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Ah bit late for happy New Year. But hey hope you are well bud.

D&D, my daughter just discovered it. So about to kick off myself down this road.

Never too late for Happy New Year, Cam- thank you for looking in! Great to have another gamer in the family- is this the daughter who is also an accomplished designer and figure painter as well? Too much fun. I've been lurking over on your Tatooine site, watching the Jawa crawler emerge- I'll leave some feedback as soon as I can; work is exciting at the moment and I'm desperately trying to keep up with that, wrap up all my unfinished terrain projects, learn 3d printing and get on to all my nifty new infantry that need painting.

Very good to hear from you, hope all is well with you and yours.

More follows soonest!

You know, to me, it's strange to use miniatures for RPGs. Or at least it used to be. I've always run games and honestly I prefer it (weaving desparate stories together into a single thread, giving each player their spotlight in ways that enrich the greater game). But it's always been theater-of-the-mind for me until recently. I've been running a game of Fantasy Flight's OOP Deathwatch game for some friends for about 2 years now and they recently had an encounter with some Black Legion Chaos marines guarding a gate in the ruins of a city. I built the gate, built the chaos marines, someone else had made their characters in 40k scale, and I used some of the city ruins I had made. It was a blast - like the most enjoyable encounter they had experienced in the game to date. And these players are not 40k players. They're diehard roleplayers. So I see the appeal.

I had much the same thoughts- started out as a DnDer and it was exactly 'theatre of the mind'. I wasn't interested in using miniatures for gaming at all- minis were for Napoleonic tabletop gaming or chess. Then found one (a Ral Partha elf bard) that 'spoke' to me- and now I understand why companies like Hero Forge are so popular.

Players can invest heavily in a character that is exactly how they picture themselves, right down to which side the scroll of Beer Plentitude is carried, or having a bow and a spear slung across the back (-1 for Dexterity to deploy, if you do that).

Even with minis, there is a heavy requirement for imagination, but I think the arguments over sight lines and spatial relationships are fewer!

Very close to finishing another project, but a vehicle, not one of the several terrain pieces cluttering up every horizontal surface in my commuter apartment. Here's the build cycle to date for The Lunar Mouse Scout Car:

It starts with an actual computer mouse carcass, some styrene tube and a pair of tread units from the Russian company Tehnolog (I get a ton of great bits from those guys):



Next, some styrene strip to fill that pesky slot down the middle, a travel size shampoo bottle cap (swiped from a motel) for a 'grill' and some styrene for windows (they get changed out later):



Then using a slow speed Dremel drill bit to scribe the door outlines- I wanted this vehicle to go with 'Tatooine-style" buildings I've been making from smoke detectors and PVC pipe, so smooth bodywork with desert/prospector/military scout doodads (that's 'gubbins' to our British cousins) breaking up the curves:





Attach the track units:



And build some tread boxes out of plastic canvas (to look like steel grating) and some styrene strip:





Doodad-age front: headlamps made from a bit of sprue and some cheap plastic 'gems', ammo crate from somewhere and the pintle mounted heavy stubber (some sort of Space Marine gun, I think, I have ten of them lying about waiting to get used, now only nine left), the pintle is just a piece of styrene tube; note that the rounded windows are now replaced with square and a component from a circuit board added to the 'grill'- this is either a turbo-charger, a water condenser unit or a mysterious new death ray never before fielded by the Imperium, you decide:



And doodad-age rear: A heavy tarp made from leftover greenstuff from another project (I always make extra tarps and packs and straps from whatever greenstuff is left, for just these occasions) and a high-lift jack made from an extra piece leftover from a WWII Russian B203 tracked carriage howitzer kit, Tamiya fuel cans (actually, one fuel, one will be water and painted accordingly) and even in this poor quality picture you can see a trimmed down milk pull acting as the gunner's hatch up top:



And the whole kit and caboodle with a first coat of primer:



I can now get started painting and may add some more doodads like a tow chain, some additional trim on the top hatch and maybe a couple more ration boxes, but mostly I like how it has shaped up.

As always, your constructive criticism is always welcome. More follows soonest.

When I saw lunar mouse scout car, all i could think was lunar new year of the mouse scout car

This is a creative idea, and I like how it's turning out. Kind of cute with all the rounded edges. I always love your greenstuff tarps.

I never would have thought of using a mouse as a tank. Shows how much I still have to learn! Now get that thing painted so we can drool over it

This little scout car is awesome! Cant wait to see it with paint. I'm definitely stealing your spontaneous green stuff tarps idea. I'm also going to check out your Russian bitz supplier. Nice work!

Tehnolog is really a hella fun company, I wish there was a good source for them here. You just have to wait for the shipping to eventually arrive.

Great work on the mousecar, it really harkens back to the original Imperial Deodorant scout skimmer.

--B.

Thanks all for looking in, and the kind words!

 Syro_ wrote:
When I saw lunar mouse scout car, all i could think was lunar new year of the mouse scout car

This is a creative idea, and I like how it's turning out. Kind of cute with all the rounded edges. I always love your greenstuff tarps.

I'm in full agreement Syro- when this mouse died months ago and I said to myself "I know I can make something out of that" I knew I wanted 'mouse' in the name. I even thought about naming it just 'Mus', after the German super=heavy tank of WWII. But I almost immediately got in my head 'Lunar Year of the Mouse' too, and now I can't think of the buggy in any way except in relationship to the Chinese calendar.

 MegaDave wrote:
I never would have thought of using a mouse as a tank. Shows how much I still have to learn! Now get that thing painted so we can drool over it

Thanks MegaDave! This will be the first vehicle scratchbuild I will have used an airbrush for all the basecoating (nothing against airbrushing, this is just the first vehicle project I've completed since I got one). The temptation to do a flecktarn pattern camo scheme is great- but that takes away from the 'desert-y' theme and the science fiction rounded body styling both, so I'll try to go with suitable desert colors. I may do the tarp on the back in flecktarn- just to provide a contrasting color that makes sense in context so the whole thing pops a bit. For comparison, when I first deployed to Desert Shield, most of the vehicles were desert tan, but most personnel were wearing Woodland Pattern battle dress uniforms- the suppy chain hadn't yet caught up with issuing half a million men and women desert pattern uniforms yet!

 MacPhail wrote:
This little scout car is awesome! Cant wait to see it with paint. I'm definitely stealing your spontaneous green stuff tarps idea. I'm also going to check out your Russian bitz supplier. Nice work!

Thank you for looking in MacPhail! The extra tarps and things is strictly from my parsimonious Scottish and Yankee ancestry- waste nothing, refuse nothing except blows. I'm getting better at guess-timating how much putty I need to do things nowadays, but initially (I've only been messing about with greenstuff for about a year) there was always too much left over- I hated to waste it, it's a little pricey. So, with the help of a couple YouTube vidoes, I make extra bits and save buying someone else's castings for things I can make myself (unless it's a really, REALLY good deal, in which case my Scots/Yankee avariciousness screams 'go for it!' ). As Briancj notes below, Tehnolog offer a lot of different things- I keep an eye on eBay to see what is being offered up at any given time. Mostly it seems like third parties buy up remnants and sell them until they are gone- there are things I would like to get more of that aren't available (at least, through eBay) anymore. But there's always something new- everything from the Robogear tanks to the Bronecorps armor, buidlings walls and sets to freeform towers and platforms to the chibi ponies and mortars that I've shown here in earlier pages. Something for the whole family!

 Briancj wrote:
Tehnolog is really a hella fun company, I wish there was a good source for them here. You just have to wait for the shipping to eventually arrive.

Great work on the mousecar, it really harkens back to the original Imperial Deodorant scout skimmer.

--B.

Long time no chat, briancj- thanks for looking in! Until you mentioned it, it never occurred to me that this build was very much like the First Edition deodorant stick scout car- but it is! Now I'll never be able to say 'Lunar Mouse Scout Car' again- it will always be 'Chinese Year of the Mouse Deodorant Stick Scout Car'! I'll get some paint on it as soon as I can!

Thanks again all for your visits and your comments- it means a lot. While it's nice to get moving on this particular build again, I've got three other terrain pieces that need finishing up (including the one I started for the last LOER competition) before I can allow myself to do another squad of infantry- and boy do I have a lot of projects _there_ I want to get into! I'll photo some for another post. Plus a whole, separate, rant post about my lemon of a 3D printer and steps to rectify that.

More follows soonest.

Reminds me of the story of the guy who lost the (magnetized) turret of his 1:35 "Abrams" in an accident at the show. Since he has already won a second prize with it, he wasn't _that_ much down, and soon came up with an alternate turret like You car. Lots and lots of styrene card as reactive armor, a barrel and a mask at the front (they survived from original turret, being turned brass and so). With a handy basket at the rear and mouse keys moved to the top to represent hatches, it looked like a very weird cross between M1A1 and something Russian with rounded turret.

But Yours "smells" more like a weird pre-star-wars fiction film, with all these easily recognized things like a Jerry-cans. Shelves over tracks are nice. Is it too late to add some staples or just a bent wire to them for an easy step up for infantry and crew to disembark? The placement of a side hatch is good, probably - are You going to scratch its perimeter for an easy washing border, maybe oil-dirt spots?

(And thanks for not forgetting the building steps photos - they make the magic come less easy!)

Thanks very much for the comments, Wirecat! As I was monkeying with this, I did have in my mind the sci-fi RV from the TV adaptation of Roger Zalazny's Damnation Alley and the vehicle from Cherry 2000

I'm going to have to keep the 'tank turret option' in mind for another terrain build- I want to add a defense tower to my 'desert sci-fi buildings collection' and need a gun platform of some kind to sit on top of the PVC pipe fittings I've already assembled to be the tower structure; if I've got another mouse lying about (or can find one cheap at Goodwill) that might be the answer.

The stirrups for ease of entry are a great idea- I'm working them in now. They make perfect sense and are a detail that I think will help lend verisimilitude to the build and help make it easier for viewers to suspend disbelief and imagine it as a three- or four-man scout car. Or maybe a prospector's movable claim site- complete with heavy stubber to keep claim jumpers at bay!

I'm hoping to get some paint on tonight as a start and will post some pics if I have time.

More follows soonest!

I loved that movie Damnation Alley . Killer Cockroaches, the triple wheels on the RV, George Papard.

Fun looking mouse car, just the sort of future tech that probably will come about.

Thanks Theo! I mean, it's no Family Truckster, but still......


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just a couple of painting WIP shots- managed to flog up the enthusiasm to break out the airbrush and then after get some old fashioned brush painting in:





The base coat is a cheap craft paint 'Apple Barrel' Sunny Day Yellow thinned for the airbrush, then some crease inking with Minitaire's Ghost Tint Yellow, also through the airbrush. The track units are hit with Scalecolor's Metal 'n Alchemy 'Black Metal'. The tarps are another cheap craft paint 'Italian Sage' (which is a _great_ army green to work with).

I was going to just rust up the edges of the doors/hatches, but the whole vehicle is so rounded except for the obviously tacked on survival equipment that it just didn't feel right, so I framed them in. I've used some putty to smooth the joins and once dry, will use some more, but I like the look better already.

I ordered a portable light booth from American Science Surplus (they were having a sale, we'll see how good it works) so my picture taking may improve. Right now, the difference in yellows is pretty hard to see, but the whole thing is fixin' to get dusty directly anyway, so it's all good.

More follows soonest.

Great conversion Meer_Cat.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks very much Cap'n!

Couple more WIP shots for tonight's work- mostly basecoating but starting in on washes and then later of course drybrush highlights. One thing I'm glad I remembered was to clip away two of the prongs on the carry handle for the water can: in the US Army, at least (may be NATO-wide) fuel cans have three prong carry handles, water cans have one prong (of course the photo is blurry and you can't see it, I was a bit rushed). This is so that a dogface can tell them apart in the dark by touch and grab the correct one without showing any light. Occasionally, irritable neighbors with guns express their displeasure when you shine a light to find the water jog amidst the diesel cans:





I did sop up some of the extra sepia wash that didn't look nearly so bad until I saw the picture. The black on the windows/viewports is the first layer of basecoat, the paint I'm using is for crap and needs a lot of thinning and I want a nice, smooth finish before I use a top coat of a glossier black- lots more work there to do.

More follows soonest.

Great start, keep at it!

Mouse car is coming along nicely, has a little Fifth Element vibe for me, reminds me colorwise of Bruce's taxi.

Cool little vehicle, Cat. It barely looks like the mouse it was made of.

Nice work on the paint, really like the pop the blue number gives to the vehicle.

Awesome, harkens back to the days of deodorant hover tanks and packing foam terrain!

Thank you all for looking in- this has been a fun build so far and I'm getting the chance to try a couple of new things!

 Viterbi wrote:
Mouse car is coming along nicely, has a little Fifth Element vibe for me, reminds me colorwise of Bruce's taxi.

Thanks Viterbi! I'm torn now in finding a 28mm (or 30 or 32mm or 1/56 scale) kit of a 56 Chevy Bel Air to convert into Dallas' taxi, or just going for broke and scratchbuilding the flying noodle sampan!

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
Cool little vehicle, Cat. It barely looks like the mouse it was made of.

I appreciate the kind words, Warboss! From the beginning of this blog my motto has been "It's not done until it's OVERDONE!"

 Theophony wrote:
Nice work on the paint, really like the pop the blue number gives to the vehicle.

Thank you for the observation, Theo- I was hoping that would be the effect. A reality of vehicles in the field is that they get dusty to the point that everything blends in eventually with everything else- and that's boring. The Athena Command and Control vehicle I built awhile back is probably one of the best weathering jobs I've ever done- and it's very hard to pick out any detail at range because the weathering is so realistic (or sort of, anyway ). The Lunar Mouse needed something, so it got the dry transfer number in front, and the high-lift jack in the back to add just a little bit of color.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Awesome, harkens back to the days of deodorant hover tanks and packing foam terrain!

Thanks Kid- and to paraphrase the late, great Rowdy Roddy Piper in that classic of science fiction They Live "I came here to kick ass or (chew gum) use deodorant- and I'm all out of deodorant...."

I appreciate you all looking in and taking the time to comment- it means a lot.

More follows soonest!

Way too orky... but instead of integrated circuit at the front a good and proper mekboy would go for a corkscrew. Ram damage!!! That - and yellow always go together with checkers.

That's a nice nosy mouse You've got, congratulations! I've liked the idea all the way from the beginning, and result didn't disappoint either! Thumbs up!

Thanks very much, Wirecat- I hope I can complete the paint to the level that I had in mind when I started!

I hadn't thought of this one for the Orks, although looking at it now it seems a natural, but I still have a Russian B64 armored car in 1/48th scale and some grots that needs building! We'll see what comes next but I still got three other terrain pieces to finish and get out of the way, and possibly a LOER side trip to make.

More follows soonest!

Good use of the mouse.
I have a mouse-shaped cast from some mouse packaging for just such a use... in the future...

Thanks very much for looking in, Doc. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with your mouse frame!

Right then, the Lunar Mouse is (as) finished (as it's going to get), tried some new things, learned a bit, now want to try to put that learnin' into practice.

First, a quick product review: This is the Shibusa Studio, an affordable light box with some interesting features. As you see, it folds flat for storage and is made of stiff vinyl with large snaps to hold its shape when open:



It measures 16 inches on a side and comes with two foam backgrounds- white and black:



It comes with two LED light strips, powered by a USB cable. It has a rheostat so you can adjust the brightness:



I gave US$25 for it from American Science & Surplus (at this link, if you're interested- https://www.sciplus.com/) I also get most of my rare earth magnets from these guys, although they don't always have the sizes I want ins tock, you have to check back sometimes.

I tried photographing the Lunar Mouse in it for a test- I finished up some touch up paint and weathering and am done with it for now, at least. In the first pic I still had the light too high, the others are better but maybe still too bright. Those little LEDs kick it!











New things tried:

a) I (tried to) swiped Clanmac's effect for windshields by painting the base black and then 'streaking' white over it to look like a combination of light reflection and dust. I'm actually not entirely disappointed with how this came out, although I want to play around with it a lot more to get the great look he does.

b) I tried to paint the lenses with light reflection effects- this came out terribly. I need to watch some more videos and would be grateful for any tips all y'all might have. The last picture shows them closest (note: not 'best'- they suck). I think what really ruined what little good I might have done with the color layering was ruined by adding a drop of gloss polyurethane on top, to try to enhance the effect. No worries, I know what not to try next time, and lenses plus OSL is something I really want to get better at.

c) I used the sponge method of adding a chipping effect. Next I need to scratch, chip and rust a spot to combine all the techniques to better effect. As it happens, I have an idea for a scratchbuilt tank that gives me some canvas to practice on.

All in all, I'm fairly pleased with how it came out- not too shabby for an old mouse carcass. One can't ace everything the first time out, but I'm also pleased with the bit I've been able to progress my painting skills. I've been at it for more than 40 years at this point; 40 more and I might just start getting good!

And I'm pleased that I tried pushing the edge. It's easy to get into the habit of not trying something new because we don't want to ruin the otherwise good work we've put in on a model. But hey, if you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

Couple more terrain pieces to finish off and then I can switch over and hit some infantry. More follows soonest.

The lunar mouse is an awesome scratchbuild--well done!

Re: lenses. Recently, I find that I get good results with black as the base color, rather than blue, red, or green.

Thanks Josh! One of the videos on YouTube started with a black base, but it seemed awfully counterintuitive! I may spend another lick of paint on this vehicle to see how that works out.

 Meer_Cat wrote:
Thanks Josh! One of the videos on YouTube started with a black base, but it seemed awfully counterintuitive! I may spend another lick of paint on this vehicle to see how that works out.

I think this image from my gallery shows my most successful use of this technique.