Black Dog painting WIP more "Accents"

I got the yellow accent marks highlighted. They appear pretty chalky here but when I do the wash they will blend better. I still have some details to paint them weathering. I think I'm going to go dig through my old model kits looking for decals I can use.

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.

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.

Spaceport 69 Depo 5

Well I'm finally getting a start on my Spaceport 69 project. I've collected several plastic meat trays because of their interesting shape. I've seen people try and make terrain out of similar plastic packages but they often try and use the package for the main part of the sturcture. That's not alway a bad thing when it's well pulled off but a lot of the time it just ends up looking like a painted bit of packaging on the table. I've decided to use them as roofs for the older more industrial buildings in the spaceport.

I'm building the buildings out of foam core. I'm trying to make all the buildings in this project as playable as possible so I'm making interiors for them. The best way to make interiors for buildings is to plan them out first.

After I finished the basic floor plan I picked out a few miniatures to see how they fit in the floor plan. I wanted to make sure I could get at least one figure on an average size base in every room.

After finishing the floor plans I planned out the front, back, and sides. This took a while but planning makes construction easier.

Of course it's always good to check with the experts. My son was giving me advice the whole time.

After I got the outside walls cut out I put the structure together using sticky tack. Sticky tack works great for this but don't leave it on too long or it could get harder to remove.

After I got everything cut out I used sticky tack again to put the entire building together. Of course there is a lot of detailing to do and painting before I can put the building together.

Here is a shot of the interior with a few minis inside. I left the inside walls a bit shorter so I could get to the minis in each room easier.

Next the detailing and painting.

Miniature a Day 2009 day 2

Painted up a couple of Sligg Soldiers from Reaper's Chronoscope line. These guys were a blast to paint. This pair will be working with Kirby McDowell as crew of the Skip Tracker in my Spaceport 69 project.

Just a couple more details about my mini a day goal. I'll track the progress like this:

Day: 2
Number of minis:3
Score: +1

Also unlike last time I'm going to be posting the mini I finished on the prior day and not the one I finished up that day. This way I'll have time to varnish and photograph the mini.

The "Skip Tracker"

Today I finished another ship for my Saceport 69 project. It's the "Skip Tracker" a ship owned by bounty hunter Kirby McDowell and his two Sligg partners.

I purchased the toy this ship is based on a couple years ago at Walmart. It's part of a line of 3 inch action figures called "The Corps". I added my own landing gear from craft sticks and plastic bits from plastic model kits. In order to change the scale of the ship to appear 28mm I put a strip of plastic over the front of the toy's cockpit to scale it down into a front window of the shuttle craft. I also added a hatch made from light cardboard to the side of the ship. After that I painted it up. I still have a bit of touch up to do and varnishing but the ship is pretty much done.

And here is Kirby McDowell and his Sligg partners ready to be painted themselves. That's my next project.

I know I didn't show much WIP on this one but I'm planning on building at least a couple more ships based on this toy so stay tuned for some more detailed builds.

Spaceport 69

Spaceport 69 is my new home brew Savage World setting. It's also going to be a miniature and terrain project. My plan is to make it a living project. Each building I build for the project will proceed on a logical timeline. The first building will be the spaceport hub, the next perhaps a canteena or hotel. The timeline will also fit into the setting time line. The first few adventures will center around the hub then when the next building/business is built it will be incorporated into the setting timeline and added to the adventures. This way the terrain project will grow as the setting grows. Each building and spaceship I build for the project will also get a crew/staff of NPCs and miniatures to represent them.

I'm going to start building the main part of the spaceport first. The Virgin Galactic hub. The spaceport itself will be a kind of truck stop in space. The setting itself will be 100-200 years in the future and will be based on current history. I thought using Virgin Galactic as the original corporate sponsors for the spaceport would at a tie to real world history and give a feeling of a more realistic future. All the buildings will be playable inside and out so my goal is to make them seem futuristic without making the construction too complicated.



I've been collecting various space ship toys and models over the last few years with the intention of making a spaceport for them. Here is a shot of some of my ships in various stages of completion. These ships will represent either permanent residents of the spaceport or frequent visitors. I'm planning on adding a couple larger ships, about twice the size of the bigger ships shown here.

So that's the project. I plan to get a good start on it in the next couple months then I'll be adding new elements in the future as I'm able to get them done.