Tail End Charlie
New Instructions in the Hybrid Series Kits
Text: Jakub Nademlejnský
When we at our company profile our typical customer, we always end up with a man between the ages of 40 and 60 - someone who can still see the models clearly, the kind of person who is creative and would rather stay home than go out to a bar for a beer in the evenings. Instead, he prefers to retreat to his little den, gluing together his models until midnight (and some even later), while his wife is at ease because her husband is home and she doesn’t have to worry about when he’ll actually come back from the bar. And when it comes to personality traits, we almost always place our customers on the more conservative end of the spectrum in terms of how they perceive the world around them.
Which is quite a paradox, because, in my opinion, the modeling world is actually changing at a breakneck pace. New companies are constantly emerging; both model production processes and approaches to overcoming various technological limitations are being innovated; various small companies are coming up with fresh solutions; state-of-the-art technologies are being implemented in plastic modeling; and innovation is, in fact, just around every corner. Here at Eduard, we’re actually doing nothing else but innovating all the time. Every new model our designers work on brings new solutions.
Just this weekend, our chief designer, Standa Archman, demonstrated to visitors at our booth at the exhibition in Nitra, Slovakia, a new solution for connecting the wing to the fuselage on the new 1/48 scale MiG-15 — a solution we can certainly call an innovation. And we’re innovating on all fronts — we’re constantly working on improving decal printing and considering the purchase of the latest printing machines for even better 3D decal printing, which has undergone significant innovations over the past year, thanks to which the decals already look very good. It hasn’t even been a year since we invested in the latest 3D printers, half of which are the newest 16K-resolution machines that we received in the very first batch, right after production began. Right now, we’re finalizing the purchase of a laser plotter, which we’d like to implement in the production of die cut masks, but its use will likely be much broader—and, as is often the case with such things, its acquisition will probably open up possibilities for us in areas we haven’t even imagined yet.
I’ve saved the Hybrid series for last, which is actually one big innovation — an updated product where we decided to change practically everything. The series has a new logo, its own new box design, and a completely different approach to model production. For those who may not be familiar with Hybrid yet, it’s a combination of 3D printing and classic plastic injection-molded parts. There’s one thing, however, that we didn’t change with the first Hybrids: the assembly instructions.
After much deliberation and brainstorming all sorts of solutions, we decided — after several decades — to take the plunge and revamp the look of Eduard’s instructions. Completely. The exported 2D drawings have been replaced by new renders, which are now in color and thus make it easier for modelers to figure out how to paint individual parts—which was perhaps the biggest weakness of the previous instructions. It should now be completely clear to modelers how to paint individual parts or their assemblies. The Hybrid Series particularly benefits from this, as the model’s subassemblies in this line are the most complicated, and painting them can indeed be a real challenge at times. One example among many is the landing gear bay, which is truly complicated; now, thanks to the instructions, modelers won’t have to figure out which color each hose should be. The labeling of individual colors has also changed. It still refers to color shades from GSi Creos series, but the colors are now marked with a colored dot, which should again help modelers navigate the color scheme. Another new feature is the way parts are depicted: We no longer adhere to the standard 30/30/30 degrees view, where the object was always tilted in one direction, but instead rotate the objects so that the connecting elements are most clearly visible. We draw the arrows so that they point directly from the connecting elements to the locks, which should again help modelers with orientation and easy assembly.
When I have these innovations in the field written down like this, on paper, in front of me, I actually don’t understand how the typically conservative modeler can take them all in. Sure, we often get our fair share of hate for anything new. Typically, any innovation we introduce triggers a wave of outright rejection — sometimes even outright demonization of the thing in question. And, of course, every innovation has its flaws at the beginning, since it hasn’t been put through its paces in real-world use, tested over years of practice, or fine-tuned for mass production down to the last detail. And, of course, some innovations won’t survive — they’re dead ends or turn out to be unsuitable. But I believe that the new instruction manuals herald a new future, that they have potential, and, if we receive good feedback from modelers, they’ll eventually appear in other editions of our kits as well.