High Tech Phantom Reinforcement

Another Commission for a Phantom titan.
This one to demonstrate more tech in its painting. 
And a few local shield hits that are barely worth its notice. 

When dealing with warp spiders....

Yo Spike for brains!
1. Never turn your back on a warp spider
2. Especially never turn your back on a Pheonix lord 
3. If your stupid enough to break rules #1 and #2, DON'T FLIP HER OFF!

It doesn't matter how tough their armor is, projecting a warp into an armor seam then diving into the warp with 4 scythes is a great way to crack that petulant egg!

Steam Punk Scorpion

As part of my Diesel/Steam punk force buildup (slow build up)
The scorpion giant walker is done enough... for now.
The model was some cheap resin thing found at a store that had a good start. I added some turrets to her tail to protect them from straffing runs,  a few turrets on her back for the same, and a main quad cannon on her back facing forward.  Her tail was also augmented with an autoloading autocannon with shells almost as big as a man, for the scale.  I also broke the legs free as well as the arms and repinned them and glued them in  slightly different positions.  The legs are not strong enough to support the massive block of resin so I took 3 brass tubes and stuck them into her belly to hold him up on a tripod.

For tabletop purposes the little turrets are flak cannons or point defense.  The main quad cannon is forward facing only and land targets only. The tail cannon is land or air but packs enough of a punch to keep enemy airships at high altitude.  Yet the armor is tough enough that most of what an airship can carry cant penetrate its carapace.

 Itll take some heavy high altitude firepower to lay this monstrosity onto her belly for good.

BFTP: Sci Fi cast and almost painted, plus bases

And then they were 3d printed, cast, and slowly started to get painted... That took a while but I did enjoy playing with simple and exotic vehicle paint jobs.   I wish there was more color on the road today.

I also wanted more sci fi bases so I designed a bunch.

and then the painting began.

BFTP: Sci-Fi Concept Cars!

as a blast from the past (digging up and sorting photos) Im posting some photos every now and again that predate this blog.  These were from an effort of mine a few years back when I was annoyed at how little diversity there was in sci-fi vehicles for 28mm scale models.  only a few existed and even after this it seems there is little imagination out there. People are generally too afriad to try to imagine an interesting future that doesnt reak of homogeneity. so with these vehicles, I started from a basic concept (SUV, reclining car,  highly fragile roadster,  etc) and let it evolve independent of style of the other vehicles in the series.   Kind of going back to when cadellac dared to be a little different... but now sadly nearly all sedans look very similar.   Homogeneaity stinks. 

ITS THE FUTURE, DARE TO IMAGINE.

Later Ill show painted versions and my cityscape tabletops with them on the board. It was colorful!

Arming Fairies for the Fair

EDIT: Pardon my dust.  I was using photobucket for legacy reasons  (read lazy) but they changed their subscriptions from a basic for 10 dollars to 400+.. thats silly, so I am deleteing my account and migrating.   It may be a few weeks before I replace all of the pictures.  However, I plan on having some blast from the past showing pictures that were before this blog.
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A few months ago I got a bug to make some wood swords for the rennaisance festival.  My kids had wood swords bought from the fair, one of which I painted pink-purple with lighthing... but I had to be different. So I made myself a few swords... First I made a stand-in for a kanatan.  But it was too boring, and when practicing with my kids I remembered the bane of every adult fighting kids... they arent very good at aiming and you really have to be on  your toes to keep your fingers from getting smashed by flailing kids, especially when they swarm you.
Therefore I designed a series of weapons from small daggers (with finger guards) to short swords for fast blade work (with finger guards) and one great sword (with two finger guards and the ability to use it as a sword, staff or reversed sword depending on how the munchkinds gang up on you).

But, of course I take my swords to the fair and get ready to fight my kids and the swarm of other munchkinds whose parents armed and released them into the grand mele of finger smashing goodness... and my kids want my swords.  I was reduced to the daggers on occasion or convinced one to use one of the short sowrds so I could have a sword and dagger at least to fight off the hoard and keep my kids safe.  And it was a lot of fun!  But I want MY swords... so, ever the enabling parent who is also just looking for an excuse, I had my kids design their own swords with a bit of revision from me for ability to actually make teh things and make them somewhat effective weapons. .

One went with a "heart shaped"  "batleth" style sword which we painted purple.  Its effective for defense but not as good for offense.  Then we painted it purple with flowers and wrapped the handle with athletic tape.

The second wanted a swirly hooky sword because she like how I kept using features on my swords to trap my opponents.  She wanted hers painted white, with metallic edging, styling pictographs, and a bit of blue ice... not to mention the black athletic tape grips.   And I rather like that design, as a single handed sword its well balanced for a little kid and is easily tranistioned to one or two handed.

PULP ww2 fleet progress

I started working on this project when I got some fighters from Iron Wind Miniatures for the Crimson Skies game.   I later found some 1/200 scale ww2 fighters and painted a few of those, then got the bright idea to modify a large zep as a pulp carrier airship.  Recently I realized some of the inspiration for a bunch of airships and Japanese spaceships a while ago were old submarines.  So I decided to take it a step further and use some ww2 subs for large sail based airships with pulp ww2 tech. such as cannons and turboprops.   And for some big ground forces to counter the tech of a large airship, such as a large mechs and scorpions.

On the left is largely ww2 fighters and bombers, on the right is crimson skies fighters.  center has a few experimental fighters.  Front center is a large mech scorpion with a few mech buddies.  Top left is the carrier zep, top right is a pirate cruiser, pirate frigate, luxury yacht, fuel/hydrogen tanker, and switchblade littoral intercept craft.  Jagged bets on the front of the pirate ships and the interceptor are to cut sails.  Main principle is that while props and turboprops work great, they cost fuel and make noise, sails greatly extend the range of an airship. 

Legio Custodes

Finally finished another commission.  It appears that GW decided to finally try for a bit of style with the space marines. In a way these look like a bit of steampunk flavored marines.  He wanted a bit of energy shielding on the arm shield and on the fore sections of the tanks.

On this last one, a note to GW.  Please put the mounting post at the CENTER OF GRAVITY.  these things have so much resin making a strong base is a bit tricky with the flimsy plastic base provided.

Wraithlord charging in

Also just finished a wraithlord comission. This guy is charging in to introduce someone to the pointy end of his sword.  The ultimate backscratching, through the front.

Stargate SG1 or atlantis, choices choices.

Painted up a stargate from studio bergstrom.  Its about 4" diameter and I glued a clear acrylic disc in the center for painting the event horizon.  It glows very nicely with a wee bit of UV lighting.  he made it either the SG1 or Atlantis type gate based on which side is forward.  Now I just need to figure out how to mount it.

In Space, no one can hear you ...die

In Space, no one can hear you drool over these bad boys right before they send a heat seeker up your tailpipe.

After quite a while staring at me to paint them, I finally brought some life to these Silent Death fighters and capital ships.  I love the variety of this line of ships.  Each was begging for something different.


A carrier with some hotshot ace fighters.

 A Thorn dreadnaught with escort.

And a hammerhead with space superiority fighters. (one of the little ones also reminds me of a hammer head from space-above and beyond)

 A Manta with its interceptor and bomber.

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Silent Death Incomming

I have a batch of silent death ships that have been staring at me on my desk with just primer on them for over a year.  Finally getting the fire to start painting again I quite like how most of these little guys turned out.  Its always fun imagining the race that controls each type of ship and how they may paint the ship.

Better pictures to come once these are completed,  at present they are about 95% complete.  Im not sure if Ill use standard SD bases or make something else,  My base materials stockpile appeared to have been low last time I painted. 

NERF camo extravaganza

Well I didnt care for the grey nerf gun, so I repainted it.
I actually like this one a bit better even though it appears to be worse in the NIR.  I also painted up a nerf grenade launcher (shoots the big red darts) which accounts for my two favorite action nerf guns.  I much prefer pumping each round than relying on batteries.   I went with a messy concrete'ish top for the grenade launcher and a quasi tech camo with mostly classical earthy colors for the smaller pump action.   However (shoulda done a color sample test in the NIR first) it turns out the base earth color I used for these is pretty darned dark in the NIR.  Oh well I still like them.    And they add nicely to my eclectic nerf arsenal.

NERF Hailstorm: Rival Kryptek

Seeing videos of people converting their nerf rivals I had to give one a shot.  Since C and D batteries are so passe I first replaced its 6 C cells with 3 8000mah lithiums which allows this thing to spit out 12 rounds in well under a second.   I modified the trigger to be a two stage trigger pull half way to spin up the flywheels and a high power ducted fan for the feed tube, wait a quarter second then pull all the way to open the gate and unleash nerf hell.  When this bad boy spins up you know its time to duck and cover. The balls also dont feel very good when you get hit so WEAR SAFETY GOGGLES.

I havent spent enough time to work out the feed issues with the backpack. At present Im thinking some sort of cork screw to prevent clogs.  A project for later...

I decided to paint it with a kryptek style staying with light blue grays or silvers. Other than the backpack clogging issues, and that there is no reasonable way to play with others with this, I am quite proud of this bad boy.  Next I need to develop a filtered vacuum cleaner to pick up the hundreds of balls this baby can fire in a minute. 

Parents get sabers too!

It was unfair for the kids to get sabers so the wife and I get sabers now.
I have a light staff under way but at this rate itll be another 6 months.  Too many other projects.
She gets one that looks vaguely sith like with scratch marks for grip while I get two black and silver handled  more classical style.  Both handles are aluminum with a mild level of polish and the grip black is a duracoat for maximum durability.  

She got the bight teal on the top while I got an aqua and ice blue.  Hers is brighter because its a fixed LED while mine are RB and RGB. 

For the internals I used lightsaberos for arduino as found many places on the net.  Modifed the code a bit, and after a lot of playing figured out a stack which allows an arduinonano, a sound amp, an mp3 player, voltage regulator etc all on one board.   later I further added a 5V boost because on powerup with high power blades we often got a brownout on the boards causing a reboot or glitch state.  a buffered 5V boost allows the arduino to stay powered at 5V even while the batter takes a large initial hit. 

Further powering a few hundred milliamps up to an amp for the LED array takes a fair amount of fet power.  I milled aluminum heatsinks that socket some FETS and allow a set screw in the handle to press the heatsink into contact on the ID of the lightsaber aluminum tube turning the entire handle into ground and a heatsink.  Otherwise these fets overheat and blow within 30 seconds.  It turns out using red is even worse because it has such a low potential drop  compared to blue and green that the fet has to dump a ton of power.  Thus why people making red blades often run half of their LED's in series with the other half.  Blues have such a nice high voltage that the fets down have to dump much heat.  The quad fet below is powering an RGB saber. with two fo them running the Red led's.  The 6 fet sink runs the blade in segments with a common ground (or anode, I forget which) making the blade power up in sequence.