Pimp My Dinosaur

 

A while ago I had the idea of fielding large reptiles along my fantasy-esque 1/72 armies, mainly built of figures bought from Aliexpress. Of course, these reptiles would be suitable for 28mm games as well, such as the Stegodon-like thing presented here.

It is from the higher end of 'Made in PRC' toys, as its neck, jaw and other appendices were posable to some degree. This, unfortunately, meant leaving huge gaps around the joints, which I filled with greenstuff, then textured. Improved the look a lot, just as overpainting the crappy paint job did. I think the hues are really cool, and I even painted the eyes.

Now let's root for the creature because the hungry Orcs would be arriving at its part of the jungle soon...

WIP - Colonial Gunboat, Codename "Glama"

My interest, again, drifts me towards late 19th - early 20th century naval development, when warships looked more like jewel boxes and not tools of war. 

This is going to be a full-hull toy ship, reminiscent of the colonial gunboats employed by the great powers, with a few guns and a minimal superstructure. 

I intend to make her sea (or bathtub) -worthy, so right now I'm making the internal compartment water-tight from the inside, with lots of PVA. The large washers serve to keep her point of balance low, something really difficult to do if one plans on using just a block of wood. The outside part will be dealt with using synthetic varnish over a few coats of pink paint.

MIG-15 Restoration #2 - Priming the Red Rocket

I've decided to do this outside because of the fumes and metallic dust.

Hobby Project May - MIG-15 Restoration

We dug up an old toy MIG-15 fighter jet in the back yard some time ago. It's been sitting on the shelf after we cleaned it, but it's got a bad case of corrosion from the iron bolt that fixed it to its stand, and it reacted with the supposedly aluminium alloy and caused a nasty bubbly rot. So I'll clean it, sand it down, add some filler and primer and restore it back to its old glory. 

I've strayed away from the goal to do a major hobby project each month, and this is a good chance to get back to that original concept.

Fight to the Death: Baby Mikasa vs. Baby Borodino

I am currently separated from most of my scratchbuilding stock, but first seeing Master Cordery's blog post about these Japanese wonder weapons and then the same product appearing on a forum, I decided to make something similar.

These initial efforts cover the IJN Mikasa and the four Borodino-class Russian ships. The hull is 3cm long and 1cm wide. The superstructure is compressed and the ship gains this caricaturistic rotund shape. I used standard scratchbuilding materials: plasticard, broom bristles and other plastic garbage.

The Borodinos steam out to meet their fate.

Zvezda Samurai WIP #2 + Spring Cannon(s)

 I'm out of coins at the moment so the Zvezda figs, although the painting is done and they are varnished as well, are still not completed. 

I did not particularly like painting these fellows and they took a lot of time too. My original plans were to paint two major and two lesser factions in different colours but that may just be reduced to the two big armies as I feel no further inclination to do more.

What I have found instead is a six-barreled toy gun with a spring action. This is very cool and shoots BB bullets to three or four metres. A 'real' spring toy gun costs too much but this one was cheap and had multiple barrels. Cut the barrels off (they were moulded together), and I'll be making six single-barreled guns which fit for 54mm figs. I'd like to do SYW in the near future so the Armies in Plastic / HäT boxes would be a good start. I'll need wheels for the cannons first. There's a fellow in the US who sells MDF cart wheels on ebay but he ships only to the US - gotta look for alternatives.