Drop Ship III

Further updates on the saga of the Grymn Drop Ship. I started on the nose, or what i shall now pretentiously refer to as the command unit (its the bit where the pilots sit!). I decided on something like a cross between the head of an Eagle spaceship from Space 1999, crossed with the front end of an Old Crow Glaive APC.








The 'command unit' is not yet finished, it requires some awkwardly shaped rear and lower panels to be cut and glued and then the seams filling and the whole lot sanding smooth. Then i need to apply the surface detail that turns this from an interesting shaped box into a space ship.

Hear you can see a little proress on surface detailing the main body and engine pod, and all of the progress so far.

Comments, suggestions and critisms welcome here, or on the Forum of Doom

Drop Ship II

Further progress on the Grymn Drop Ship model. After almost a whole day of sanding and plasticard construction (and more sanding) things are beginning to look a little more like a model and not just a casting of a mouthwash bottle! I've cut the bottle tops off, glued 2 of the halves together to form a hull shape (much deeper than the original bottles) then sanded and filled and sanded and filled to get a smooth join. I haven't filled all the air bubbles that were present, as you can see most of them get covered anyway, so I'll fill the ones that now show.

I have decided to go with a style not dissimilar to the Old Crow 25mm vehicles designs that I have already used for my grymn. The vehicles have a simplicity about them with a distinctive style of "notched plates" over much of the surface. I have tried to copy this approach in the decoration of the drop ship.

You'll also see the first of four engine pods which will attach to the main hull as shown. this was scratch built entirely from plasticard and then filled and sanded smooth, and decorated. Its shown attached to the hull, where it will swivel in place to allow both vertical and horizontal thrust, which also means I can use the whole of the rear surface as a loading ramp/door. For the purists amongst you forward pods will be mounted wider and lower than the rear pods, so the exhaust doesn't blow directly into the rear engines. The engine pod still requires engine nozzles and some further decoration but I'm happy with the basic look - functional, chunky but clean geometric lines.

I was concerned that I'd made the engine pod too big and that the whole ship looks too 'dumpy' but then i decided that this was a good thing as it reminded me a bit of grymn/dwarfs - very functional and practical but extremely well engineered with no need of go faster stripes or twiddly bits.

Still on the list of things to plan and do:

1. Front cockpit - I imagine something along the lines of an Eagle spaceship from Space 1999, crossed with the front end of an Old Crow Glaive APC.
2. Rear loading ramp/door - I'm toying with the idea of casting this model hollow; partly to cut down on the volume of resin required, but also so that I can fit models in it. To make that worthwhile, I'll also want to cast a door that opens and closes.
3. Landing gear - as in 2 above, I'm getting ambitious and wanting the landing gear to retract to allow the model to be used both in-flight and landed.
4. Further surface decoration including whatever weaponry may be appropriate - I'm thinking a handful of ATA missiles and perhaps a point defence weapon - don't know where i would place these though.
5. Tail fin? Should I or shouldn't I?
6. Stub wings? - See 5 above.

Suggestions, and comments on very welcome.

Drop Ship I

So, finally I found the time to begin work on my Grymn Drop Ship modelled from the mouth wash bottle in my earlier post. I am a complete resin casting newbie so this is a learning experience for me, and I've taken plenty of pictures along the way for reference. I bought the rubber molding compound and the resin casting material from Tomps Mould Making and Casting Supplies on ebay and can thoroughly recommend both their service and their products and the indespensible information sheets for beginners! I also had some good suggestions and hints from Geronimo Jones of Fenris Games on the Forum of Doom






I wanted to make my final model thicker than the bottle so that it can be hollow and perhaps accomodate my grymn troops within the interior with a fold down rear door, or maybe side openings for door gunners. So I cast the bottle in two halves, each half more than half the thickness of the bottle (it makes sense to me!).

You can see from the pictures above that I have problems with air bubbles - these are in the rubber mould itself and not the resin, so I have to take more care with that in the future.

My intent is to detail two halves of the resin casting, add swivel engines to the sides and a front cockpit section where the bottle neck is, add a rear door, and then make a mould for the complete model so that I can cast a number of them. Who knows, I may even put a few on ebay and see if they sell!