Last weekend Emerald City ComiCon hosted their first scale model show, Model Mayhem 2013, here in Seattle. My thanks go out to the folks who run Emerald City ComiCon, and to my fellow model builders from the Galaxy Hobby Science Fiction Model Club for making this wonderful event happen.
The show almost didn’t happen, as the original organizer was unable to carry out the preparations. At the last minute I picked up the task as we already had space dedicated to the show. Initially this was to be a contest for area modelers, but given the remaining time we elected to present our work as a display-only. This format has proven quite successful for the Seattle IPMS Club (International Plastic Modeler’s Society), and allowed us to bring in a large number of our kits.
Lots of visitors
Based on our own off-the-cuff counts, and this is a conservative estimate, we think we had at least 5,000 people come through our room this year. That’s quite a large number for the scale model community, and it was likely far more than this.
We were rather impressed with the number of people who found our little room – far more than I can remember seeing in some of our previous shows. It was the largest Emerald City ComiCon to date, and unlike many of our model-themed shows this ComiCon crowd brought us a lot of people who may not be aware of our hobby. And among them there were those who fondly remember building models when they were young.
Show me the models!
Our display featured a great cross-section of the models we build – spacecraft, vehicles, figures, busts, and even a carnivorous plant. A perfect way to demonstrate a wide range of subjects. John, Preston, and Paul also brought kits to work on during the show, which proved to be a popular demonstration for the crowd.
I mostly build spacecraft from science fiction movies and shows, and I brought every finished kit I had that didn’t need extensive repair. This is one of the unique aspects of a model display show like this, you get to see a lot more of everyone’s models. With a contest, participants usually just focus on their latest projects.
The most common comments I had on my models were:
- “Did you sculpt these yourself?” – More a question about the spectacular figures on display, and by far the most asked question of the day. Most of the figure kits were garage kits – sculpted and cast by ambitious artisans, often far more elegant than a mass-market figure. They require clean-up and painting, sometimes a more robust stand that better features the work. And our club has some top-notch, award-winning figure modelers. Very impressive indeed.
- “I built a model of the Enterprise as a kid, but I thought it was larger” – The only classic Enterprise models I had on hand were smaller (and much more accurate) kits produced ten years ago by Polar Lights, not the original AMT Enterprise which actually is larger.
- “Are these for sale?” A question that caught many of us off-guard a bit. The answer is “Yes, but the price may be higher than most people are willing to pay”
- “SPACE:1999! I remember that show!” My Rescue Eagle and Moonbase Alpha model drew a lot more comments than I’d anticipated. Still one of my favorite science fiction TV shows from the 1970’s, it was fun to see how many people also had fond memories. Far more people mentioned it than I’d anticipated.
- “AUDREY II!” – My little Audrey II was a crowd-pleaser. And such a simple kit really
Next Year – Model Mayhem 2014!
We’re looking forward to expanding the show next year to include a full-on model contest with prizes, a make-and-take for the kids (very popular in our other shows), and more hands-on demonstrations.
For those of you who visited Model Mayhem 2013, I’d like to thank you on behalf of the Galaxy Hobby Model Club, IPMS Seattle, and of course the folks who run Emerald City ComiCon. We had a great time showing off our hobby and hope that our excitement was shared.
If you are interested in learning more about the Galaxy Hobby Science Fiction Model Club, you’re welcome to attend our regular meetings which are open to the public. We meet on the second Thursday of every month at Galaxy Hobby Shop in Lynnwood (check the link for location and details).
Did you visit Model Mayhem 2013?
If you dropped by to see Model Mayhem 2013, thank you! Tell us what you liked and didn’t like!
