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.