Friday 18 January 2013

Plastic Fantastic: Rockets and Spaceships Update


A rush update now, on the latest batch of 'Plastic Fantastic' pieces, mainly due to the great fun I had in painting these up; I say painting these up - actually much more of a splash and dash, as I was so keen to see how they would turn out - with hindsight some corners were definitely cut!

As you can see from the photos, I went with a vaguely Mongo-inspired scarlet and gold scheme for a trio of War-Rocket look-alikes, and thought I'd follow through with a 6mm Shuttle vibe on the other piece:


The Shuttle is actually the fuselage section of the blue rocket seen in the earlier post, with the front opening faired over with plasti-card, and some plastic scrap inserted into the rear as a propulsion unit/retro-rockets....talking of Retro, maybe this could stand in as a sort of 'Ruck Bodgers' Gemini-style 'Ranger 1' space capsule; hence the: "I've been frozen in space for three centuries" dry-brush applications of frosty white.... (For which, read: "I went a bit too heavy there.....oh and forgot to fill in the small hole above the nose....").

The War Rockets are the green and yellow versions, although in separating all the various components for the previous Blogposting's photos, I mixed the wings up somewhat, so actually the Shuttle has the winglets that should be on one of the yellow rockets, and vice versa - I won't tell the Emperor Ming if you don't......

More dry-brushing was in evidence here over a single layer of matt black undercoat - the plastic minis take paint very well, so no more than one was needed, after having washed them in soapy water first.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice further misses - in that did I not paint the inside of the rocket bodies visible through the cockpit spaces - nor did I bother to fill these in or fair them over - just too darn keen to press on without any high-falutin' attention to detail and such like.....

Moving on, here's a view of the original Lego Bionicle feet, here in two versions paired back to back to produce a Romulan Dreadnought, and also a Cylon Cruiser - the blunt end of the former had a sort of D'deridex look, and the latter is a Cylon Marauder fighter writ-large, at least to my eyes:


More over-excited puppy renderings of slap-dash painting, so the squeamish should look away now, particularly in these comparison pics when they are matched with more sedate and considered paint-schemes; here some of Irregular Miniatures' DYO13 Blackstar Liner as pre-TNG Romulan ships, and a FASA Citadel original Bird of Prey from the TOS era:


Again, to show the scale, the Bionicle feet ship tops out at around 70mm:


Finally, the Cylon feet alongside one of Drew Bergstrom's excellent Cylon Baseships:


So, it's probably 'hang my head in shame' time for the slapdash approach to these, but definitely Warp-factor Fun in terms of actually putting them together - hopefully future plastic shenanigans will reward a more considered approach - so watch this space.....

6 comments:

  1. I think they fit the bill quite well!

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  2. Must resist urge to go on eBay!

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  3. Really nice! I especially like the rockets and while the paint job might be slap-dash, that only enhances the effect of hard-worn pirate dropships.

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  4. Cheers guys, glad you like 'em - certainly addictive, this cheapo plastic project!
    Got some more types on order, so watch out for more to come soon.........

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  5. StlOnSnd,
    Starship minis made from lego Bionicle pieces... go figure! I am seriously going to try this. I already have located a couple of sources for the pieces needed. One question though..For the green ship made from Bionicle Feet: What is that small cylindrical piece in the back? Thanks and Good Job!!!

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  6. Hi there, good catch! - I had completely forgotten about describing that - I had wanted to fair over the gap in the Bionicle foot part and have something more engine-looking at the rear, but couldn't really find anything suitable - so I went for an expedient I had used before, some black rubber electrical cable connectors cut in half lengthways- the sort of thing that is used on BNCs for video feeds - seen here in the centre of a scratch-built Aquanef sub project:

    http://steelonsand.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/aqua-nefiness-quick-scratch-build.html

    So not strictly Lego, but did the job - hope this helps!

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