The Stone Statue (Flight 714 to Sydney)

Flight 714 to Sydney (French: Vol 714 pour Sydney; originally published in English as Flight 714) is the twenty-second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from September 1966 to November 1967 in Tintin magazine. The title refers to a flight that Tintin and his friends fail to catch, as they become embroiled in their arch-nemesis Rastapopoulos’ plot to kidnap an eccentric millionaire from a supersonic business jet on a Sondonesian island.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

This is Tintin project : 054

This project was originally completed on 2025/10/30

THE STORY:

When I originally planned out my 172 scale Tintin project, the only thing I thought Flight 714 to Sydney had to offer was the fabulous Carreidas 160. It really steals the show. And, of course, along the way, I was able to include the HU-16 Albatross – it’s a blink and you miss it inclusion right at the end of the story, but… it’s a flying boat! I HAD to include it!

However, if you ask most Tintin fans what they remember MOST about this story, besides the Carreidas 160, I think they’d probably answer… that amazing stone statue.

I mean… it really is something else, right? That moody, escape from a volcanic island that’s a bout to blow up scene in the third act of the story is probably the best part of the album. It’s the kind of scene that I’ve seen played out in everything from Johnny Quest to The Flinstones (Karate.. a chop-chop, right?), but I never really get tired of that trope. But the imagery that Herge included along the way and that “secret passage behind a statue” is really top notch.

I dunno what… but there’s something very appealing about that wide nose, wide mouth, bullet head.

THE BUILD:

The build itself was relatively straightforward. Early on I made the decision to go with a filament instead of a resin print for the statue/base. Besides being faster to print (and probably a bit cheaper to produce), the rougher texture of the filament print seemed like a logical choice for a stone statue, no?

Well, as it turns out… only partially.

Of course the statue printed out fine, but I hadn’t quite considered how symmetrical the print stepping was going to be. I tried to convince myself that the mysterious people who carved the album would’ve probably followed a similar path – but even I didn’t fully believe it. So I did my best to fill in some of the gaps and left it like that. I was more afraid that too much sanding would take down the already somewhat soft details too much.

The other challenge was the flip mechanism. I gave some thought to automating it somehow… eight using electronic means, or creating some kind of switch and counter-weight, but eventually I shelved the idea as being impractical. This was a fun project, but I didn’t want to devote the same kind of energy to it as I had to the SuperColor-Tryphonar project. In the end, you can open it with your finger. Good enough. 🙂

Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. Despite my careful measurements, the statue itself was binding on the base when the flip was made, so I was double-glad that I hadn’t spent a ton of time working on a fancy flip switch only to find out later it didn’t work. Instead I just had to take some heavy-duty sandpaper to the statue’s corners and give it enough clearance to work. I also glue on a cover over the notch in the back wall that the axel sits in. That way it won’t fall out.

I also had given some thought to trying to do a fancier paint job, but again, laziness won out. I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it to my own satisfaction, so I went the homemade decal route instead. I think it was the right choice, but feel free to tell me what you think in the comments below.