ClearHorizon Raven Complete

Presenting the Black Dragon, Raven class gunship.

 I just finished this 15mm scale Raven assault gunship from ClearHorizon miniatures.  It was a nice smooth little model and so I decided to do a paint job that was part camo, and part subtle sci-fi.   You have to look closely to see the textures on the green, the mottling for the camo.  And even closer to see the composite fibrous material of the darker "carbon fiber" like grey sections. There is an attempt at reflections of the trees on the horizon of the canopy as this ship is flying just above the treeline.    The nose art on the right shows the dragon head and 5 stars for 5 aircraft kills.  Tanks aren't worth noting as they barely stand a chance.   This is

I took two sets of pictures because I couldn't decide which background looked better.  Second set coming soon.

 Edit:  Second set finished

Muzzle flasshes in this one are photoshoped, everything else is genuine.   99% airbrushed.  I didnt both airbrushing the highlights on the hellfire missiles.

Covenant Heavy Plasma Pistol: NERF Diatron

And another one for the armory =)
A nerf diatron seemed styled after the covenant weaponry, so the paint job seemed fitting.

Edit: can anyone tell me why google/blogger adjusts the saturation of random pictures?  Some I can upload directly and others I have to send to photobucket so it wont adjust the saturation and make the image absurdly bright and washed out...

Stealth suits from Pierre

Pierre at http://15mmspaceopera.blogspot.fr/ sent me a couple stealth suits to try out.  I was tempted to paint them with the cliche half stealth half suit paintjob.  But the more I painted these guys the more I liked their sleek suits so I kept them looking high tech.  They are on a couple of my bases as these seemed appropriate and simple.

Sniping with a bit of style.

I nearly always go for the sniper rifle if I cant use tech, biotics, or some other indirect means of taking out enemies so when I saw this rifle..... 

A Mass effect/District 9/sci fi inspired Nerf Centurion sniper rifle.  Just a bunch of texturing and weathering after setting the basic bland color scheme. 

Now back to little things... or some are little,  at least one more nerf in the lineup (covenant inspired).   The rifle is a fun toy with some decent power to it.  Don't aim at heads, and you should probably wear safety goggles anyway.  =)  

RAH 66 Complete

Ive loved the design of the Comanche since I was a kid and so bought it a couple months ago after watching ebay for about 1.5 years to get a decent price. This was painted to look like an anime or infinity styled sci-fi  chopper that sees action in the city.  And I often avoid painting the inside of a cockpit since I think it just distracts for the part of the model I care about.  Thus I painted the canopy to look like a fully immerse display where the pilot reads streams of data on the inner panels which tell him much more about his surroundings than his eye could... after years of interpretive training.   Sight carries a lot of information, but the human mind is highly adaptable and excellent.  Of course these "pilots" dont have great social lives outside of the nets.

This is a 48th scale chopper The rotor blades have a UAGDP or plasma sheath to reduce friction .  The Stinger missile is a close approximation scratched by me along with the fire.  The tail side stabs were also modifications based on some prototype RAH66 pics on the net.

Dust Tactics Mech On The Hunt

Finished the mech.   Mainly focused on a bit of sacrificial weathering  and a few bullet holes and dirt/burns. Simple and dirty.   There are very subtle highlights on the camo but given the contrast of the weathering the texturing is lost unless you look really close.  Still I like the effect and it was fairly quick and easy for a relaxing painting session.  Bullet holes are admittedly a bit sloppy.

Daddy Dictator, Get'em!

 Finally got good pictures of the Khurasan Dictator.  Ill be using him as a sentinel for 28mm minis.   If your lucky you go up against the little guy, or even a bunch of little guys.  If your unlucky you get the big shielded daddy wielding the absurdly large cannons. 

And my composite set. right click view image to enlarge.  Ill have a few pics of it in action eventually for my UFO game.

Edit: or should it read

Resistance is futile, you will be obliterated.    

Sorry I had to. =)

Painted Sports Car from 3d print.

Finished the crawler, though Itll be a few days before I get a good pic of it. Im leaving it shiny and so it takes a concerted effort to get non-glaring photos of such a mech.  But its beautiful shiny in person. Also finishing up the commanche RAH 66.  Adding a missile and basing it.

But as for the 3d models here is a picture of my abosolute favorite of the set (finished about a year ago). the Viper sport.  I only ever 3d printed 1 and was so in love I painted it rather than trying to recast it.  Besides, recasting this sucker would have been a pain.   Ive tweaked the design to make it a 4part model or so for casting but I dont see enough of a need to have more.  This one too was so shiny it took a while to figure out how to get a good picture.  You still cant quite see the iridescent effect of the deep teal green on the fuel-cell fenders. I know many people cant take my style of painting,   Im sorry. but only slightly =)  Camo is moderately easy,  this is hard and awesome!  The central area is supposed to be a glass material with a very busy HUD cockpit.  The wheels glow just because its cool and they felt left out otherwise.

And an early picture that had several of my cars painted up as high-tech as I could get them.  As with everything else in the line shiny organic and very busy.   Notice the switch blade bike (lower left) has a nice reflection of the dusk horizon on the cockpit.  

Ill try to find the nautilus pics tomorrow.


Cars now!

Website Maintainance and 3D Modeling

I did a bit of website maintenance today to my commissions site  Thirdfatecreations.com.  It needed it.  Will add more later but for now at least cleaned up the gallery of some of the crappier paint jobs from 5 years ago and added some 3d renders to the 3d commission page.  Painting is my main passion, but when I cant find the model I want, I make it!

Here are a couple of my favorites. As you can see I love my organic designs.  Though Ive done a lot of techy designs too.  Pictures of painted versions of these will be up in a few days.

 

The Nautilus Dreadnaught, Fleet scale. I had a sketch of this guy for years and it was him that prompted me to learn modeling for miniatures.  

The Deathray Organic Interceptor.  Bred for space and high atmospheric combat, this Banshee rips through enemy formations without mercy. 

 The Viper Sports car.  Uses external polymer fuel cells linked directly to the induction wheels.  Extremely powerful, recharges in the sun (albeit slowly) but has no effective armor and a single bullet, or piercing piece of road debris penetrates the fuel cells and causes catastrophic shorting and ignition of the fuelcells.  The high durability glass-ceramic cockpit is the only saving grace for its driver.  Depicted here with pulse rifle and particle cannon addons. 

The Macromphal Breach carrier.  Big brother to the Nautilus Dreadnaught above.  Dont even try to approach it with anything larger than a bomber, you wont get close.  Four high power rail cannons will track and splash anything larger than a corvette because Sir Isac newton is the deadliest...... in space.

15mm Hell Divers "airbrushed"

Harold at Clear Horizon sent me a few of his Hell divers as a challenge and I was happy to try it since they are roughly the size of my nozzle assembly.   I tried and found you can put 3 into my small paint cup for the airbrush.  So I tried my best to do a camo and hydrophobic wash on them. And with one did a quick little modeling of a rocket firing.  These are 95% airbrushed.  The reflection spots on the helmets are the only exception.

And a minigun drone I'm painting to be a near future sentry drone for my UFO games. Im hoping to do something like him but a lot more detailed and complicated on either a Khurasan Crawler or Antenociti spider.... We shall see

Next, a peek at something I hope to finish in a few weeks. As long as I can figure out how to finish him. 

And finally, I made these scabbards a few weeks ago for a couple swords.  I need to figure out how Im going to upholster them.  I was thinking airbrushing a "gold leaf" pattern into them...  Glossy varnish doesn't photograph well without a light booth. Perhaps Ill not be lazy next time and set it up.