| V.I.N.CENT. (MODEL
KIT)
PROJECT #220
CLASSIFICATION: MODEL KIT
MANUFACTURER: MPC (1979)
MATERIALS USED: PAPER CLIPS, MODEL GLUE, ENAMEL PAINTS
MEDIA APPEARANCE: THE BLACK
HOLE
"You can't improve on perfection. We're
the best!"
Preamble: V.I.N.CENT. and Old B.O.B.
from Disney's The Black Hole are among my all-time favorite movie
robots. Strangely, most of the online film reviews I've read seem to
blame the robots for ruining what would have otherwise been a halfway-decent
sci-fi flick. As far as I'm concerned, though, they're pretty much
the only thing of interest in the movie. The film was released
when I was four years old, and one of my fondest early memories is owning
the model kit of V.I.N.CENT. released many years ago by MPC. (Actually,
I'm sure I must have broken it not too long after I got it, since my most
vivid memories are of building it, not actually playing with it.)
As an adult, I toyed with the idea of finding a replacement on eBay
for a while, and by a stroke of luck I finally managed to snag one in a dutch
auction for only a fraction of the price it normally goes for.
Construction: My intent was to make
V.I.N.CENT. (whose name stands for Vital Information Necessary Centralized)
as authentic to the film as possible. There isn't much photo reference
available online (there were only a few grainy movie stills on the model
kit box), so I gathered up my own reference materials. The 1979 storybook
and record album set produced by Disneyland Records has some very nice movie
photos, and as such was invaluable. I also ended up sitting down in
front of my VHS copy of the movie and drew up a working color model, paying
particular attention to details like the colors of his control panel lights.
The model kit is pretty much molded in the correct colors (mostly grey
with some red parts, a few translucent pieces, and a whole mess of
vacuum-metalized arm attachments), but I nevertheless ended up painting just
about every piece. I painted over his red parts to make them more glossy
and metallic, while his legs, feet, and center body section became a flat
black (I also painted the inside of his helmet black as well). I painted
his helmet and body silver, paying close attention to the brush strokes,
following the contours of his body to create the illusion that he was made
from polished steel.
I was a little worried that the decals wouldn't
work correctly (this model kit is over 20 years old, after all) but to my
surprise, they were still perfectly viable. The eyes, name stamp
and labor force markings, and control panels are all decals. The only
ones I didn't bother to apply were the black stickers for the audio sensors
(I just painted them instead) and the front computer screen on his body (I
mixed some green paint and clear gloss and painted the translucent piece
from the inside).
In addition to painting the model, I also made
some minor physical improvements to its design. V.I.N.CENT. has numerous
interchangeable arm and claw attachments (over 20 removable accessories in
all), and the instructions specifically explain not to glue them in place
so that you can swap them if you want to display him with different equipment.
The only problem here is that you have to glue the side panels in place
(in the movie, these panels swing open when he extends his claws). The
panels themselves don't move on the model, and there's no way to attach them
without gluing them in position, which kind of defeats the point of having
doors in the first place. So, I decided to make a minor alteration,
creating a hinge for each door by gluing a section of plastic-coated paper
clip to the inside of each door and drilling holes in the model for the paper
clip to rest inside. Now, the doors can open a little when he's using
his extended claws, and can still close when his retracted claws are in
place.
The door near the top of his body (which reveals
the buzzsaw blade he used
to destroy Maximillian in the movie) also had no way of being attached without
gluing it in place. Basically, either you glue this door (which means
you can't attach the buzzsaw arm) or you leave it off entirely. The
challenge for me, then, was to create a hinge that was both hidden inside
the body, but still allowed the door to open all the way. I ended up
using another section of plastic-coated paper clip, but this time I slipped
the metal out of the plastic sleeve and glued only the plastic part to the
inside of the door. I also cut some small grooves out of the piece
that attached to the inside of his body (containing the peg hole for the
center arm attachment), which held the plastic sleeve in place. It's
kind of cheatsy, since this isn't a true hinge (opening the door simply threads
some of the plastic sleeve through the gaps that I cut) but it gets the job
done.
Comments: This poor project was fraught
with problems. For starters, my art room used to be right next to the
laundry room, and after somebody left the laundry room door open a couple
of times, the resultant humidity caused by the airborne moisture from the
clothes dryer caused the decals to start peeling off. Also, I had to
pack up and move shortly after completing this kit, but since I didn't want
to risk packing him up and damaging him, I carried him with me in the moving
truck. That turned out to be a mistake, since all the rattling around
must have shaken loose one of his front-mounted blasters. I managed
to create a new one, using the remaining blaster to cast a mold out
of Sculpey. It was an imperfect solution, but suitable for display
purposes. After the move, though, the model kit also got whacked
accidentally with a metal pole, breaking off the helmet and head dome, so
I had to drill a new hole in the center of the helmet and thread the support
peg through the top. Poor V.I.N.CENT.!
Later, I bought a second V.I.N.CENT. model kit
with the intention of turning it into Old B.O.B., the early-model robot
V.I.N.CENT. meets aboard the U.S.S. Cygnus, since he never got a model kit
of his own. The acquisition of a second kit worked out nicely, since
I was able to use parts from the new kit to replace the missing blaster,
giving the slightly misshapen one to B.O.B. This also gave me a chance
to redo the decals, soaking V.I.N.CENT. in hot water to loosen the old decals
before applying the new ones. (This time I coated him with an enamel
spray to protect the new decals. This made the flat black parts a little
more glossy than I would have liked, but it's a small price to pay if it
means the decals won't come off again.) Expect to see a separate page
for Old B.O.B. as soon as I complete the project.
As of October 2009, this page is the very first
search result when you do a query for "V.I.N.CENT. model kit." (The
fact that you only get 36 search results does in no way diminish this fact
in any way.) |
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