WIP Shots : Anakin ETA 2 Jedi Interceptor

I've been sitting on those pictures for too long, but didn't have the time to put words to paper.

I'm calling this WIP shots, as it's too barebones for a proper tutorial but hopefully you'll get a clear idea of my process and what to expect from those shapeways models.

Building the Death Star Trench : Part 1

Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him? 

A quick post to show you what I've been working on lately : a table to replay the legendary Death Star Trench run in X-Wing. The idea is to have 2 boards separated by a deep trench to be able to replay the trench approaches, pursuit in the trench and the arrival of He who shot first.

The table will be for my gaming club, the Ludothèque de Boulogne Billancourt, and has to be movable and easy to store, which means a modular design. Each modular piece (4 trench sections and 8 board sections), will have a foam core for lightness and a wood exoskeleton for resilience.

First mock-up of the trench for sizing:

Wood cutting in the living room (Yea for sales season!) :

The first modular sections :

To spice up the table I also ordered a turbolaser turret from Shapeways:

The shape and details are amazing, but I'm slightly worried by the fine lines created by the printing process even in detail plastic which was the best available for this item (edited after Regnirok comment). I will need to fill them or sand them before painting as they will definitely show after an airbrush paintjob.

On a related note, I also got some Eta-2 light fighters from Shapeways:

Sorry for the bad pictures, but it's really hard to photograph translucent models. They are in frosted ultra detail. They have some of the lines issues of the turret in places but less pronounced, we'll see what I can do with them.

Time to reload!

Ica

Showcase : Luke Skywalker Red 5 X-Wing repaint

Arguably the most well known science fiction star fighter of all time, Red 5 was the personal fighter of Luke Skywalker during the battle of Yavin. He used it to destroy the Death Star and save the Rebellion.

The craft is represented here before trench run, with R2D2 still operational.

Notice the ball magnet in the stand to allow full rotation of the model:

If you're interested, 2 WIP shots of the model follow.

First the model after application of the base colors on black primer.
As on the B-Wing, I first airbrush white for the base color, then painted the markings in mephiston red. The yellow nose line was painted in Iyanden darksun and highlighted with Iyanden+white. The cockpit was painted in astronomican grey+black and the canopy received a simple coat of black.

To get closer to the banged up look of the fighter in the movies, I then painted small grey dots using a small piece of foam to get random patterns and give the weathered look.



After that followed the now classic black oil wash.

The wash was removed on the raised/flat areas using a qtip, then I highlighted the grey base with white and I finished the details.

Time to reload!

Ica

Step by step : Dagger squadron B-Wing

As promised, a step by step with pictures of the B-Wing repaint.

Preparation:

First came the stripping in brake fluid, then the magnets and the base mod. 2 broken guns were repaired with a paper clip. (products used: brass rod, araldite glue, 3*2mm rare earth magnets)

Next came the black undercoat (citadel chaos black) and the white base coat (pro-color white). The white was applied with an airbrush aiming from above and left of the model to create natural shadows and color modulation as if the light source was above and left. The dark side of the model also received the white base, but much less, giving a greyer aspect.

Brush time! Red is citadel mephiston red, applied in thin layers to keep the grey modulation underneath. Black is citadel chaos black. Inspiration came from this:  http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/10551.shtml

Protect the model with gloss varnish (in my case vallejo model air).
Now the scary part! Put some black oil paint on a paper towel to absorb most of the oil. Then mix the paint with lighter fluid (essence F in french). Apply the wash generously on the model:

Wait for the wash to dry (a few minutes in my case).
Reward time! Take a Q-tip humid with white gas and remove the excess wash, leaving the wash in the panel lines. The beauty of it is that you can vary how much wash you remove by controling the amout of pressure and the humidity of the Q-Tip. Take your time the wash won't stain the paint underneath.

Revarnish with mat varnish (PA air with an airbrush).

Brush time 2! Highlight panels and go back over any mistakes in the previous steps. I also lightly glazed the red parts with blood red to give them more impact.

Final step engine glow! First the engines were sprayed with white to determine the area of the model that would received the glow.

Then they received a coat of fushia pink (airbrush) and the inside were painted white.

However after showing the model on http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/101573-b-wing-repaint-dagger-squadron/ I received a few comments that the engines glow was not good enough. So I went back with a brush and redid them using Prince August fluo yellow and orange + white.

I HAVE YOU NOW!

Time to reload,
Ica

Mechanicum : paladin knight and enginseer retinue

After the missile platforms I decided to continue my mechanicum forces with an enginseer from FW and a Knight Titan :

The enginseer retinue is slightly converted from dark Vengeance cultists, with all chaos markings removed and some hoods and bionics added.

For the paladin, I decided to convert it a bit, reducing the size of the canon and adding a shield in place of the sword. I intend to play him as a count as riptide, so it made more sense.

Time to reload,
Ica

The Jericho : WIP shots and howto

Okay, not really a step by step, but a few WIP shots with explanations of how I converted the Jericho.

First a small description of the materials I used :
1) PVC foamboard : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cell_PVC_foamboard
This forms the bulk of the structure. I bought it in 2mm thick sheets at my DIY shop.
It's really easy to work, cut, carve and will hold its shape pretty well.

2) Sheet styrene, 0.5mm thick

3) green stuff/milliput in a 50/50 combination

First I started with the side skirts:
85mm * 15mm strips on top of 2 small triangles and an additional 65*2 strip

This gave a me a strong base for the pod.
Then I constructed the pod with one large 55* 4 sheet for the top and 2 strips of 60*10 per side.
The front structure was mostly done by trials and errors.

I then added a back bracer for the pod where the magnets for the opening are:

Next step are the characteritic raised skirts of the praetor constructed as boxes, 2 small PVC triangles on each side and a rectangle of 0.5mm styrene on top:

To add detailling and hide junctions I add additional sheets of 0.5mm styrene on tiop of the raised skirts, and 2.5mm strips of 0.5mm styrene :

I also added a bit from the original manticore and rear bracings for the pod.
I started to fill the gaps with the green stuff/milliput mixture.

Final step was to add the missiles and finish the pod :

The missiles are made from reynold paper mates clear end and filled with greenstuff/milliput.

I will probably go back to it to add some rivets once I'm happy with a technique.

Time to reload!
Ica

The Jericho : when a manticore meets a Praetor

Hello everyone, 

after a couple of month of hiatus, I wanted to show you the latest from the forge : the Jericho weapon system!

Highly inspired by the Forge world Praetor missile launcher, this my second major plasticard conversion after my calth pattern storm talon.

I started from the manticore GW kit, and built the missile pod  from scratch:

The rear pod is movable and hinges on magnets to be able to remove and paint the thing!

Hopefully I should post a step by step soon.

Time to reload!
Ica