“Under the cellophane wrapper, the parts!”: The Secret History of Kitbashing*

Dodge AT-AT Kit-bash

From chapter 13 of Lew Voltz’s Gluestick Traces, the definitive history of model railroading’s punk era*:

The term ‘kitbash’ first appeared in print in the 1967 book, The Society of Spectacular Models, by French Groucho Marxist theorist, Polystyrene philosopher, and model railroading expressionist Guy Dekit. In the book Dekit argued that capitalist production of polystyrene model kits that began in the 1950s and skyrocketed in popularity throughout the 1960s was a debasement of the centuries old folk art of making miniatures of beloved, iconic, and worshipful objects of personal interest. Dekit considered the once creative activity was being steamrollered by a mass-market simulacra of true model making.

The book was the culmination of many years work by Dekit and a number of other plastic radicals who formed the group Polystyrenist International in 1959 (the same year the first edition of The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroading Terms was published), whose purpose was to critique, divert, and subvert the tidal wave of polystyrene-based model construction. 

Dekit developed a détournement, which he referred to as ‘bashing’, whereby the components of several commercial polystyrene models were used to construct miniatures that held no resemblance to the objects that could be constructed by following official instruction sheets. Bashing was often an act of performance, undertaken in a party like atmosphere (aka a ‘bash’, or using the term of the time, Le Bash), and commonly began with a shout of, “Under the cellophane wrapper, the parts!” The bashing of polystyrene components became so strongly associated with Dekit that the activity was colloquially known as ‘bashing de kit’, which quickly became today’s plain, old 'kitbashing'.

But for every radical intervention is an associated mainstream recuperation, and kitbashing’s started with none other than Dekit’s closest colleague and PI co-founder, Au Courant. 

In the mid-1970s Courant broke with the PI and formed Craft Light And Magic (CLAM**) for the purpose of building kitbashed miniatures for the movie War in the Stars. The movie was a monumental success, but not necessarily for Courant, who lost control of CLAM through some complicated legal maneuvering by his investors. Fed up with movies, and ostracized by his old PI colleagues, he took a job offer from an American model railroading magazine and left France forever.

Courant went on to global acclaim with his innovative kitbashing techniques and educational programs; however, he and Dekit were never to speak again. That didn’t stop Dekit from commenting on Courant and his work in just about every interview he ever gave. It was clear Dekit had mixed feelings for Courant, who Dekit would often flippantly refer to as The Dark Lord of Kitbashing. 

On the one hand Dekit’s comments towards Courant could be spiteful and derogatory***, but were just as often admiring and praiseful***. He admired Courant’s ability to help show a powerful way forward to restore creativity and authenticity to the ancient art in the face of overwhelming kitization, but frequently condemned Courant’s success as simply a way for the companies to further increase sales of their plastic kits, thereby continuing to help degrade the art.

Dekit and Courant never reconciled.

Hot Rod Falcon Kit-bash

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*It should go without saying that this ‘history’ is completely fictional, and has no relation to any person, place, or thing either living or dead.

---------------------------------------------------------------

**Urban legend has it that within CLAM an entire CLAM-based insider speak developed that included such terms as: CLAMity, meaning a kitbash that had gone seriously wrong; CLAMbaked, meaning a CLAM employee was exhibiting symptoms of breathing too much plastic solvent; CLAMedup, meaning someone had signed a non-disclosure agreement with CLAM; and so on.

***When Dekit was being spiteful and derogatory towards Courant he’d refer to CLAM as Courant’s Lazy American Modellers, and when he was admiring and praiseful CLAM became Courant’s Legendary American Modellers. It’s not known what Dekit was thinking when he said these things as Courant and CLAM had parted ways several years prior to Courant’s great success.

From above

Kit # 5978

Hey kids! Collect 'em all: #5973, Moore's Balsa Products; #5975, Speedy Andrew's Surf Shop; and #5977, Cal's Coastal Cafe.

Blue skies

A couple of weeks ago I submitted some photos of the Loonar Module's de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver to Max's Models for his Canadian Group Build video. I was pleased to see my photos were included, and that one up there was one of them. I shot it the same day I was outside taking the ones of lake water. This is the blurb I wrote to accompany the photos:

This is my build up of Osborn Model Kits’ 1/87 scale DHC-2 Beaver. It’s a laser cut wood kit that I built last winter. The prototype was manufactured by de Havilland Canada, and many were used by the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. My paint scheme and markings are reminiscent of those flown by Lands and Forests, but aren’t 100% accurate. This little plane now resides on my model railroad.

I like that picture, but the sky's colour isn't right. It's the wrong shade of blue for a sunny day in southern Ontario. Now, over on the right, that's a classic sunny, summer Ontario sky blue - at least as far as my camera can capture it.

These days I'm starting to gain an appreciation for layout lighting. In most photos I see, and have taken, the lighting is poor, and doesn't properly convey the essence of the scenes being recorded.

For my outside photos I can make improvements by changing my backdrop, trying different orientations with respect to the sun, and taking pictures in various natural light conditions, but I'm not sure what I'll do when the weather forces me back inside. Well, today's the first day of summer, so I'm not going to worry about that problem until the snow flies again.

Birch grove

Last week I spent some time finishing off the three birch trees that have been languishing on my workbench. 

I discussed armature construction in a previous post, but once that was completed I was a bit puzzled on how to finish them. After trying a few things, and discarding some bad ideas, I finally settled on this approach:

1. Each armature had two coats of white glue painted on to help hold the branches and limbs in place. The nice thing about white glue is the armatures are still fairly flexible when dry, so more adjusting can be done if necessary.

2. A piece of grey duct tape was cut into 2mm wide strips, and these strips were wound over the trunks and major limbs. I made sure the strips didn't overlap, but left no gaps. Once applied I made sure the strips were fully stuck in place.

3. The taped armatures were then painted with two coats of white acrylic paint. 

4. The end branches were loosely painted with brown and grey acrylic paints.

5. The birches' distinctive black trunk slashes and bruises were then painted on with flat black acrylic paint.

6. When the trunks were dry they were painted with loose washes of Tamiya X-19 Smoke acrylic paint.

7. Stringy tufts were teased from a piece of Woodland Scenics Green Poly Fiber for the foliage bulk. These tufts were slid onto the branch ends and then fluffed out. The poly fiber tufts on the rightmost tree are way too dense and had to be thinned out - more on this further down in this post.

8. I then sifted out some fine material from a bag of Scenic Express's Summer Lawn Flock & Turf. The tufts were soaked with Mod Podge Ultra Matte spray, and the fine flocking was lightly sprinkled on. The key word is lightly. Unfortunately I got a bit of flocking on some trunk sections and I need to take a little more time to remove it - it looks like some weird moss.

9. When completely dry the leaf canopies were trimmed with scissors to get rid of stray strands and clumps.

I thought the resulting trees didn't look too bad, but the one on the right was still weird. I didn't want to discard it, so eventually I did two modifications:

1. I pulled the poly fiber off and discarded about 3/4 of it. What was left I teased out into something more stringy and see-through before reinstalling. And ....

... 2) I cut off most of the trunk so that the tree was now one of those examples you see that have a short main trunk where two trunks branch off. 

You hear of film on the cutting room floor, well there's a trunk on the workshop floor :-)

There's the modified tree. It's still a bit odd, especially the canopy, which got a little more fluffing and trimming later, but it's looking much better.

Individually, these birches aren't super detailed, and I still need to work on canopy shaping, but on the layout, placed together in a grove, and photographed in sunlight, I'm quite happy with them. I plan to build maybe two or three more for placement elsewhere on the layout to balance out the composition. Hopefully on those I can work out the canopy and trunk moss issues.