Modeler's Miniatures & Magic

Industry artist Steve Neill is hands down an amazing artist. Lately he has been doing actual commission work for a few lucky collectors… and this Enterprise is one of those results! Assisted by the actual designer of the NX-01 for the Television Series ENTERPRISE, the collector who commissioned this build (Dave Jones) is going to be completely happy with what he gets!

Here is what Steve has to say of this beautiful build…

This model was built for a customer in April of 2011. Lighting kit was provided by the b9factory@verizon.net it’s an excellent value and I was able to add about 9 more LEDs to the board without a hitch. Additionally I added fiber optics to light up the hanger bays, mark lights around the bridge and more.

The Aztec decals are made by www.acreationmodels.com/ who additionally created new kit supplied replacement decals. The included kit decals with the kit broke and disintegrated.

The kit itself had some badly warped parts and bad fits but I was able to get them to fit in the end. Adding the lights, assembly and painting were the easy part overall. Adding the decals took 80 hours.

Doug Drexler an old friend of mine from the motion picture biz helped me hand and foot to get the details right. He was the best man for the job because he created this ship and still had it on file in his computers. I’d ask for a detail and he’d put the model up in Lightwave and render me a new image. I couldn’t have done it without him.

The model in total took 4 weeks of hard work. Doug was nice enough to send me the model as a gift because he knew I loved it. I have the decals and lights, even a base so I’ll be building another for myself soon.

Plagues were made for the model which both I and Doug will sign. Not too many NX-01 out there will have that feature.

Steve Neill