Stereotyping of Model Maker’s Capabilities

Building reputation and long term relationships with customers is one of the primary objectives of model making business’ marketing.  Clients interested in model making services in most cases will become returning customers. Whenever a client is a museum, an architect, a product developer or a designer, it is unlikely that the project they commissioned you for was the one and only. By the nature, such businesses will do other projects in the future, where they also will be in need of model maker’s assistance. If you treated them right, followed the client’s requirements, provided a high quality product by reasonable price, that client will come back for more.

Depending of the type and nature of the initial project a client might, however, to form a certain opinion of your capabilities, which might affect your whole further relationships with that client. Despite model maker’s effort to present and market his universal capabilities, a stereotype, which limits these capabilities might be imprinted on your client’s mind after completion of the initial project or a series of initial projects.

Model Maker’s Rules#1

These are the cardinal rules that I figured and set for myself. Some of them help me to discipline and sometimes even to overcome myself. I don’t claim that I know everything, but these rules really work. I like to say that these rules are all Number One – none of them prioritize over the other, they all equally important. Rules themselves might look senseless so I will try to explain each one of them and a situation where it applies.

Don’t be lazy.

How does this apply on model making? We heard it many times, since childhood: “Don’t be lazy, go buy a milk”, “Don’t be lazy, do your homework”, “Don’t be lazy, do something with your life” and such…  There is no reason to get offended – this rule has nothing to do with real laziness – merely a figure of speech. It just that quite often we put ourselves in the situation where we do a mistake which could be prevented by doing a little effort. Let’s say, you are running out of a specific paint for your model. A store where you can buy more is just 10 minutes drive. However, you are tired, you almost finished the project and maybe you have a similar paint in the storage room. So you find a similar paint, but it is not similar enough, so you have to paint parts that are nearby the part that you just painted, and a model looks even worse. Remember, you almost finished the project, it is late and you are tired. On top of that you are staring to get angry and frustrated. If you are smart enough, you will do the only right thing – you will stop and buy tomorrow morning the paint that you needed, which means you could avoid all this situation just by doing a little effort and buying the right paint in the first place.  I can go on and on with other examples of situations where saying this to yourself will prevent self-entrapment and stupid mistakes. So, don’t be lazy.

Nothing is as scary as it looks.
You got a nice project, agreement is signed, the deposit is paid, now it’s a time to do it. The project is complicated, lots of reference, especially if it is a large architectural model, you barely see it whole. On top of it, there is an interactive system or some other gimmick that you have to design and incorporate. SCARY! Remember: “Nothing is as scary as it looks”. Say it to yourself. Stop panicking. If you are experienced confident model maker your brain already started to work on the project subconsciously, processing the information, building the model and calculating options. Send your crew home, clean up the bench, unroll the drawings, start organizing and marking them… Soon you will find yourself calm and starting to understand the project and plotting the way of building it. It is normal if you will not understand it all at once, you have to understand the main points, break it into stages and extract enough information to start building the first stage – the rest come later. Which brings me to the next rule.

If you don’t know what to do, start doing something.
Same project, next step. You are not confused anymore, you got it in general, you see where the ends come to ends. Still, the project is big, you see only a big picture, you walked two, maybe three steps of the way – the rest is still be foggy. First of all and again – it is fine, it is normal. Imagine this: a dozen of architects, engineers and landscape architects were designing this project for months, working on every detail, making and fixing mistakes, revising the design. It is impossible for one model maker to understand all aspects of the project just a few hours after he got in his hands a set of drawings. It will take time. It will take work. It will take breaking the project in steps, determining the first few, and start working on them. The rest will be clear as you will move forward. However, you are in frustration again. What are the first steps? Where to start? The clock is ticking, you keep sitting surrounded by drawings and do nothing. If you do not know what to do, start doing something. Anything… Build a base for the model, start making the most insignificant buildings or elements, but these that are fully understood and do not pose any trap. Trust you mind again – it is already working, building an order of work and solving incoming problems. It will come to you, will become clear and organized. While doing the first steps you are calming down, you let your conciseness to be busy with a task in hands (no matter how small it is), you start feeling satisfaction from the very fact that you broke the deadlock and moving forward and by all that you are enabling your professional trained mind to do the main job. Tomorrow you will know more already and will see the next steps.

Don’t do better.
This is my golden rule. It saved me so many times! It has nothing to do with low quality or “Good enough” concept. Here is a simple example. You glued a part, right where it suppose to be, the part is good, it stands at exact angle as you need it, it glued securely and clean. All is good. Of course, way to perfection is endless… And you decided to correct the part placement, just a little bit, just one micron… to push it, to straighten it a little bit. Stop and say to yourself: “Don’t do better”. I will tell you what will happen otherwise: you will push, and turn, the part will be ripped off, scratch a nearby area and fall under the table where you will be looking for it for the next half hour, than cleaning it, touching up scratches and gluing the same part again, at the same position where it was. This rule is yours to use, take my word – you will be grateful each time you “didn’t do better.”

Stop on time.
It is my other golden rule. It might look like “Don’t do better”, yet it applies on a different type of situations. Example: you applying scenery on architectural model. You glued trees and bushes, a few cars, benches where required and people figurines. It is all good, mission accomplished. Learn to stop on time and not let yourself to get carried away. Of course, you can continue and add more elements, different ones, create a nice scenes, to go on and on endlessly, making the model a real piece of art, unbelievably realistic and rich. However, it is not your objective – you goal is to build a model of architectural design, not of your ability to create rich and high detailed scenery and scenes. You do it for a client, not for yourself – you are limited by time, price and project requirements. You are a professional, therefore your time has a cost. Stop on time! You completed the project, move to the next one or go have a rest.

You might be genuinely surprised to discover that these rules apply not only on model making but can be lifesaving in other profession and just in everyday life.

Model Maker’s Rules#2

If there are model maker’s rules number 1, than logically there should be rules number 2 as well. I was asked this question a few times, which made me thinking: “Really, there are should be rules that are also important, but less in use, not so much life and work saving ones. More like tips to do a good job”. I started to memorize what else I say to my crew relatively often and I came up with this:

Be in control.
Training crews I did a stunning observation. The most common reason for making a not so good job, inaccurate and not clean, is that inexperienced model maker lets material, tool, glue or other factor to control him rather than controlling the factor. When you make a model, every operation should be done as you need it, not as it comes out. If a material does not give you a result that you need, take another or figure other way to treat the material. If a tool does the same, take another or, sometimes, make another one. If a glue is too thin, or thick, or curing too fast or too slow, use another glue or figure a way to force the glue to lay and work as you need it, maybe use a combination of glues instead of single one. In any case you have to be in control.

Don’t turn operation into a process.
Let’s define operation and a process. Operation is a single, relatively simple action. Process is a more complex part of model building which includes a series of operations, and therefore takes more effort and time. For the sake of simplicity, building a base for a model is a process. Painting of this base’s trim is an operation. Knowing and understanding your objective and requirements will ensure that particular operation will take as much time as it should and not more. Knowing your methods, tools and aids will work the same.
Say, you have to mask the rest of the model in order to paint a trim (which is also an operation – a preparatory operation). You selected wrong masking tape, less adhesive that you need. It did not stick well to the edges, plus you neglected to cover well the whole model – there are gaps in masking. A masking tape started to peel off during the painting, you have to glue it back on, reinforce with another layer, which already affected your calculated operation time. When you took off the mask you see that the paint went over the edge to the masked area and on top of that paint broke through the gap and affected the model itself as well. Simple operation from now on is turning to be a series of painful and unfortunate touch ups and clean ups, a two-three hours process instead of  10min operation.
Very often model maker or the crew spending time on cleaning up, finishing and painting areas of a part that falls into an invisible zone of the model because they working automatically, without clear understanding of the part on which they are working. Sometimes, sadly, the crew is just simply reluctant, working without counting the hours. It is a job of head model maker to stay on top of what the crew is doing and limit a time spending.
Remember that each occurrence of operation, that went wrong and turned into a process is money streaming right out of your pocket.

Think forward.
It is one of the very important abilities of a model maker – to think two, three, four steps forward, to premeditate a particular operation, no matter how simple it looks. Surprisingly even a simple operation has its order and may contain a threat to the outcome. Once such threat is not premeditated an operation will fail, trapping model maker into  wasting time to be fixing a mistake that should not be happening in the first place if a model maker would do this operation first in his head, discover the trap and figure the way to avoid it or overcome. With experience most of the operations and “thinking forward” become automatic.  Sometimes I do an operation without even realizing why I do it this way or another. When I was asked by crew members why I do it this way, or in that order, I was rather have difficulty to explain it, because it sank into subconsciousness.
Thinking forward is also extremely important for your safety. As you premeditating an operation you see where there is a threat to your safety, how you might hurt yourself and prevent it before happening.

Use what’s ready.
It is a must for model maker to be able to fabricate anything from scratch. However, in professional model making actually making everything from scratch is absolutely not necessary. Another way around – one of the first things that you have to do when starting a project is to determine prefabricated elements that you can buy off shelf and use on the model. That’s why knowledge of model making products is one of the requirements. Classic example is scenery elements for architectural model. It would be senseless to fabricate all trees, bushes, cars and people figurines rather than to buy them. Using all that is ready saves your time, your and your client’s money and making model beautiful by very little effort and investment. In most cases a project is one of a kind model or replica, therefore licensing and copyright laws are respected – by buying legally your supplies you are automatically purchasing a “license” from a manufacturer to use this particular copy for your purpose. However, beware using pre-manufactured elements in product development. You cannot take product created by someone else and “bash” it into something else and obligated to turn down a client that require such action.

Let robots work for you.
Technology is not an enemy nor a competitor for professional model maker. You must see it as your aid, a new sophisticated tool that helps you to do a better work, faster and hassle free. Don’t kill yourself over a part that will be more efficiently to produce by one of rapid prototyping methods – it is not a matter of pride. You have more important things to do, so let robot do it for you.