Here's Revell's 1/12 scale astronaut from about 1969, in this case a 1990s repop. Given the EVA equipment, the chest mounted ventilation unit and the hand-held maneuvering unit (HHMU), this could only depict Ed White on his Gemini 4 spacewalk on June 3, 1965. It was the first spacewalk by an American astronaut, and White enjoyed it so much he said having to get back in the capsule was the saddest moment of his life. He would lose his life on January 27, 1967, in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that also killed Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee.
The kit came out after this tragic accident, and doesn't mention White, instead presenting the figure generically as an astronaut. It's based on Revell's previous 1/6 scale Gemini Astronaut, and has a similar clever design to show the astronaut on a spacewalk. My goal was to do present White on his spacewalk and paint his G4C spacesuit in accurate colors, but without doing all the work of fixing the umbilical, which is simply wrong. I also wanted to make the figure's face visible through the gold-toned visor, using a bit of artistic license. The face doesn't look much like White, but after I lightly airbrushed the inside of the visor with Vallejo Liquid Gold, it's hard to tell.
After applying white primer, I preshaded the suit with Polly Scale blue in the folds--shadows should be blue in low earth orbit! Then I airbrushed it with Tamiya white with just a little Testors Turn Signal Amber and thinned with isopropyl alcohol, using my Paasche H. This looked fine before I sprayed it on, but it came out too yellow, so I mixed up some burnt umber and clear flat varnish, and shot that over it, followed up with very light drybrushing with Vallejo white. The helmet is also Vallejo white, the straps Polly Scale blue, drybrushed with the same tone but lightened, and the gloves are painted a mix of Testors white and steel acrylic, with the black areas painted with Vallejo black lightened with grey. The HHMU is painted with more Vallejo Liquid Gold (it comes in silver, too). Various parts on this and the suit are anodized blue and red, which I represented with red Sharpie.
I did basically no modifications, with a few minor exceptions. The designers seem to have rotated the arms as an afterthought, so the seams on the sleeves don't line up with the seams on the shoulders, as I think they should. To fix this, I filled the upper part of the seams and rescribed them. The two antennas on the left wrist broke off, so I replaced them with wire. A plain black rectangle is provided on the decal sheet for the name patch, so I drew a black rectangle with "E.H. White II" in white lettering in Autocad and printed it out on plain paper, then glued it on the chest. It's a little oversized, but if it were any smaller the text would probably not be legible.
It's possible I'll redo the umbilical at some point in the future. It plugs into the wrong place, the instrumentation port above the inlet port where it should plug in. There's supposed to be plumbing or wiring connected to all three ports on the front of the suit and to the ventilation unit and the helmet. The kit represents these features either inaccurately or not at all. If I do replace the umbilical, I'll probably use steel wire and add weight to the Gemini capsule base.
I did basically no modifications, with a few minor exceptions. The designers seem to have rotated the arms as an afterthought, so the seams on the sleeves don't line up with the seams on the shoulders, as I think they should. To fix this, I filled the upper part of the seams and rescribed them. The two antennas on the left wrist broke off, so I replaced them with wire. A plain black rectangle is provided on the decal sheet for the name patch, so I drew a black rectangle with "E.H. White II" in white lettering in Autocad and printed it out on plain paper, then glued it on the chest. It's a little oversized, but if it were any smaller the text would probably not be legible.
