VSF for a change

I thought it was about time that I showed some of the rather large VSF project I've been working on for the past few years.

The basic premise is that the major powers are competing for the resources that have been discovered on Mars.

I will write a more detailed back story as we decide on the details but for now all you need to know is that my chosen faction are the Japanese (no surprises there then :-)

The first thing I'm going to show for this project is a defense platform. The idea of which is that it gets towed into place, say, along a trade route and is armed with three heavy machine guns with crossing arcs of fire.

Now, the initial pictures might not make much sense but it will be come clear as the post progresses.

The basic construction was with lasered acrylic (after finalising the design) clad with wood of styrene for the finished surfaces.

The turrets are cast from resin and will soon be available on my website, along with (hopefully) a whole range of VSF goodies.

The bottom shape was just simply styrene wrapped round an inverted cone frame and stuck together, using strip styrene as pretend joints between the panels. The top railing was made from brass rod cut to size with dressmaking pins pushed through a fine chain and lightly glued in place. It's actually quite robust unless you drop the whole thing on the floor... (guess what I did).

The ladders and portholes were taken from my ever expanding bits boxes along with the hatch on the top.

The whole thing was covered in rivets, and no, I haven't counted them :-) The top surface on the command deck is textured styrene sheeting.

The whole thing was given a coat of Halfords grey primer (probably the best all round primer going).

Then came the fun bit...

The paint scheme was chosen to match historical Japanese ships of the time (namely 1900-1905), the main influence being the battleship Mikasa.

There was also an Japanese style emblem added to the cone base (better picture below). The main hull and tops of the turrets were painted dark grey with the superstructure and upperworks a light grey. The whole lot was washed with a mix of brown and green GW inks (god knows what they are called now).

When this was dry a light drybrushing of very light grey was added and then plenty of washes of thinned orange ink for the rust. Occasional topdeck areas were also given a light drybrush of sliver to represent the worn metal surface.

The emblem was painted gold and then treated in the same way as the rest.

The base is a disc of arcylic with a 10mm clear rod sticking up that fits in a respective hole in the bottom of it. The anchor was a late addition and might need some more weathering. 

I'm amassing quite a collection of 28mm neffs at the moment and at the last count I had five complete, two nearing completion and two more just started.

I do have plans for plenty more but as you'll see in the coming months, this is a massive project and so everything in time.

ttfn