Venture Star Prospecting Company

One of the first things I'm going to build for my spaceport/colony project is a prospecting facility. My first thought was to do a full blown mining operation but I decided that would be far too involved and costly at this stage. A small prospecting company doesn't need nearly as much equipment or crew members to be viable.

Here are a few of their vehicles. The large mole machine is a G.I. Joe “Cobra Mole Pod” which I picked up at Wal-mart for about $15.00. I've seen them on-line for a bit cheaper than that but of course you have to pay shipping. I also don't mind spending a bit more on the mole machine because it will be kind of the centerpiece for the whole operation.

The dump truck and excavator are from a “construction” set I picked up at the Dollar General store for about $8.00. It also came with a flat bed semi truck and a couple smaller bobcat type machines. These are not particularly exotic or sci-fi looking but the background of my space colony project is based on our solar system and a future Earth so it's somewhat more practical. I plan to have some hover vehicles but the wheel works quite nicely especially for heavy equipment like this. I feel future Earth style sci-fi should have familiar elements and these will also be able to do double duty in zombie games or other modern games. The cab on the dump truck is a bit smaller than I like but I think it will work out. I plan to pick up one more construction set so I will have two trucks and excavators.

I plan to build a base facility with an office/lab, barracks, a vehicle garage, and small smelting facility. The employees will consist of 10-12 people including crew, administration, and scientist.

Finished Shots of the "Sky Sweeper" and some other stuff.

I put the finishing touched on the "Sky Sweeper" a couple of days ago. Here is a shot of it in a Star Wars setting. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It is converted from a 3 inch scale G.I. Joe toy if you missed my previous postings about it.

Here is another shot with a couple of my other finished toy ship conversions. This terrain is some stuff I made years ago for a Star Wars skirmish game I was working on with a friend based on the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG rules and Necromundia.

I just thought it might be a good time for me to post a pic of my current ship collection; finished, unfinished, and work in progress. I have a few others that will be set up as wrecks and junk ships.

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.