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That's a class I'd take at adepticon for sure. I agree you'd have a head time at gd level, mostly due to the current trends they are looking for being completely different from your style. I don't think your work isnt good enough to be noticed though, you'd turn some heads!

Ok here is another set,
A few months back I posted images of some zeppelins to be used in a pulp / crimson skies styled fighter game.

Finally finished painting and taking pictures of them

The ZEUS:
First we have a Tesla Zeppelin, based on a toy from the golden compass movie, probably the only good thing to come out of that movie. I 3d printed some coils, wound some others and modified the toy before repainting. The fluff will be the armor plating on the front are a ceramic Polarized plating that allows for an extreme charge to be built up, while doubling as Polarized armor to greatly improve the punishment this thing can take in battle. Unless its opponents are filled with hydrogen it does little damage to them, but instead it acts more as a primitve ECM disrupting all electrical systems including fuel injection systems and turret motors. With its high speed it cruses in close and effectively disables enemy aircraft or zeppelins allowing its own to pummel the enemy from afar. Its direct weaponry include a handful of anti-fighter/ missile turrets and a directional tesla cannon capable of firing up to 1km. Well short of standard cannons, thus this zep usually relies on cloud or mountain cover to get close.

The ICARUS:
And next we have a kit bashed 700th scale graf zeppelin bashed with parts of a USS Missouri and some other random stuff. The nacelles are 3d printed.
all painted solely with an airbrush as usual. One of the first militarized zeppelins made by the soviets, this ship shows its age with numerous refits and replaced panels. It is effective because it is small, simple, and easy to repair. These zeps are often the first to fall, but also the first to be repaired and sent back into action. It boasts several light and medium anti aircraft turrets and a single trio cannon for anti-zeppelin combat. Range 3km.

Click to enlarge

This is all so awe inspiring . Thank you for sharing .

And next, a closeup of the two XCOM ships shown earlier.

First the Pegasus Hobbies AREA 51 UFO. Obviously a ship to be used by the Greys
Though the most common incursion craft used, these are not to be taken lightly. They can drop rapidly from orbit and land within a matter of minutes. Top speed is unknown due to apparent jamming technologies disabling our long range radar though estimates put it at over mach 4. The come in several variants, though are indistinguishable unless observed up close.
The Harvester variant uses a Ventral tractor beam to scoop victims out of off of city streets during low fly-overs. This version is susceptible to cannon and small arms fire, but the tractor is effective at deflecting missiles.
The Recon-in-Fource variant mounts one of various under slung fully gimbald direct fire weapons (typically some sort of rail gun or plasma cannon) with a range and fire power comparable to a mid-sized naval vessel's cannons. These are vulnerable to long range missiles, but are otherwise too maneuverable for long range projectile weaponry, and nothing survives getting close if it is spotted. Interceptors are advised to fire long range missiles at the first opportunity and retreat. If the missiles never make it to target assume its a harvester and close range.



Second My kitbashed USS runabout modified to be a Valkyrie class drop ship. This ship is designed using captured Terror saucer antigrav modules. Though designed to lift small loads, the pair act more as JATO packs (would that be AGATO boosters? =) These allow the Valkyrie to quickly lift loads off of the ground it otherwise does not have the vertical thrust to lift, buying it time to shift into standard flight mode using the airfoil and forward thrusters to carry the load. The antigrav also enables this ship to be more evasive despite its otherwise sluggish nature. With the repulsive features of these pods the Valkyrie can fly a mere 50 feet off of the ground at high speeds over flat terrain without fear of ground effects and winds making it eat dirt. This has been the only feature until recently that have allowed X-com to approach landed enemy craft without being taken out by their weaponry. Though outdated by almost a decade in this never ending war, its rugged and versatile nature have kept these as one of the workhorses of all but the most advanced X-COM Incursion response forces. The latest version boasts improved antigrav efficiency enabling 1.2 metric tons of cargo to be lifted without weaponry, or a full IRF force cargo module, and two heavy craft weaponry.

This one mounts a Human version Plasma Cannon and an upgraded Gau-12, because nothing stands up well to 6,300 rounds-per-minute of 30mm Depleted Uranium slugs. It was an act of desperation when the first Gau-8 mounted on a valkyrie was used when the landed UFO took off appearing out of nowhere from behind a building a mere 300 meters from the approaching Valkyrie. The crew was stunned as the cannon tore the spinning alien craft in half in under a second. The primary for the weaponry, however, is to disable landed UFO's, and provide close in air support since no other quick response craft could do so in the early years of the war. Modern fighters and assault craft will now typically accompany Valkyries and augment their support role.

OUTSTANDING paintjobs, atropos, words cannot express. Very, very well done!

Totally agree with Cosmic!! These are nasty-awesome!

And now for a fighter I modeled about 2 years ago. That funny black plant ship at the beginning of this blog.
Im not sure on name, Suggestions
Nightblade
NightScythe
RazorLeaf--- sounds a little too pokemon
Viper

Its an old design I found in a notebook a while ago, And I realized it looked like it could be vespid since its partially insectoid/beetle.
This is primarily an air superiority figther with short duration low orbit capabilities. Not meant for deep space. The design is highly manuverable and adaptable to atmosphere giving it an edge over aerospace fighters
The primary weapon is an enormous neutron focusing crystal, similar to whats used in the vespid rifles. Capable of bypassing armor and damaging sensitive organic and electronic equipment inside enemy fighters. Thicker armor protects against its damage but cannot stop it. However this weapon, while instantaneous and therefore does not suffer Leading its target, is fairly short range (24inch) due to the difficulty of focusing a large flux of neutrons.

The ship boasts expendable weaponry including symbiotic rocket pods range 36 inches and two squid class organic missiles.

The vespid pilot interfaces directly with the ship using a specialized version of the "communication headsets" given to vespid commanders. This allows the multifaceted and multispectral sensor dome integrated onto the canopy, similar to insect eyes, to feed directly into the visual processing center of the pilot. While extremely fast and maneuverable, and capable of regeneration, the armor is no better than that of a barracuda. However top speeds are on par with the fastest enemy fighter, without sacrificing superior atmospheric maneuverability.

This ship was genetically engineered using dna from the vespid queens, plants that symbiotically link to vespid nests, and it is suspected, a bit of tyranid. The only pieces of technology implemented are the neutron cannon, its power supply, and the neural interface.

The core of the ship boasts an irridescent shell similar to that of the vespid while the outer wings express more plant like features. Since there is little metal in this its radar signiture is remarkably low.

And I believe I will call these starship troopers Arachnids done for now.
I painted them more to be terror units for the XCOM game.
Shame on me, while the models are 100% airbrushed the bases are only about 90% since I got sick of stipling with an airbrush, and grabbed a sponge to do the highlights in green and white.

Click to Enlarge

Mind boggling as usual. What size are they?

Vitruvian XVII wrote:Mind boggling as usual. What size are they?

Thanks,
The base is about 13cm diam, the model 6cm tall. I want to say they are old mongoose, but I got them used off of ebay and "refurbished" 1 and a half of them. Whatever that guy used for glue was darned near bullet proof making it hard to disassemble to make flash removal easier.

Love these bugs. Brilliant use of color.

Shame on you indeed. How dare your 90% be so much better than the rest of our 100%? Tsk. Staggering work all round.

Well since my work got one of these cisco / polycom conference phones I had to turn one into a UFO.

Fluff for this one.
X-COM Dreadnaught Class Gate ship.
This UFO seems to be the pinnacle of the alien craft technology and force projection. Simple in concept, but beyond our greatest minds to understand how it works. This ship appears to serve a single function, to project a stable wormhole to a region of interest, though practically it was classified as 3 separate ships due to its apparent role in the battlefield.

Click to enlarge to see circuit patterns. Also note The sides are orangeish from the bottom but blue-turquoise from the side. This model actually uses iridescent paint (which is bloody expensive) The gate is in the bottom middle, ideal for low fly-overs to drop a batallion of troops in minutes. The top boasts a low power high CPM defense turret, good for only keeping fighters at bay and directly attacking weak ground targets. This ship relies almost entirely on its 3 ventral tractor beams and the wormhole for its defensive and offensive weaponry.



1. The first misclassification was Heavy transport. never viewed up close except by a handful of survivors among the rubble, Reports indicated this ship flew at high speed meters off of the ground dropping troops and terror units. Despite the high speed flyovers, the troops landed safely due to an array of 3 tractor beams that would safely lower and decelerate the troops to the ground. It was later determined that these troops did not come from inside the ship, but rather were dropped straight from the gate, caught by the tractor, and lowered to the ground. In this manner 3 cities in the early war were overrun in a matter of an hour as an estimated 2-300 shock and terror troops were deployed.

2. The second misclassification was of Dreadnaught. Again, never seen but from a distance and at high speed, this craft seemed to deflect any missiles sent to intercept (which we now attribute to its three tractor beams capturing and deflecting the missiles). It also appeared to launch its own guided munitions, though we realize now those too were fired through the gate and acquired their targets after entry into our airspace, likly redirected by the craft's sensors. These missiles prevented early interceptors from getting anywhere near the ship.

3. The final misclassification was that of PlanetBuster. Though an exaggeration of the ships capabilities, this name was given as a single ship dropped over NORAD and in a few minutes melted its way into the underground bunker with a high-output energy weapon, again later realized to have been delivered through the gate. The energy output of this weapon is greater than that of half the power plants on earth. This weapon was also turned in a slightly defocused manner to act as air defense. When several of our most advanced squadrons were sent to assist the attack on NORAD this ship was responsible for destroying 3/4 of the incoming fighters in a series of sweeping arcs.


The majority of the ships systems seem to be designed to sustain one end of a linked wormhole back to an unknown location. After the nature of this craft was determined 6 months of planning and waiting resulted in one daring ambush set by xcom. This mission sent over 60 micro UAV's at this craft during a terror drop mission, from pre-concealed locations. Only 3 made it through and those were destroyed a few milliseconds later by defenses on the other side. From this raid we now know the following.
There is an array of at least 50 automated turrets on the other end that open fire immediately.
There appears to be a shield in place encasing the gate and 100 meters around it, now referred to as the staging area.
Outside said field is yet another array of hundreds of turrets defending an entire city.
A single large structure is aligned straight with the gate with nothing obstructing the line of sight, it is believe this is the high output energy weapon observed.

It is believe that only one gate ship is operational at any one time and it links directly to this staging area due to the resources required to replicate this warmachine and its support city. This is reinforced by the fact that upon every successful destruction of a gate ship, of which there have only been 4 in the last decade, it is at least another year before its class is encountered.

The most successful methods for its elimination have been overwhelming force from half a dozen of our most advanced squadrons.
Or Daring attacks close in by ground forces with heavy weaponry. The latter is in fact how 3 of the 4 were eliminated as a couple enhanced hand-portable anti-ship weapons at point blank have a much higher probability of scoring a hit before defense systems can be brought to bear.

It took almost a year for X-Com to determine that they had misclassified 3 enemy ships from this one. The classifications

Very clever atropos. I've sat through many a meeting around one of those things... I'll never look at them the same way again.

When your bored imagine it hovering a few inches off of the table and dropping scores of little green men.

Or better, turning and firing a powerful energy weapon at whomever is making the meeting last forever!

sigh. =)

*chuckle*

Ok Work let up enough for me to crank through these over the past 2 weeks. A contest on starship combat news was a good excuse to get off my rear and actually paint these, since they have been sitting with a coat of primer for over a year begging me to actually start painting them. Finally putting paint on them was nice. we shall see if I have enough time to crank through a few more.

First the Singon cruisers from studio bergstrom. I played with color schemes from the standard olive to add a bit more contrast and color modulation.


Next, we have Imperial star destroyers from studio bergstrom. Again playing with deviating from the boring norm while trying to add more visual interest. and those windows... ugh Im rather tired of windows at the moments.


Finally, my favorite the battlestar Kraken running the gauntlet of a sword and octo? basestar. Ive done so many battlestars, even pushing the color depth I needed something more so I didn't brain myself doing more armor panels. I decided to have an ace cruiser, the Kracken Novastar. With enough guns it has no fear running this pathetic gauntlet of a sword and octo charging in between to give both a full broadside. Those flames were tough, but the starfury, thunderbolt, and viper from Behrle I painted a month back were great practice for small flames. I really liked how they turned out on this battlestar. I also toned down the colors on the armor panels so they werent fighting the flames for attention. The base stars also have simple lighting on the inside so they dont pull much attention from the outer hull. I wanted the octo to look even more high-tech so I painted "circuit" patterns which are fun to look at. Novastar from Iron wind metals/Fox miniatures, while base stars are from studio bergstrom.

Star Destroyers = EPIC. Incredible as always, Atropos - thanks for sharing!

Those are simply unbelievable Atropos. Am I right in thinking that those are pretty small models? The space ship models I've seen have only been a few inches long, if that.

While the battlestar is truly amazing, I think my personal favorite are the Signon cruisers. How you did the glowing vents is beyond me.

You are the master of spaceships without a doubt.

Fantatic attitude to details .Bravo
Colors are so stylish/bright

The ships are all about 3 inches long. +- an inch.

These are some of my less vibrant ships. IE the singong cruisers are rather drab other than the lighted bits. those star destroyers aren't nearly as vibrant as my battlestars, but that was on purpose so the hundreds of "windows" really showed up against the dark subtle base.

The key to the lighting is
1. Lighting- I paint by and take pictures with "reveal" bulbs or their compliment. they have enough blue light that paints, especially flourescent paints, show up a bit brighter. Under normal low level room lights my models look less vibrant. When I paint I have a strong reveal bulb right over my shoulder so I have a good idea of how the camera will see the model. Then when I take the picture I usually have the camera far away so that the flash can make the bright points Pop just a bit without saturating the model. I also have very strong reveal bulbs to either side of the model to allow indirect "light sources" to still glow nicely. Some of my pictures are taken without a flash since the more subtle armor panels often wash out with a flash like on the star destroyers. Half of those pictures did not have a flash.

2. Paint: I typically use translucent and fluorescent paints for lighting. they just look nicer. I think using standard GW or such paints for lighting effects just looks boring and drab. use the standard model paints for the base, but always use transparent/translucent/flourescent paints for lights.

3. airbrushing: the alternate layers is usually white- then paint to color the edges, then go back and touchup the white so they look as bright as possible.

4. Gray/black/white cards. Lately Ive taken to using a small trio of references in the corner of the frame that use a gray card, white paper, and black felt. Then I use these to color match and light balance, and then crop them out of frame. The auto match functions in GIMP are wonderful.

And as you've guessed, Yes I do so love my starships and tech based miniatures.

Thanks guys.

Thank you so much for the tips. You set the bar so high... it's nice to gain the benefit of your experience and technique. Can you suggest a brand for the translucent/fluorescent paints? I've never looked for such things before so I'm not even sure where to start.

Great stuff as always, what is that second Imperial Star Destroyer though? It looks scaled up.

Gitsplitta wrote: Can you suggest a brand for the translucent/fluorescent paints? I've never looked for such things before so I'm not even sure where to start

Createx works well enough but its not very tough. There are others but thats the easiest to find without special ordering.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Great stuff as always, what is that second Imperial Star Destroyer though? It looks scaled up.

The smaller is, im fairly sure, an imperial star destroyer.
I tried to determine what the larger one is but there are so many "official" and unofficiaal classes its hard to tell with a quick web search.
While the particular class is hard for me to nail down but I think its an intimidator class SD
see the below link
http://templarsoftwilight.wikia.com/wiki/Intimidator-class_Star_Destroyer

I paint models, I dont often make sure I know what particular class they are.

And if you know any one that has particular interesting ships let me know with a PM!

Thanks, cool looking model.

Have you looked at repainting the new Heroclix Star Trek or the older Japanese Furuta Star Trek ships?

I picked up a bunch on my list trip to Japan, they're hard plastic and fairly detailed.

Haven't gotten the Hero Clix yet.

Hi Kid Ive looked at the heroclix but havent acquired any yet.

And for some closeups of the shards I painted last year. Getting pictures of these shinny models is tough.
These are a bunch of shards including advents, primes, jaggeds, concussors etc.

edit: im having problems wiht one of the images and cant get it to show properly. Sorry.

And my two favorites
The Shard Amp Suit (concussor variant)
And the Shard Eradicator. I love this wicked looking thing.

The shard are sold by iron wind metals

click to enlarge.

Amazing work as always atropos. No idea how you do that, but I do enjoy the results.

Ok Ive got most of the pieces prepped for the UFO Incursion Response Force game (read X-com) game. Now I need to just streamline the rules with a few more play throughes.

The terrain is mostly tommygun, though some was heavily modified to be more useable. The drop pods on the helipad are my own design to match those on the valkyrie dropship (runnabout conversion).

The ground is centered around a tileable dock file from .. Ive tried to find the file, if anyone recognizes it please just post a link to the artist of the cargo areal. I then used satellite images to mesh the helipad grass and other parts in, then used some tileable images for water, and grass to finish the map. I have a second map of a runway and residential section made entirely from tiles and satellite images. But I havent finished the terrain for this map.

Anyway then I also made some more custom papercraft such as exploding barrels from halflife,
Vehicles are O-scale. Barricades are more custom papercraft I made along with
The bright squares are solar panels I made that look quite cool even in low light.
The transparent blue and purple fencing is part of a set of "laser fences" ive been airbrushing.
Finally the Purple HK from the terminator was repurposed to be a human attack craft with hybrid technology.

Now for some more playthroughs. guard your mind or they will control you!

I hope I get this polished enough for the con.

As always, click to enlarge. Map is 4' x 8'