Colonial Viper Car (PaperJams entry 2021)

[Revell-Fan]

Following @shadree 's call to participate in the 2021 PaperJams I have picked a (hopefully) suitable topic: The notorious Viper Car.

Never heard of it? Well, here it is, folks:









The Viper car is a street legal car built by Dean Shorey, the master ride mechanic for Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester, NY. The base was an old small-block paired with a mail truck. It seats one person, has a cassette deck but no a/c and no bumpers.

This vehicle was on my todo list for quite some time but I had no real reason to tackle it - until now. I fired up SketchUp, aligned the pictures and started to shape this beast:





Basically the components are drawn on the canvas in parallel mode. Using the perspective mode will definitely prevent you from moving the faces correctly. The 2D shapes were then pulled out into full 3D elements.







The wheels are all components, meaning they are all alike. If you edit one component all the others are edited the same way immediately. That saves much time.



The bottom was pretty tricky because I had a hole which needed to be closed. However, whenever I pulled out the bottom piece it protruded longer than the wings which led to a very weird appearance.





After a while I found a way to remove the excess. The canopy windows were offsetted and cut out of the frame. The parts were then unfolded and textured in CorelDRAW. Stay tuned to see the first images of the printed parts!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

COOL! Now @Rhaven Blaack needs to build his Thunderfighter car.

 

[mijob]

Nice job on this model and you are a master in using sketch up.

 

[micahrogers]

Please tell me this is gonna be available here! This is so cool.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Thank you all! Yes, it's gonna be available here, too.

 

[shadree]

Sweet!

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I am looking forward to trying my hand at building this!!!

 

[Revell-Fan]

Cool! I'm dealing with some fitting issues on the inserts now, so no new pics today. The first version was too small, the second a tad tight. The third try should be fine.

 

[zathros]

I'd make it a single front wheel. 3 wheel vehicles with the weight on the two wheeled end handle excellently. This guy could have made his Viper car with a single front wheel and it would have handled excellent, as the weight is on the two wheeled end. Too bad he hadn't passed it by us, I could have shown him the theory, how to set the ackerman, castor, caamber, etc. Oh well.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

I'd make it a single front wheel. 3 wheel vehicles with the weight on the two wheeled end handle excellently. This guy could have made his Viper car with a single front wheel and it would have handled excellent, as the weight is on the two wheeled end. Too bad he hadn't passed it by us, I could have shown him the theory, how to set the ackerman, castor, caamber, etc. Oh well.

Good idea! I'd be curious about how the steering would work.

 

[Revell-Fan]

I'd make it a single front wheel. 3 wheel vehicles with the weight on the two wheeled end handle excellently. This guy could have made his Viper car with a single front wheel and it would have handled excellent, as the weight is on the two wheeled end. Too bad he hadn't passed it by us, I could have shown him the theory, how to set the ackerman, castor, caamber, etc. Oh well.

Good idea! I'd be curious about how the steering would work.

This would have looked even better because the front axle had been completely omitted. The basic structure would be similar to an ape. The vehicle, not the animal!



(insert Roadrunner's MEEP-MEEP here)

 

[Revell-Fan]

Please excuse the late reply. I have a very busy job and am working on a few other projects at the same time. Now then. After successfully texturing the parts in CorelDRAW I have started the test build. Here come the first pictures!



As you can see I was working very hard on this kit. The small size of some of the parts made it a bit challenging but with patience it can be done.



I started with the nose and the cockpit. Unfortunately I worked so fast that I did not take any pics of the interior assembly but it is not all that different than the one from my 1/48 Colonial Viper kit. Basically you build a tub, put the seat into place and glue it to the nose piece whilst it is still open. Then you add the rear plate and close everything.



This closeup shows you the little detail I worked into the kit. It is still pretty basic but it helps to bring it to life. Since I have no pictures of the real dashboard I had to make up the detail myself. You see a retro-style steering wheel with a Galactica-style honk button. The cassette deck was important to me since this info was given in the description of the car. Usually that deck would be located on the bottom of the dashboard, however, if I had put it there it would have vanished completely. So I decided to put it right on top. I hope the original creator forgives me for that but heck - this vehicle is so wild that I think this will only add to its charm. :-D



The nose insert features re-used lights from my Landram model. Please note the license plate!





The main thrusters are simple tubes with front and back inserts. It took a few tries to size them correctly.





The wings are straight forward, too.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

This is coming together nicely!!!

 

[Revell-Fan]

These are the parts for the fuselage.







Since the side thrusters are embraced by the fuselage it would have been impossible to add them without issues. So I decided to cut the mounts in halves and make a two-piece assembly. As a nice side effect the texture aligns exactly in this spot so that the seam line should become completely invisible in the end.



A future update will show you exactly what I mean.





What would a Colonial Viper car be without greeblies? I have added a lot of these for you to spruce up the kit.



I laminated them directly to the surface to save time. If you want to achieve a stronger 3D look feel free to thicken them up a bit by laminating to additional layers of paper.





And these are particularly made for my dear friend Rhaven! :-D





The cannons are complete. I am now working on the wheels. Stay tuned!

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I really like how this is taking shape!!!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

Wow! Good work! Looking good.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Thank you all!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

I'm looking forward to @Rhaven Blaack building a 1:1 version!

 

[Revell-Fan]

He'd be more busy building a Thunderfighter car instead!

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

That is a great idea!!!
NO!!!