Robots!

Grumpy the colonist has a couple of new robots to make life easier round the scrapyard. He has a small astromech style droid for general maintenance work, plus a much larger heavy work robot for waste processing and loading. He found this latter droid at a reduced price (£1) on a recent trip to the planet "Tesco", and he will soon be repainting it to try and make its origins a little less obvious!

Shack

Looking at the various shacks and other wasteland scenery that's been cropping up on other Blogs recently (Dropship Horizon and Black Primer Paint, I felt inspired to add another little building to my collection.



This shack is based on a piece of 3mm 10x10cm MDF textured with fine sand. The back wall is a Hirst Arts door, obviously scavenged by the occupants. The corner support pillar is another Hirst Arts block, and the side wall has been made from a toy car which has been gently hammered into a flatter and more wall-like shape. The other 2 walls are sections of a plastic punnet which contained supermarket mushrooms. The roof is an off-cut of fine-corrugated cardboard.



I deliberately left the area at the back open as a sort of storage area, giving a few more places to hide in a gunfight. I have added quite a few bits of scenery round the edges; 1/76th scale oil drums and stack of ammo boxes (120mm Challenger tank rounds to be precise) from Continental Model Supply Company, plus a couple more oil drums rescued from an old airfix battlefield accessory kit. I had been leaving them as loose scatter scenery, but I've found that it takes ages to find and pack them all after a game, and they keep getting lost/damaged, so I've decided that I may as well just stick them in place on the other scenery anyway.



Painting used assorted Inscribe acrylic hobby paints:
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber
Forest Green
Ultramarine Blue
Snow
Raven
Holly Berry


The roof was painted around the edges with the red-brown burnt sienna for the most rusted parts followed by dark brown burnt umber added for less rusted areas. A couple of extra rust patches were added towards the middle of the roof and around the patch. The white snow & black raven mixed in 2 shades for a basic grey followed by a lighter drybrush to bring out the ridge detail.



Walls were forest green with a quick highlight of forest green+snow. A drybrush of burnt umber added rusted weathering around edges of windows, doors etc, with a few touches of burnt sienna to create fresher areas of rust.



The car received 2 coats of snow to hide the original paint job, then 2 coats of Holly Berry red. Some burnt umber/burnt sienna rust patches were dabbed on to complete the car.
The door is ultramarine blue highlighted with blue+snow plus rust patches. The pillar is mixed raven/snow grey highlighted with extra snow, plus a few patches of green algae.
Once finished, the whole lot had a gentle drybrush of dusty grey around the bottom of the walls etc. to help blend it into the base and bring it all together. When I find my bag of static grass, it'll get a few scrubby patched of that too.

Industrial building

This is a little something I've been working on for the past few evenings. It's going to be a vehicle garage/small hangar of some sort. I've included a couple of figures for scale (Rebel Minis military contractor with replacement GZG head and a GZG armed colonist).

The base is 3mm MDF, cut to fit the same 10x10cm grid that I use for all my buildings. In this case, it's a 20x20cm base, giving a bit more room to play with. It has been designed so that if/when I make other buildings, they can connect together into a larger complex as desired.

The building itself is constructed from plaster blocks cast from Hirst Arts moulds. Although designed for 25-30mm scale miniatures, they still look pretty good with 15mm figures. I use parts from these moulds for a lot of my buildings. Some are almost completely built from plaster blocks, but others are mainly foamcore, card etc. but with the odd clock added to represent ducting, plant & machinery and other functional looking items, adding character to the buildings without too much effort.

The doors are removable - the top of each doorway has been left separate, enabling me to lift it off and slide the door out.

The yellow "Dragon's Teeth" at the front are intended as a safety feature as found on many modern industrial buildings - large vehicles entering the garage at the wrong angle would hit one off these first, rather than colliding with the wall of the building. They also provide a handy bit of cover for anyone defending the building from attack.

I need to cast a few more blocks; I was using up some of my existing stock, and ran out part way through construction!

There will be a first floor for the building, which will most likely be made from foamcore.

New UNSC Troopers

This is a somewhat experimental colour scheme using a couple of the new UNSC troops from GZG.


This is based on a "Wimbledon" style colour scheme using white, purple and green. I had some old GW Epic scale Imperial Knights which had been painted in this "House Warwick" colour scheme. Although they have long since been re-painted in the "Warp Runners" Titan order colour scheme, I did like the old scheme, so thought I'd give it another try.





I'm not really sure that it has worked! I might go for something more conventional on the rest of them, or perhaps a traditional white and blue UN scheme...

Projects on the go...

I haven't had much time to add anything to my Blog in the last couple of weeks - too little time as there has been lots to do at work, overdue gardening tasks to catch up on at the weekends and several evenings has been taken up with either:
a) preparing activities for about 40 Cubs and Scouts out in the woods yesterday evening and
b)painting numbers and sticking googly eyes on 100 small pebbles for a fund-raiser at our Community Festival this coming weekend!

I've been working on assorted little projects when I can snatch a few minutes, coming soon are...

Industrial type building constructed using Hirst Arts starship moulds (nearing completion - just need to cast up a few extra bits that I've run out of)

Some more shacks and a few wrecked/burnt out cars

GZG crusties (finally managed to watch District 9 last week!)

More work on the Eagle, starting with paint stripping and filing off mould lines


I'll be trying to take a few more photographs over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Finally... a thank you to Mark from Dropship Horizon for giving my Blog a mention!

Paul

Eagle Transporter

Space 1999 Eagle Transporter

I picked up this old Dinky Toys Space 1999 Eagle Transporter for £2 in a junk shop.

It is clearly in need of some TLC having lost engines, most of the RCS thruster nozzles and the majority of its paint! I'm planning to strip off the battered green Dinky Toys paint scheme and re-paint in a more appropriate grey/white colour scheme. There is so little of the old paint scheme left that I won't feel guilty about destroying it. Prior to painting, some quick surface detailing will be added to the interior of the support tray which runs down the spine of the ship, and to the sides of the access ways which will be inside the structural cage. A few sequins, plasticard bits and wire wrapped guitar strings will add a nice selection of technical gubbins. The "beak" command module will have mould-lines and joins smoothed over, and casting marks on the undercarriage pod "shoulders" and landing feet will also be filled / filed smooth.

As the craft is currently without engines or transport pod, I'm thinking that it will be a static display piece - a long disused ship, stripped of many of the useful parts and incorporating some sort of lean-to building underneath (where the pod would have fitted). In fact I already have a scenario idea which would make use of this piece of scenery...

One day I may try and scratch build some engines - I have a plastic Eagle kit partially constructed, with a set of fuel tanks, engine bells etc. which will provide a good template. For now though, it will just be cleaned up and re-built as it is.

Headswaps and skullhunters

A couple of my currents works-in-progress...

Head swaps using GZG replacement heads.

Security team leader...

Plus some "Skullhunters" from QRF.