Stargrave Water Gun Spaceship Part 3

In this phase I need to tackle a few tings.  First up was the top handle gap.  I decided to put some card stock over the gap to give it a cockpit type feel.  I used some of the faux credit card plastic that comes in the junk mail that we occasionally receive in the good old snail mail.

 

Next step was to clean up some of the details.  I grabbed some spot putty to fill in some of the gaps, screw holes, and other 

I had to keep reminding myself that the goal was a finished model, not a perfect model.  Next shot is the first prime in black.

I'm planning on trying the salt weathering technique on this so first up was an undercoat of black, then some large salt chunks are applied.  now for the 2nd prime in grey.  The white specs are the first salt application.

Now for a touch of grey!

As you can see in the second black primer photo I will have to do some more work on the top of the main body to eliminate the connection seam.  I'll give it another round of spot filler to see if it holds up.  More updates soon.

Stargrave Water Gun Space Ship Part 2

The bulk of the structure is worked out with the exception of the rear cargo area, I'm going to need a bit more time to figure that out.  I moved onto some detailing.

Front nose communications array was just a few odd bits I had around.  I think one was connector, another was a plastic missile from a toy gun.  

Landing gear is actually made of of old leftover windshield wiper parts.  They were the connectors that I didn't need for my vehicle and turned out to be very useful.  

Top weapon is actually a bad wire connector that we cut out of a piece of equipment that I immediately saw potential in.

This alternate weapon is from a line of toy soldiers that Dollar Tree sells and at a $1.25 I couldn't pass it up.  My original thought was to use it as the main weapon until I stumbled on the electrical connector.  I plan to pick up a few more of these for other projects.

Drive units are have a lot of misc greebles from various things like the inside of a bourbon bottle, tops from kids squeeze fruits, etc... 

Next step is to finish up the prep of the main body and get to some painting!

Stargrave Water Gun Space Ship Part 1

 As I have been working on various Sci-Fi projects I got the itch to do a space ship for scenery and because I seem to always need something new to work on.  After some searching I found several options.  One was a foam board lander that was originally designed for Reapers CAV miniatures.  The scale and design we such that while it is a 1/285 is scale it can easily pass for a 28mm with a few modifications.  I downloaded the pdf's for it and have plans to give it a go.  As I started to get things prepared I realized that I had missed that one of the templates had a piece that needed multiples cut out but only provides one template for it.  Given I printed on full page stickers and just slapped them onto the foam board I will need to either make a few more or do a design modification.  I have decided to put that one to the side and work on another example I found that was made out of squirt guns.

There was a video online by Dark Matter Workshop, that caught my imagination and off I went.  First up was to get the squirt gun, I managed to find the exact one in the video online and made the purchase.  

 At least I thought it was the same one, I clearly didn't read the dimensions before I purchased it.  While they are identical in design, the one in the video is rifle sized and mine came in pistol size.  After reviewing the dimensions I realized it was my mistake.  I contemplated sending it back but decided to make the best of it and try to make some thing out of it.  I went to Dollar Tree and found some nice looking pistols as well and started to make my plans.

Dark Matter cut the handle of his and that made good sense to me so I followed suit.  I had always intended to use the smaller pistols as some sort of drive unit.  I considered keeping the grip intact to use it to attach to but had concerns about cleaning up the trigger areas and just decide to cut their grips off as well. 

Now came the fun part, I just started to play around with different configurations, taping them together with painters tape.  I landed on this configuration for the drive units.  I just need to work out how to connect them.  I tried a few different bottle tops, I really liked this bottled tea top but couldn't figure out how to make the attachment.

Figured out a connection after several tries.  I landed on the top of a pop bottle cut just below the top thread with a cap.  I had a couple already done so it was more out of convenience.  Turns out it was very useful as I had to adjust each side slightly, just had to tighten/loosen the cap!

I got them connect and realized they weren't quote square or level.  Then I had an epiphany, of course they aren't square since the area you are gluing them to isn't level!  D'ou! The areas that I planned on using as the connection point slant in towards the nose at a slight angle.  I realized that I wasn't making a model to enter into some contest, it is intended to be used as table top terrain and doesn't need to be perfect. Once I got past that I reworked the connections.  I have a few more modeling things to address like the nose, a front landing gear and the back section.