by Ian O'Neill

This is a scratch build of a DRD from the Farscape show. I had seen anotherscratch build in the forums using an old mouse. After searching for an older mouse of similar shape, I stumbled across a card holder in an art store of roughly the right shape. There were a couple of big missing chunks for holding the card that were filled with putty and sanded to the overall smooth shape. I then laid down strips of styrene over the main shape to get the raised parts. The strips were then puttied up to make complete raised areas. The 'eye' on the body is a styrene tube cut to fit and puttied flush. The sensors are obviously pipe cleaners that were put on last into holes drilled into the 'finished' model. I placed a paint bottle in the pictures to give an idea of scale.

The model was primered white and painted with Vallejo Model Color paints. I did a dark red crease lining, and later covered that with a yellow wash as it was too intense of a lining. To get the dirty effect, I rubbed the model with newspaper. This method worked mostly as I intended, except the deeper areas did not come out dirtier as they would be on a 'real' DRD.

I had to go in with folded newspaper to try and at least even up the dirtiness.

This is my first scratch build. I learned a lot about sanding large puttied areas smooth and working with styrene as a support material. The first raised area I did (on the models left side) is almost completely styrene. The rest are mostly styrene, but more puttied areas. If I had it to do again, I would make some more detailed areas such as more raised areas or even lights on the sensors.

Image: Front view

Image: Rear

Image: Right side

Image: Top view