Designing, scratchbuilding and kitbashing Sci fi Spaceships and radio controlled vehicles.
I took one of the primer grey photos into photoshop and messed about until I had something pleasing for a paint scheme. I then looked at the model carefully and thinking about the masking involved went back into photoshop and slightly simplified the graphic elements to make masking possible. Below is the final rough colour design. The finished result on the model can be seen below. The off white…
Grey primer - done. The engine bells are wrapped in cling film to mask them off. A commenter on facebook thought the "spare tire" nurnie is too obviously what it is. It was a part I had that perfectly fit the hole I had to fill. I hoped that the grey primer would be sufficient to disguise it but perhaps not. A little more work will be required here. Thanks for looking. More soon...
I believe I have completed the surface detailing phase of the project. The plain white panels are mostly cut from 0.5mm styrene sheet. The rest is a lot of flat panel kit parts and a few bits of evergreen textured sheet.. Next step grey primer. Thanks for looking. More soon...
I added a strip around the back edge to give the rear bulkhead a bit of an inset. The rear bulkhead was then fully detailed out, quite a fiddly process as I had already glued the engine bells in place. I then moved on to detailing the lower hull at the front. The large grey part with a round shape with black strip is the loading door. It would open and become a ramp. Its upside down in the picture…
I made four landing pads from some 1/35 scale Maus tracks and suspension parts. They were drilled to take a short piece of brass rod which was then inserted and glued to the bottom of the hull. I also detailed out the bottom cavity in the lower hull. Some detailing of the front lower hull has been started. I made some wings and fins from three layers of 2mm styrene sheet. The centre layer has some…
I came across this image of a kitbashed spaceship on Facebook made from the two halves of a submarine Plastic model kit. The modeller was Tony Murray https://www.facebook.com/groups/2043682082594379/posts/3266027093693199 I thought this was a genius idea and as I had the front end of the hull of a large 1/72 scale U-boat sitting idle in a box I thought I might be able to have a a go at doing…
The HPI Savage XL chassis received a few slight modifications. Mainly the custom electric motor mount combined with a small platform for the ESC (electronic Speed Control). A custom aluminium plate was added where the original nitro motor mount plate used to sit to hold the battery. The motor is mounted quite high where it has plenty of room under the high body. Old Savages used to have 8 long…
Once the 3D printed main hull was completed it was time to go old school and fill in the undersides with kit-bashed detail. In the picture below is a few parts from a Wall-E truck toy, a Bruder dozer toy and a bunch of bits of old transformer toys. Mixed in is a few plastic kit parts and some garden hose fittings. The large black rear exhausts are the bass reflex ports from a Sony mini hifi, the…
I have always wanted to make a shallow dome roofed watchtower of some sort and over the years scribbled many thumbnails of the sort of thing I had in mind. Until now I had never found a suitable large shallow dome... then one suddenly appeared ouit of the blue, part of a microphone shield that had been removed at work. The thick acrylic blow moulded shallow dome with a diameter of 695mm ( 27") was…
After layers of spray putty, primer, spot putty and sanding I finally got a reasonably smooth 3D printed body with almost no layer lines visible. Then it was time to fit out the cockpit. The front suspension shock absorbers intruded into the cockpit area a bit so the seating and indeed the backs of the Tamiya 1/12 scale Formula One driver figures had to be relieved for clearance. The seating was…
An AI image popped up in my Pinterest feed that stood out as a possible RC vehicle project. It already has the stance of a typical 4WD basher style rc vehicle and in particular it brought to mind an HPI Savage due to its high centre of gravity. The Savage has been around in various guises for decades but I have never had one to hand. I started a search for a suitable chassis to adapt and…
The body was primed with light grey primer and then masked and sprayed with a can of yellow enamel. The window frames were left in grey primer, some parts sprayed matte black and the roof sensor cylinder sprayed with matte white primer. At this stage there were no occupants of the vehicle. To rectify that omission I built a rudimentary console and some seat backs to suit a couple of Tamiya Bruiser…
The Speed controller is a cheap brushed controller capable of running 3s - 6s (12 - 24 volts). I'm only using two 2s lipos in series providing 4s at 14.4 volts. The lighting plugs into the balance lead of one of the batteries and runs through a voltage booster to increase the 7.2 volts to 12 volts. The plug is made from some PCB pins and a blob of hot glue. It plugs into the red and black wires of…
Way back in 2015 I came across the concept art for Hardware shipbreakers a computer game that eventually became Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. In it were a couple of interesting off road sci-fi vehicles that caught my eye as possible subjects for rc models, the Baserunner and the LAV or Light Attack Vehicle. In this old post I toyed with building a Baserunner loosely based on the original concept…
Started in 2016, the container spaceship project is finally done. It has been worked off and on (mostly off) for around nine years. It has been a big task painting and weathering this model as it is reasonably lengthy at 1515mm (roughly 60 inches) and each container was a separate paint job in itself. The main ship colour is white primer stained with an oil wash made from burnt umber and a bit of…
It's finally time to push this project through to completion. Its been more than a year since I last worked on this and the remaining job was to detail the container hanging deck. I came up with an idea to detail the hanging fingers with a sort of T section. As there are 24 of these fingers I wanted to automate the process so decided to model the parts in Onshape and 3D print them using my FDM…
I masked up all the areas I was going to leave dark primer grey and sprayed the base colour from a Montana Spray can. Next I knocked up a graphic in photoshop and cut a couple out of stencil vinyl on a Silhouette Portrait vinyl cutter. This mask was carefully applied to the wings using masking tape as a transfer film. Added to the stencil was a paper and masking tape barrier which was then sprayed…
I have fooled around in photoshop and come up with a rough paint design for the model. The next step is to see if I can achieve anything close in reality. It is always tricky masking over the top of surface detail. Thanks for looking. More soon...
The grey primer stage has been reached for the Jan Buragay inspired spaceship project. I masked out where the wings glue on and after spraying the primer attached them with superglue after roughening the mating surfaces with coarse sandpaper. Next job is to come up with a paint scheme. Thanks for looking More soon...
I decided to tackle the side windows. I found some PVC conduit that fits inside the larger conduit I made the round ports from that sit at the side of the bridge. I cut rings of the smaller conduit by parting them off on the mini lathe. These rings were then stuck to small pieces of 2mm acrylic sheet (perspex). The acrylic was then carefully sanded flush with the rings and then pushed into the…
I made up the "wings" from 6mm foamed PVC sheet, bent using a heat gun and some scrap wood formers. The material is oversize and then trimmed back to shape once bent and cooled. Once happy with the fit and placement I started paneling the surface with 0.5mm styrene and evergreen strips and textured sheet. I also completed the skinning of the hull with the flat plates of 1.5mm styrene. The edges…
I have nearly completed the detailing on the rear and the engines of the Jan Buragay Spaceship project with a start made on the detailing of the top surface and skinning the sides. I have also nearly completed the detailing on the front panel. It is going to be a quite heavily nurnied surface. Thanks for looking. More soon...
We had this old Sony Micro Hifi thing which was always a bit problematic. The CD door which was electrically operated broke quite early in its life. I fixed it a couple of times, then recently the belt broke making the door impossible to operate. Additionally it started making a crackling sound and it was destined for the bin. I was on my way to throwing it out when I turned it sideways... and...…
I started on the control console and built a backlit desk from styrene and a clear acrylic desk top. Under the desk is a 12 volt LED strip facing sideways which reflects off an white angled wall around the knees of the 1/24 scale figures. The console is on a raised plinth so the figures' heads will be at the right height for the front windows. The clear acrylic has been fine sanded to give it a…
Trawling through my stash for suitable parts I dug out a bulldozer blade from a Bruder toy. I removed the front part of the blade and thought the back part would be good for the rear of the chassis. It needed a section to be removed from the middle to fit. The two abs halves had all the holes filled with scrap sheet abs and some strips to reinforce the join. This was superglued to the black foamed…