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Author Topic: 15mm Sci Fi project: Eden- new painted figures 11/11  (Read 92022 times)

Offline CookAndrewB

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Another couple creature sculpts without a lot of fluff right now:

For now I'm calling this guy E-1 (Eden 1st critter):
This one is set up more as an alpha predator type. Something big and ugly to contend with on Eden. Maybe even a critter with a bit of a Jurassic park type storyline. Some short sighted corporate type wants the dangerous thing captured and put in a zoo, dangerous thing escapes onboard a ship. Rescue mission sent to save the crew and/or recapture the critter and fulfill the delivery. Anyway, here it is so far.


After reading the Nick Cole Wasteland Saga (Old Man and the Wasteland, and the Savage Boy in particular), I started to feel very drawn to this idea that mutation giveth and taketh away. In the story there are tribes of people who have a hermit crab type appearance. One strong and capable arm/leg and the other side is withered and near useless. The spirit is unbroken, and often quite aggressive, but the physical manifestation is a mixed bag. In the Old Man and the Wasteland, he is pursued by a young mutated warrior who can swing a parking meter as a one handed club, but struggles to run because of his withered leg. So the critter here is sculpted with one arm that could rip open a tank and crush power armor, but the other arm is basically worthless.


I really nailed the glutes on this guy! 😂. The head is meant to be something a bit like a toad with a mouth full of teeth. Powerful bite, like an alligator or something. The ridge down the middle of the head is supposed to be some kind of extended olfactory organ. Tracking prey by a sense of smell that we don't quite understand. Maybe like how a mosquito senses CO2 emissions? Perhaps it is attracted to methane. Whatever you do, don't pass gas!


Some of the sculpting looks a little rough where I did some filing. I believe it will clean up ok once I get it wiped up with a Q-tip. Most of the rough looking stuff is just dust that I didn't get cleaned up very well.


I did quite a bit of sculpting over the weekend, so I kept ending up with extra little blobs of green stuff. One such blob has now become Super Salad's trusty pet. Need to work up an origin, but basically some kind of armored, galactic, four eyed, space toad (E-2).


I'm going to give him a tongue the next time I have a little extra green stuff. Might also give him a pack animal look? Not sure on that.


This is a 15mm round base from Proxie Models. E-2 is maybe 7-8mm tall/wide/long.


Tomorrow I'm going to hopefully get to some terrain updates.

Offline Skullhamma

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    • 15mm through space and time blog
Keep them coming! I really like bucket!  :)

Offline CookAndrewB

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Some humble terrain beginnings today.

Being an alien planet, I did want some rather odd geological formations/plant life. I didn't want my alien world to just be trees. So this is the first style of formation that I've begun working on.


Because these pieces are being designed to sit on a 12x12 game tile, I wanted to make them in a few different base sizes. The 2x2" base is the smallest unit for my terrain. The next step up is the 2x4" (back left in the above picture.


By slotting these together in different ways I can create larger geographical features.


Some kind of protected grotto...


Not a bad sniper perch if you can make the climb!

The big question in my brain is how to paint these up. The ground will get some texture and such. I'm not sure if I like the hard edges on these (would make some sense if geological), or if I should apply some goop to create some curving transitions between discs which might suggest a more organic origin.

I believe I have enough disks to try and whip up another few bases. I'll build up as many as I need/want before starting to deep dive into finishing. I would like to bulk paint these so I stay consistent. 

Offline Skullhamma

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Re: 15mm Sci Fi project: Last One Out of Eden - Geological formations 8/1
« Reply #18 on: August 01, 2019, 08:10:36 PM »
Interesting... will you texture them with sand or other materials?

Offline CookAndrewB

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Re: 15mm Sci Fi project: Last One Out of Eden - Geological formations 8/1
« Reply #19 on: August 01, 2019, 08:34:32 PM »
Interesting... will you texture them with sand or other materials?

No, not sand. If I were to texture them I would either go with a spackle/pva mix or acrylic paste. I think I would want a smooth lumpiness to these rather than something gritty, if that makes sense.

Offline Brummie

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Re: 15mm Sci Fi project: Last One Out of Eden - Geological formations 8/1
« Reply #20 on: August 01, 2019, 08:44:03 PM »
Those critters look like the sort of thing I wouldn't want to see coming at me down a dark corridor.

And those formations look like something out of that No Mans Sky game! Need a guy in a brightly coloured space suit to scan them for ore  :D

Offline CookAndrewB

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Re: 15mm Sci Fi project: Last One Out of Eden - Geological formations 8/1
« Reply #21 on: August 02, 2019, 02:57:05 PM »
I had to look up some pictures of No Man's Sky, and there is some really great inspiration there. I think that pretty well convinced me I might leave these as are and just see what a good paint treatment does for them. Since the ground color I intend to use is a dark blue, I am thinking these formations would look good in yellow tones.

Last update for the week is the second building for Eden. Just a residential module. Base is 2x4" and I have a second unit in the process of being built. Construction materials are largely cardboard. In this case the bumpy stuff is the unfinished side of a cardboard egg container. It makes for a rather nice unfinished concrete/stone texture.



Obviously it needs some paint, which I hope to get to this weekend. Most of the cardboard greeblie bits are from Iliada Games.



The cardboard surfaces on this side will hopefully be painted up as solar panels. If anyone has a good method for this, I'm all ears. That is sort of a tricky surface to paint as it can have a pattern but it is subtle.



And some "how it fits together" preview shots:


The business and the residence together:

Offline War In 15MM

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Some nice terrain work there.

Offline CookAndrewB

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Thanks, War. You ain't seen nothing yet! I had a positively monstrously productive weekend on the terrain front. Got in a groove and knocked out a ton of good stuff. But, that isn't what I'm posting today  :D

I have a couple WIP figures that I wanted to post up. First is a young female Duz, and one of Super Salad's crew. She is "armed" with something like a power fist, which is really just a mechanic's tool for working on hot engine parts, being able to "finger tighten" large bolts, etc. It just so happens that this tool can make a pretty convincing close combat weapon as well. Still needs some bulking out but I'm happy with the direction it is going.


She is wearing a heavy mechanic's apron as well. Part lead vest, part head reflective. Again, for working on high temp/radioactive engine parts.


Still need to do some work on the backside of the mini and keep adding/tweaking all around.


Next up is a figure I've been thinking at an Ameob (spoken Am-yob) race alien, based on the Star Frontiers Dralasite.

Dralasite (for your awareness)


Ameobs are intelligent single celled organisms with an overall consistency a bit like a damp gumdrop.
 

Because of their slightly sticky nature, the Duz tend to keep them around as something like a galactic janitor force. The Ameob walks around and all the dust in the ship sticks to him. Something that the Ameobs don't mind, and that the Duz find rather useful when they are in their lazy phase.
 

The entirety of the Ameob involvement with the other races of the realms is a misunderstanding of unfathomable proportions. Ameobs have no ability to vocalize, though they process sound through vibrations across the entirety of their body. To them, this is understood in a manner that is similar to those old western movie where a train robber could put their ear to a railroad track and predict the distance and arrival of a train. An Ameob can "hear" the other races talk and get a vague idea of what is happening (train approaching, human angry, Gruff eating, Duz sleeping... etc), but the overall understanding is similar to Charlie Brown listening to an adult talk with the "wah wa-wahhh wah" trombone sounds. To the Ameob, most other races are regarded the same way we might look at a sentient pile of ants. They are astounded that so many little cells work together and serve such oddly specific functions. They are curious about the goings on of all these cell piles, and thus they tend to tag along with other races out of curiosity the way that a kid might sit in the back yard and watch a line of ants carry away some picnic crumbs. Ameobs rarely understand what the heck we are up to, but once they understand that we want to move that "crumb" somewhere else, they are happy to help out just to see what we do next.

It should also be noted that while while Ameob's don't speak, they are perfectly capable of writing. Their own communication with each other tends to involve the flickering of a chromatophore type organelle. They find writing to be tedious in the way that humans might find communicating by semaphore to be lacking in sufficient detail to conduct daily interpersonal interactions. So, when a human wrote "Amoeba?" to an Ameob, in an attempt to understand what it was. The Ameob understood the question to be something like "Are you Oeb?" Well, this particular Ameob's name was best translated to Eob, in which case it responded AmEob, referring to the fact that it was, in fact, Eob, and not the one known as Oeb (which is not a flattering name among the Ameobs). Their own "name" for themselves would be the chromatophore equivalent of a sunset over a field of flowers, made of lightning, dancing to AC/DC's Back in Black if the sound was converted to a million chinese acrobats juggling spiderwebs of pure light. It is... hard to pronounce.

For the rest of my update, I started making some stowage items. Today is a seating module and some crew lockers.
 

The crew lockers will be glued in place in a space vessel build I'm working on.


The seating module allows a cargo vessel to install extra seating for additional passengers, or perhaps crew.


Of course, moving and securing the unit can be accomplished by use of the integrated control panel which allows for strong force clamping and repulsion that is integrated into the underside of the unit.





Offline CookAndrewB

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    • 3d designs can be found at Thingiverse
Another habitation building for my growing frontier world colony.




This one got an underground cellar entrance.



This side is a little dull, so I may drape some wire or something to spruce it up.


I have been looking at some "alien" looking flora for my board, and aquarium plants seem to be the best way to go unusual, colorful, and alien on the cheap. Looks like I didn't quite get these lined up, but the bases for these three terrain pieces are the same 2x4" dimensions.



And some of the "wild" terrain placed together to start to get a feel for how things will look:



I think that makes for a rather convincing landing party scene.  :)


Offline CookAndrewB

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This is the beginning phase of my 15mm sci-fi "dungeon" crawl aspect of this project. While most fantasy games have dungeons in the ground, I think it makes more sense for "dungeons" to be large ships in orbit or found while transiting within the local planetary system.

This is design #1, based around foam core board. I had considered peeling off the paper cover, but passed on that idea in the end. I'll dress this up a bit and all will be right with the world. Some additional design notes are that the walls themselves are 15mm as I wanted something I could pretty easily play in, but I don't need a high level of detail regarding the walls.

This is the first engine room design. In this case the eventual engine will be on the right side with the left side being an open access into the next module.


Just a vague idea of what the space could look like with some stowage items back there.


This is the second module, a shuttle bay and some storage space, or perhaps bays for broadside weapons emplacements in the four corners.


Since I'm planning on using the Five Parsecs: Salvage Crew rule set for my solo gaming (for now) I wanted to give each module something like a Clue Board feel. Various points of interest to explore. In the engine room there would obviously be the engine itself, a tool locker, possibly some workbenches or other stowage items. In the shuttle bay there would be shuttles, stowage items, lockers, etc. The smaller openings I'm intending to build some door pieces that can be placed/removed similarly to a 2d system. The wide inter-compartmental openings will probably just be open unless I see the need to design something like a larger bay door that can be put in place to seal off the engine room, etc. I would rather accomplish that by placing more internal walls though.

Here is the shuttle bay with a shuttle in place:


Finally, the command bridge and crew quarters (No walls yet).


If everything goes according to Hoyle, then I should end up with a variety of engine rooms, bridges, and "middle" sections that will either chain together to make something like a Space Hulk, or get pieced into smaller ships to indicate a smaller fleet travelling in space. So below would be a command bridge, and engine room forming something like a smaller escort ship.


Since the overall goal is to make something like 9-10 hull segments (3 bridges, 3 different engine room configurations, and 3-4 midships configurations) I feel like I can get a pretty wide variety of options when putting together a deep space mission. I will probably stick to a single paint scheme for everything just to make life simple for myself. Beyond that, the real challenge is getting enough scatter terrain built that can do some double duty in space and planet side. I'll be borrowing heavily from Ockman's little piles of crates, because I think those look the part quite convincingly. I'll also need to build some computer terminals and a such, and I may consider whether I want to build a couple "bridge" sets a la Star Trek with the whole captain's chair, helm, etc etc. I actually like the idea of getting into the details a bit.


Offline Cosmotiger

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Wow, very cool. It's inspiring to see what you can do with simple materials.

Offline CookAndrewB

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Wow, very cool. It's inspiring to see what you can do with simple materials.

Thanks! I definitely endorse a DIY attitude towards terrain. Basic household materials are easy to work with, forgiving, and the end result is quite enjoyable. Might not win awards, but it also won't break the bank and half the reason I undertake any of this is to exercise the creative part of my brain. Hopefully the end results will be inspiring enough for someone out there to give a similar project a shot. 

Offline CookAndrewB

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While I'm working on some larger non-atmosphere ships, I figured I would also develop some smaller atmosphere capable drop ships or small shuttles. I have some in development that don't have playable interiors, but some will. This was a bit of a test bed for the bigger stuff.

Name to be determined, but this is the first playable interior landing craft. I figure something like this will be how crews reach any larger ships for salvage and exploration.


Not designed to be sleek, this kind of bulk hauler is used to shuttle goods from orbit to a colony. Super Salad is in the market for a new vessel, so he has decided to visit the shipyards to kick the tires on a new construction.


The full cockpit hasn't been installed yet, but Super climbs the stairs to take a glance at the accommodations. 
"No room for a co-pilot. Note to self: better have a good pilot. Hopefully they will offer an AI suite to assist with piloting and navigation."


"What will be installed along the front hull? What's that? Optional Rail Gun that taps directly into the shipboard Replication and Reclamation (RaR) system? That is quite footy! What...? Handy? Are you sure that is the phrase?"


"Mighty kind of you to let me load some of my goods in here to test out the payload capacity. What do you mean I didn't ask?! Fine I'll move this stuff out. Bubba...BUBBA! Get the boys and haul this out. It turns out THIS stuff can't be in here."


"This can't be in here either?! You, sir, have a lot of rules! I'll be filing a formal complaint with your shift supervisor! Bubba...Bubba... BUBBA! I know you can hear me! Move this out. Mr. Rules says we can't have this in the ship during construction. I know you just moved it in. Don't take that tone with me! I'm not the one causing problems here, you need to talk to Mr. Rules over there. Bubba, be a cabbage and take the boys with you in case Mr. Rules has more he wants to say. What's that? Peach? You sure? Be a Peach? Why would anyone... fine, just do it already!"




Offline CookAndrewB

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Re: 15mm Sci Fi project: Last One Out of Eden - dropship 8/8
« Reply #29 on: August 14, 2019, 09:05:38 PM »
A few completed work shots:

First is the alien plant life.


The Deep Space Operations figure, planetside.


Maybe a better angle? Not sure. Hopefully you get the idea of what the finished product looks like.


And of course the Calmian out for a stroll.


I hope to start working on the game tiles for Eden in the next week or two. I have all the materials for four 12"x12" tiles, so a 2'x2' board worth. That should be a fair start for my planetside games. I'll add new tiles and new geographic regions (or perhaps different planets?) later down the road. Eden 1 will have this blue ground base at least.

I also have these odd plantlife bits to still use. Not sure about the blue disc things. Maybe some kind of lily pad? Or I could build some odd trunk for them. Anyone have any ideas?

« Last Edit: August 14, 2019, 09:12:56 PM by CookAndrewB »

 

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