The beast is taking shape!

Thought I'd post up some more of the progress that's taken place in the past week.

Marine having a bit of a look up top, just for scale.

Front "mouth door" finished & installed. A cheap camera
aperture used for a door.

These are the two base platforms that will keep this bad boy off the deck.

As you can see, it's not a pretty sight underneath. Copious amounts
of hot glue were administered, all in the name of mad science.

Not sure if you can place this section, but it goes just behind the
conning tower. I cut out the boss in the centre of this hole,
enlarged it to take a 25mm base, installed some mesh & put a
plastic ring inbetween to fill in the gap.

Magic health drink containers installed. Their jet engines silly!

Double the yogurt power!!!!!

I'm pretty happy with how the bases turned out, their only visible if you get down low to the table, apart from that angle they cannot be seen....just what I was aiming for.

I'm kinda worried about the painting process at the moment. That mouth section really should have been painted as a subassembly & then installed after everything had been painted, but I'm too impatient to see it fully assembled. If I painted it before installing it I might have faced the chance of running into fitting issues & could have ruined the paint in the process of making it fit....thats my reason for fitting now anyway :)

Next up will be fitting a control panel to the conning tower, armaments to the various sections & then I think she'll be ready for the detailed work i.e. making the drink bottles look like engines, running cables over the exterior of the body, hiding/ including the stub axles in the design.

The beautifying proceess continues........

Bye for now.

Orctober in December, yes, it does happen!

So, here's my entry for Orctober. At this rate of production I should have the rest of my horde finished right about the time we invent "faster than light" propulsion technology.


Let's get on with the show shall we;

Here he be, with with his oversized cigarette lighter.

Took ages to figure out how to do the glowing effect, I think it
turned out ok, but Christ it was a bastard to get right!!

You can see it a lot better here....as well as the beginnings of a casting
flaw on the yellow feed line.

I used my usual basing method, but just added some battlefield
debris i.e. painted up plastic sprue bits.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how he turned out. The armour colour scheme was supposed to be some sort of desert camo effect, but I think it looks ok. The skin tone was a time consuming part of this painting job. I've really only ever painted a couple of orcs in my time -and they were nothing to write home about- so I copied the recipe off of Thantsants blog. I must admit that I deviated quite a bit from his method, as I was starting from a black undercoat, but it did get me most of the way there.

The glowing effect had me stumped for a long time, must have painted that area about five times I reckon. Plasma glow is a lot easier for some reason..... maybe because we have no real world knowledge of the colour of plasma, as we do with fire?

Lastly, thought I'd ask the question, does anyone know of an easy way to removed casting marks from corrugated tubing? It's a real bugger!


Bye bye :)

Progress on the Hovertank.....

Thought I'd post some pic's of the build here for your interest/bemusement/inspiration/disappointment....either one, take your pick :)

Bandaged in sticky tape while the plumbers glue cures.

I really need to source some different sized plastic G-clamps
 one of these days, they would make this sort of job a lot easier.

Captains conning tower hotglued in place, offending "R" sanded
off all three sections & the roof left off the rear, so that I can
 fiddle around in there without ripping my fingers to shreds.

This is the front "mouth" of the tank. These cavities in the
lower section (that I've placed cables in) were originally
filled by motorised wheels. 

Rear cargo bay, detailed with Araldite tubes, cardboard,
plastic stirrers, corrugated card, wires, pipes, plastic
checker plate etc

The right side of the cargo bay. I went all out and put a control
panel up front too!

Here's a shot showing the cabling work I carried out. Not sure
why I bothered actually, as your not even going to be able to see it
once the beast is done. I just couldn't help myself, once the conversion
bug hits its a bit hard to stop :)

And here's one of the little blighters that I'll be using for the
jet engines. This idea is not mine, it's from one of the first
kitbashed models in history.... more on that later.

So, there you go, progress dear chums. It does happen on occasion :)

Welcome, to yet another project :)

Found this big bad mofo at a local bargain/antique store a while back. It was some sort of Japanese toy that would -at one time in it's life- eject matchbox cars out of its gob when a button was pressed, but now all it did was spoke a bit of Japanese & made a few clicking sounds, but that's about it.

Obviously I didn't buy it for its mechanical serviceability, I only had eyes for it's RT vehicle potential. I'm gunna convert it into a Hovertank come heavy transport, able to roam the wasteland of some degenerate planet, providing protection to the workforce on their way to and from the mines.......Helsreach.

So, let's see what I have planned for it hey.

All the wheels will be removed & the rear most wheel wells
will be filled with rocket engines.

Control panel & bulletproof blister pack windscreen
to be fitted to the conning tower.

Both sections to be bonded together permanently & those "R" symbols
 on the rear section are to be sanded into oblivion.

I've got a WW2 bomber type in mind, but it may prove
impractical if I want to retain the ability to place a mini
inside....time will tell.

This guys going to be mounted on a hidden platform that will raise it about a centimetre off the table.

I've decided that in future I'm not going to mount this or any other large vehicle/building on an aesthetic base, as I think it detracts from the visual impact that it can have on the table. Of course I'm still going to base things that "need" it.... for stability, but for no other reason.

I've already stripped this toy of all it's bits & bobs, so all that's required before I begin the build is to wash it in soapy water & give it an alcohol wipe down.

This project should be completed relatively quickly (famous last words) as I won't have to scratch build so many component's.



And yes, I know that I've got two or three other unfinished projects on the go, but this one got me all excited! Trying to get myself motivated to paint/convert after a long hiatus away from my desk..... any way I can think of.

Congratulations ;)

Slaves to Darkness - The gift that just keeps on giving!

I have a confession to make, I can't draw to save my life! Well, I tell a little lie, I can "draw"......stick men or boot-shaped car's, but that's about as far as my skills go.

What's the above statement got to do with the almighty ROC tome you ask? Stop asking impertinent question's, keep reading & you'll find out!

I would love to be able to paint artistically unique designs on shield faces "freehand". But I know it's never going to happen with my meagre skills. So, what's the next best thing I could think of? Find someone else's unique artwork & shamelessly rip it off, that's what!

And here's where Slave's to Darkness comes in;

About a year ago -while flicking through said tome for the umpteenth time- it dawned on me that in the corner of almost every page there is a small round illustration, almost begging to be used for a shield face. So, last month I nicked my wife's phone while she wasn't looking & rigged it up on a jerry-built tripod. I then began the task of photographing every corner of Slaves that had a circular image in it. The whole book isn't filled with them, some of them also repeat a few times & some of them don't look that great either, but there's still quite a lot worth using....over 35!

After that, it was just a simple case of transferring the images to a Word document, resizing it to fit my plastic shields & Bob's your uncle.

What can you notice in this photo? Apart from my poor framing ability!

I spy a round, almost "shield shaped" illustration, hiding in the corner :)

After a lot of swearing & cursing trying to
resize the images, this is what I ended up with.

Then it was a case of cutting them out.....

.....and sticking them onto my shields.

Once I've added a lick of paint/ink to him he should look like a million dollars!

So, what do you think? Not bad for an afternoon's work hey :)

Cheers big ears!