Various and Sundry On and Off the Workbench!

Here's the first installment of a photo tour of what's been a-cookin' on my workbench and rolling off to the Great Outdoors of our little patio to be sprayed with Testor's Dullcote for your amusement and consideration! We begin with what happens when one of my original kitbashed creations meets modern 3D computer modeling skill and technology, the end result of Darby Eckles of Darkest Star Games taking a fancy to my 15mm scale cheese wedge-shaped heavy anti-grav panzerknackers and deciding that they were the perfect basis for the armored support for a new canid alien race he's been planning for a while now...

As you can see I wasted no time in assembling the four samples Darby sent me, two apiece of the panzerknacker and APC variants. Each is cast in only four (4) separate parts, two ball mounted gatling guns, a sensor/targeting array for the commander's cupola, and a frontal mounted weapon system consisting of either a twin gatling gun and smoke grenade dischargers, or one of three possible weapon choices for the panzerknacker: 

Besides the hypervelocity rail gun I chose to mount on my two shiny new panzerknackers, there was a  conventional style main gun barrel and a heavy rocket-boosted howitzer option included in each kit. I designed the original trio of wedge-of-gouda shaped AFVs with two conventional gun-armed tank destroyers and a single heavy howitzer model, and outlined my creative vision to Darby that the machine is essentially an extraterrestrial anti-grav analogue to the WW2 era German Army self-propelled assault gun family built on the ubiquitous Panzerkampfwagen IV tank chassis:

After a coat of flat black spray primer I proceeded to paint the alien quartet of armored anti-grav doom in a scheme that would look suitably alien enough yet be effective camouflage in an alien environment (and give me an excuse to use my favorite color -purple- on an otherwise somewhat serious sci-fi subject):

I developed the pattern by borrowing elements of design from both the late WW2 German camouflage patterns prevalent on their tanks and AFVs near the end of the war, and the patterns found on French tanks from the early period of the same conflict. I added an extra layer of extraterrestrial authenticity thanks to my being a hoarder of decals from models and projects past, in this case some very effective Zentraedi insignia from Macross kits some 25 years ago and kept until the right project just happened to come along:

 Here the Fearsome Anti-Grav Foursome receive their mandatory coating of Testor's Dullcote flat spray finish to seal the models and blend the decals into the paint work along with yet more space fighters for Silent Death and a pair of the new S-Model 1/72 scale Hotchkiss H-35 fast build kits:

As far as I am concerned Darby has done an excellent job of interpreting the original kitbashed models and translating them into their new, resin incarnations, in a number of ways I would say better than the originals! The triangular shape really lends itself to conveying an very non-human take on just how to best arrange the target profile of an AFV from a non-human perspective, particularly that of a canid alien evolved from a pack hunting social carnivore. As these were drying I was assembling the bases for these anti-grav hunter-killers using some pre-cut oval wood plaques from Michael's craft store, some plastic bottle caps, and white Tacky Glue. Some paint and flock, and the next shots will showcase the models on their bases along with the original kitbashed creation that served as Darby's physical guide through this project.

So stay tuned, Space Possums, as there's more to come....


Next Installment: The Finished Models on Bases and Further Mischief!

EDIT: For those of you interested in these marvelous little nasties, here's the link to Darkest Star Games:  http://www.darkeststargames.com

All kinds of fun stuff to be had from this growing line of 15mm sci-fi goodness! >;)