Hey Everyone!

[FRD]

Thanks for the welcome guys, I'm looking forward to familiarizing myself with the forum and how it works.

Yeah, I could tell you stories like: "ya' whipper-snapper, back in the day, we used to draw them by hand with borrowed pencils on the backs of used Xerox copies" (but generation X doesn't want to hear it...)

[FRD]

This was my very first design, the Sternwheeler Columbia Gorge, drawn by hand in 1982, the coloration was done by hand cutting the ruby lift-up film to make the various plates.

It was printed on an offset press and registration of all of the plates was a minor problem.. the lower hull was a little chunky back then but now I've got it all worked out.. this ship model design is 32 years old this year.. the ship is still plying the waters of the Columbia River Gorge.

[FRD]

This was the first model I ever designed using a computer, drawn between '93 and '96, to celebrate the centennial of the famed gun-runner, "Three Friends".

Built in part by Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, it was used to smuggle arms to Cuba during their war of independence from Spain, he would later use that fame to become the Governor of Florida.

Converted to an oil fired harbor tug in the 1930's, (hence two replicas) each version was from the water line up, they shared a common base from the water line down, it sank tied to it's moorings in 1947, the engine was recovered from the river bottom in the early 1970's

This was a very early computer model for me, it was all done in grey scale with a 24 pin, dot matrix printer before going to the press.

[SCEtoAUX]

Welcome to the site. Those are two (three) mighty fine looking ship models and ships.

[FRD]

SCEtoAUX That first one is pretty chunky, I'm not particularly proud of it but it was my first back in '82 so I had to post it.. (hope it's not too offensive) it was originally drawn with borrowed pencils on the backs of used Xerox copies, that was my only means of test fitting back then, photocopy and see if it fits, now I do all of the fitting in a virtual, 3-d environment, (eliminates all of the guess-work and parts fit perfectly) I don't miss the old ways of doing things at all..

[FRD]

Now that I have 20 years of cad behind me, I've often thought of revisiting these two (three) old models and bringing them up to today's standards, the end result would be a lot cleaner models that I would be proud to show...

[FRD]

Just a note: back in '82 photographic color separation (CMYK)was available but since we were using opaque, base colors we did the separation by hand.

The material we used was referred to as "Rubylith", a two ply film, the first being a rigid, transparent polymer coated with a second ply of pliable, ruby red, translucent film, there was also an "Amberlith" and as the name implies, was amber rather than ruby.

To do one of the colors at a time, the film would be hinged to cover the black and white line drawing, you would then cut the coloration and "lift up" to remove the unused, pliable coating.

Eventually adding addition layers, (four, one for each printing plate) when done the four layers of color were all ruby in color! we had no idea what it would look like in full color until the plates were made and it was printed (glad it all worked out)

[whulsey]

Welcome! Spend many hours cutting Amberlith and Pantone sheets during the 80s and 90s. Did the Home Depot catalogs for about the 1st 5 years that they were on the West Coast. Some of the covers with different color %'s and switchouts would have 20 to 25 overlays. Was one of those slightly strange people that really enjoyed it.

[FRD]

whulsey- It was great fun, there was a certain aspect of anticipation as it finally went to press and you could finally see if your work paid off, it was exciting and satisfying to see all of the colors where they were meant to be.

I remember on the sternwheeler model, it was a bit tedious because all of the railing coloration was a series of squares and rectangles, tedium aside, it was great fun..