Crashed Aquila Shuttle - Bit of Airbrush practice

I'm still busy cleaning up all the troops but it's high time I painted something. I picked up a new double action airbrush at the recent MOAB convention for ridiculously cheap and scored a 2nd LEG Power Loader !!!

Using some Tamiya paints that I figured were suitable for the Dropship and APCs I thought I should have a practice run on something so attacked the crashed Aquila shuttle that I had picked up off ebay. If the colours look good I can go ahead on the Valkyrie and APCs if not I can buy some new colours.







I couldn't really do any preshading since the model was already primed black when I got it so I went straight over that with XF-62 Olive Drab then lighter with XF-67 NATO Green then highlight with a mix of NATO Green and XF-49 Khaki since Khaki by itself looked too brownish. The engine bits I used Model Air Steel. Also added a bit of heavy shading with Model Air Black.

After that I went in with brushs and drybrushed everything with a lighter mix of off white mixed with a touch of NATO green and some Khaki. Then lots of lining edges with Steel and drybrushing areas I figured should be well banged up. Then drybrushed all the dirt areas with a couple different greys working up to a bit of whitish grey then lots of Army Painter Dark Wash wherever needed to bring the shapes out and to give some good depth to the Steel areas.

The windows got painted a very dark brown then edged a bit with white then had several coats of gloss and Tamiya Smoke painted over them to make them look shiny and a bit translucent even if they aren't.

Oh and lastly I had a mess around with some Secret Weapon brown weathering powder I picked up along with the airbrush. Never tried the stuff before so messed a round a bit making some areas look very rusty.



























Think it turned out alright. The flash made it look a bit lighter than in real life though but brought out the shading nicely. Now I really need to get the interior to the valkyrie painted so I can assemble the damn thing.

ALIENS more progress

More progress :D

As I mentioned before I sanded back the circles on the turrets to clean up their lines.

I also got in some Kotobukiya option parts from HLJ I figured was worth trying out for a few dollars. This kit is basically addon gatling gun muzzles. I figured the front guns on the Caimens needed improving from the 2 tubes they have now. The smallest gatling muzzle was slightly larger than the molded on guns so I put a short piece of plastic tubing over the regular guns and then glued the muzzles to those. I think it looks much more like the movie APC guns now.

Last night I dug through the cupboard and found where I had hidden all of these kits. The result:

A nice hanger backdrop for taking photos of the collection as it progresses.

I've also been digging through my library for reference stuff I collected over the years

Other new aquisitions. Infected bases from Secret Weapon (was playing X-wing for hours in the game store and felt like I should buy something)

and a new Merkava kit from Academy and from the back of the cupboard again an old cheap chinese kit also in 1/48 which may just be a scaled down 1/35 kit from Tamiya. Looking at the 2 kits I kind of think it's the better of the 2. Also an IG Valkyrie that I bought when they came out and never did anything with. I may do some gun swapping to de 40K it a bit.
So this is all good for the USCM but what about the aliens??

Barks came through for me selling me 14 Ozmade/Eureka Chaos Weasels which are damn difficult to photograph since they are so shiny and black. I'm not planning on repainting them at the moment but may rebase them to the Champ bases.

I think they do the job pretty well but I can't wait to get the LE xenos from Comsquare for a proper hoard :D

There is also the always impressive Konami Alien Queen figure. I also got a LE Queen which I am cleaning up and working out how to pin together and resculpt her broken off little arms.

Looks like the xenos have noticed you boys

dramatic zoom out...

CNC Antenna Dishes

I seem to be on a bit of a kit building thing at the moment, here is another kit from CNC Workshop the double pack of Antenna Dishes. Fairly simple looking kit going by the sprues.





The build goes together fairly easilly after a lot of clean up sanding. Like the buggy the cut curves aren't as smooth as they could be and there are lots of notches for no particular reason all over the place that you have to sand and putty up. CNC really needs to crank down their laser power too cause the edges are very burnt. Anyway onto the build.



The base with the gearing is quite nice. You align the gears with the baseplate using toothpicks and predone holes. The arm joints also align using toothpicks, in this case I cut down the toothpicks and glued them in place which let me rotate the joints till I liked the arm pose and glued it in position.





The only way to really glue together the dish is clamp the ring to the arms, cause they don't quite line up.



It does look good once the glue dries.



Then attach to the arm.



And onto the 2nd dish.



You can see I changed out the lasercut cables at the back of the arm with some regular wire and bits of plastic tube but that's the extent of my blinging up on these. I really like them.













After taking most of the pics I decided to fill the gaps on the joints with the rings. Sanded back it's not so messy. I've primed them already too but still deciding how to paint them. Any suggestions?

Pre detailed plastic bases by Champ Industries

In the back of my mind for years now was some cool bases I always thought would go well with my Colonial Marines I'd seen a review from Dr Faust's Painting Clinic (remember him?) Of course my marines were in the back of the cupboard at the time... 

With the revival of my project with all the new vehicles and lovely Hasslefree guns got me thinking about how to base all the models. I was considering the rather nice Sulaco bases by Fenris Games but being resin it gets rather pricey. But I remembered to look up Champ Industries again and see what they had on offer. After a simple paypal transaction my order was off and a week and a bit later they arrived in Oz.

I ordered a big bag of 150 industrial bases which will see out all my marines, aliens, and probably any Infinity stuff I do in the near future. I also grabbed 30 of the urban bases for zombie survivors and stuff, though I think it would fit 40K stuff pretty well or Infinity.

Here are the 4 different Industrial designs. I flipped a row to let you see how the facing changes the look. 

Here are the 3 different Urban designs.

And with some minis blutacked on to see how they look, I think I invested pretty well in these. It's kind of surprising but apart from the occasional pre detailed base by GW no one else out there has made plastic pre done bases. The detail is very crisp and unlike resin bases you still have the void at the bottom of the base so they sit on the table really easily you can also use plastic glue to stick down plastic minis instead of pinning down with super glue. Dr Faust seemed to think you can get away with just super glueing down metal minis without pinning as well, I'll give it a try.