Thursday 28 December 2017

Dirty Spaceship

Some might call me a model-making dynamo, ceaseless in my quest to perfect my art. Others might be more realistic and just say that I need to get out more. Whichever is true, I've been using this holiday to crack on with some projects.

First up is the Mantic Interceptor spaceship. This is from their game Warpath and, like a lot of Mantic products, felt a bit primitive to begin with. However, it fitted together easily and was perfectly well detailed for what it is. I sprayed it white (it was grey plastic to start with), then washed it with a nasty mixture of brown paint and dark tone. Parts were then washed with grey.

I brought the colour back up by using white paint on a sponge. This is quite good as it doesn't leave too many lines, as painting with a paintbrush can do, and doesn't leave water marks, as washes can. I applied more white to the raised areas to represent light catching the upper surfaces, then added some small details such as windows and blackening around the engines.



It's arguably not the most exciting model ever, but I like the Star Wars-type styling of the ship and the fact that it's fairly easy to build and paint. Here's another picture.


I also managed to make some terrain. Thanks to my recreational misuse of Dettox, I've got quite a lot of stripped older models, some of which are out of scale or rather lumpy. I'm also not very interested in Space Marines, so I've got no great interest in making an army of them.

I stuck a marine on an MDF column and added some bits and bobs to suggest technology. I imagine that these grandiose statues aren't of much use to the citizens, and are now being used to support home-made tech that actually does something (probably involving stealing cable TV). That feels very cyberpunk to me.




4 comments:

  1. Cracking work on both pieces!

    I can imagine the bronze bolter improving tv reception in the local sump township and being fought over whenever someone wants to change channels...

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  2. Thanks! I did try sticking a massive satellite dish to the end of his gun but it made the model very lop-sided. I'm definitely into the more dirty frontier town aspect of it all, so more dodgy-looking terrain will be coming soon!

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  3. That Spaceship is a pretty tidy transport. A friend of mine painted one up and used it in a game earlier in the year, they look great on the table!

    I like the idea of slamming a radar dish on the bolter :)

    Cool stuff Toby!

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    1. Some of Mantic's stuff is genuinely not much good - far too cartoony for me - but I think some of their better models aren't helped by the painting style they go for. Their vehicles can look a bit plasticy, if that's a word.

      I did try the dish but it just wouldn't fit! I've got a few old marine models and they might all end up on plinths.

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