Hi, CRS!
Besides the occassional free download available throughout the internet, I buy all of my models online, a good portion of which are digital downloads. I have also purchased many CDs from places like Fiddler's Green and other sellers who offer their models on a CD. I have many published models which are available only in printed format, but I still don't like to take a chance and cut them up, in case I make a mistake or I find a fitting problem during constructions. It has become a habit to make a copy of every printed model by scanning as a backup. As I mentioned, I am lucky my printer is fairly good so I print the scanned version and work with that, which gives me the option of printing it out at reduced scale where desired. I can also open some of the scans into Photoshop Elements and make alterations I want to the original scans, which I then save as a separate file. I have do this regularly, my most recent being a recolor of Fiddler's Green Yak 38. It also gives me a bit of practice in designing on a very elementary level some aspects of the original model to fit my needs. I also use watercolors to color a number of parts during the build, which is why I don't hesitate to scratch build parts of the model where I feel I can do a better version than the kit part provides. If you haven't seen it I did just this with the Krefeld which I rescaled to 1/1000, originally a 1/500 scale freighter from WHV. The most attractive part of this is how I have almost unlimited options to work with a given model, be it in a published paper format or digital download (unless the orignal file is locked and I can't re-open it to work with it). The actual printing cost is relative cheap, which is good because I make a lot of mistakes during the course of the build.:grin: Oh, the printing cartridge can be expensive, as is the card paper, but it sure beats buying two or more printed copies of the same model when I make a mistake. However, I like buying the models in printed form, especially when the particular model is not available elsewhere as a downloaded version, mostly because it helps keep the designers going in their wonderful work and able to offer newer and better kits in the future. I am very sensitive to their plight, as it was not so long ago that there were not as many models available online...yep, I can remember those days, and they weren't all that long ago. Since there are no stores around where I live that sell them I am lucky many folks have taken on the job of opening up online shops to sell paper models, and I want to keep that industry active and alive, for personal and perhaps selfish reasons.
Gee, I hope Barry doesn't come back and feel we hi-jacked his build thread.
ops:
I would be more than happy to continue this type of discussion in a new thread if you or anyone else is interested...I think it's great to understand how we each work in our area of the world in paper modeling, as I am sure there are many differences that dictate how we go about pursuing or love of paper modeling. As I mentioned earlier, I feel many great ideas come from such discussions and one can always learn a lot from another given the chance to talk about it...one of the very valuable and attractive things about our hobby which I think is somewhat unique to our pursuit, at least that has been my experience compared to the older hobbies like wooden ship models.
Cheers!
Jim
