You're building a model; doesn't matter if it's Armor, Aircraft, Ship, or Figure, you've filed and sanded and are pretty happy with the fit. You can see where you are going and are happy with your results, then you apply the base color coat and there it is crap. The model just looks plain and the vision is gone.

I encounter this every time I build, just prior to Decalling and adding finishing detail and weather. It stops me cold, and I have to over come the urge to not finish. It just looks so plain all of a sudden. This is probably why I always have several going at one time.

Once I push past this point and add a little more detail it's okay, but this is always a break point for me. Is it just me?

It's not you at all, it you and me! I find that I lose my concentration on a model often and have to leave it for a bit. (Right now I have 4 that are just sitting there, waiting.)
How do I get around it? I haven't the foggiest idea......

Don't have a stash of models, then you have to finish each one before starting the next - either that or run out completely!

I'm there now - I haven't even got to the paint phase, which is where things usually go from "this looks o.k." to "smashy - smashy & in the trashy". I got all fired up and traded for an Italeri DUKW - needless to say I'm pretty sure that I am the only one who has had fit problems with this kit. Every 5th step in it's progress results in going 4 steps back. I have puttied and sanded this thing to death & still I have holes and seams. I can't really go after the kit and blame Italeri since I have seen no evidence of any fit & finsh issues with it - just accuracy. So it sits collecting dust - I can't get over the hump. I won't even begin to get into why I can't get my state-of-the-art + $200.00 air-brush to do anything better than a can of spray paint would. Call it user error I guess - that's what our resident computer guy @ work says everytime we have a computer problem...

Ciao Chuck,
No, you, me and many others, have what is called IMS (Impatient Modeler's Syndrome). It happens to everyone now and again. The reason that you stated is the exact reason why I rarely do anything other than figures. I get impatient and want to move on to the next project. With figures, I can finish one at a time, get them out of the way, and then feel that feeling of "Good. It's done!" It's best just to leave it until you get the urge to finish it up.
Ciao for now
Rob

And now representing the oppostite point of view, reknown kit hoarder and stash fiend, Mike D... :-)

My solution is exactly the opposite. But I don't find I bog down at any one place especially..
I have models in various stages of completion, so if I feel like painting, I have one --read as 7!.. that need paint.
I've got kits that need pretty much anything I feel like doing, but I find I enjoy the basic contsruction and intircate detailing both, so I have lots of kits with much of the assembly and lots of the detailing mostly done...

The previous opinions are not necessarily those of the Armorama staff. Persons with alternate view points can post them below... :-)

Mike

yup it happens to me also... your all happy about your results, let it dry up etc, come back 2 days later and looks like crap and your like, man i can do better ( in my case) then end up re-paintign it or something, then i dont like hte results and get made, leave it there for a week, come back, celan my space, and keep working on it, with the weathering etc then looks good!

Frank

Chuck, I think it happens to us all. I get to a spot and wonder "what do I do next?" or "man this doesn't look perfect " My trick is to have a vision of what my result is going to be, and every step to get there is simply a step, no leaps here, no rushing, if it doesn't feel right then I stop and go do something else. The main goal here for me is to enjoy what I'm doing, not the final product . Although a great final product makes it easier to enjoy what I'm doing.
So heads up soldier and, as we say, Slug through it.
Bruce

Yep...I have it too. Plus, seeing some of the works of art around here gives it a double whammy.

I like Rob's term "IMS" ...it's perfect and I suffer from it in a major way. I've a graveyard of unfinished kits.

I'm with 95bravo. I get to point on the model and then see what someone else has done with the same model and it's an instant block! Then it's hem and haw for a couple weeks or a month and then finally work up the incentive to add a few more detail bits and get on with it.
Another contributing factor are all the new models being released that just have to opened and fondled, and I just have to see how a sub-assembly of one of the new models will look.

Hi all, I'm not advocating tobaccy or alcohol but this used to happen to me and I would leave the project alone for a week or so but when I got the jones to tackle it again I would just be double disgusted with it. I found the answer tho, don't give up and never leave the work area. Once you get up and say screw it your beaten. Usually I light up a butt and have a beer or a coctail [it's an Irish thing] and sit back and say " ok what can I do to correct this mess and turn it around." It works, even if the model is below your own personal standards it's still a learning thing. I don't throw stuff out any more it goes on my , my eyes only shelf. Trust me its more satisfying to keep and learn from your half-as**d work even if you think it's junk or off, you completed it. Besides it can always be canniblized for spares.-Cheyenne

IMS, good name. I knew I didn't really have AMS as I'm not all that advanced!

I was buying bunches of kits a year, but making maybe a kit every other year (if that). I usually do well in construction unless something really is tough to fix. I've got a Tamiya KV-1 about 90% built but the dang external fuel tanks are giving me a problem. It's been sitting here this way for years.

Painting is usually where I screw up, although I've had some successes.

The kits I completed have been simple yet nice looking when built. Tamiya 75mm PAK 40 and 20mm Flakvierling. Both hand painted and I'm pleased with them. I have a Tamiya M5A1 Stuart that I airbrushed years ago that I really should tackle again. This was the only kit I'd airbrushed with my newer (Paasche?) airbrush and I remember being amazed at how well it looked. What stopped me on that was a piece broke off and I lost it. I fashioned a new one from a paper clip but my jar of paint had dried up. I bought a new one and touched up where the new piece was but the color was lighter than the rest. Gave up at that point. A few years later, I looked at it and I guess the paint must have changed shade as it dried/aged. Now I can't tell which was the kit part and which was the paper clip! I have hopes that I'll get around to adding the fiddly bits and get this one done (finally).

To get past my block, I had also tried doing small simple kits: 1/700 subs. Unfortunately, some of those hulls seem like the halves were for two different subs so I ended up doing lots of putty/sanding work. So much for simple. I also decided to try a Tamiya 37mm PAK 35/36 since my previous successes were artillery, but this kit isn't as nice as the other two were. Lots of ejection pin marks. That one is stalled as well. I was chronicling the build on my web page, but took it down after I hadn't worked on it for a year. Someday.

At least I've stopped buying kits and have been selling others off at the local model club.

I do still hope to beat IMS someday.

I to find that building various kits at the same time helps. If I get stuck on something I'll get on with something else for a while until the inspiration returns. I also go through phases where I really get on with something speciffic, like at the moment I have a real flow with snow and winter camo.... I hadn't painted anything OD for a long time, just because I couldn't get the paint shades and weathering right. And now about two weeks ago it just hit me and came back. Now that the Pzr IV is finished and the Mercedes I am going to have a go at some OD Armour. I've started shading and highlighting my M48 and next to be painted will be the M18. After that, I do know yet, I have a Jagdpanther completed, ready for paint (not winter camo!!!), which I would like to enter in the AO campaign, but I also have to put the finishing touches to the Demag with PaK 38.. in winter camo... Sorry, but I did say that I have a real flow with winter camo at the moment..
So yes, I suppose will all have this problem, I think best thing to do is not to force yourself, but to keep the model in sight so that one day you just happen to look at it and go

Cheers
Henk

What about the flip side of this, the one that makes it all worth it. The time everything is going smoothly, the fit is great, the paint looks fabulous,everything is looking good and you can't wait to get back at your future master piece. I love these days!
I havn't gone through a whole model like this, but I have had a couple of days on top of my modelling world!!

Gotta go, I'm having one of those days
Bruce

well that surely happens many many times to me also . I hate the after priming correction, when u think everything is set for paitning, especially on figures ....
But in the break point i know that one step after will show the bright side , so i overcome this easily enough !!!!

With me I didn't have all the right stuff to finish my projects, and this worked out for the best for me, cause I've learned so much in-between, that if I had finished them, I would of been disappointed.

Bruce-Slug said the right thing, you are to enjoy the hobby, if one model starts to get you down, put it a side, and start on another one. Put that one in it's box and save it until your ready to tackle it again.

After a while you will be, after working on another one, and having much better luck, that will built your self confidence to go back. I have done this many times, I have sanded and sanded, then finally I found a place where I never glued the seam, so it never would seal, so I got that straightened out, and shot with primer, and now it is finally smooth, but it took 4 or 5 tries before I notice that seam, it was real hard to see, the way it was built.

But I put it up until I was ready to tackle it again, and worked on something else. I'm not sure but I think I got about 16 or so going on at once, at a quick glance, to keep me interested.
Kerry

I seem to be having another disease lately. After not havin built anything for 10+ years I seem to suffer from OGMS.

OGMS stands fro Obsessive Greed modelling syndrome.

I just can't look at the news, or in a book without being confronted with yet another brilliant idea to make another model or build another Dio.

Plans are getting so big and taking up so much time that, the day IMS hits me, it will be a real model graveyard.

But what the heck, for the time being I ENJOY MYSELF LIKE NEVER BEFORE

I have several kits in various stages of completion in plastic shoeboxes from dollar stores on some shelves in my model stash closet - when I get tired of working on one kit, I can box, put it on one of the 'purgatory' shelves, and then start a new project or resume work on whatever strikes my fancy at the moment... a new kit or a half-completed one or whatever. I have a shelf that is full of mostly assembled kits waiting for their time in the paint shop.
In the paint shop I several kits in more plastic shoeboxes, some primed, some with base coats, etc. This gives me the option of doing whatever I want to do, pretty much whenever I have time to do it. I supppose I would come down with a bad case of IMS if I were building on a deadline, but since that is not case, no worries

Nah this doesn't happen to me...I always build one kit at a time and I also split the building from the painting ...what I mean is once the kit is ready for paint it is like I'm starting something new ...I'm half way home when I get to this point ...Basic painting may take up to an 8 hour session ..Then the clear then the decals then another clear then the washes and filters then the Matt cote...then the weathering ...I love it !! I get inspired every time I get out that old A/B...

Rick