Shadowrun: Orcs in progress.....

Got on a pretty big converting kick for my Shadowrun project. Yesterday I went to my FLGS and picked up some figures to make Orc conversions. I already had a couple done. The two primed figures are converted from Reaper orc heads and other bodied. The one on the far left is Jäger in his combat gear. I used the same head from the Reaper 1/2 orc monk that I used for the business suit version from my previous post.

I used various Reaper heads and a few Games Workshop Beastman heads with their horns cut off for the most part. The beastman heads will also get tusk added. The Foundry Street Violence fig on the far right makes a pretty good orc as is but I'm going to add tusk to his face as well. Other than that he is good to go. I'm particularly proud of the orc with the minigun 2nd one from the right. He came together quite well.

I still have quite a bit of green stuff work to do on these but I feel they are coming along nicely. I'm also looking at some conversion ideas for five more female orcs.

2012 Project "Shadowrun" in miniature.

Our big project for 2012 is going to be "Shadowrun". I think it's pretty fitting because the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 marks the beginning of the 6th world. I've been playing in a consistent Shadowrun campaign since 2008 and for the first few years we either didn't use miniatures or we used the GMs 1990s style Ral Partha Shadowrun figures. In the last year I've started working on a few Shadowrun minis in 28/30mm scale by converting minis from existing modern and sci-fi lines.

Here are some runners I converted and painted in the last year. Most of these are from our team although not all are current.

From left to right:

Brass: Female Elf "Face". This is simply a Foundry miniature from their Street Violence line with elf ears sculpted from green stuff.

Edward: Male Elf "Technomancer". This figure is is made from the body of a Militia miniature from the Void miniature game and a plastic head from the old Games Workshop Dark Eldar line. He has red skin because the character had to have his natural skin replaced with synthetic skin after being engulfed by a Spirit of Fire.

Bear: Male Human "Street Samurai". This figure is made from various Games Workshop plastic kits and an AK-47 from Reaper's modern weapons pack. Bear is actually an NPC dependent.

Jo: Female Orc "Street Samurai". Joe is made from a Reaper Half Orc. The AK-47 comes from a RAFM figure and the extra gear on her belt came from a Games Workshop plastic kit. Jo is my wife's character.

Jäger: Male Orc "Street Samurai". Jäger is made using the body from a Foundry Street Violence miniature and a Reaper Half Orc monk. His machine pistol is from the Malifaux modern weapons pack. Jäger is my character.

Parker: Female Orc "Face". This figure is made from the body of a RAFM USX miniature and the head of a Reaper half orc.

Elf female: This figure is made from a Foundry Street Violence figure with some elf ears made from green stuff. She is currently serving as a stand in for a player character until we find something better.

Squirle: Male Elf "Technomancer". This figure is made from a Militia figure from the Void miniature game with elf ears made from green stuff.

We are also planning to build; more runners, security forces, organized crime factions, gangs, spirits, drones, awakened critters, civilians, vehicles, and sprawl terrain.

Of course we already have a large number of modern and sci-fi humans which we will be making extensive use of.

Ork Shadowrunners WIP

I've been working today on some Ork Shadowrunners. The frist two are the characters my wife and I have been playing in our Shadowrun group for the past 3 years. The last one is just one I did for fun.
The first one is Jager my Street Samurai depicted here in his "business" suit wielding his Ceska Black Scorpion submachinepistol. I'm planning on making another combat version of this character. This figure was made using the head of a Reaper Halforc Monk with the body of one of Juno's Crew from the Foundry Street Violence line. The gun is from the Malifaux Modern Weapons pack.
The lovely image of beauty on Jager's right is Jo my wife's Ork Street Samurai. The figure is a Halforc Pirate figure from reaper with an AK-47 taken from a RAFM terrorist. I need to do a fair amount of putty work in the back of this figure where we cut the cutlass that the figure was holding away. The hand will need some touch up as well.
The final guy is just some Ork. I have an Ork character in limbo named Bulldog who this mini would work well for but I have no idea if I'm ever going to play in that game again so for now he's just a spare Ork. He's made by swapping a Reaper halforc barbarian head with a Starship Trooper Mobile Infantry body. When I get these guys a bit further along I'll show them compared to some typical height sci-fi humans. These are all big minis perfect for Orks.

Statio 42: More Venture Star Vehicles

Just making a quick post to show off a couple new vehicles for the Venture Star prospecting company from my space station project. First up is the company shuttle which is a G.I. Joe Shark Tooth submarine toy. It's basically just a re-paint. I did basically nothing to the model in terms of conversion. There was already a plastic ridge in the canopy that was about where I would have put one to re-scale it so all I really did was paint it up. I'm really quite happy with the way it turned out and I'll likely be picking up a few more Shark Tooth toys for the project.

Next up is this flying car I picked up at Wal-Mart. It's a Hot Wheels kit car that is about 1/43rd scale I would assume. I think it makes an awesome air speeder/flying car. Check out my previous post for more details.

This car will be the personal vehicle of Mr. John J. Biggs the CEO of Venture Star. It is pictured here with two Copplestone "Babes"

Station 42 Mr. Biggs gets a flying car!

I picked up this Hotwheels "Custom Motors" flying car today while at Wal-Mart. I'm using it as the personal vehicle of Mr. Biggs the CEO of the Venture Star corporation. It looked like the kind of over the top ride a CEO going through a mid life crisis would call his dream car. The scale of the car itself is closer to 1/43rd so it's a bit large but it is after all a "flying car" so I suppose eyeball scale is good enough. I look at it more like an air speeder than a sports car anyway.

Here's the packaging it came in. There are a couple spots on the roof that need some putty work because they are places you could attach customizable bits. This set cost about $9.00 with tax and there were several other kits that could work for 28mm vehicles. Some of the larger sets cost about $16.00 but I didn't want to try them out until I had worked with a smaller kit.

Station 42 BIG STOMPY ROBOTS!!!!

Anyone who follows this blog has probably figured out that I spend way too much time browsing the toy isles at the local stores. I love toys. I think most miniature gamers are just big kids anyway playing with big kid toys. The best thing about toys though is that they are cheap. Or at least cheap when compared to miniatures. My budget for miniature gaming is tight. Really damn tight. I barely have the money to buy the minis and that leaves almost nothing for terrain and vehicles and larger models. Fortunately I have toys.
Take a look at these guys. I found these packs of robots at a local Dollar General. They stand 3.5 inches tall (9cm) and cost $5.00 (not a lot of money in your currency either) a pack. That's right $5.00 for three "BIG STOMPY ROBOTS". That's about $1.66 each. I can't remember when I last paid under $2.00 for a brand new 28mm mini. Space Marine Dreadnoughts cost $45.00 each. I can get 27 of these guys for $45.00. That's a lot of bang for the buck. I can't think of that many sci-fi settings where you couldn't use these guys as heavy war droids. They are a bit small to be mecha but my next project is to track down some larger cheap robot toys for that purpose.

Here are three of the droids and some 28mm miniatures from various companies for a scale reference.

Here's another three with the miniatures. You can't see the green droids arms but they are a pair of Gatling cannons. I plan to use this model for my M.S.S.R. force. It just has that Commie Tech look to it.

These droids are all possible because they are constructed with ball joints. As toys these joints are really loose. The legs come apart at the knees way too easily. However I'll be gluing these guys into static poses. The nice thing is that if I get other copies of these droids no two will have to be in the same pose.

Here's a shot of the same droid in another pose. The detail on these are very nice. Fairly crisp and deep which should really come out with a better paint job.

Here's another shot of a more dynamic pose. I think I'm going to use this pose for this guy when I set him up. I also think he's going to be part of my N.O.V.A. security company. He just has a nice clean "cop" look to him and I think he will look great with the Reaper minis I'm using.

Here's the really cool thing about them. Not only are they multi poseable but they also come apart. In fact you can use any part from any one of the models on any other model. All the weapons and wargear are interchangeable too! That makes for quite a few combinations. These guys are a kit bashers dream.

Here's a shot of the scenic bases that come with the droids and some extra weapons and wargear. It's almost like the people who designed these things were wargamers themselves.

I'm going to work these guys into the forces of several of the factions in my sci-fi setting. I'm even planning on converting a few as industrial droids since you can remove the weapons from them and add other tools.

I've made a lot of high value toy purchases for wargaming but I thing these are some of the best. Not only are these going to make great war droids but they could just as easily be made into objective markers and terrain bits. Big robots are found in all kinds of science fiction settings and these guys can be converted into many variations quite easily!

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.