another HO shed...

This is the last of the HO sheds I bought a while back. By Peco it's called Coal Merchants Office. Makes a decent little colonist building.

The windows are hollow and you cut the blister packaging to size to make the glass. I scuffed the blister up and rubbed in some brown paint to dirty the glass up. This also made it opaque so you can't see the plain interior. Some bits of debris added to the roof to make it look more scruffy. Scales pretty well with 15mm sci-fi figs.

To add some interest there's a  HO chocalate bar dispenser stuck to the side painted rusted up. Got a few of these in a pack. Might glue some back to back to make a little free standing doodad. Could put a little plasticard "screen" on both sides to make a public "vid phone".

Alien Spotting: Part 1

For a recent painting session I dug out of the lead pile a whole load of alien type figures and prep'd them for painting. Here's the first batch completed.

Left to Right: Fragalian, Converted Creegan Spore, Converted GZG crewman, Horansi, Vergan, Triorb, and Sponk.

More galactic oddness to come soon!

Overseer 'bot

First casting of the Overseer robot.

Painted Watcher 'bots

Painted up my resin 'bots at the weekend. They were drybrushed from a light grey up to an off-white then the details were picked out in grey and black with blue "caps" added. Will be painting up some more bots in these colours to form a larger squad and will try some different colour schemes once I've gotten some more cast up. 

Painted Rockjumper

Converted Khurasan Rockjumper.

Robots!

Had a little painting session yesterday and managed to finish these 5 old Laserburn robots. Really simple colour scheme made up of vallejo elfic flesh, gory red and black. Used a little bit of steel grey on the small bots laser and arm to finish them off.

The two humaniod types were converted a while back. One given a tube for a right arm the other a bit of scrap lead for a rough blade. The there prongs on the left arm were made by snapping the existing lower arm off and gluing it back on the other way around. Some other bits of scrap metal were added to this arm to make the join stronger.

The little robots turned out pretty nice.  I avoided trying to pick out the little circles around the mid-section painting this area a flat colour which looks ok. I've started painting my floating bots in the same colour scheme so could be the start of a little robot force.

Watcher bots...

Been working on these floating robots recently and got some cast up in resin. I wanted to make them kind of sinister with lots of "eyes" around the body something like a robot Beholder from D&D.  Could use them as security bots or even something along the lines of a force like the Daleks. Hoping to get these painted up sometime over the weekend to see how the look with a lick of paint.

Hornby HO Nissen Hut

Picked this up from a model shop in Portmadog on a recent break in Wales. Scales up really well with 15mm figs and the pre-paint is pretty nice.

Because it's hollow cast the windows are clear which is a nice touch.

Khurasan's JTFB

Yesterday Jon posted some pics of his new JTFB range over on TMP.  These were a lot of fun to sculpt and it's really great to see the response they've been getting. Here are some pics of the greens showing some different angles for some of the figures.

Anti-grav flit WIP

My girlfriend went shopping the other day and came back with a this for me!

She said she saw it and thought it was "spacy" looking. It called DEORA 11 from hotwheels and definately has some 15mm sci-fi potential.  First thoughs were to to remove wheels and fill in the gaps for a nice anti-grav truck. Then I spotted the surf boards on the back so began thinking about ways to remove or hide them. It occured that it may look cooler with the whole of the mid section removed making a small 2-seater flit.

It only had one rivet on the bottom and it's plastic so it was a matter of seconds to scalpel it off and get to the parts.

Once it was apart I could dremel the mid section away resulting in this.

I think I'll fill the gap between the back of the cab and the arch over the engine so that the engine will only be seen from the rear. Will end up being something like this.

The bottom of the windscreen over hangs the body so this will have to be sorted either sanding the windscreen back and then buffing it smooth or building the front of the body out a bit. Just need to work out a way to join the two halves so the interior bits will still fit in.

Jaka Walsh and Duke

Jon over at Khurasan has just released the first two of a set of figures I sculpted back in the summer. These were one-off rpg type figures with a bounty hunter vibe. After seeing the post on TMP I spoke to Jon and he sent over some high rez pics so I could post them here. Figures painted by Chris Yaro.

These have become part of the DLPS range with a nice background story with Jaka being a ex-cop Bondmans and Duke a net shooting robotic gundog!

Garn Commander

Being new to a scale has its advantages. I managed to double my painted figure count in one session by finishing a second 15mm sci-fi figure! For years the only figure I had finished was the yellow-suited citadel Traveller figure I've used on this blog for a bit of scale. At this point I probably got about 200+ unpainted in the lead pile so my painted to unpainted ratio is pretty dismal... always was a slow painter!

 I added the sword to the Garn when I bought him a few years back. It was originally the bayonet and rifle-end off a Dixon Dahomey figure. The jumpsuit was sculpted after being inspired by Spacejacker's Garn conversions over at Tiny Solitary Soldiers.

I've got 8 Garn troopers and two heavy weapon conversions still in the lead pile which I'm planning to paint different colours in terms of their clothing so they should look like a bunch of irregular rag-tag space pirates when they're finished.

Not much gaming potential with just two figures. Being a big fan of metagaming Melee I might try some duels using the Legends of Time and Space . I'd probably drop the IQ stat, allow a running shot to be attempted on 4/DX, no grenades, and add in the dodge movement option and the critical hit/miss rules from Melee and see how that plays.  Should be fast and bloody fun!

Painted static water tank

Some pics the finished static water tank from the last post.

Static water tank WIP

Been playing around with another scenery element which should go well with the colonial buildings I've been painting up recently. It'll be a static water/fuel tank, good for scenery or an objective.

The tank was taken off a toy train piece I picked up at a car boot. Once the tank was separated from the under carridge, the join line was smoothed and a plasticard skirt was added to give it a sturdy base. Hopefully get a chance to paint this up at the weekend.

Painted terrain pieces

Some pics of the paintjob on the colonial workshop from the last post, along with some other HO terrain bits. Should be good for a mid-tech colonial outpost.

The Wills HO sheds come in a pack of two, the first is part of the workshop, the second shed was painted an off-whte colour. The large barrels are some 28mm resin pieces which were glued together with some plasticard added to the side to look like some scrap metal.  The barrels are pretty over-sized for 15mm but the size is not too much of a stretch in a sci-fi setting. Will make a decent piece of full cover during a game. I took the tires from an old matchbox truck I picked up from a car boot, which were glued into two piles and given a quick painting. Got a few more terrain bits on the go but probably going to try to get some new figures painted.

Colonial workshop

Here's a little building I've been working on made from a couple of HO scale sheds. It's going to represent a small colonial workshop, maybe a bot repair shop.

The brown shed is by Peco and the paler is a kit from Wills. I cut a larger opening in the Peco shed with a dremel and made an open roller shutter to put above this. On the inside a workbench was added for a bit of detailing.

Scruffy old transporter

Resin truck by Old Crow.

Industrial bins

These are a couple of hornby HO scale bins I re-painted to look a bit more used. Before painting them I added some random bits of green stuff around the bins to make it look like bits of rubbish stuck to them.

The original paintjobs on the bins.

A-line HO containers

Ordered these HO scale containers by A-line a week or so ago from US and they arrived yesterday.  Really happy with them, seem a perfect size for 15mm. Should look great painted up battered and rusty.

The containers were rattling when I got them and I discovered the bottom popped off and there was a sprue of bits inside.I know where the long straight bits go on the doors but no idea about the other parts, probably leave those off.

Hotwheels h2go landspeeder

A few years back I picked up this hotwheels model. Even though it's a speedboat with a massive petrol engine I always thought it'd make a cool sci-fi landspeeder. Considering it's a toy that cost just over a pound there are some nice details on the model.

In order to paint some of the parts it's worth breaking the model apart by drilling out the two rivet heads on the underside of the model.  I find it best to do this by hand with a 15/20mm drill bit.

Once the rivet caps are off the model can be broken apart. Took the wheels off and put them in the bits box.

At this stage I went over the two body halves with a fine wet and dry paper to give the primer something to key too. Then all the bits were cleaned and primed grey.

Going for a two tone paint job I settled on a Turquiose and off-white for the body and interior, with the seats and steering wheel a leather brown. Engine would be drybrushed metallic silver. Here's a pic with some of  the base colour applied. Looked a bit clean at this stage...

Once all the basic painting was done it was dirtied up by smearing some washes of black and leather brown to some areas of the model, particularly the underside and the rear near the engines, then some areas were scraped away to show some of the original red paint.

The model re-assembled prior to varnishing.  Once it's all varnished and glued I'll probably use 3 bits of brass rod under the body to raise it off the ground slightly for an anti-grav effect. I'm pretty pleased with how the scrapes look where the original red colour is showing through.