So a weekend ago, I went to Dutch Comicon for the first time, with a bunch of mates. Loads of cosplayers, loads of merchandise, loads of fun. And at one stand , I found a grey imported Lightyear Armadillo toy, which I picked up after hesitating only a very short time. I've seen several people here on the LAF posting these, but they're only sold at Target in the US, so near impossible to get one over here in the Old World.
I bought it (at a very fair price too) based solely on the testimony of those LAFers lucky anough to get themselves one, and I'm glad I did.
In fact, this model is just about perfect for tabletop gaming, and the final few shots will prove it too. Also, I had such fun painting it, I actually find myself wanting to paint another one!
It only took one weekend to complete, all in all about 10 hours of work I reckon, and all of it enjoyable.
The ship barely required any prep work: just the filling of two small screw holes in the back/bottom and the closing off of a couple of holes in the bottom with some plasticard. I do regret not filing off the disclaimer texts on the bottom, but at that time, and moving at speed, I reckoned it would delay my progress and I really wanted to finish it in one weekend.
The only other things I did was glueing all the moving parts (bar the rear hatch) in place and adding a bit of mesh and trim on the inside of the rear hatch, as it only was a textured plastic tray at that point.
For the painting, I found a perfect colour match in an old spray can of acrylic brown, as I really liked the rust brown colour of the plastic. But I really wanted to paint over it, as unpainted plastic will always keep some trace of translucence; barely noticeable, but still hinting at the origin of the material. But before the brown, I first generously sprayed the inside of the cargo hold with black.
Then it was a case of a light drybrush with a lighter brown and the placement of the waterslide transfers.
For those who want to know; most of the decals came from a sheet belonging to a 1/48 German Fiat G.91 and the serial number comes from a 1/48 F-14. And that's it. I kept its alignment/origin/universe as vanilla as possible. It's just a ubiquitous small transport of which there are thousands on every planet (and in every universe). It could belong to a DWAN subsidiary, could be a backwater pattern of Arvus Lighter, a Correllian shuttlecraft or even a Federation workhorse!
I then gave it a pinwash of black and brown oil paints and a quick varnish. And on top of that, the highlighting, detailing and weathering went on.
I tried to logically place the chipping effects, but for some reason, the entire craft pretty soon was scratched and worn, even though I kept the heaviest damage to the lower/underside of the ship and around the cockpit.
Finally some details in the form of lights, buttons and wiring and the last step was adding some soot effects around the big atmospheric engines at the back, and it was done!
So, finally, here are some pictures of it in action, dropping off some DWAN troopers on a desert planet...
All in all, I'm really chuffed with how this little ship turned out; I really like it, and should I find myself in the position to get another one (even though I really don't need even more space ships
), I probably will; it's that useful as a gaming and/or terrain piece...
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October 01, 2011, 09:35:45 AM