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After Mongoose Publishing launched
Starship Troopers in 2005, they managed to release a hefty
range of miniatures for the Mobile Infantry, up to and
including the 'Light Armoured' troopers made famous in the
film versions. The one gap that remained unfulfilled for the
greatest amount of time however, was that of the fleet
models, such as the drop ships and retrieval boats. There
was an intent by Mongoose to produce these models and indeed
four designs were commissioned and master models worked on
as far back as 2005/06. Sadly, as so often happens, the
miniatures range for Starship Troopers came to an end before
the fleet ships could be truly realised and put into
production.
It wasn't all bad news however, as one of the masters,
that of the iconic 'Skyhook' Retrieval Boat seen in the film
was in a state that was reproducible in resin and that is
exactly what Mongoose did. Only a limited number were cast,
three of which I snapped up to give my light armoured
troopers some much needed mobility and fleet support.
With these being somewhat limited edition models, I
felt they warranted a little more attention than usual being
lavished upon them. So without much ado, I have included
below the various stages I went through to get the first of
them up and ready for deployment.
Skyhook - Part One
The parts, for mine anyway, were in excellent condition.
However, for those of you that might not work with resin all
that much there are a couple of housekeeping tasks that
needed to be taken care of first.
1. Wash ALL of the parts thoroughly in warm soapy water
before you do anything else. I cannot emphasise this enough.
This particular model I found to be especially tacky on the
surface with what I am assuming was release agent from the
casting. Either way, it needs to be cleaned off.
You may find, as I did that this is not enough to remove it
entirely and after they have dried, some of the parts still
have a slightly 'tacky' feel to them. You can help reduce
this further by giving them a gentle wipe with a cloth with
either some acrylic thinner on it (such as Tamiya X20a) or
better still, save your pennies and use some of the
wife/girlfriends/own nail polish remover (the former in my
case!). This will help and does not damage the surface of
the resin.
2. Once cleaned as best as I could, I repeated the start of
stage 1 and washed the whole lot again in warm soapy water,
giving it a good scrub with a toothbrush (NOT the one I use
on my teeth obviously!)
Basecoat colours
Once assembled, I decided to make the most of the smooth
finish of the panels and used an airbrush for the first
three coats.
This is a great way to start to get some natural shadows
into the model very quickly and easily. I started with a
fine coat of Tamiya NATO Black, then added two lighter coats
of thinned IJN Grey and Light Grey concentrating on the
centre of the panels more than the overall model. This helps
prepare the shading and although doesn't look much at this
stage, does help with the detail coats. I have deliberately
ignored the gun detail and some of the panels because I will
come back to those once I have finished adding the main
colour and paint them in metallics. The same goes for the
cockpit glass which will need to be brush painted later.
The next stage was to add a coat of mixed Tamiya Light
Grey and Flat White, again, with the airbrush. This time I
concentrated entirely inside the panels and left some of the
original base colours showing around the edges. A good trick
at this stage is not to be 'too neat' with the painting as
you want it to look quite naturally weathered if possible,
so have areas where you stipple a bit lighter and others
where you only give them only a few thin strokes. Normally,
I like to leave the weathering to the very end. However,
with the Skyhook, I thought it would be nice to help
emphasise the pre-shading and add a little at this stage
which I could then fade back with the dry-brushing. This is
one of the most fun stages as you really start to see the
detail come out of the model.
Mixing up some shading, which is effectively a 'very' thin
acrylic wash (9 parts thinner to 1 part 50/50 mixed Tamiya
flat black and brown), I airbrushed into the panel lines and
vertically a few streaks around areas like the engine
intakes, exhausts, thrusters and cockpit. This help give the
impression of dirt and heat damage that builds up during
flight.
I love this stage as you can let your imagination run and
just add as much or as little as you like.
Don't worry if you make a mistake, or over do it, you can
easily correct with a few touch ups of the base colour, or
as I have done using the next stage dry-brushing.
To bring the main base colouring to a close and start on
the detailing, I firstly painted the canopy in stonewall
grey to contrast it with the body of the aircraft and then
the frame in ghost grey. Both of these colours would be
taken back a shade, but I just wanted to emphasise them so
that they gave me something to work with later after the
washes were finished. The guns were also base coloured in
NATO black and a mix of stonewall grey and silver as was
some of the detailing on the landing struts. At this stage I
found some very useful photographs from the set of the
original film which included close ups of the cockpit,
landing gear and the guns. This helped a great deal in
getting the colours right and would be of use later when I
am adding the details. A quick search on Google should help
turn these up.
For the dry-brush, I 'very' lightly dry-brushed Vallejo wolf
grey over the main body and cockpit. This has the effect of
not only picking out the highlights in a naturally softer
way that the airbrush cannot, but more importantly helps
blend together the pre-shading, weathering and highlight
colours into a much more natural finish.
The above stages took the model from the picture on the
left, to the one on the right.
Skyhook - Part Two
The next stage is really just straight forward brush
work, nothing special. As I mentioned in the last update, I
pulled a few photographs offline from the film set which
showed the cab, engines and guns on the retrieval boat in
more detail. I wanted to try to match the look and feel of
the movie large scale prop without getting too exact (at the
end of the day I am trying to create a nice gaming piece for
my Mobile Infantry, not an exact replica for a movie
diorama).
The guns were an interesting mix of colours from a flat NATO
black on the upper casing, to a mix of black and gunmetal
for the underside and crisp mithril for the highlights and
barrels. The tarnishing and scorching was done to match the
photos and achieved using an ink from Vallejo called 'Smokey
Ink'. Basically it is a brown ink with a suspension of
denser pigment particles which creates the effect and is
great for this sort of task. I simply painted the ink where
I wanted it to concentrate around the gun muzzles and barrel
ends. When it was 'nearly' dry, I wiped away the excess
using a cotton bud (Q-Tip if you are American possibly, I am
sure someone can correct me on that).
With the guns done, I then concentrated on the yellow
hazard markings, "Rescue Pull" tags and the canopy.
I wanted to keep the canopy glass very simple and not
distract from the overall model too much. This was done with
just a very very simple wash of black ink with a drop of
midnight blue paint. Once dry I applied a coat of satin
varnish (Vallejo) to give it a slight sheen, but not so much
as if I had used gloss which can be a bit distracting.
For the canopy frame, I simply painted wolf grey which I
then lightly highlighted with ghost grey.
The yellow markings were a 50/50 mix of bone white and
golden yellow. I always mix my yellows like this for two
reasons. Firstly yellow on its own its too translucent and
never plays nicely no matter how light the surface so the
denser pigment in the bone white helps beef up its opacity.
Secondly, on its own it is too golden. The bone helps soften
the yellow to a more mellow colour.
More weathering!
 Not
done with the weathering yet believe it or not. The next
stage was to add in areas where the paint will have worn off
or been scuffed. There is no exact science to this, I just
mixed up a little silver with black and worked into the
areas around panel edges and doors where I felt things would
rub. A great way to get ideas for this is to look at
photographs of real aircraft or military vehicles and try to
see where they tend to wear. Around steps, moving joints or
gears is always a good bet, as is anywhere people would
step, hold or otherwise jump on or off the vehicle.
The ends of the tail on the right show what sort of thing I
mean.
The devil is in the decal!
Apologies if you know these already, I have simply
included them for completeness.
Decals can be a bit of a headache if you don't prepare the
surface for them first. The following is the golden rules I
always follow when adding decals.
- Gloss varnish the area you want to place them first.
This helps give them a nice smooth surface to slide onto
and avoids the horror of trapped air bubbles.
- When you get the decal where you want it, use a
moist cloth just to press them down gently and absorb
any excess water. At this stage I apply a setting agent
such as 'Micro Set' which will help soften the decal and
'fix' it in place.
- Another coat of gloss varnish over the top helps
protect it and seal it in, and finally...
- A coat of matt varnish will kill the reflection and
leave you with decals that look like they were painted
on.
I always apply decals at this stage before the final few
details so that I can then apply some further weathering
over the top and really help blend them into the model.
Note: The decals were from my own 'bits-box' from kits I
have collected over the years, they do not come with
this model. Just thought I had better mention that
before someone emails poor Mongoose asking where their
decals are
With the decals in place and all that
remains is for the final weathering to be added using
pastels and airbrush, and for the model to be varnished.
Details of this, plus the final photograph will be covered
in part three just as soon as I get them completed.
Next Up: Skyhook - Part Three
(Coming soon)
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