The People's Hero, Comrade

I haven't inked with a real brush, pen etc for a couple of years, so I thought I would quickly do something to warm up. I have no idea where the concept for this dude came from....I thought it might be fun to have the Soviet version of 'Captain America in WWII' scenario. He could fight bad guy Nazis as well as perhaps bad guy Yankees.

It would all be a bit more exotic and grittier over there on the Eastern Front.

What's next?...

...The Space Jockey from Alien. I have always been a huge fan of the original Alien movie. As an aesthetically well-designed film I still don't think it has been surpassed.

This kit was released by Halcyon in the early 90s.
It will be my first attempt at a vinyl kit. Trimming the pieces sure was a pain in the %@##!!
I must say I'm looking forward to getting out my Giger books and going to town on the airbrushing with this one.

Holy Frack! It's Finished!

Whoops! Been out of the blog sphere for a while. I wasn't well and ended up doing a stint in hospital. Eeergh....

Anyway...at last I think the viper is finished.


I wish I had taken photos of the terrain build, but I was keen to get it over with. Basically the terrain is plaster over a polystyrene base. The grass is railway model fibers with acrylic paint dabbed on to break up the color.
I used a sponge and worked from dark to light colors for the rock face. The weird plant things are left over milliput sculpted then painted with acrylics.

Lessons learned from this exercise? Weathering took a lot longer than I thought it would.

My 'ol mate Tim Wade thought that I could have gone a bit further with the weathering. Looking at it now, maybe I could have.

Although I thought if you look at F1-11s (which are old planes these days) that are still in service, while they show a bit of wear and tear, they are still kept up to a certain standard. I figured the Colonials would treat their ships the same way.


I actually realised one must be wary of using filming miniatures as reference for painting these spaceship models. For the most part the film models are WAY over weathered...I assume so that there is no doubt that the details will show up on film.

While I do like my terrain, it probably dominates the whole display a bit too much. I could have got away with a base half the size and made a much more elegant statement with the design.

There are a few things that are a bit sloppy...you can tell the bits that were rushed. I know I'm always going to struggle with wanting to get a thing finished and keeping an eye on the quality.

Overall, it was great to take something that I had always thought I had ruined at age 14 and turn it something I'm fairly proud of.