusher Joe", which was modified in the nose area and had a scratch-built laser cannon added underneath. |
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| This the Bromry from Japan's "Dougram", for which I wired miniature lighting in the headlights, cab and its searchlight. |
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| This the Ride-Armor from Japan's "Mospeada", which is an interesting 'transformer' design. These are stills from a video I took back in the day. |
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| This is the Fireball from a Japanese model series called "SF3D", which I heavily spattered with minute drops of thinned paint for a weathered oil drum effect. |
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| These are my AT-AT models from "The Empire Strikes Back", for which I painted a large backdrop. The 'snow' is baking powder and the 'smoke' is cotton wool darkened with pastel chalk. Photos by Paul Power. |
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| This is my kit of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey in 1:72 scale. |
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| My finely-airbrushed model of the Toyota Celica 1990 by Tamiya in 1:24 scale. Like professional auto photographers, I used a softbox for this photo. |
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| A model of a Powerliner Mercedez-Benz semi tractor truck with cargo container and trailer, both by Italieri in 1:24 scale. I made new headlights out of clear resin and wired the cab with miniature lighting for a convincing photograph. |