A Movie Model Masterpiece

In March of 2018 I was asked a question: Do you know the blimp from Blade Runner?

My answer: Freaking of course I did! Not only am I an enormous fan of the movie, and an artist in awe of the models made for it, but it also happens that my college mentor was Lawrence Paull, the Oscar-nominated production designer of said masterpiece.

Sitting in the Tested office eating a slice of pie for Pi Day, Adam Savage pulled out a garage kit — the starting point for my screen-accurate reproduction at one-half studio scale. For those not deep in the world of model making, a garage kit is a model kit put together by someone who has done all the legwork for you ahead of time. They’ve sourced most of the needed materials and hardware, and probably given you a heads-up on the build process. This kit has not been mass manufactured, is usually not licensed, and depending on your source, may or may not be entirely accurate.

Luckily for me, this garage kit was put together by an extremely talented maker in his own right, Jason “Moff” Eaton. Here in front of me was a massive alien cocoon-looking thing, the body of a blimp. There were sheets of etched brass, two digital photo frames, and a whole mess of what I will naively refer to as electrical thingies. I am not an electronics gal, and this was the most terrifying part of this proposition. This wasn’t just a static model meant to look cool — it needed to function.

I’d like to say I got right to work and had this thing banged out in a few weeks. But the life of a freelancer doesn’t always work like that. It would be: Work a little, pause for a theme park ride job. Work a little, pause for a 2001: A Space Odyssey star-child build. Work a little, pause for MythBusters Jr. Work a little, go watch my first Star Wars screen credit in theater. Jobs for Adam can be easygoing like that; he’s not in a rush, he just wants it done right. Since most of this work was done in the Tested Lab or Adam’s Cave, it was a glorious 9 months.

Bodywork and kitbashing

My first order of business was to get the blimp body into shape. Two vacuum-formed shells were stuck together to form the recognizable blimp shape, but Adam is a stickler for accuracy, so it needed to be exact. This entailed some epoxy putty build-up and sanding and checking a few times until the curves were just right, and more symmetrical. This same process needed to happen with the lid — the top of the blimp that’s removable to allow access to the hollow interior for all the electrical components.

Once we were happy with the shape, I started adding the “tubing” that ran along the body — thick wiring that followed the contours and defined the outlines of every shape on the blimp body. This also helped hide the edges of the lid and gave a nice registration for setting it into place.

After this tedious work I needed a treat, so I switched to working on the pilot house, a separate little gondola vehicle suspended off the front of the blimp, where the pilots would theoretically sit to fly this thing. There was a tiny casting of the main body, but it needed fleshing out. I inserted an LED ring inside to illuminate the vehicle, added a not-quite-round half dome for the top and some brass cutouts for the windowpanes, and started kitbashing for all the other bits I needed.

Turns out the original gondola parts were taken from an actual model kit, so I had to replicate the seemingly random original choice by digging online to find the necessary parts in a smaller scale. If I remember correctly, it had been part of an army tank kit. Adam of course knew most of these parts from sight, and was extremely helpful as he delighted in recognizing old parts or knowing just where to look — sometimes already having the exact part I was trying to source!

Greeblies for 22 antennae

Next came mapping out where all the antennae needed to go. Here comes in the insane amount of resources I had at my disposal. Mr. Savage had a wealth of research already accumulated. I’m talking a 1TB drive of reference photos. I’ve honestly never had better reference for any job, ever. Looking at a photo of the original model taken BTS and being able to zoom in almost microscopically was the greatest joy, and on this job, a true necessity. Using this treasure trove of information, I spent many hours hunched over a computer (a rarity for a shop rat like me) to map the antennae locations, all 22 of them, from nose to tail. Once I was sure of placement, I started drilling. The holes would need to fit not only the brass antennae but also the wiring for the LEDs that would be at the end of each one.

Next I had to build the antennae. I had sheets of brass photo etch shapes — greeblies or nurnies to those in the model making community, pieces that look like something technical. On their own they amount to nothing, but assembled with other parts, they look convincing in this world. We somehow had access to the original photo etch template used on the real movie blimp, so these pieces were what was used on the real deal, just half scale. Back to the reference photos to find out which little bits needed to be on which antenna. Find a part, snip it out, drop it in the bin slot for that antenna to await assembly.

Luckily for me, I have history in soldering. From my childhood days of finding my dad’s soldering iron and building an Eiffel Tower out of paper clips, to stained glass in high school, to constructing the brass truss work for Real Steel, I was ready for this part. I was actually looking forward to it. Nothing beats getting the perfect setup and then zoning out while you find your groove and knock out piece after piece. Sadly, that was probably the quickest part of the whole job. Oh well, so it goes.

A soul-crushing game

Here’s where things went off the rails. With most of the body ready to go, I couldn’t get into the paint process until I had the electronics figured out. And that was a doozy. The wires on the LEDs were bare, thus shorting out the minute they touched any of the brass antennae. Quite a pickle when having to wind them around these parts to then thread inside the body. Due to the tiny scale, I couldn’t wrap them in electrical tape. I experimented with Plasti-Dipping them, which I thought would work — until I had all 22 dipped, wrapped around the antennae, and installed in the blimp, only to begin playing the soul-crushing game of “Where’s the short?” every few minutes. It just wasn’t a sustainable fix. And I was out of ideas. This was never my strong suit, and I had pushed myself beyond my limits.

Now having set up shop onsite was very fortunate for me. While toiling away in this common space, I became acquainted with Adam’s shop assistant, Mel Ho. We quickly bonded over a shared love of all things weird. Taxidermied animals? Check. Obscure vintage cinema? Check. Dry sense of humor? Check. Obsession with animatronics? Well helllooooooo! One day at lunch I bemoaned my utter lack of electronics knowledge, and as the fates would have it, Mel was in school for robotics. Suddenly, we were collaborators. Adam gleefully agreed to let me borrow Mel as needed for making this blimp as badass as it could be.

Mel took one look at the setup and decided we needed to overhaul this thing. I swear I must’ve had heart eyes watching them work and was in total awe of their knowledge and problem-solving skills. I’m going to let Mel talk you through this next part, because I sadly still can’t speak this language.

Off-world billboards

While Mel worked on the electrical, I switched into paint mode. I got the blimp ready with its base coat grey, and all the antennae as well.

Then I moved on to prepping the frames for the billboard video screens. In the original model, the fiber optic cables wound around the frame, illuminating the edges of the screen. My problem was that this was a much smaller scale blimp than the original, but the fiber optics could only go so small, therefore I had some rather fat fibers trying to make rounded 90 degree turns, and they just weren’t happy. I sat using pin vises to drill tiny holes and then trying so hard not to snap any of the strands as I bent them around these corners. Man, why’d it have to be a four-cornered rectangle?

I also started attaching all the extra details, including little suspended engines originally from an actual Apollo rocket model (thanks, Sean Charlesworth, for 3D printing me some of those to throw on there), and the searchlight box frames. Some of these were made from the brass parts, some were scratch-built from styrene.

Adam was excited to make a metal frame to support our billboard video screens. People assumed these were iPads but in fact they were digital photo frames, bulkier than you’d think. Mel helped me design a clip to hold the screen in place, with a magnet on the front to allow the fiber optic frame to simply pop onto the face of it.

Glitter in the dark

Now it was time to tackle the fiber optics. I had never worked with fiber optics in this way before. We would be utilizing the color wheel method: a bright light would shine while a motor slowly spun a clear acrylic disc that had different translucent colors painted onto it. It was how they did R2-D2’s lights in Star Wars. I know this, because Adam gleefully ran to his own R2 and stripped the mechanism out to demonstrate to us. Our need was for the lights to go between white and red, which meant we just needed to add a few random red spots on the disc. While Mel tackled the motor, I set out to drill what felt like one million holes in the body of the blimp. Again I had to meticulously study the reference photos to locate exactly where and how the body lights up in the original.

How many strands did I run through that blimp? I counted: 265 holes, and 265 fiber optic strands threaded, gathered into groups, and labeled. There’s probably a reason I have not done another fiber optic project since this one, folks. It was like dealing with messy hair. They were everywhere and constantly flopping in front of whatever I was doing. For a person with sensory issues and a need for an organized workspace, this was anxiety inducing. I was so, so happy when it was finally time to gather these babies into one bundle and lock them in place in their tube with clear epoxy — pulling that messy hair into a tidy ponytail, finally out of the way.

The first time we tested out the fiber optics with the light and color wheel was a beautiful experience. Seeing that natural movement coming from the blimp, almost like breathing, truly gave it life. I loved seeing the slow fade and the coming and going of the red. This moment felt like a true turning point in the whole project. Finally seeing the hard work pay off, and the reward of trusting in a genius collaborator like Mel.

Painting a masterpiece

Now I could get into my comfort zone — paint! I started by testing all the colors I had at my disposal, finding the perfect match, and starting to layer.

I airbrushed the contours to really bring out the depth in the curves. Then I added masking and created some of the accents. I started with a bit of weathering, but held off on the bulk of it until the next part.

After much research and Photoshopping and scaling, I had printed every single advertisement that was stuck onto the original blimp (plus spares in case of accidents!). I used my Cricut to cut them all out, and a handy pill organizer to keep them separate. Then came the beautiful “zone out and apply” phase. I used PVA glue to adhere and coat the paper ads. This would give a very slight sheen without being too much, and protection from future weathering.

Of course we had to throw a few hidden ads in for ourselves — note the Savage Industries and Sabicer Labs ads, some of the only deviations from the original that were allowed on this job. In a few spots I used adhesive-backed cut vinyl for certain markings.

Screenshots by Gunther Kirsch

After that it was weather, weather, weather. So much weathering. Lots of acrylic and oil washes, milk powder pigments, and roughing up with Scotch pads. Adam even had me do something controversial: add some very tiny scaled bird poop. Although we were both very aware that the birds in this universe were artificial and therefore did not poop — it helped to sell the aging, and provide us with a bit of amusement. We both laughed, knowing the internet would have opinions on this. But you can’t please everyone.

When all the finishing work was done I got to finally snip all the ends of the fiber optics off flush with the blimp. Leaving them long had allowed me to paint with careless abandon and no masking; once clipped, they shined exactly as intended with no extra cleanup work. Then I mounted the video screens, applied the light-up frames, and voilà!

A new life awaits you

I made a tidy folder of everything I’d gathered and learned from the job, and stored it with all spare parts in the custom boxes Adam had constructed for this job. Now he has a go-to spot to look for any future needs or repairs.

We shut off the lights in the Cave for dramatic effect and turned the blimp on. It was a thing of beauty. After 9 months of on-and-off toiling, this project was finished. And now it exists in the world to be enjoyed by anyone who sees it. Even if I still wince a little when I look at it and remember those sleepless nights I spent worrying how it would turn out.

Photos by Norm Chan

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Featured photo by Mark Madeo

This article appeared in Make: Vol 94. Subscribe for more great projects.