Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Quick photo update: Caprica's last Fleet

A quick photo update on the Battlestar Galactica Colonial vessels, just to show the direction things are going in; somewhat breathless, I know, but there's just something about these little ships that make you want to press ahead and get them painted.

The Irregular Battlestar is all but done, and the old fashioned 'Gunstar' stand-in from Brigade is pretty much there; Bergstrom's Battlestar has had a base coat of black, and the first rough dry-brush of neutral grey applied.

We see below, then, the pre-Cylon War Nova Class Gunstar, the 'Albion', alongside her replacement in the development of the class, the Battlestar 'Olympia':

With the Olympia, I wanted to pick up on some of the white-with-red-trim vibe displayed on the Colonial Vipers in the original BSG, and following this train of thought, allowed for some more red and white on the earlier Albion.

The larger vessel has suffered somewhat from that bane of the dry-brusher, 'frosting' - probably too much white in the grey, allied with a rather heavy-handed use of the brush - not so clever on a figure, but here, I don't think it looks too bad; an ageing metal hulk that has been round the frozen depths of Space one too many times would look like this -no?

The Albion began with a black undercoat, then a dry-brush of Prussian Blue, followed by another with a mix of the blue and some white, and then finally a light go-over with light grey with a spot of the original blue in it. I wanted her to look simpler, as if from a previous era in terms of iconography, with just the final detailing colours as before - not entirely happy with how she turned out, but not bad given the pace I find myself working at!

Both have had a final diluted ink wash applied, but I didn't want to be too heavy with this, so it is fairly subtle - might add more layers later....

Finally, a closer look at how the Galactica is shaping up, against her predecessor once more:

Obviously at a fairly basic stage as yet, but will be receiving a lot of attention now that the other two are pretty much launched; I found the deep greeblies and pitting that characterise the Bergstrom sculpt quite difficult to work all the base coat into - my undercoat brush is pretty mashed as a result.... and I think I'll have to make the following coats of grey lighter than on the Olympia, to give her the properly modern feel familiar from the series.

So there you go; I'll just sign off with a couple of website links; an academic and well researched discussion article on the names of Battlestars can be found here:

http://www.battlestargalactica.com/outside_docs/bg_outdoc0002.htm

and a lot of amazing general info can be seen here:

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

See you all on Kobol! ;-)