In 2003 Disney decided to turn one of its more storyless theme park attractions into a movie by stealing the story line of Curse of Monkey Island and telling Johnny Depp to go hogwild. The result was the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which singlehandedly made pirate movies cool again after Geena Davis killed the genre in 1995. One of the most unique parts of the movie was the fastest ship in the universe, the Millenium Falcon, wait, I mean Black Pearl. A burned out husk of a ship it was still able to do the Caribic Run in less than 12 parsec.

Several years later Disney cooperated with Amati to develop a model of one of their theme park ships, the Wicked Wench. Apocryphically the theme parks Wicked Wench IS the movies Black Pearl before it went up in flames.

Coinciding with the release of the fourth PotC movie, Disney, Hachette and Amati decided to publish a part work version of the Wicked Wench model, which while unchanged they decided to simply call the Black Pearl nonetheless. This introductory ship model is mostly aimed at teens and young adults, so building it is in parts much easier than your usual part work fare.

I need something to do between deliveries of the Soleil Royal and can't be bothered to deal with my more serious ship builds right now, so I de-iced this partwork from the basement.

This will be a pure oob build with no amendments, improvements or even thinking about historical inaccuracies with this fantasy ship. The idea is to build the kit with my brain turned off while watching pirate movies for instance.

This build will be the half-open version with full interior.


The kit loves its gimmicks. By issue 2 we have spent more time on buildling a presentation stand for the Jolly Roger and figure head than on building the ship itself. I think that's a rather nifty idea. Zoukei Mura do something similar with the engines of the Horten 229 model.


Here we see the rather unique way the keel is built. Arriving in three segments frames are already installed in each segment even when they are not joined together yet.


This is not a problem though. A rather hefty system of support beams ensures the frames will end up in the correct positition no matter what.


By issue 7 a stand already arrives. I love this. It is also highly dangerous if you're going to do your own improvements. I have seen people spend months on kitting out this rather plain stand, then burn out and never finishing the ship.


The lower deck planking is actually a drawing on a piece of cardboard. While this may seem cheap at first, it actually looks pretty nifty once in place. When the side walls and middle decks are up I suspect one won't even notice.

You'll also note the first color has gone up. There's lots and lots of painting to do in this kit. Sacks and boxes of food, rum bottles, racks, cages in the brig, lanterns etc etc. You name it, you paint it. Which is fine by me, because I need to get better at painting.

They go absurdly in-depth down to specific advice which colour to use from which manufacturer. "Better spraypaint these", "Here you're better of using acrylics" "Do these with enamel" "Now thin your humbrol 119 and bring out some highlights" "Now go drybrush these. Here's how you drybrush." "rub down a pencil on some sandpaper, pick up the graphite with a cosmetic brush and apply"

I absolutely love it. It's model painting 101.

Yup, and they actually look good at least as far as I've seen.

Thanks for the tip. :)

The paint actually looks much better without the flash (also far less red).

My first thought was actually staining it but the surface of the MDF is so smooth and tightly packed, the stain doesn't even penetrate. One can simply take it off with a cloth even after minutes and it's like it wasn't even there.

On the other hand some irregularities add to the overall charm of the model.

With the cell walls for the brig I've even gone out of my way to slap on the colour as thick, sloppy and uneven as possible to give it a more cast iron-y look. (needs some drybrushing still)

One very nice thing about this kit is how much stuff they give you for interior decorating.

In the last 3 issues we got provisions and rum and barrels and ropes and all kinds of other fun stuff.

Looking very nice I'm wondering if a wash would help bring out something me detail on the potatos

Very nice work.... this is a kit I do like the look of and with the open interior there is so much freedom and scope to model additional detail and items.... .. Look forward to your next update....

Regards

Alan

The thing one has to remember is that this is a glorified phantasy version of how things were below decks. The reality was much much worse.

Added deck beams and supports for the battery deck. Going to play architect for a while now while walls, doors and "windows" are added.

Finished putting up all the walls in the battery deck