In the January 2006 Charlie Conway won the Kitbash Contest with a freight house. It was a great model, but Mr. Conway used pieces of the model to make masters and then cast the major wall sections from resin. As far as I can tell from the article, none of the actual kit pieces made it into the model (other than being used as parts of the masters for making molds). Normally a kitbash is where the actual pieces of a kit are modified or combined with other kits to create a model. My personal feeling is that the majority of the structure has to be made of pieces from the kit. They can be modified, cut, trimmed, added to, but the basic kit has to survive into the finished model.
If this model had been entered into an NMRA contest, could it have been considered a scratchbuilt model?
I have no dispute with Mr. conway’s results or techniques.
I voted not kitbashed but I must confess, I didn’t see the artical in question. To me there is a fine shaded line here between scratch built or kitbashed. To me scratch built means building something from scratch, period. From the info here, he made duplicates or another kit if you will and used it. Now this also, in my mind brings up another question. If a body purchased a ready to roll caboose and a ready to roll flat car and made a wrecker tender or transfer caboose, would this be kit bashing??? A kit wasn’t used in this senerio. When all said, I don’t have a problem with the out come of the contest. Ken
“Kit” in “kitbash” doesn’t mean you must use only parts from models that come unassembled in kits. Kitbash means using parts from different models (or kits) to make a different model.
I believe the model in the article was “scratchbashed” - it used some parts from kits but made a majority of them for the model.
But I don’t work for MR, so my thoughts don’t really count. It’s their ballgame. If someone made a model out of modeling clay, they could say it won first place if they wanted to. This isn’t a democracy.
A kit bash is joining 2 or more kits together and not casting walls or any other part…You see a “kit bash” is something the average modeler can do simply by joining kit parts and other readily available parts the main structure… .
Now in my opinion a kit bash structure could include using DPM walls and door sections as well as ABS plastic and still stay within the perimeters of kit bashing as long as 2 or more kits are being used for forming the base structure of the kit bash…However casting walls and other parts does not fit into the perimeters of kit bashing.
Bob and Chip. Yep I agree with you here and only voted and posted for conversation sake I guess is the best answer I can give. I only used the ready to roll scenerio to show how trivial all this is. Kind of wish I hadn’t responed now. Again, I have no problem with the out come of that contest. Ken
According to the official unabridged dictionary by Ken:
kitbash: Take a kit and bash it, then make something else from it. Best way to bash is with the proper sized hammer.
It’s definitely a kitbash: he took stock kit parts and whacked 'em together to create a completely new structure. So what if he only used one set of kit parts, and then cast the rest of the sides? Seems like a good way to avoid a lot of tedious cutting, filing, sanding and shaping to me.
Of course, he could have scratchbuilt the thing in about the same amount of time…
Guess we’re dealing with the evolution of language here. For me, kitbashing has always meant putting 2 or more kits together. As such, I technically don’t see it as a kitbash.
Maybe we need a new word for what Charlie has it: kitcast.
Anyway, it’s not that big a deal to me. The model is very nicely done–even though it intimidated me to see all the work he did. [^]
The only thing I can see was a few of the window and door castings. All the freight doors were scratchbuilt, the walls were made of resin castings he made, the roof was scratchbuilt.
I don’t think this was a kitbash. First he started with a built up model and took it apart. Second I’m not sure the model saved him that much time since it was primarily a source of patterns that he probably could have done himself. Third the kits were not the primary source of parts. I normally think of a kit bash as combining two or more kits with maybe a few parts from Grandt Line etc. The idea is to treat the kits as a box of parts that you use to build something else. The key here is that you use the parts in the kits to build something.
Enjoy
Paul
Technically, it’s a bash,of some sort, but in the way we’re used to taking two or more kits,same or different and combining to make one. Art Curren,who was the master of kitbash would NOT have made molds of same kit, he always used simple structures to bash into something different.When he needed an extra wall space he used blank plastic and covered it with ground foam to give the look of vine covered walls, but mainly used kit parts.
I been thinking this over…I am going to sum it up by saying its another blunder by the MR staff…What was they thinking? Better what’s the other guys thinking that enter a correctly done kitbash?
Is there any experience modelers left on the staff of MR?
Kit-bashed…scratch-bashed…mishmashed… sounds to me like MR is allowing greater flexibility (or looser interpretations of the rules) in the kitbash contest. I would dearly love to have the skills evident in any of the items submitted for this contest. Whether it’s two kits, pieces parts of six kits or scratchbuilt, I like the results. What’s in a definition? My congratulations to the modelers who entered this event. Great work!
John,Lots is in the definition of the word “kit bash”…And this structure doesn’t even come close to that definition. .I will tell you what it is though…Its another slap in the face for true kit bashers.
The model may have been the best of those submitted to the contest, and the one that would present itself in an article the best, so it could have been chosen for that reason rather than because it wasn’t a real kitbash.
Maybe in MR’s next photo contest someone can submit a very nicely done painting of a train scene and see if it places. What is a photo anyway, but a depiction of a scene? So is a painting! Good enough! It’s a winner!
Bob,Why not enter a Atlas engine in a locomotive super detail contest and call it super detail because the end railings was added by the modeler?? [}:)]
As far as a photo contest why not use a scene from Train Sim or from a TS add on? Like you said its a photo…[:0]
Since when did a kitbash require more than one kit? I can bash a single Rix board & batten warehouse into more than 20 structures (including 12+ sheds). Can’t nobody tell me those buildings aren’t kitbashed!
He used the windows from the kit, and he used the kit’s walls to make the master for the resin molds. If nothing else, he kitbashed the masters. Of course, most resin manufacturers use some kit parts as the basis of their masters; it’s pretty common.
True, what the staff of MR picked as their winner wasn’t what we all think of as a “traditional” kitbash. So what? The model was still created by mostly using a stock kit (now only available as RTR, but it WAS a kit at one point) to make the base structure.
Kitbash, scratchbash, scratch with some stock parts from a kit…it’s all real MODELLING, and we should applaude it. The guy could have just opened the RTR box and plunked it down onto his layout, after all!