Right then, with the fluffy stuff out of the way, let's move on to the actual Subfighters! There's a sailor's salty story about how these found-object builds came about, so pull up a bollard and let me tell 'e a tale...
Some of you might remember this all from a brief appearance on another forum many moons ago. I ask that you don't spoil it for those coming new to the story.
A few years ago I made the considerable personal error of being convinced into a managerial role with a certain retailer of products intended to remove follicles from the faces of fellows. I say 'error' when I mean 'blunderous incapacity to recollect how little Australian retail companies appreciate the concept of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.'
On one of the many not-particularly-fair, unpaid days I endured in this role, I had reason to rummage about in my store's storage room, in search of lost stock, dust, and the brains of upper management types. But instead, I found that the store's previous boss had left behind a couple of boxes of old, used, and now unloved shavers, trimmers, and other electrical odds and sods. At first I thought to throw out the lot, for they were sufficiently aged and non-functional to discredit any claim they once had to being of value.
But hang on a mo'…
On closer inspection - couldn't that be a space-shippy sort-of-shape…?
Or maybe, given it almost looks shark-like, I wonder if I could use it —
— and right then is when it hit me. Oh my goodness, I was looking at a whole fleet of futuristic submarines, in a grotty cardboard box!
And not just submarines, either; if that's not the centrepiece of an underwater metropolis, I'm no sci-fi modeller!
"So," thought I, "should I turn these into a bit of a nostalgic tribute to Gerry Anderson's
Stingray?"
In truth, others have done
Stingray games long before me. Most of them have been pretty simple concept-wise - Stingray and other WASP (World Aquanaut Security Patrol) supersubs verses the Terrorfish of Titanica. But, visually, they are brilliant, fantastic looking things, real 'blast from the past' stuff, and very worthy tributes to Anderson's fertile imagination.
Also, it would be more than a little work (to put it mildly,) to convert any of these into a 'proper'
Stingray, as seen in the 60's Supermarionation show. That's when the idea gelled - rather than slavishly follow the original material, do a game set in an Anderson-verse-like setting, but with a modern, post-climate change apocalypse spin. All the world is fleeing to the ocean floors, and they are the new battlegrounds.
Right then, now to see what we can make of our box of clapped-out cranium croppers. Taking a look at the Braun shavers I'd picked out for the role of the
Manta 'hero' Subfighters I decided that they'd look a lot more like 'the business' without windows; something I never much liked about the design of the original
Stingray was her huge, glass windows.
Why such dislike? Well, with a Dad who spent much of his life making things that hunt
real submarines, a young Martin was quick to take an interest in machines that go 'ping!' beneath the waves. I thus knew from an early age that sheets of glass and unequal pressures don't make for happy endings.
In fact, from an ergonomic standpoint, it could be argued that windows are a terrible mistake in a submarine, due to the tendency of humans to rely on ‘eyeball mk I’ when trying to spot something to shoot at (or avoid something that’s doing the shooting). Humans are woeful at seeing in the dark, so if it’s pitch black outside, (and it is at 400 metres down), you’ll only waste precious seconds trying to see the torpedo that sonar is screaming is coming right for you.
I imagine that the cockpit of the Manta is hidden beneath layers of armour and pressure hull, the crew relying on sonar, enhanced video and blue/green laser rangefinders to 'view' the surrounding ocean.
Time to take this apart, methinks.
Most of this type of shaver disassembles with the application of a screwdriver. Out come the gubbins, leaving a thin, light shell of plastic, but there is this big layer of rubber that provides a grip… I thought of leaving it as a kind of anechoic coating, but I knew it wouldn't fool anyone, and might hint at the bristle-blasting origins of the ship, so it had to come off. But, blades wouldn't do much, because the rubber tore when I attempted to peel it from an incision, leaving most of itself stuck to the smooth plastic beneath. What to do?
Knowing I was taking a risk, (one of being left with a puddle of rubber and plastic, rather than a sleek guardian of the depths,) I had a crack at gently heating the rubber with a heat gun. Lo and behold, off the rubber came! With practice, I was soon de-rubbering the shavers in moments, revealing hard, black plastic. Whay-hey! Time to scratch that scratch-building itch!
Because this game is inspired by Gerry Anderson's shows, I consciously decided that I would try to build my fleet of subs entirely from found objects or recycled things. (Do you know how many toothpaste tube caps they went through on those shows?)
Plastic card I had in quantity… and some cheap half-ovoid 'bling' craft shapes would come in handy...
At the back of the original
Stingray there's this big, clear shape, usually referred to as the Ratemaster. It spins around, showing the folk in TV land that the motor is working, while looking for all the world like some tap fitting. Try as I might, nothing in my bits box, nor in various $2 shops, revealed a suitable object to mimic this role on my Mk V Stingrays. But then I noticed that a Lego wheel was a suitably interesting shape...
A plastic hemisphere from an animal stamp pad went on one end, mounted to a round-shouldered 30mm figure base, and the tail cone came from the end of a multi-colour pen. The hemisphere is to give the impression that the Ratemaster is able to swivel about on its mounting, greatly improving the manoeuvrability of the Mark V.
Moving amidships, the back of the command section (actually the pop-up bit that houses the trimmer) got its 'saw tooth' grips ground off and sanded smooth, but the ones at the front of the section remained. I like the look of them, they suggest a spoiler-like feature.
The fins and hydroplanes were simply cut from plastic card, although I was picky enough to give them a taper, by cutting two pieces for each, adding a spacer at the root, and filling and sanding the leading edge. (These took longer than they deserved…)
Lots of putty to blend in the fins on the command section, and then sand, sand, sand...
The hydroplanes are mounted on cheap (how I love that word) acrylic craft gems, which I found in a craft shop for $1.50 a pack. Perfect. On to the painting.
Tamiya and Gunze Sangyo colours, thinned with GP thinners, and shot through my Iwata Revolution. I didn't want to attempt the
exact colour scheme from the original
Stingray - finding the right line to mask the yellow and blue areas is a terror without equal. So I opted for a simplified scheme that reflected the original colours, and I'm pleased with the resulting shapes.
To paint the yellow, by the way, I first sprayed a second undercoat mixed from a base of Royal Grey with a few drops of Tamiya Clear Orange. This gave me a warm brown-grey colour, which kept the yellow topcoat from turning green from the blue layer beneath. This also meant I could spray the yellow in a single coat, avoiding the dreaded build-up of paint on the masked edges.
Weathering lines were achieved by simply masking lines with Tamiya tape, and applying black weathering powder on one edge, feathering it away from the tape. Remove tape, repeat until all panels done.
Immediately spray with gloss varnish.
Lastly, I made up some simple decals in Adobe Illustrator, and printed them out.
I've made two Mantas so far, but I have a number of other subfighters on the slips, although they have been there for quite some time.
Glory Deep is definitely on ice for the moment; Other projects sounded siren songs louder (and quicker) than this over the years, and off I went in pursuit of the latest, shiny thing.
But I am tempted to revisit Tasmantis, and see if I can revive interest in this idea. I did write some rules for Glory Deep, and they were sufficiently advanced to warrant a couple of test games with cardboard stand-ins.
However, it was a clunky game, with too much detail, and hung up on the balance between super-fast (but loud) movement and the need to 'run silent'. (Everyone just chose to keep schtum!)
But I might revamp it with the aid of the Movement Disc system I've invented for
Saucer War One, and see what comes about.
https://miniaturemartin.com/2020/05/01/how-a-tiny-flying-saucer-flies/Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this entirely self-indulgent trip into my half-finished project. If people are interested, I'll post some more stuff, but if not, thanks for taking a look!