Friday 17 December 2010

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Galactica Progress


The Battlestar Galactica, here in the shape of the sculpt from Studio Bergstrom, is all but complete, so in the spirit of recent posts, thought I'd share the images ASAP - so no one was left wondering how she turned out....
As I thought, the particular mode of sculpting made dry-brushing a dream - if anything, you had to reign yourself in somewhat and not overdo it - the various lumps, bumps, inscribed lines and pits easily picked up the mix of Vallejo neutral grey, silver grey and white that was applied in various quantities and coats - an ink wash then sealed the deal as far as I was concerned.


Detailing used red, orange and a Vallejo brass, dotted on here and there to give the impression of running lights and other illuminated windows etc:


The Drive or engine exhaust areas were done with a swedish blue, then a lightened swedish blue patch in the centre, and finally a splodge of white in the centre of that - this approximates an 'Ion Drive flare' (or some such technobabble), without the need for getting too master-modeller about it - that's not really my style, after all! :-)


The characteristic red coloured recognition stripes on the carrier bays were by necessity, rather roughly lined in - the sculpted surface is just too busy for straight lines - so these had to go in over the top regardless, but don't look too bad at gaming distances.

Next up, I've been considering what else to add in to the Rag-Tag Fugitive Fleet, with the beginnings of some civilian vessels, as well as a further Colonial Military one.

On the left in the foreground, we can see the Brigade Models SAC faction Bantu Destroyer, SFS-630, which is going to stand in as a class of Light Cruiser, to help fend off the Cylons, and next to it two further vessels by Irregular Miniatures:


In the centre, we have the old SH4 Human Cruiser, which should do a good job of representing a transport of some kind, and on the right is the SH1 Human Freighter, which will be, well, a freighter, I suppose...

I've found that my choice of the Bergstrom Galactica has somewhat limited the range of off-the-shelf vessels I can use to support it, as most of the available ranges, such as Hanger18FASA, Orion, Ravenstar, Titanium etc, are built on a considerably larger scale - my diminutive Battlestar will most likely need some scratch-builds to complete the fleet.
At the moment, I'm thinking in terms of doing a Colonial Movers vessel, an Agro-ship, a Mineral ship and probably the Foundry ship, depending on whether I can find some suitably small bits for the usual messy scratch build.

Cylon Basestar and the fighters should be seeing the workbench soon, so more to come on this before the end of the year, no doubt.

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