Building Better Buggies (Part 3)

From the Moon to the Swamp

Welcome to the third and final episode of this series about how the venerable Moon Buggy/Amphicat kit was developed. It’s a small kit, but a lot went into making it available for you, and it’s probably the most accurate ATV kit that’s ever been made of any civilian amphibious subject. And for those of you with 44” Space 1999 Eagles, you could not ask for a better companion to your model, as this one is done to perfectly accurate scale with your 1/24th Eagle miniature replica. For those of you with the various 22” MPC Eagle kits, you will love this too, as the buggy, as previously stated, was done to that scale too. For the rest of you who don’t care about Space:1999, well, you might still find this essay interesting if you like model kits at all. And why would you be here if you weren’t, right? ;-) Below is the box tray (bottom of the box) art for the new release of the buggy kit produced by Round 2’s MPC brand. I did all the photography for it myself. The layout was done by Jamie Hood (who deserves a LOT more credit than he gets!).

Let’s see… where did we leave off. Oh yes. The prototypes. After the 3-D prototypes were approved (with corrections if needed), fabrication began on the tools that would produce the injection molded parts that you can buy right now. It takes some time to make these molds, as they use a process called “spark erosion”, also called “electrical discharge machining” whereby a copper electrode charged with electricity in the shape of the part to be made is plunged into a steel slab bathed in acid that erodes away the metal that is to be removed. The process takes weeks to accomplish but is more accurate, faster, and has much higher tolerances (greater resolution) than the now outdated pantograph-type machining and hands-on craftsmanship (well, craftsmanship is always subjective in this case) that was done decades ago. This type of mold-making is more dependent on the accuracy of the computer-generated CAD model than the skill of the machinists and labourers, so that’s what makes for lower-cost manufacturing. Computers and automated machines do most of the physical work now. Skilled labour is not as important as it once was, which is how relatively cheap labourers in China and other third-world countries can now produce more consistent high-quality products. The world is a-changin’, folks.

With the tooling completed, “test shots” are then produced. I usually get these test shots sent to me after Jamie receives them (the first parts out of the newly created molds) to do the build-ups required for the publicity photos, displays at conventions such as Wonderfest, and most importantly, the packaging art. The test shots usually have at least a couple of minor flaws that I have to work around. These flaws are noted by myself and Jamie at Round 2 and are corrected at the factory for the subsequent set of test shots that also must be approved and finally the production run that gets the kits to you the consumer.

Here is a picture of the contents of the Disposal Area 2 kit as sold to y’all. I don’t have any photos of the original test shots, but suffice it to say that what I got looked pretty much like this:

The quality of detail on these parts is quite amazing, actually, as you can see below on this closeup of one of the wheels on the 1/24th scale buggy model which clearly shows the “Amphicat” logo accurately embossed on the tire, just as was done on the real full-sized vehicle.

Once the test shots were all built and lit as one should expect, extensive photographs were shot in my workshop for the box art which you can see on the official release.

Those of you familiar with my work already know of my techniques so I won’t go into it all again here, but suffice it to say that the models were shot with very little or no digital trickery. My goal is always to represent the model as it actually looks in person using creative and artistic lighting in real life but to add a slight bit of extra embellishment only to place it into a fantasy environment to capture nuances that would not normally be seen in what could be considered “candid” photos. The actual parts included in the kit are never digitally altered except for colour temperature, levels and/or background items unwanted in the shot, and so on. The models themselves are NOT retouched by me. Some shots are composited from original elements, such as the hovering Eagle in the background and the distant mountains, which were lit, shot and composited specifically for this layout.

Here is how the “Laser Barriers” were lit. The lights do come with the kit. Takes a bit of fudging to get them in place, but they really work!

Roughly at the time this kit was to be produced, I presented the model diorama parts at a club display here in Truro for the local populace (Hey, it’s Truro, NS, so not a huge audience was in attendance!). This gives you a good idea of what ONLY the kit parts would look like when completed. The Eagles shown are of course the separately available kits that I had built previously.

OK now, let’s fast forward to the year 2022. Jamie at Round 2 made the decision to have the 1/24th scale Moon Buggy/Amphicat model available on its own. This time it would include the parts needed to make the real-life Amphicat version which would have the complete engine and chassis section and the decals exclusive to the real-life Canadian Amphicat amphibious vehicles as it was built in the early 1970s.

Jamie Hood, who is an exceptional artist, created an entirely new painting (old school and by hand!) of the Moon Buggy for the main box art which you will see on the new release of the kit, like this:

The kit has some new extensive decals which include the Amphicat insignia as well as the various versions of the Moon Buggy decorations as you can see here:

As those decals were not available to me when I built the models for the publicity and box art photos, I had to make my own and printed them myself with a bubblejet printer. The results are seen here showing both scales of the Moon Buggy version.

The problem is, bubblejet printers cannot print opaque ink. Light colours cannot be printed to appear normal in front of darker colours. Therefore, for the “Amphicat” logos, I had to print them onto white decal film and they had to be really carefully cut out around the edges to represent what they look like on the real vehicle. The results can be seen in the photos of the model in that livery.

For the Amphicat version, new photos needed to be shot of the model as decorated as such. Luckily, I had already built an Amphicat version at the same time I had built the Moon Buggy version. All I had to do was photograph it appropriately. I set to work gathering some vegetation as close to scale as I could in the backyard and set up a diorama in my shop which resulted in photographs like this one, which was designed to show the Amphicat in the environment that the vehicle was initially designed for.

I took several dozen photographs with varied lighting and composition effects and the best ones were chosen for publication, some of which are shown here in the thumbnails below, giving you an idea of some of what was done:

Here is the typical setup for how these shots were taken:

The large white foam block on the left is for bouncing fill light. The background is my hastily painted sky backing (doesn’t really show up in most shots taken but does help present “atmosphere”) which I have used on several shoots previously, and the “water” is simply a piece of textured glass with some painted paper underneath it to give it some depth.

Since the Amphicat version was built at the same time I did the Moon Buggy version for the aforementioned Nuclear Waste Disposal Area, I snuck it into a contest in Fredericton, New Brunswick where it won first prize in its category at the largest model contest in Atlantic Canada.