Stars of the Screen! - Vehicles that have featured in Movies or TV shows.
20. Dreams are Free! - Follow your dreams, build the car, bike or truck that you would love to have sitting in the garage! - COMPLETED
The Dreams are Free Group Build is under way now, and following a recent vote on the old forum the next to start will be Heart of the Beast in April 2021. I will create a dedicated lead-up thread for “HOTB” where we can post images and discussion for inspiration and motivation.
I am looking forward to continuing growth of the AutoModeler site here, so please feel free to contribute to the discussions with feedback on the list above, or further suggestions for Group Build themes.
@cosimodo , it’s your lucky day! I pulled your name out of a hat and you get to choose the next Group Build (from the list above) to follow on from “Heart of the Beast”!
The one that you choose will start on October 1 this year.
Let me know your thoughts, obviously no huge rush as we have almost 7 months before the start date, but it would be good to get a discussion thread rolling to build some momentum.
Well no pressure then on deciding what Automodelers should be building for a six month period.
As requested, I will limit myself to the list above. I am surprised, given the foibles of the Associate Editor, that Chevrolet doesn’t appear. I could go a campaign for that. I have a couple Chryslers in the stash that fit the bill - you know, the cars Chevrolet aspire to be!
Actually, I take that back. On further inspection Bad Taste is an option - so Chevs are covered.
Despite the fact that nearly all the kilometres I travel is on two wheels I don’t have one in the stash so that rules out Bikes and Trikes. The very title - White Challenge - probably raises all sorts of diversity issues, so we shouldn’t go there. I am grateful to Emergency Services, but lately I have seen more of them than I would wish in the mirrors of the aforementioned two wheels.
I could find plenty of reasons why we shouldn’t do the others except for the one I have chosen – Union Jack and Tricolore. And to be honest, if you want to build a bike or a jam sandwich (Ha! I bet that will test your automotive knowledge) we could cover most of the campaign options with this British Commonwealth motors or French voitures. Even Bad Taste – I am sure somewhere in history they assembled Chevs outside the US, like Canada!
So God Save the Queen and Vive la France! What other country’s auto manufacturers bring you the sublime to the ridiculous –
Jaguar E-Type…
Yeah, I just knew that I had left myself wiiiiiide open for something like that! Honestly, the pages here are half-filled already with my Bowtie obsessions, I am just doing the honourable thing (like any responsible Associate) and opening the doors to the also-rans of the Auto world!
A very comprehensive and well-argued response, nothing there that anybody should take issue with. I’m sure we will see a wonderful variety of designs hitting the bench.
I have updated the list in the opening post to reflect where we are in the wonderful world of AutoModeler Group Builds !
In summary: "Dreams are Free!" - finished March 31 "Heart of the Beast" - commenced April 01, finishes September 30 "Garage Queens 2021" - commenced January 01, finishes December 31 "Commercial Trucking 2021" - commenced January 01, finishes December 31
And thanks to Michael (@cosimodo ) we have pending: "Union Jack and Tricolore" - commencing October 01, finishing March 31 2022.
There has been solid progress in the background to get a Group Build/Campaign format up and running, very similar to the old Kitmaker format, which will be very welcome We will bring more news on that front as things progress.
I hope everybody is staying safe and well, and please keep posting as much progress and relevant comments and content as you can to raise our profile here on AutoModeler.
Cool, although with no V8SC Holden Commodore available this will have to be a Lotus Europa (Tamiya), Jag XJS (Hasegawa) or XJ220 (Italeri) although there is also a Ford Fiesta Rally car (Belkits) in my stash.
There are a few back-yard resing casters here that do Commodore bodies, then you need to find a donor kit of the rest. I wouldn’t trust them to land there in one piece though
Plenty of time to decide, then change your mind, several times. That’s what I plan to do. At the moment it’s the DB5, because that’s the only kit I have in the stash that fits the rules, but a lot can happen in 6 months
Oh, BTW, look what I found hiding in my stash! If I recall correctly, I won this in a raffle at a club meeting quite a few years ago and completely forgot that I have it
It looks like one of my sons has opened it up and started gluing some parts together, so there will be some rectification works required to get this one up to scratch
Ok folks, there have been some major changes to the Group Build structure recently which I think will make things much better as we all get used to them.
All Kitmaker Group Builds and Campaigns are now located under a parent forum HERE: Latest Campaigns / Group Builds topics - KitMaker Network
Within this forum, each Group Build is now actually a parent topic in itself, which will allow us to create our own individual build log threads if we wish. Of course, we still have the option of only posting within the main Group Build (as I will be doing with my current Ferrari build for HOTB).
This change will also bring us closer to being able to create and award “badges” as we did on the old forums, but I believe that under the current system this will be a “one-and-done” opportunity so everybody will need to be completed by the award due date.
Over the next couple of days I am hoping to create the “Union Jack and Tricolore” Group Build so we can get the discussions rolling, and I will post a link to it here once it is done.
D,
all the active campaigns & GBs are listed in two places as it was in the past. But what I can’t find is how to start my own build blog in the GB as only the same Reply tab is on the bottom. so how do I go about creating one?
If you follow the link in my post above to the Group Builds forum, then instead of going to the BLUE Group Build thread, click on the white Heart of the Beast header.
This will take you into the next stage where you can create a New Topic within the HOTB parent forum. You dedicated build log thread will then appear below the main thread in the blue index section.
As I said above, I will make some time to create a forum and thread for the Union Jack and Tricolore and then create a dedicated thread for my build to make sure I understand the process more fully.
I followed your instructions to the letter, and indeed I was able to create my build thread which now appears directly under the campaign, not in it, which is perfect as nothing will get lost. No matter how many threads are created, everyone will be super easy to follow, as well as clicking on the GB and following along as usual.
There are two pluses to this method for me. There’s no reason to now start a separate thread in the main car section unless we want to try and increase site hits as much as possible, and there’s no reason to now do a duplicate post in the campaign.
Joel and I have been having some discussions offline regarding the drop in participation in the Group Builds that are under way at the moment. Is there any particular reason that anybody can put forward, or is it just the state of the world we are in right now?
My initial thoughts were that the relocation of the Group Builds to a separate parent forum might have made navigation more difficult, but once you have found the thread and participated, it will pop up in your “Unread” list every time there is a new post.
Anyway, we would be very keen to understand why the numbers have dropped so significantly this year.
On that note, I have created a thread in the Group Build Staging Area for the next Auto Group Build:
Hi Damian,
I think creating a separate forum for Group builds was a bad idea. It does depend on how you use this site. I have a link that takes me to the Automodeler forum, from there I sometimes look at a couple of the other forums and the Campaigns is one that doesn’t spring to mind even though I am involved in both Auto Group builds! but that is because I post infrequently. BTW I didn’t even know I had an Unread list.
@cosimodo, I like the structure of the Group Builds forum, but if it results in lower participation it defeats the purpose. It seems to be working well for the other forums where the daily user numbers and Group Build participation rates are higher, so I think we just need to persist and adapt and work out how to get our AutoModeler crew to jump across.
If you click on the 3 horizontal bars in the top RH corner you get a drop-down box which gives you updates on various selections. The “Unread” selection takes you to a list of threads which you have previously contributed to where there has been other posts since your last visit.
As you said, it depends on how frequently and how widely you use the site as to how familiar you become with the new features.
I think that the drop in participation has to do with the structure of the Form itself. I have a feeling that many members liked the old forum, and are either not comfortable navigating the new forum, or just plain don’t like it. I have to admit, I’m not a big fan myself, but I’m learning to navigate around.
Another thing is in the old Forum, members who successfully completed a Group Build or Campaign received a ribbon to display in their profile. This new forum doesn’t seem to have that feature.
As Damian said in his post, we’ve had several discussions about both the overall lack of posts from members, as well as the why we have such a small number of signees for the current GB at just 9, and only 4 have posted any progress on their builds. This is just a small percentage of what the last GB on the old forum had, and less then the last one which was the 1st one on the new site.
Like most of you, I also feel that not having the GBs located within our own community forum certainly hasn’t helped, and as been pointed out several times, this site is much more complex to navigate then our old site. With time and a little more effort (including me for that matter) hopefully will help.
I also feel strongly that not having ribbons for completed GBs is hurting the participation. I do know that Jim is working on a way to have a badge instead of a ribbon. Past that I’m just not sure if it will have the name of the GB, etc.
Please continue to posts your thoughts, ideas, and concerns as they can only help us get back to the levels we were previously at.
A badge or something on one’s profile just to show participation in a Group Build would be nice. Maybe there is a way to make the badges unique? I don’t know. Right now they just seem to be all the same “golden asterisk”. I have a feeling that Jim has more important things on his plate that making the badges unique.
