The cockpit
The consoles are assembled starting from transparent styrene and laser printings of the walls, the contrast of those being reinforced by a layer of Black-out which was also useful for the photoetched typons. The seats and padding are in Sintra.
The electrical system
The lighting of the whole of the sphere is provided by a 4 W miniature neon, its choke is slipped under the pod bay floor.
The power supply is fixed in a HAL 9000 control unit outside the ship. The adapter for the pod leds is also there.
The base
The base is a black wood plank in which are fixed two metal tubes sliding on the t-squares of the central spine. At the rear there are connections for the plugs coming from the power supply, the electric wires are glued in a throat under the base then they go up in the front tube. A small photoetched brass plate points out the name and scale of the model.
DECORATION
Final painting is satin white sprayed after a gray primer coat to emphasize the details. Two excellent makes you can find in the french supermarkets: Altona or Herpé. They do not flow and are less expensive than their counterparts specialized for the models! A slight weathering with graphite powder (lead of pencil) dirties the ship right what it is necessary, the various nuances sheets are painted with Humbrol on the brush. Lastly, several dry brushings of matt white and a last very diluted layer make it possible to attenuate contrasts. The ideal would be to use an airbrush, but I still do not have one, therefore it is the brush!
When painting was finished, I acknowledge that I moderately liked the result. Being accustomed to see the movie in video, with always very hard shots in term of luminous contrast, therefore details embedded in the shade, the fact of seeing the sphere as a model with large gray plates shocked me. Even so this decoration looks like that carried out at the time by the model makers. The movie rerelease on large screen finally made me realize that it is well this decoration which was used, with effects of weathering that the graphite powder method makes it convincing.
Once and for all, the models produced for 2001 are not immaculate like the video or certain photographs could let it think since all these years!
FINAL ASSEMBLING
March 11, 2001, in other words 4 days before the final date of handing-over the photographs for the article, Discovery is completely assembled at 10.35 PM. It was hard, some final improvements were necessary to overcome: light modification of the bay ceiling to be able to pass a connection screw for the half-spheres, addition of plastic discs in front of the engine block to fill missing 2 mm (?!)...
Discovery is finally there, in front of my eyes, the cockpit and the bay are lit by this pale light which is seen in the movie, and the pod tries to perforate darkness by the power of its 4 tiny headlights. The final shape of the ship seems respected, but I anyway have some regrets for some details (too small diameter of the bay doors, therefore quite a lot of details to the wrong locations on the sphere - heritage of the wrong initial scale -, left door which should be exactly like the Aries one, reactors grids not enough driven). Time is not any more with the modifications, Discovery will remain such as it is...
The photographs are made rapidly, I am so much concentrated on those which must look like the movie shots that I take very few of the model details. A second session takes place, and all the photographs are delivered to Jean-Marc Deschamps on March 16 , for final composing of the article.