A NEW Enterprise-E? Options

[Commodore Kor...]

^^If your meaning the windows are molded but not colored in, yes that's true. I used a mechanical pencil, good bright light, and hours of patience and looking at the ship at odd angles to get all the windows colored in. It really finishes off the look of the ship.

[Alex]

All right, accidentally lost my original post, so here's the condensed version:

Anyone notice the ship, in the Cool Toy Review and Toy News International pictures, is missing windows?

Actually BlueArrow, it's not missing them; they're simply molded into the ship itself, just as they were on the first 1701-E. The 1701-E and the 1701-D are pretty much the opposite of each other; on the 1701-D the windows are painted on and the Azetec panels are molded in. On the 1701-E the Aztec panels are painted on and the windows are molded in, but not painted.

DST has painted Windows in the past, some (all?) TOS 1701s had painted windows in addition to molded ones, but it was painfully obvious if the paint was just a little off. Likewise the Art Asylum 1701-A had molded windows, which DST painted when they released the WOK 1701.

As Stormfury_Echo has stated, painting the windows seems like a good idea in theory, but it's a bad idea in practice; when they're molded in, it becomes very obvious if the paint job on the windows is even just a tad off center. The end result generally looks sloppy, so it's actually better for DST not to paint the windows. To their credit, they did seem to fix some of the paint issues with the windows on the WOK 1701 reissue, but you can still see if a window is slightly "off;" this isn't DST's fault, it's just the way manufacturing works.

The 1701-D doesn't have the windows molded in, so if the paint is slightly off-center it's not really noticeable, but if the windows had been molded in, it'd be very noticeable. The 1701-E has always had the windows molded in, and with all of the additional detail, painting them would likely not only look sloppy, but also "busy," and would diminish the overall look of the ship. The windows are there, they're just not painted. Commodore Kor'Tar's solution, or a variant thereof is the most accurate way to have painted windows that won't look sloppy. Mechanical pencil, Gundam marker, or a .005 micron pen will all do the job, and painting said windows by hand will almost certainly give you a better paint job than anything DST could mass produce within a reasonable budget. As noted above, the manufacturing process is what makes painting the windows a bad idea if they're molded into the ship. Of course, if the windows are HUGE, (think of the big blue ones on the WOK 1701 and 1701-A,) then painting them isn't a problem, but the "slit" windows should either be painted without being molded into the ship, or molded into the ship without being painted. It looks like DST is taking note of that.

By the way, I think we can safely say that Rick's "IN STOCK" status for the case is a glitch, and that the site should read "Available for Pre-order." Ah well, I put my preorder through, so hopefully when the ships come out I'll get them early on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

On a side-note, I'm thinking of grabbing my video camera and shooting a "concept commercial" for the new Enterprise-E. Basically, I'm thinking of creating what's essentially a fan-made :30 second TV spot for the new ship, which I hope to find a way to distribute to TrekToy members. Of course, that's assuming that Trektoy members would like to see a fan-made "proof of concept" for a toy commercial for a Star Trek ship.