A little bit of fun: Rosetta & Philae - the kiddie's model (-;

Hi there.
It has been a while. There was so much work and stuff to do, I could hardly get some rest to think about what would be my next step on the road back to paper modeling.
The documentary films we've made the past year have been very successful. They had good reviews and ratings and two even were broadcast.
All in all there was little time to spend in the hobby room cutting out paper. I did make a very nice plastic model, though. A 1/48th Westland Wyvern in winter camouflage. Came out reasonably well, it being painted with a couple of hairy sticks instead of the airbrush.

But what was the big thing in spaceland the past week? Right, Philae's comet landing. I watched it live and boy was it boring without any commentator filling in the shots of people staring at screens. But the landing itself, very spectacular indeed. 100 points to ESA.
Looking for a model of the real thing, I also found the kid's model at ESA's site, which was shaped after the cartoons they showed on beforehand. I decided that this was a nice first model to restart my paper model stuff with after my sudden stop. I loved these pretty animations they made of Rosetta and Philae arriving at P67 anyway so why not?

More after the jump.


This was just a nice afternoon of easy glueing and cutting without any pretention of making a meticulosuly exquisit model. And that too is a reason to make stuff like this once in a while. Hugely enjoyable. I added some refinements, of course.

Firstly, I reduced the model to a little more than half its original size. The mast of the little dish antenna was rolled from black paper, the original part was a triangular elongated pyramid. I thought this looked better. I also made the solar panels stick out from the body, I used a bamboo skewer for the rod. I flattened the ends to better fit the panels.

Secondly, I scratchbuilt the photo camera Rosetta holds in her hands. It's made from pieces of coloured paper, which I gave an outline of black paint afterwards.

Philae got a pair of little binoculars, also not included in the original model.

The arms and legs are all made of coated metal wire which I painted black. Philae is glued against the mast of the dish antenna to stay put,.

The binoculars were made from rolled pieces of paper.

 Movable arms..

And that concludes an afternoon of entertainment. Thanks for watching.
Up next: highly probably it will be a small-sized Gemini diorama. Stay tuned!
--PK