Friday 27 August 2010

Robur's Albatross is launched!


"From out of the clouds a long dark shape gradually emerged, and sank slowly into the overcast above the glittering Pacific; Nemo's Nautilus may have suffered under the combined bombardment of the Peruvian and Chilean Fleets, but now a strange ally had come to her aid.......The Albatross had arrived!"

Well, at least she has had a few coats of randomly applied paint smudged on by yours truly, so I thought I'd give a glimpse as to how she is progressing.

The colour scheme started off with red and white over a predominant black, but this made the vessel look more like a car ferry than a fantastic aeronautical wonder-craft, so I somewhat haphazardly added some accents in green, which at the time seemed like a good idea, but in retrospect does rather give her an unintended 'Italian' feel.....!


I'm quite pleased with the Robur coat of arms / sun symbol, but overall, for me this scheme is just not firing on all cylinders - it certainly says Victorian-era sky vessel, but somehow has lost all the menace and excitement you would expect of such an enigmatic craft with the Madman Robur at the helm.


The Albatross is also yet to be based, as although I'm intending to use rare earth magnets to match with standard plastic flight stands, I'm not sure whether to use one or two, given the weight of the mini; a top-heavy nose dive on the table could easily see her various protuberances smashed.

So although Nemo and his Allies could probably do with some aerial back-up (I'm currently working on re-inforcing the conventional Peruvian and Chilean navies), it may be that this prototype is launched, but is yet to be accepted into service.

So, whilst I think about how to improve things, I'm consoling myself with this web page describing various other preposterous craft:


Well worth a look! (Warning -some adult humour is involved....)

7 comments:

  1. Congratulations - a truly atmospheric sepia print that really helps to portray the VSF theme, well done.

    Tony
    http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/

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  2. Very nice looking, the black and tan in particular is effective.

    I just picked up Master of the World today, along with some other rarer Verne. Still looking for Robur, but at least that's somewhat in print. Included in my new acquisitions were "Demon of Cawnpore" and its sequel, "Tigers and Traitors" which apparenly revolve around a land train/caravan pulled by a steam elephant! I was going to do one anyway, but now realize Verne was ahead of the game, yet again...

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  3. Thanks guys, glad you like the look of her - as I said, I'm still a bit unsure....but I guess the colours are growing on me....

    @CJR Wow - a steam elephant - now you're talking! Have to track those stories down.

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  4. Beautiful stuff! The colors make the ship, man. Seriously. It really jumps out at you.

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  5. Absolutely spiffing old boy - Bravo! Love the colours

    Any chance of a cross-post over at the old White Wine Sauce??

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  6. Thanks guys, for your kind support - always helps to know what other people make of my mad ideas!

    @Tas - of course, I'll work on putting some things up soon.

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