Thursday 26 January 2017

Beep, bleep, beep, bleep and GR75

I'm not exactly sure what the things I've made are but, unlike my previous 'space junk' efforts, I like to think these might serve a multitude of purposes. 


Perhaps they can be mines, satellites,  or something. Anyway, I made five of whatever they are. I've added the X Wing for scale. Junk flight stands are 3mm aluminium tube in Flames of War plastic bases - card 'mine' counters have been drilled (is nothing sacred) to fit. The 'junk' is not fixed to the stands, they are interchangeable with other junk.

They are made from a wheel from a small toy vehicle (actually an up-gradable miniature skate board kit), a lego light sabre hilt (cut in half and reversed to 'clip'), a small map pin and some ordinary sewing pins (cut to length).  The 'bobbly' nature of the pin ends is largely achieved with paint (though round headed pins are available, I'm told).

The wheel and light sabre bits were glued together, the bead was added (with pin cut very short) then the wheel was drilled so that shortened sewing pins could be placed and glued. The process was very simple - though I did have the tools. BTW, my tool for doing the pin holes for the sewing pins, is a dill with a bit of Milliput added to one end as a 'twisting' handle; the tool for cutting the 'sabre handle' in two was a modelling knife. Just about everything was done 'by eye' so conformity between the models varies.

One thing to bear in mind, because I'm a complete idiot, especially when it comes to Star Wars. I've repainted two of these 'whatever they ares'. I originally painted the first two red - I like painting red - but, although they did look good, they didn't fit in with the Star Wars pallet. CLASH! (White Riot). I do wonder if the pallet is the key to Star Wars stuff - it's very muted. Perhaps that is what is wrong with my 'razor blade' capsules (see link above).  


It started to come to me after buying a GR75 transport. It looked so colourful (underside) on the screen. In reality it was dead boring. I added some colour to mine with acrylic inks but, the blandness of the Star Wars pallet suddenly struck me. I don't regret what I did to my GR75, because I realised, as I was doing it, that less was more and did it sympathetically (I think) - but, I do now believe that Star Wars is almost devoid of colour and will now bear this in mind for everything else I do for this. At some point I'll repaint those razor blade pods grey, or possibly black - WOW, they might look awesome.


7 comments:

caveadsum1471 said...

Yes, black grey, tiny touches of colour, great Italian wars they are not!
Best Iain

sean gewecke said...

I like the look of the space junk. They can be used for so many things. I like versatility.

the transport looks good as well.

Jay said...

hazards = random events. Sweet!!

Ray Rousell said...

Don't care what colour, they still look pretty cool to me!

Lasgunpacker said...

Nice work on these, and your prior pods look good too.

The problem with color in SW, and red in particular, is that it is intentionally a "republic" era thing, and by the time of the Empire we are down to light greys. Design choice by Lucas.

Yarkshire Gamer said...

Great addition to any X Wing collection, like those very muchy

Gonsalvo said...

Very nice - mines or sensor arrays, I'd say...