More Black Dog painting WIP

I finished the first coat of the yellow accents. I think I like the way they turned out. Now I just have to touch them up and weather them a bit.

Black Dog painting WIP "Accents"

I started painting the accent markings on the "Black Dog" today. Took me a while to figure out what I was going to do with them. I didn't want the ship to be all black or look like a regular military ship so I wanted a little brighter color scheme. I've decided to go with Yellow for my main accent lines and will probably use Red for some of the smaller accents. After I get the accents down I'm going to add the markings and the name and "nose art" which will probably end up somewhere on the side of the ship and not the nose.

I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP 2

Here is a shot of the weathering on the Sky Sweeper. I kinda feel like I got the wash a little heavy but there's not much I can do about that now. Over all I think it's still going to turn out looking good. I don't think I'm actually going to name this one.

The only thing I have left on this is to finish the canopy and touch it up a bit.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP 2

I've made some progress today on the Sky Sweeper paint job. I think it's coming along nicely. Unfortunately the "Black Dog" is still at the same place it was last update but I think I'm having trouble deciding on the details for that ship so getting something done on this one is actually helping.

I still have to come up with a name for this ship so I can finish it up. I've still got detailing and weathering to do as well. Hopefully I'll get more done on both ships before the end of the day.

Sky Sweeper painting WIP

I decided to take a break from the Black Dog for a bit to think about the rest of the paint job. I used some plastic card from a "For Sale" sign to cover some places where I cut off the missile pylons. I also made a hatch although I'm not totally satisfied with it. I think it will work though.

The I took the ship apart so I could paint it. The engines are just too complicated to try and paint around.

Here is a shot of the project my wife is working on. A Valkyrie drop ship from Games Workshop. This thing cost about $60.00 but it is a real nice model. We might pick up a couple for general sci-fi games but at that cost we can't buy a lot. That's why I like toys. They are usually much cheaper.

Here is a shot of the ship with the base cote. I think it's going to look pretty cool painted up. I haven't decided what I'm going to name this ship yet. Guess I better get that figured out since I'm going to try and get it painted over the next couple days.

Black Dog painting WIP

I just finished doing the basic hull paint job on the "Black Dog". I did two layers of dry brushing to create the highlights. I tried to make the ship look black but heavily weathered. I think it came out pretty good.

Of course I plan to do a lot more weather and detail painting. I'll be painting in scrapes in the paint job that expose the metal hull and I have a lot of details to paint in as well. I'll also have markings and nose art which may or may not actually go on the nose depending on the design.

Here is a shot with the hatches open. I really like the contrast of the green interior with the black exterior. I think things are progressing nicely and I still expect to be finished by this Sunday. The crew pictured here are just a stand in crew. I chose them out of my collection because they each represent a different major company. I don't know that I'm going to make a specific crew for this ship straight away. It may change hands over the course of the campaign I am working on.

The Black Dog WIP finished interior!

I managed to get the interior of the Black Dog finished today and the ship re-assembled. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out.

One thing I am eventually going to change is the extendable ramp. This one is just too long. For now though it will serve it's purpose.

I feel the cockpit re-scaled fairly well and that the ship looks reasonable as a 28mm ship. The engine compartments also turned out nice although they were a bear to paint.

Here is a nice closeup shot of the interior of the hold. I painted it green to give it contrast from the black hull. It also hints at an earlier military use.

Over all I'm really happy with other than the ramp but that's something I can fix later on. I'm also happy with my progress since I just purchased this ship a couple days ago and I've already got quite a bit of work done on it. I've still got some detailing to do and quite a bit of painting but if I keep up this pace I might have it finished by Sunday night.

Cockpit of the Black Dog.

I don't think it was all that clear in my earlier post but the white strip of plastic I glued to the cockpit was to make the cockpit appear more in scale with the rest of the ship.

Here is a shot of the cockpit painted with the first layer. The painting is rough. I will be cleaning it up on the finished model. I just wanted to make it clear for further WIP shots.

Finishing touches on the Black Dog conversion.

I was able to wrap up conversion on the "Cobra Gunship" last night using parts from the Platformer and Hexagon sets from Pegasus Hobbies. This turned out to be one of the easier conversion I've done of a toy to a game model because of the flexibility of those kits. Granted if I didn't already have these kits the cost of this conversion would have been a lot more but I've had they laying around for a while so I used them on this project. I could have probably scratch built what I needed out of cheaper material but this also gives me the advantage of being able to convert another gunship with exactly the same look.

Now on to the painting.

Work in progress on some spaceships.

Today I did some work on two space ships for various sci-fi games. Both are based on G.I. Joe toys currently available at several stores. I feel like I got quite a bit done on both of these ships in just a few hours.
I thought I would go ahead on show the method I use for gluing down the strips of plastic I use to re-scale cockpit canopies. The easiest way to do it is to just glue it in place on one side and let the glue set. Then I glue the rest of it in place. It's much easier to bend the plastic over the curve if you use this method.

Here is a shot of the cockpit after re-scaling. This may not be the "best" way to do this or the way a modeler would do it but it's just for gaming so I'm happy with the results.

I also worked on the "Black Dog" I'm converting from the "Cobra Gunship". Nicer toys like these are often held together with screws which make working on them much easier. Normally I don't go crazy and work on interiors on small ship models but this one was set up really nicely for that kind of thing so I went ahead and decided to detail the hold area and re-scale it for 28mm.

The cockpit on this toy was even easier to convert because of it's boxy construction. Here I've just added some straight strips to reduce the canopy scale.

The open area on the side of the ship had a boxy bench seat where you could set a couple of three inch figures. Of course this took up a lot of space so I cut it out and covered the holes with these pieces from the Pegasus Hobbies Platformer kit.

Here is a shot of what the hold area looks like after conversion. I should be able to stand several miniatures in the opening or put some light cargo inside. My next big hurdle is the side hatch. You can't see it in this pic but there is a lip on the end of the hatch which looks odd for 28mm scale figures. I plan to make a pull out ramp out of platformer bits that will extend to the ground and look a lot nicer.

I picked up this Sky Sweeper Jet from the current G.I. Joe toy line to convert into a futuristic jet for the Shadowrun setting. I figured I could use it as a transport type vehicle with limited VTOL capabilities. This is a neat little model that comes with landing skids which is a big bonus. Of course the cockpit will need to be re-scaled. I'll use the same method I used on the Skip Tracker model of using a plastic strip forward on the canopy to denote the size of the cockpit then I'll paint the rest of the canopy as the hull.

This is the spot I'm going to place the plastic strip which should make the entire model look appropriately scaled for 28mm miniatures. I'm also planning on adding some door/hatches to make the model look even more to scale.

Here's the shot of the model with a few modern and sci-fi miniatures from various lines. From left to right those lines are; Foundry, Void, Reaper, Copplestone Casting, and Games Workshop. I think it scales nicely out of the box. It might also make a pretty good shuttle or small craft for a sci-fi space setting although I feel the wings are a bit too long wide for that. Perhaps a drop ship type craft as well.

Another shot from the front with a Void militia model. The engines are a little tweaked because the support pieces are made from a softer plastic but I think I can fix that.
A 3/4 view from the other side with a Reaper Chronoscope miniature. I can't express enough how nice it is to find this kind of toy with landing skids. Making any kind of landing gear from scratch is a nightmare and really taxes my feeble scratch building skills.

A shot from the back with a Games Workshop Necromundia figure. I think it's going to make a nice little vehicle for Shadowrun and other futuristic games. It only cost about $15.00 so I may be able to afford a few more painted in other colors or with different role variations.

Shadowrun in Miniature

Well I've decided to start a new project doing a set of miniatures for Shadowrun since I'm currently playing in two long term Shadowrun games. I've already got quite a few human modern and Sci-Fi style minis so I'm not going to spend any extra time on human minis unless they are security types or gangers or other NPCs.

My plan is to focus on the meta-human races. My short term goal is to do several of each race and do male and females. Because some races are going to be harder and more expensive to convert and aren't played that often anyway I'm not going to have the same goals for each.

I plan to build 10 Elves evenly split between males and females and spread pretty evenly between archetypes. Elves are probably second only to humans in popularity and they are somewhat versatile. I'll probably avoid doing a heavily armored street samurai type but I'm going to try and cover the other common runner types. Obviously I'm going to be using lithe minis for most of these figs and either doing head swaps or sculpting ears.

I plan to do at least 8 Orcs. Orcs are a fairly common race especially for combat characters and hackers. I'll probably lean more heavily on the combat side with the orcs. I want to do at least three females but I might do four if I can find good figs for conversions. I'm going to have to look for some big human minis for these guys.

For starters I'm only going with 4 Dwarves. They aren't that common as runners. Obviously I'll probably do at least two riggers and a female shaman. The fourth will probably just be a generic runner. It's going to be hard to find good dwarf minis. I'll probably have to look at Warmachine for the mechanic types.

Trolls are going to be hard. I'll probably use Ogres for base minis and I'm only planning on making 3-4. Hopefully I can find at least one suitable female fig. These are also probably going to take more sculpting than the other conversions.

Of course another part of the project will be doing vehicles and drones. Fortunately I have a lot of options out there. The Infinity game has some nice combat bots and there are some other lines out there with some good stuff. Even some of the constructs from D&D could make exotic drones. Very small scale tanks can be turned into tracked drones as well.

Well hopefully I will be able to get some good stuff together. At the moment I just plan to add post to this blog but if things get going I might do a blog just for the project.

Brethern of the Belt: Growing Crew.

Well I finished three of Axel's Lads tonight. These are minis for my "Brethren of the Belt" space pirate army project. These guys are fron the crew of the "Bloodborn" like Vinnie's Duct Rats I did earlier.

These minis were kitbashed from various GW parts. The one in the center has; the head of a Chaos Marauder Horseman, Torso and Backpack of a Tau Firewarrior, Legs from a Catacan Jungle Guard, arms from the Empire Militia set, and a Dark Eldar rifle.

Here they are standing in with "Vinnie's Duct Rats" who are all from the Urban War militia box. The Urban War minis are slightly smaller scale but that's ok because Vinnie's guys represent younger new recruits and Axel's lads represent regular crew.

New Ships for the Spaceport!

Well I picked up a couple more ships for my "Spaceport 69" project. The red one is another Marauder Attack Fighter from "The Corps" line of toys. I used the same toy to create "The Skip Tracker" last year. I've been able to find these fairly consistently at Wal-Mart. They cost about $7.00 making them cheaper than some standard 28mm miniatures.

The blue ship is "Argost's Jet" from "The Secret Saturdays" toy line by Matel. I assume it is from a cartoon since it has the Cartoon Network logo. I picked this one up on clearance for $11.00 but I think it was originally about $16.00.


I'm basically going to use the same method to convert the Marauder Attack Fighter that I used on the Skip Tracker so I'm not going to go into that here. As you can see there are no landing gear on the Argost Jet. This is the typical problem when dealing with toy space ships and jets.

For some unknown reason there is an odd shaped hole in the back of the starboard side engine. I can't figure out why since there is not extra piece in the box that would fit there and it doesn't look like anything would attach to the ship here either. I'm just going to have to fill it in or cover it up or put something back there that will look logical. Fortunately the ship has an asymmetrical design so that should help make it look better.

As you can see the figures that came with the ship are basically in the 28mm scale range. With those big cannons on the front this ship will be a heavy attack fighter with a crew of 2-3. I'm thinking of adding it to my space pirate force because it looks kinda menacing but my daughter likes it a lot so I may let here use it for her own character in the setting.

Axel's Lads

Well it's been two years since I made any progress on my space pirate army but I'm finally starting to get some more things done for it. Axel's Lads here are more of your regular pirate crew type miniatures. I made these guys entirely out of Games Workshop plastic kits. I think there are parts from the; Catacan Jungle Guard, Caidian Shock Troops, Empire Militia, Knights of the White Wolf sprue, Tau Firewarriors, Dark Eldar, Eldar weapon sprue, Chaos Marauder Horseman, and Caidian heavy weapons sprue.

I'm pretty happy with the way they are turning out considering they were made from left over kits. Keep watching this space for more progress.

"Resident Evil Hunters" Episode 3 "Unfettered"

July 24th 1998 Raccoon City. Anya Fields and Meredith Hartwick of “Hartwick and Fields Investigations” are at their downtown office. It's mid morning when a woman walks in. She introduces herself as Victoria Sanchez a reporter from the “Raccoon City Times”. Sanchez explains that she had received a package from Eddy Williams about dangerous and illegal experiments being conducted by the Umbrella Corporation. She also says that Eddy told here than the investigators had helped him get the information. Unfortunately her editor wanted more if he were going to risk going up against Umbrella. Miss Sanchez found another lead. An Umbrella employee who claimed to have solid information about seriously illegal activities by Umbrella. His name was Tyler Norton and he was hiding in a family hunting cabin in the Arklay Mountains. Miss Sanchez offers the investigators $3000.00 if they will help her find Norton's cabin and get the information. Hartwick and Fields agree.

After a flat tire and making a few wrong turns Hartwick, Fields, and Sanchez finally find the cabin. Unfortunately it took much longer to find than expected and it's almost nightfall when they arrive. They cautiously approach the small cabin.

Sanchez knocks on the door and a young man with an automatic rifle opens it. The man looks frightened. “Are you Sanchez?” the man ask. Sanchez introduces herself as well as the investigators. The man introduces himself as Tyler Norton an employee of the Umbrella Corporation. Norton explains that he was hired by Umbrella as a dog handler. He took the job thinking he would be doing security work but after signing a non disclosure agreement he found out it was for another reason. Umbrella began experimenting on dogs by administering them something called the T-virus which cause the dogs to mutate into larger killing machines. They called these creatures MA-39 Cerberus. Norton was frightened by this work but more frightened of what would happen to him if he tried to quit his job after seeing what he had see. He had also heard rumors that Umbrella has experimented on humans with the virus which turned them into mindless “zombies”. A few weeks ago the Umbrella Corporation managed to secure a timber wolf from Alaska. They named the wolf Fenrir and it was their intention to infect it with the t-virus and turn it into a super Cerberus. Norton decided he had to do something. He gathered all the information he could about the Cerberus project and broke Fenrir out of the kennels and hid him at the cabin.
Norton continues to explain that last night the cabin was attacked by “zombies”. Fenrir broke his chains and attacked them. Though he killed several it appeared he became infected. Fenrir attacked the cabin but ran off after hearing some howling coming from the surrounding hills. Norton fears the zombies and Fenrir might come back at any time.
Sanchez looks over the evidence that Norton recovered from the Umbrella labs. She's excited that it look like good evidence.

The group prepares to leave the cabin but when they look outside they see several groups of individuals who appear to be stumbling towards the cabin. Norton says "Damn they are back. Kill them!".

The creatures approach the cabin in four group from several different directions. One group seems to be cutting the humans off from their car. Everyone inside the cabin readies their weapons and takes up positions at the windows. After dealing with the creatures at the farm and Kruger's lab Hartwick and Fields have packed a formidable arsenal. Fields readies her AK-47, Hartwick loads her 12 gauge pump action shotgun with slugs, Norton takes up a position with his rifle and even Sanchez is given a Colt 1911.

Hartwick takes up a position at the door. Fields and Norton take up positions at the window. Everyone starts shooting at the creatures.

Several of the creatures fall but other simply shrug off the shots. Fields seems to be having the most luck with her AK.

Despite several creatures being shot down the rest stumble on oblivious of the fates of the others. Sanchez gets into the fight shooting out the back window at a group of zombies but her shots are wild and untrained so she has no luck.

Eventually some of the creatures reach the cabins front door and back window. Hartwick tries to fend them off with her shotgun but finds it harder to hit with the creatures clawing and biting at her. The creatures at the back window attack Sanchez but have a hard time reaching her through the window.

Fields and Norton manage to take out the rest of the creatures converging on the cabin with well placed rifle shots. Hartwick at Sanchez manage to avoid injury fighting off the creatures but do little damage themselves.

A maddening howl is heard even above the gunfire and fighting. It seems Fenrir has found his way back to the cabin. Fenrir charges towards the cabin and unlike the creatures he is very fast.

With the help of Norton and Fields, Hartwick managed to kill several of the creatures attacking her.

Fenrir charges past Sanchez's car and into the open. Norton and Fields pour fire into the infected wolf and score some impressive hits but the beast just keep coming.

Fenrir closes the distance between the car and the cabin with astounding speed but just as it looks like he will make it Fields hits the beast right between his eyes nearly blowing it's head clean off. The massive wolf falls just one leap from the window that Fields and Norton had been shooting from.

With Fenrir destroyed Hartwick, Fields, and Norton manage to clean up the rest of the creatures attacking the cabin in short order. Sanchez runs over and starts taking pictures of the dead wolf.

After finishing off the last zombie Fields is the last to emmerge from the cabin her AK smoking from the barrel and foregrip with a nearly empty magazine.

With all the creatures dead the survivors are able to get to Sanchez's car safely. Sanchez is confident that her editors will finally let here write a story exposing Umbrella's illegal activities.

Note: This was the third episode of my Resident Evil campaign usign the Savage Worlds rules.