Mantis Ship - finished

Right, that's the pastelling and weathering done on this lil' ship.
The blobs of Blu Tac have been removed to reveal the windows, but hasn't worked too well as the holes in the paint are very jagged.
So I've put rust around them to make them look beat up and look like I meant it that way.

Spoon Ship - finished and base coated

Right, adding a Star Fury engine for its, er, engine finishes the Spoon Ship.
So its on with a coat of Grey Primer then I had to consider what base coat to go with.
Originally it was going to be a Ma.K style - very WW2 matt grey or green.
Then I thought maybe 70's paperback cover - bright red or blue or somesuch.
But, with it in Primer, something was saying Gerry Anderson, so that's what i'm going to go with and the base is "Renault Glacier White".

T.I.E Bomber - to attempt or not to attempt?

There was a boot sale in the village this morning, and I went along expecting to come back with nothing more than a few books for the Sprogs at most.
But there was this action figure-scale TIE Bomber just sat there screaming out to me to own it.
Had to have it - its a very impressive size, looks pretty accurate, and was going for only 2 quid.
Its missing the cockpit hatch, so i'll have to remake that, and i'll dig out the old Sci Fi & Fantasy Modeller magazine where a guy made a studio scale replica, to see just how much work would be needed to improve on things.
If its do-able i'll do it, if not, it reverts back to a toy for the Sprogs.

Ma.K Tank - primed

Okay, have decided to draw a line under this and move on to the primer stage - I've too many projects on the go at the mo', it takes up too much space on the work bench, and I've another two kits on their way.
So, all I've done before putting the Primer on is to drill some holes at the point where the legs meet the hull. They're for elasticated cord that i'll be adding after the painting is done, which'll be power cables, helping to disguise the sloppy joins there.
Oh, and the turrets not glued in place yet - i'm keeping it off until the very end for ease of painting and weathering.

The Artmor project - teaser.

There isn't one.
I've tried and tried to come up with an enigmatic teaser image of progress so far, but anything I could come up with, i'm guessing will be pretty obvious.
And I want it to be a proper surprise when it arrives across the Pond.
So, no teaser image.
But... a shot of something that plays a BIG part in the making of.

Star Wars Rebel Transport

Went round to my friend Mark's for a natter this morning - and came away with the Rebel Transport ship from the old Airfix/MPC Rebel Base set that came out back when "Empire" first hit cinemas.
I've always loved the design in the film and loved the model in the really rather naff otherwise model kit.
I had one when it first came out but that's long gone, and have had a hankering to buy the kit again to have one again, but couldn't justify owning the rubbish X-Wings and totally out of scale ground grw/Snow Speeders/Walkers that also came with it.
So, thanks to friend Mark - and friend Alun who gave it to him - for stopping me needing the whole darn thing to get the one craft.
It's built and filled and the top half is in a glossy cream.
Looking at it compared to the studio model, its pretty darn close - the basic shape is there and the panelling's nice and the engine's are good (even with internal ribbed detail that'll never, ever be seen but its does fall down on the underside. The cargo pods are well done and some of the detail is good, but there's a whole bunch that isn't - why put on clock dial in there?????




After priming:




I departed from my usual method and have started the metallics first - its going to be difficult to pick out the side areas and some of the underside after painting the hulls, so done them first. I'm not dry brushing too much as I don't want the naff detail to be too apparent:

The Artmor Project

A while back I put up an teaser image of something i'm building for a project that i'm honoured to be a part of.
It was a teaser image as that what other folk involved in it were doing, but now full images of finished pieces are starting to appear, so figure its ok to go public on the thing.
Head on over there - its got some stunning work so far, and i'm looking forward to seeing more soon. And you'll find ways there to help in this very worthy enterprise.
As for mine, its nearly done, but I don't want to post up a finished shot as I want it to be a surprise when it reaches the other end. So on their FB page is where the first pic of mine will be, but I may post another teaser soon.

https://www.facebook.com/ArtmorProject

Spoon Ship - tail done

Not been any progress on this build as I've been awaiting a suitable wing for the tail.
And, quite frankly, forgot all about it.
But, looking through Dover Dave's bits box, a lovely, chunky wing appeared.
Bit out of scale with the rest but, seeing as I now figure its a 70's-style SF book cover craft, its not TOO far out.
Next up, blend it in with bits and pieces, ditto the neck of the beastie.

Finishing the Ma.K turret

With most of the detail done to the turret, I had to come up with a cowl to put over the top.
Right from the start, I knew I wanted a circular shape, or dome, to offset the hard lines of the legs, and to tie in with the round shape of the spinning top body of the main part of the lower hull.
I had it in mind to find some sort of plastic barrel or tub and cut that down but then finally got around to opening a box of kitbits that my good friend Dover Dave left for me when he came round for a garden bash recently.
Inside I found this lovely clear dome, which I guess was a clear stand for an aircraft.
It looked kind of neat offered up to the barrel, so I cut a length of plastic pipe to the right size, glued that to the barrel, then Hot Glued the dome onto the top of that:



Once the Hot Glue set, I went over it with the sticky jewels to give a nice random, blobby detail. And I added the dark green piece at the rear, something I've been itching to use literally for years - part of a 1/24th helicopter kit:



Then it was PrimeTime and i'm pretty happy how things pulled together - the dome seems to me to be a nod to a WW2 Tommy helmet, or a Dalek head, or those Pod Racer pit stop Droids, or the Thrill Suckers from the early days of 2000AD.
And i'm happy that the detail along the sides seem to look like they do something.
By the way, the very end of the rear of the barrel is just a drinks bottle top.

Audrey 2

Wow, stunned to stumble across this as I thought it long gone and had totally forgotten about it.
Made back around '93, it was one of my first ever attempts at doing my take on an existing creature design and its Audrey II from "Little Shop Of Horrors" in case its so bad you don't recognise it.
Looking at it now, I can see I used air-drying clay, rose thorns for the spines on its back, cut-down rose thorns for the teeth, and tree roots for the tentacles.
Still happy with the shape of the head and the lips and the colour scheme - just a shame its in such a sorry state and most of the tentacles are missing.

Mantis Ship

Another project sat there in that box was this ship.
Got a bit of a convoluted story this one:
I first built it after being directly inspired by a fantastic scratchbuild i'd seen sometime back in the 90's.
And it stayed there on the shelf, only to be taken off to be photographed for this very Blog back in the early days of its existence.
And that's when Andrew Glazebrook got in touch to say that he'd built the ship in the magazine that inspired me.
Back it goes on the shelf and gets pretty much forgotten about.
Until I stumbled on it while in my first Ma.K phase and go "hey, that looks very Ma.K-like, i'll give it a repaint".
And that's the nifty green/yellow scheme its now in - but didn't go any further as I guess I lost interest in it.
So here its is back and this time I will finish it off. The little blobs of Blu Tac are still in place at the front, which are masking for windows, so all I need do is weather.
Part-wise, i'd used Andrew's fantastic idea of having the 1/24th Harrier Jump Jet engine as the main bulk of the ship, with domes in each side opening for "eyes".
There's a whole bunch of tank parts all over and you may or may not recognise the shape i'd used for the engine area, this shot makes it clearer - its the head of the Maximillian robot from "The Black Hole."