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Aircraft in Pixels

Flugzeugwerke is what I called my Shapeways shop, specializing in 3D detail parts for 1/32 scale Wingnut Wings WWI airplane kits. And for awhile it was a great ride — I designed stuff, uploaded it, they printed and shipped and let me collect a little markup. Nothing lasts forever, though; Shapeways, for reasons of their own, enacted policies that made it less and less viable to create parts for this market. With the demise of Wingnut Wings it seemed my niche market would evaporate completely,

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My name is Bo Monroe, the creator behind Aircraft in Pixels and Flugzeugwerke. My training is in fine art, but over my career I’ve been drawn to the nexus of technology and art, such that today my day job is game designer, programmer and artist.

I’ve had a lifelong obsession with scale modeling and aviation history, and returned to building models seriously in 2012. Coming from the world of 3D art I like to think that brought a fresh approach to the craft. I had also been exposed to additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) and though the machines, materials and software of the time were well out reach of the average hobbyist, the writing was on the wall that the craft of modeling would be revolutionized.

Shapeways provided an important bridge between the early era of 3D printing and today’s explosion of high quality desktop machines, much like service bureaus filled that role in the 80s for desktop publishing before the advent of high quality desktop (2D) color printers. Flugzeugwerke is what I called my Shapeways shop, specializing in 3D detail parts for 1/32 scale Wingnut Wings WWI airplane kits. And for awhile it was a great ride — I designed stuff, uploaded it, they printed and shipped and let me collect a little markup. Nothing lasts forever, though; Shapeways, for reasons of their own, enacted policies that made it less and less viable to create parts for this market. With the demise of Wingnut Wings it seemed my niche market would evaporate completely, and with it my enthusiasm for the large scale WWI aircraft detail parts niche.

Meanwhile, I had also been developing a series of casual simulation video games where you assemble a highly realistic “model airplane.” I’ve been calling this series Aircraft in Pixels as kind of an homage to the Aircraft in Profile series of books which I devoured in my youth.

These two projects have tons of crossover; while I don’t use the same tools to create 3D game art as I do to create 3D models for printing, the research and prep is the same.

Fast forward to today — I finally got my own desktop printer and cleaning station, and have begun printing both my old catalog as well as new designs in house. Somehow, even though out of production for several years now, parts for Wingnut Wings kits still show little sign of slacking in demand. I’ve dusted off other passions, too. I built Airfix’s ubiquitous 1970 tool 1/24 Spitfire MkIA kit as a kid and have had an original boxing languishing on an attic shelf for decades. Seemed like a fun challenge to try to go gonzo on this once impressive, but now dated kit.

So — two primary lines of parts at the moment: 1/24 scale Spitfire and 1/32 Albatros and related. For the last several months I have been selling parts exclusively to Patreon subscribers, but I recognize that not everyone wants to make that commitment. So, while patrons will always get the best prices and first access, I’m making my more popular items available to the public at large.