Starship Trooper Plasma bug build

[Vonkluge]

Been looking at all my unbuilt SST stuff (got a lot built but still a bigger pile un-built) so I finished my Plasma bug Thursday and got him into combat Friday. The plasma bug is the biggest model produced in the now OOP line done several years back and one I was really not interested in building. It has some real challenges in the paint dept! The entire rear end of the bug is supposed to be glowing from the about to be released plasma energy bolt.

I decided that this was a job to trot out the airbrush on and the results surprised me.

So after assembly I primed the model with Krylon Automotive primer, flat black. Yes I prime nearly everything in Black and have done so for over 25 years way back when everyone else I knew was priming in white people thought I was crazy! But I developed a style over the years that I like and paints quickly . I then dry bush the entire model with a wide flat brush using water based acyclic in off white or beige. This has the effect of helping me “see” the figures detail more clearly and decide how I will approach painting it. It also helps to define the highest spots and get a head start on shading. Likewise it helps those colors like red, yellow, blue, green, ect, that suffer from being laid directly over black.
The head, trunk, and legs of the bug did not worry me as they were a straight forward bug job, but the back section that needed to glow like a build up of plasma energy was occurring did. I had seen several other plasma painted with the typical white / blue shading effect, much like you would use on a lantern or internal fire effect. Since this was going to be an energy effect of glowing plasma I wanted something different.

I decided to use a lacquer based chrome silver from Testor’s that had been in my paint kit for 20 years, back when was painting model airplanes. The plan was to start with it and the spray a very thin coat of light blue over it and then circle out from there getting darker all the way to the skeleton “cage” that would be painted like the main body of the bug. I had hoped that by thinning the paint way down it would show through and create the depth I was looking for. However it did not work no matter how thin I made it, it covered and dulled the brightness of the silver chrome, it also was so thin that it barely showed blue and I wanted the effect to be intense and appear deep.
I the remembered a paint I had used on some Battletech figures years ago. It was transparent red paint from Tamiya that gave some great results. After a quick pop down to the local hobby shop I had a bottle of Tamiya Blear blue. It is water/alcohol based and can be thinned with isopropyl alcohol. I mixed some at 50% paint to thinner and popped it into the airbrush, and started to lightly spray over the silver. It was perfect; the silver took on the vibrant blue but retained its shine and after a few more light coats even appeared to have a depth or thickness!
It dries very quickly being 50% alcohol and the rest of the paint job was pretty routine. As always I clear coated the whole figure with Testors gloss lacquer using my airbrush, then added a bit of dull coat to the mix giving me a nice semi gloss bug look.

This turned out to be a very fun and interesting build and I'm keen to do two more with some type of lighting effect!



A picture from friday nights battle, if there is any interest I post up a battle report with some more pictures!

 

[Jaeger]

"Hey mom..." Ha, ha. Priceless. 

Brilliant stuff.

[Bergil]

And with the old IG, sweetness. I brought a bunch of those ST bugs from a mate, can't wait to get my IG against them.

[Vanvlak]

Like the firefly effect - very nice, this 

[Vonkluge]

And with the old IG, sweetness. I brought a bunch of those ST bugs from a mate, can't wait to get my IG against them.

Yes, the "old Imperial Guard"  

When I first started collecting the mini's for SST I of course painted some Warrior Bugs, everyone does, then I was about to do some of the SST Mobil infantry when I found there was 9 or so pieces to each figure and they were a bit "fiddely" to assemble, most SST stuff is.... I just was not interested in assembling them. I also had for years been collecting futuristic ground combat miniatures because I liked the look and thought I might do some type of gaming with them. At the time "kids" were selling their old Warhammer stuff for 10 cents on the dollar to buy "Magic" cards and such so I got LOTS of GW stuff cheap! I always liked the "Old" Imperial guard and most of the GW vehicles, the ones produced before they cluttered them up with to many skulls, and "over the top" detail crap that in my opinion ruined the models making them too busy and silly looking. It's sort of like painting, when you do too many colors and to much detailing many time the overall effect is lost in the clutter. I got a pretty nicely painted IG army for a great price off Ebay and it became my base force to start playing SST. I have been repainting the old GW vehicles, Rhino's, Lehman Russ, ect... and coming up with stats for them in the game.

Another view of the Plasma Bug with its controlling Brain Bug..





Repainted Games Workshop "Rhino", done in Late war German Ambush pattern.....I did this as a test of vallejo airbrush paint and did not "fix" the poorly done assembly by the previous owner. The paint job came out rather well and now I'm sorry I did not take the time to do that, ohh well battle field repair work is sloppy!



A pic of the Rhino from the rear and side. It also shows the "bug holes" I built, need more of these!!!



Ahh the "Glory days of GW" when their designs were clean and believable, well for 40k space combat...

[Barks]

Great work! Love to see that battle report.

[Vonkluge]

I've post the battle report as a seperate topic, enjoy!

[Suber]

I've just read the report and looks great (I now see that I should have commented about the minis here...)

[The Voivod]

really like your bugs.
Your brainbug looks like the disgusting hunk of flesh it should look like and the plasmabugs glow is neat.

[stone-cold-lead]

That's rather impressive.

[Gibby]

Ahh I wish I hadn't missed the boat on the Starship Troopers miniatures range.

Lovely work on those figures! This thread was fun to read.

[War In 15MM]

That looks great!  Richard