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.

 

The Force is strong in this one...

 With this post I'm venturing into the Star Wars universe, specifically the Star Wars Legion line of miniatures.  I have not purchased the core set as of yet, I wanted to make sure I was interested in the figures first.  My wonderful wife and sons got me a couple of expansion sets of Imperial forces because clearly the universe needs structure and order!  

I'm obviously a fan of Star Wars, who isn't?  I saw the original premier in the theater as a kid back in the day.  There have been a few iterations of Star Wars miniatures from the West End Games Star Wars Miniatures Battles to the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Miniatures collectable line.  While these have always been intriguing to me it was Fantasy Flight Games release of Imperial Assault that got me to dip a toe in the water and it was Legion that got me to jump all the way in!  

I started off with a used copy of Imperial Assault which is more of a board game than a wargame but it was packed full of miniatures, 34 to be precise.  

I picked up a copy at Half Price Books at a ridiculously low price.  Some good pieces like Darth Vader, Luke, recon droids,  Stormtroopers and some miscellaneous rebel forces.

I started to do some research into the Legion line which was released shortly after I picked up Assault.  There was a lot of chatter online about the scale difference between the two.  After some thought I decided to go with the Legion line since it was also announced that Assault was being discontinued.  I got a couple of the expansion packs of Stormtroopers for Christmas to try out.

 First thing to do was get one assembled for a scale comparison.  One of the droid probes came off its base so I was able to get them on the same base.  The Legion bases are notably taller and thicker than those from Imperial Assault.  Any crossovers will likely need re-based to the Legion bases.

Now lets take a look at the Stormtrooper comparison.

Clearly the Legion models are a bit larger in scale and definitely more detailed.  In a large mass of them its unlikely that you would notice it much, especially from an overhead view while gaming.  I do think that non-identical figures will probably mix well together.

Being honest, I'm not a big fan of white as a primary color for miniatures but given my proclivity for all things Empire i dont have much of a choice.  I'm going to give 4 different base color schemes a try: white base, grey base, black with just grey apex and black with grey and white apex.

 

Next update will feature the results.

WIP Updates

 Decide to do a quick  WIP update on a few projects. Here we go!

Knightmare Games Bugbear

Started a color test on this guy to see how a yellow/orange would look.  Overall I like it and will break out the others to get started on them.  If memory serves me correctly these are the work of the great Goblinmaster Kevin Adams.  I'll have to send Sergio some shots for his Facebook page.  

Apex shading

 

Initial color blocking.  

After some highlights and washes

Done except for the base.

Direhard bounty hunters

Wrapping up the details on these guys and have just a few more touch ups then I'll call them done.  

Not real happy with the left shoulder guard, wanted the golden eagle look from JD but I'm not so sure it really works.  Will have to decide on a base look for them, maybe just a dirt/soil look or a Martian red look.

Carwars/Dark Future/Gaslands

Primed up another car to work on when I get bored with everything else.  That is it for now.

Off with the Old and on with the New-FTS

I think this is the second or third installment of my project to strip off old paint jobs from when I was a wee lad and update to something more modern.  No question the old FTT troll with the female captive on his back looks much better.  As I was rummaging around I ran across an old bag of mins that go all the way back to my first purchases ever, something like 45+years ago.

Yes these guys need some TLC! 

These are pre-slota base skeletons from Citadel's Fantasy Tribe Skeletons (FTS).  I have always been fascinated by skeletons especially fantasy miniature ones.  I place that blame squarely on Ray Harryhausen and the skeleton stop motion scene from his 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts.  It seems that this has been mentioned by many other hobbyist similar in age.  As noted in my Digging Up Bones post, I've been collecting them for my entire hobby career.  Citadel was clearly head and shoulders above most miniature companies in terms of quality, detail and variety of their products in the late 70's and early 80's.  The Fantasy Tribe series dates from 1979-1983, after that it became the C series of codes.

I immediately knew I had to get some of these great miniatures.  Wargaming and RPG mins were not easy to come by back then but I was relentless in my search. Whenever I went on vacation with my family I would comb the yellow pages (if you dont know what those are I dont know that I can explain them to you!) finding any and all hobby shops in our destination.  If they were close they would indulge me, if not I could only dream of the treasures that I was missing out on. I'm fairly confident that these miniatures we actually ones that Ral Partha produced under license from Citadel and distributed in the US in the Ral Partha Imports line.  I managed to find a pic of one of my actually mins on ebay still on the blister.

I had these guys in an old 2L bottle diorama that I learned how to make from an copy of Military Modeling magazine back in the day.

 

They had what I thought was a brilliant idea, nowadays I think it would be referred to as a hack.  Back in the 1900's, (okay 1980's but using 1900's sounds older) the the 2L bottles of pop were a two piece creation.  They had a clear bottle that was rounded on the bottom and a black or appropriately colored bottom that squared it off so it could stand up.

The article shows you how to pop the bottom off the bottle, cut the top off where it started to taper and then attach the bottom to the freshly cut piece, instant display case.

Or you could attach it to a wooden base and accomplish the same thing

There guys were in a similar work with lots of cotton balls stretched out to simulate fog.  Actually quite brilliant of my younger self if I don't sound too boisterous.

Fast forward to today.  Like anything old they clearly need a fresh coat of paint.  So off we go.  First are a few close up starting pics.  Clearly I had no knowledge of inks, washes, or dry-brushing yet.

 

 

You have to love the menacing red eyes!

After a good soak in Green Stuff for the better part of a month or two.

 

Primed black in preparation for apex shading.

 

Some apex shading with pure white.

Next update will have some color blocking.