Plastic Fantastic - Dimestore Spaceships Trial Painting

Just finished putting together some trial paint jobs on a selection of the plastic Dimestore Spaceships - mostly just a bit of fun, with a couple of detailed ones, and others that were little more than dry-brushing with some detailing to see how paint would sit.

Must say, I'm quite pleased - certainly no complaints for what was a quick test run - these ships painted up easily, and I think would support a number of complicated techniques or stages of painting if you were so inclined.

To start off with, I was looking long and hard at the Flying Saucer design, and it reminded me strongly of the semi-mythical late war Nazi design of the Haunebu or H-Gerat:

http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/HAUNEBU.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_UFOs

So I went for it in Luftwaffe Green including some hand-daubed iron cross insignia - a bit rough, but I was too excited to bother with time consuming decals - something I will correct at a later date:

The Flying Dart shaped ship I just gave a dry-brush of bronze over the black undercoat, and then did a minimum of detailing - I was thinking that these might be a secret Allied design to combat the German 'Wunderwaffe' - maybe a bit of Luft '46 might be in order employing these - they would go nicely alongside 1/300 aircraft, I should think - throw in a few ME262 and the odd all-white 616 Sqn Gloster Meteor and Bob's your uncle!

Next I went for a simple grey scheme on what I am calling the 6mm Gunship, just with some red detailing - although I realise I forgot to finish the canopy before taking the photos - tut, tut!
The Flying Horseshoe got a sort of alien purple with the odd bit of colour - very quick and rough again - but definitely speaks to the potential they would have as Fleet-Scale Sci-Fi:

I think there was a race in the Babylon 5 universe that it would fit the bill for; was it the Vree?

Talking of on-screen Sci-Fi, the next craft, the ones with the trio of domed protuberances, I did to go alongside my Late Republic / Early Imperial Ships; here with an Irregular Star Destroyer and a Brigade Models' Insidioso:

I think the domes reminded me of the ones on an Interdictor Class, so perhaps these are an early, smaller scale fore-runner.....

Finally, just to show the scratch-building potential - I lopped off the two side sponsons on the ship I have dubbed the Rocket Sled - came away nice and easy with a quick chop of a craft knife - I was thinking fixed upright, they would make good moisture collector towers for 6mm stuff?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Moisture_vaporator

All in all, then, great fun to throw paint at, no problems to deal with, and a few good ideas as to how to employ the various designs - obviously a couple more to play with yet, so hopefully more to come on these......

Plastic Fantastic: Dimestore Spaceships

More Plastic Fantastic madness, now, not in the shape of the usual strange conversion fodder, but rather these so-called 'Dimestore' Spaceships that I ordered via EBay from the USA.

Yes, rather than doing strange things to bits of plastic to turn them into something resembling Fleet Scale Sci-Fi, we have here seven separate designs of various craft that come in bulk - to whit: 144 of the blighters! I went the whole hog and bought them en masse, although I shared the cost and went halves with a fellow gamer and Blogger who could also see the potential in them.

Of course, not all the designs are immediately obvious as your standard Spaceships, but I feel they are ripe for conversion, and might do duty in a number of scales.
The major positive is that unlike previous incarnations of similar toys, these are neither made from rubber, or from a weak, bendy plastic, but rather from a good, hard styrene-like substance, so once washed with warm soapy water are ready for undercoating.

Made in China, the bulk shipper based in the US sends them out in random samplings and colours - you can't order specifics, but I received pretty much twenty or so of each craft, with a few more of a couple of designs thrown in to make up the total.

The variety can be see below, against a mat with 1cm square grids for size:

Immediate stand-outs are of course the Flying Saucer and the Horseshoe-shaped craft, whilst the Gun-ship type in the bottom left hand corner looks like it wouldn't disgrace a 6mm Aerospace environment; the remainder are somewhat more esoteric - if I was feeling critical, the ship in the upper right corner is a bit of a strange one - sort of a rocket sled with apparent seating for a pilot - although the side pylons look useful for removal and conversion.

All in all, the details are crisp and nicely moulded, plenty of greeblies and ridges apparent on the surface, and also on the underside as you see below:

As ever, not entirely sure how these will be utilised - I bought them cheap before a recent price-hike on delivery by the USPS, so was blinded by the fact that the unit cost had come down to about twelve pence a ship - and therefore didn't worry about such fancy considerations as where they might serve!

That said, I've got some ideas for some sample craft and some hopefully interesting identities that I will be working on soon - I've already undercoated a few, and found it easy to cut away any of the extraneous detailing, tails and guns to give the following:

They take paint well, and also superglue, as you will see with the addition of a circular rare-earth magnet on the base of the dart-like ship seen bottom right above.

The extraneous parts cut away easily and in one piece, so could be saved as further scratch-building material - I'm certainly looking forward to playing around with these, so watch this space for some developments soon!

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Weekend Project Part 2

I completed the Fleet Scale Sci-Fi project, so thought I'd share the photos - although it didn't quite turn out in the way I had expected, it was a good learning experience and I think I ended up with a couple of decent-looking flotillas.

As you'll see above, the Imperials I had described in the previous Blogpost were joined by a pair of Brigade Model's EuroFed SFS-431 Insidioso Destroyers - I think they have a certain Republic Venator Class Cruiser vibe, if on a smaller scale!

I started by adding control bridges to the three Irregular Miniature's Destroyers and the GZG Cruiser with some offcuts of oblong sprue topped off with some small Aeronef turrets that had the guns removed and were placed upside down - not exactly feet and inches accurate in appearance, but good enough at this scale.

The Irregular Destroyers are rather plain in terms of detail, so once I'd started off with a dry-brush of grey after the black undercoat, they were looking rather bland; furthermore, the grey I did use dried a lot darker than I had expected, so I was looking to add both some detail and 'highlight' the colour, if you like, to make them more resemble the originals from the movies.

This is where things got interesting, in that I started off adding small lines and spots of silver grey,  and probably went overboard in adding more and more until the overall effect was rather busy.

I should have stopped there, but decided in order to gain a matching appearance across the flotilla, I should do the same on the other models, even though they had plenty of incised detail, especially the GZG example - Ho-Hum! A case of gilding the Lily....

That said, at tabletop distances they don't look that bad, but if you enlarge the photos, then the spots/lines combo does rather jump out....

Trying to reproduce the iconic Dykstra/ Industrial Light and Magic 'greeblie' surface on the Irregular Destroyers was always going to be a hiding to nowhere, and it took a lot longer than I had wanted to spend on these ships - of course I had to try to make sure that the lines roughly matched from vessel to vessel - so much more time consuming.
The final stroke was some more white dry-brushing to try and counter the overly dark underlayer, but this was getting into the realms of white 'ghosting', and therefore I gave up before they became any more muddied....on balance, though, I'm not too disappointed, as it is just cool to see some Star Wars ships on the table top - I've got some of Studio Bergstrom's T.I.E fighters to do at a later date, which should finish things off - I'm thinking this is a flotilla of the Late Republic just before the Empire really gets going, hence the mix of types....

Turning to the Minbari ships , you might remember that the Tigaran Cruisers were already painted, although they had acquired quite a few bumps and scrapes during their journey to my Lead Mountain via EBay.
The previous owner had done a nice job of shading into the blue on them, and that was something I was hoping to replicate on my additional vessels (including the Squadron scale fighters, which I managed to find), but as with the Imperials, things didn't quite go to plan...

I started off with layerings of successively lighter blues in a sort of patchy/ tiger stripe way, and then thought a nice ink wash would serve to shade their organic and sinuous designs as with the Tigarans, but for some reason the wash was not behaving, and just seemed to disappear - I was wary  of making them too dark, and so left it at that.

I thought of trying to add some dark blue to the wash, but thought this would just serve to blank out what contrast I had managed to add - so again, in order to get compatibility across the various ships I had to be satisfied with how they were.

In re-touching the Tigarans, I necessarily lost some of the nice original shading - I guess the blues being used were different to begin with, and my wash was not just cutting the mustard, but not too bad, overall. Some white dots here and there serve as running lights - I didn't want to add in any more colours as I've always liked the homogenous marine/organic colourings of the originals in the TV show - I have seen some minis done with nice purple stripes for effect - perhaps something I might try in the future - if I'm brave enough!

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Weekend Project

Inspired by some excellent recent postings on a couple of my favourite Blogs, namely the series by Jim at Wargames Workbench and Rich at Broken Stars Burning Ships, I've decided to dust off some spaceships of my own to work on over the weekend.

http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/full-thrust-mini-project-4.html

http://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/brigade-models-amrep-in-full-thrust.html

I doubt if my work will be up to their always excellent standards, but it should be fun to have a go at some fleet scale just as a short 'weekend' project.

I've dug around in the Lead Mountain and come up with some of Irregular Miniature's SH3 Destroyer, and a single GZG FSE FT606 Suffren Class Light Cruiser.
These will form the basis of a small Star Wars type Imperial flotilla, and I'll be roughing up some bridge sections that will bring them up to looking more like the originals:

These will be accompanied by some Babylon Five Minbari ships that came as part of an Ebay lot some time ago, with three Tigaran Cruisers, and two Neshatan Gunships; obviously I'm cheating a bit with the Tigarans, as they'll probably only need a bit of touching up rather than an actual repaint.
I've also got some large Squadron-scale Minbari fighters that could stand in as some sort of frigate class alongside these, have to see if I can dig these out as well and come up with  a more well-rounded little fleet:

So then, two TV/Film-inspired flotillas to get my teeth into over the coming couple of days, Real Life permitting, stay tuned for updates soon!

Plastic Fantastic: Rockets and Spaceships Update

A rush update now, on the latest batch of 'Plastic Fantastic' pieces, mainly due to the great fun I had in painting these up; I say painting these up - actually much more of a splash and dash, as I was so keen to see how they would turn out - with hindsight some corners were definitely cut!

As you can see from the photos, I went with a vaguely Mongo-inspired scarlet and gold scheme for a trio of War-Rocket look-alikes, and thought I'd follow through with a 6mm Shuttle vibe on the other piece:

The Shuttle is actually the fuselage section of the blue rocket seen in the earlier post, with the front opening faired over with plasti-card, and some plastic scrap inserted into the rear as a propulsion unit/retro-rockets....talking of Retro, maybe this could stand in as a sort of 'Ruck Bodgers' Gemini-style 'Ranger 1' space capsule; hence the: "I've been frozen in space for three centuries" dry-brush applications of frosty white.... (For which, read: "I went a bit too heavy there.....oh and forgot to fill in the small hole above the nose....").

The War Rockets are the green and yellow versions, although in separating all the various components for the previous Blogposting's photos, I mixed the wings up somewhat, so actually the Shuttle has the winglets that should be on one of the yellow rockets, and vice versa - I won't tell the Emperor Ming if you don't......

More dry-brushing was in evidence here over a single layer of matt black undercoat - the plastic minis take paint very well, so no more than one was needed, after having washed them in soapy water first.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice further misses - in that did I not paint the inside of the rocket bodies visible through the cockpit spaces - nor did I bother to fill these in or fair them over - just too darn keen to press on without any high-falutin' attention to detail and such like.....

Moving on, here's a view of the original Lego Bionicle feet, here in two versions paired back to back to produce a Romulan Dreadnought, and also a Cylon Cruiser - the blunt end of the former had a sort of D'deridex look, and the latter is a Cylon Marauder fighter writ-large, at least to my eyes:

More over-excited puppy renderings of slap-dash painting, so the squeamish should look away now, particularly in these comparison pics when they are matched with more sedate and considered paint-schemes; here some of Irregular Miniatures' DYO13 Blackstar Liner as pre-TNG Romulan ships, and a FASA Citadel original Bird of Prey from the TOS era:

Again, to show the scale, the Bionicle feet ship tops out at around 70mm:

Finally, the Cylon feet alongside one of Drew Bergstrom's excellent Cylon Baseships:

So, it's probably 'hang my head in shame' time for the slapdash approach to these, but definitely Warp-factor Fun in terms of actually putting them together - hopefully future plastic shenanigans will reward a more considered approach - so watch this space.....

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Star Trek WIP sneak peek!

Just to prove that I haven't disappeared up my own Warp Core over the festive break, thought I'd post a couple of work in progress pics on the various Star Trek vessels.

Have had an absolute blast painting these; nothing too fancy - quick and dirty as usual, but turning out quite well so far.

The Klingon D7 also is looking good, I think, although the hand drawn insignia is a bit rough and ready - the main stumbling block has been those dratted registration numbers on the Federation ships - both brush and micro-pen drawn ones are not really looking the part - so we shall see how things go over the weekend, and then hopefully some photos of the completed flotilla to follow.....

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Trekkin' about over Christmas...

Well, having found it very difficult in the latter part of this year to concentrate on spending quality time with miniatures, and in particular advancing the various detailed projects I had on the go, I've decided to have a bit of fun and keep things simple to end 2011.

It looks like hulls and nacelles will be a relatively easy option rather than trying to struggle with uniforms and all their accoutrements, so I'm going to indulge myself with some classic Trek, in the shape of some recent Ebay scores and a few craft from Irregular Miniatures.

As you'll see above, I've managed to lay my hands on a FASA style Klingon D7 and D18, alongside a trio of Romulan Birds of Prey, as well as a pair of already painted craft from Irregular's Sci-Fi range - not strictly canon, of course, being the DYO 13 'Black Star Liner', but I think they look good as proto-Romulan ships - perhaps a developmental stage we never actually saw on-screen...

These are countered by three of the Imperial Faction DYE 11, Perry Class Frigate (Revised) from Irregular, which come with separate old-school style warp nacelles, which as you have no doubt noticed, allow for a variety of mounting options.

Above you can see the basic hull with the nacelles mounted three differing ways - from the left, raised erect in classic Enterprise/Constitution Class stylee, followed by a flat mounting with the miniature's saucer section placed upside down, and then a conventional flat mount, probably as intended by the manufacturer. You must excuse the currently rather clumsy looking application of plasticard that is visible in bracing the latter mountings - I found I needed these to beef up the join, which has to fit into a rather small cut-out in the body of the main hull.

To be fair, the saucer section 'underside' of the miniature is a bit rough in terms of sculpting, but I wanted to use one upside down to add to the available range of vessels - all of course are rather on the small side, so definitely in the Frigate category, but then that should make the match-up with the Aliens all the more challenging....

Not that I am in really in a position to launch these into a gaming scenario in the near future, I merely wanted to paint some cool ships!

The timescale for these is very much immediately post 'The Original Series', I think, or at least will involve ships in combat away from the glamour of Kirk's flagship adventures....

I won't be aiming for super-detailing with them - there are some amazingly talented people out there using micro-decals and such like to produce tiny masterpieces, but I'll be happy with something representative and characterful, with any luck.... of course the Ebay finds mean that I can even cheat on the overall painting process, with most of it done already!

Irregular's current pricing puts the DYE11 Perry (revised) at just £1.20 each, which even given their relatively diminutive size, is pretty darn good, considering how much Trek-related stuff normally costs, so I am quite pleased with these 'not-Trek' stand-ins, and will proudly use them to fly the Federa.....ahem, I mean 'Imperial' flag....

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: A Flying Sauce!

Well, if not a flying sauce, then at least some flying cheek in presenting a few photos of the quickest and cheapest Fleet Scale Sci-Fi fleet you can imagine - namely Flying Saucers!

Not only are these the simplest of projects, but I can't even claim any credit for either the concept nor the construction - these ships were created by David Crook of 'A Wargaming Oddysey' Blog fame, and merely accosted by myself during a previous Lead Mountain exchange.

David came up with the brilliantly simple and elegant idea of using various makes of flight stand, principally including the GW flying bases as used in Battlefleet Gothic, paired and inverted as 'saucers', topped off with discs cut from wheel sections of cheap plastic AFVs from a boardgame!

On paper, they shouldn't be much to look at, but are so cunningly contrived in reality that even a quick blast of spray black undercoat and some silver gunmetal dry-brush thrashings produced quite a decent fleet in a veritable instant:

Not the finest of photographs, but you should be able to discern the differing types, from large command vessel, fighter carrier (Where David cleverly divided the saucer sections with a plastic slotta base) and plain saucers; a few blobs of various bright colours break up the outline as running lights or perhaps Death-Ray launching ports:

If you have a few such flying bases and stands languishing in your bits box, I heartily recommend this method for creating instant vessels of such an iconic shape - with my leisure time at a high premium recently, these were perfect for the quickest of projects, and the minimum of fuss...

Now, whilst time permits, I'm off to play Invasion of the Saucer Men -

"Keep watching the Skies!"

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: 'not' Blake's 7 completed!

I must say I'm pretty excited about these, and was keen to showcase them after an uncharacteristically quick completion; probably down to the sheer 'coolness' of the minis!

So without further ado, some eye candy showing off the Blake's 7 ships from Shapeways, as well as some of the perhaps less important personal impressions as to how they are to paint.

As you might remember, I'd started off with the flat black multi-layered spray undercoat, and then made a sortie against the Pursuit ships as you see below:

First off, I found the textured surface was murder on my brush; small detailed and sculpted-in the-round minis require small accurate brushes, but mine were pretty tired after having moved over these surfaces, I can tell you - some remedial work with washing up liquid and much licking of the brush tips (Eeeew!) was required to get them back in shape after the session.

Secondly, although I always work in acrylic with a wet palette, and mostly start off with a dab of water on the brush, then the paint, and sometimes the merest touch of water again to help flow before applying to the mini, the response of this surface material was frankly, well...weird.

Application of the paint-laden brush immediately resulted in all the moisture being sucked down into the surface - it was as if you were painting onto a sponge. This left the acrylic colour on its own, so more water dabbing was required before you could get a good surface flow going - long, contoured strokes with the brush were definitely out - so a slightly hiccupping progress, but alright once you got used to the instant disappearance of the moisture content.

Having said that, the surface took the colours well enough, with a genuine representation of what was being used appearing - here you can see the Miniatures Paint's brand rust colour brushed over in successively lighter shades, and finally touched off with some Vallejo orange:

I am quite please with how these turned out, I'm inclined to think that I need more surface detailing, and the powerplant/engine areas could do with some attention, but I am wary of gilding the lily here - the minis are small and might get a bit overwhelmed with too much done to them, certainly, there has been no final ink wash as yet - to my eye they seem dark and shady enough with that knobbly effect under the colour layers....

I then moved on to the personal ship of Servelan, the female villain of the show, and that all-important white coat - this was difficult to apply consistently over the stippled surface, and at first I was a bit disappointed with the patchiness, but then I realised that if anything, this was rather like a sort of in-built shading or weathering - so not so bad in the long run - perhaps saving me a stage in the process:

Servelan's 'Pursuit 4', a Mark I Pursuit ship modified to be her personal craft:

Moving on now, to perhaps - no, well actually, definitely my favourite craft, the Liberator herself:

The surface of this seems the most pronouncedly knobbly of the three, indeed in close-up it rather reminded me of the clogged-up surface of one of those cloth rollers you used to paint domestic ceilings with, and again, I was panicking about how this might appear under the all-white coat, but overall, I think at normal viewing distances, it somehow conspires to give some more built-in shading and definition, although of course that it hard to take away from the Macro photos seen here.

I had long ago foolishly bought a pot of Liquitex Artist's acrylic called 'Christmas Green', which was only Christamssy in the nuclear accident sense, being a sort of vulgar, florescent swamp colour. I wondered why I had never got rid of it, but then of course, it was because I was saving it all this time as it was an exact match for the green glowing power source of the Liberator!

Actually, for some reason, the 'glowingness' became rather subdued on application, particularly being overshadowed by the inscribed ribs around the globe, but overall, I'm quite happy.

The most difficult thing perhaps, was whether to go the whole hog and hand draw the Alien identification sigils on the three cylinders - they were a feature of the models in the show, but were very rarely visible on screen - in the end I went for it and did my best, and they haven't tuned out too badly:

Overall, then, as I am sure you can tell, I'm pretty pleased with how these went - but that has more to do with the intrinsic nature of the little beauties rather than any ease of process in painting them up. I think as long as you are prepared for a somewhat odd experience in the application of paint, and don't mind sacrificing the odd brush, then the Shapeways stuff is practicable as wargaming miniatures - they are after all, fast becoming the best provider of those obscure craft that we all just have to have.

Anyway, I am thoroughly chuffed with my little flotilla - and I'm off now to Cygnus Alpha to liberate some more freedom fighters!

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: Blake's 7 quick update

Just thought I'd throw a quick update into the mix with the 'not' Blake's 7 minis from Shapeways. Following some good pointers from CJR over at the TwoThreeSixMM Blog, I went the whole hog and unusually for me, did a spray undercoat. In the past, not being the owner of an airbrush, I've often found the results from this can be a bit hit and miss, finding it difficult to achieve consistent, smooth results, but given the nature of the material here, it was definitely the best way to go.

If anything, I was quite tentative in applying, and went for a lot of rather light sprays rather than one all-over job. The paint I used was described as 'flat black', although in the past, particularly on metals, it has dried with rather a glossy finish, but it was interesting here that the porous-looking white material meant that the final effect was definitely more on the matt side.

I am pleased with the finish so far, as particularly from normal viewing distances, the visible knobbliness of the material is much less pronounced. Of course the real test will be to see how the paints themselves go on over the top - I tend towards an easy dry-brushing of layers of colour on starships, so I don't yet know how these will respond to that. Two of the Pursuit ships will be a rusty scarlet colour, but the other, and of course the Liberator are mainly white - so fingers crossed there!

For size reference, the three Federation ships against the slightly converted Brigade Pacfed Barramundi, and a trio of GZG Kfirs as Colonial vipers:

I normally mount space craft using rare earth magnets, but found that the conformal sculpting and overall delicacy of these Shapeways ships meant that a magnet was looking far too clunky, so opted to place them directly onto the integral flight stand pegs.

I must say that the fit from the pre-cast holes was excellent - but I am trepidatious about how strong a mounting this will serve to be - I am sure I am not alone in experiencing peg break-off due to routine handling of minis mounted in this way.

Finally, again as a comparison of size, that all important Liberator up against the Bergstrom Galactica - Blake's ship runs out at 55mm, with the Pursuit ship to scale at 29mm long:

I am keen to push ahead with these when time permits, so look out for more updates soon - if I can screw up enough courage to paint all those white surfaces!

Fleet Scale Sci-Fi: 'not' Blake's 7 ships from Shapeways

I'm vey excited about this - being of a certain age, I am old enough to remember arguably one of the best Sci-Fi series ever to grace UK television, namely Blake's 7. Created by Terry Nation, the originator of the Daleks, it told the tale of the adventures of a rag-tag band of ex-criminals, adventurers and freedom fighters, and their struggle against the evil Federation.

Move over Star Trek - forget Firefly - this was the real deal - wobbly sets and ropey special effects- yes, but also probably one of the wittiest and most mature scripts ever seen in the genre, as well as having a candidate for one of the most evocative theme tunes ever to grace a TV show.

Moreover, it gave us the easily one of the best, unique and charismatic spacecraft designs ever created, namely the 'Liberator' or Deep Space Vehicle 2.

This was an alien craft found empty and drifting in space, that was acquired by Roj Blake and his band of freedom fighters as their primary weapon against the Federation.

Now many moons ago, Corgi Toys produced a rather cute diecast model of this ship, which you often see for sale on EBay, but it is rather on the large size for Fleet Scale gaming, so imagine my delight at finding some 'not' Blakes 7 contenders amongst the output of Shapeways in the US.

I am sure most of you have seen the increasingly interesting Sci-Fi related productions coming out of the various design studios over there, but this was my first experience at ordering from them, and I have to say I was quite impressed. More on that experience later, but back to the ships in hand.

The Liberator was designed by the renowned Dr Who set designer Roger Murray-Leach, and built by Space Models of Middlesex in the UK, with detailing by Martin Bower - I believe two models were created for the filming of the show; some great shots can be seen here:

http://martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk/liberator-blakes_72.html

and a fan site has the low-down here:

http://www.btinternet.com/~blakes.seven/main/Hanger/Liberator/body_liberator.html

Of course, no heroic protagonist is worth his salt without a worthy nemesis, and the Liberator was most frequently at odds with the Pursuit Ships of the Federation - again, from the excellent fan site:

http://www.btinternet.com/~blakes.seven/main/Hanger/Pursuit_Ships/body_pursuit_ships.html

So, I just couldn't resist the LRV-7 Insurgent and Alliance Pursuit Frigates from Admiral Duck Sauce's shop:

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/admiralducksauce?sg21257%5Bpage%5D=1#sg21257

Ordering online was a breeze, and a flurry of confirmatory and status update emails from Shapeways themselves meant the overall experience was smooth and definitely rewarding!

A fourteen day or-so wait, and I received a lovely package from the US via UPS.

The miniatures were in individual bags as you see in the photo at top, and were well protected by packing within the box - a good thing, as the material these are made of is extremely light, and I would imagine on the fragile side. Here's a photo of the two ships together for scale:

As you can see, the 'White, strong and flexible' material has a rather porous-looking, slightly rough surface - I'm yet to throw any paint in their direction, but I imagine they will be pretty thirsty - looking close, the knobbliness is apparent, but at a visual or gaming distance, I am sure it will not be noticeable - the proportions, clarity of sculpting and detail are all excellent - as you can see in this view of the underside, showing the precast attachment holes:

The only wrinkle in the whole process was that of the three Pursuit ship types, one was missing part of the rear engine drive detailing.

I could have made a try at geting a replacement, but given that this would mean missives back and forth to the US, I decided to compromise and accept it as-is; in any event, I wanted one of the trio to represent the white ship of the Liberator crew's arch-enemy, Servelan, so this can be made unique by removing the small strip of rocket motors and re-applying it to the centre - no great loss.

Apart from this small kerfuffle then, I would be pleased to recommend Shapeways for those hard-to get or otherwise unavailable ship miniatures - they are flying a bit close to the wind copyright-wise, but with my avaricious gamer's head on, I can certainly see around that!

It might be a while before I can get some paint on these little beauties, but in the mean time, for those of you who might want to wallow in some nostalgia, or for those who haven't a clue as to what I've been going on about - have some fun looking at these Fan vids on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnautWFuEnQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atuNdPgM8eY&feature=related

Remember - 'it was acceptable in the 80's!'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cEsAX4xaFI

:-).