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Plasma Bug WIP

I made some more progress on the big bug tonight…It took over 2 hours to paint the bulb.

Not exactly what was in my head, but skill and vision ain’t exactly the same thing. That is not to say I am not happy with it, indeed it looks better in real life than in the photo, the problem was that the blending didn’t go exactly to plan, the darker colour was drying faster than I could get the lighter colour in.

Hopefully I can get him finished tomorrow and then get a bit further on with my fleet rescue pilot (proxy).

I put some very thinned light blue paint over the white to try and get a shade into the crevices. I will give her a dry brush of white to lighten the suit up a bit.

It is certainly getting towards that time of year as there is still a fair bit of light in the western sky.

Soon we will have about 22 hours of daylight and no real darkness.

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Big Bugs and Good News

First up…

I did some work on the plasma bug, the black lines took forever. Every time I looked at it from another direction I had either missed a bit or had painted a white bit black. I am happy with it how it stands. Next up will be the blue bits, darker through to a light blue/white in the middle… well that’s the theory….

I also filled in some of the gaps on the large leech and then resprayed it. I did consider trying green stuff, but in the end I thought sod it and covered the gaps in gel superglue. I will find out tomorrow how it looks.

As for the good news, on Wednesday I was reserve candidate in a job interview, I have now been bumped up to preferred candidate. This is a secondment to the end of the term, but it means something. I have been a parachuted into schools as a head teacher three times, applied for a permanent post three times and each time have been told that I wasn’t quite up to scratch (paraphrasing a bit there). This one is a deputy head post, but I seem to have broken the curse or whatever it was that stopped me getting anywhere (different chair of the panel might have had something to do with it 🤔).

This was the view out of my Office (sort of) yesterday…

Not a bad view really. The high ground and cliffs in the distance is the South end if the island.

For anyone that is interested… home looks like this…

the photo above the map was taken from the sticky out lump (or the Wastside as people call it up here). One of the islands is missing from the map and that is Fair Isle this sits 24 Miles south of the main island (and only 25 Miles from North Ronaldsay in Orkney). The One to the extreme West is Foula.

Okay Geography lesson over….

Hopefully I will get some more done on the Bug tomorrow.

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Worm Infestation

They just keep on coming! Ok maybe I should stop hitting print, but they are strangely satisfying.

I have decided on a red colour scheme for these… I did cock up the layer height on my first print. I bet you can’t tell which one it was!

The nice thing about the 3D printable files is that one can up and down. The dodgy print one is 100 %. The middle one of the double ones is the 100% one too.

Another package came in the post today…

I was a bit concerned that I was going to be building a whole pile more figures but nope, they came ready built and based 👍

They aren’t too bad size wise to the EM4 miniatures. These are pretty much the light infantry version…

And these the heavy infantry version (with two weird mutant things)

These are going to be painted up as Fleet Rescue (whatever colour they are).

Big day tomorrow, job interview for a deputy headship of one of our high schools, therefore early night tonight…

I will try and get the light infantry and the new stuff sprayed tomorrow evening.

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Light Infantry… Back to square one

Well okay maybe not all the way back to square one but I just built the last of the Light Infantry.

I managed to get these done whilst being forced to watch the Hobbit. Anyway 3 were armed with the assault rifle, 2 with SMG’s, an officer type and a couple of heavy weapons. The HMG was a straight forward add arms to plastic body type of thing. The flamer was a bit trickier in that I needed to butcher various bits and pieces to take it from a skinny armed flamer lady to a male trooper. I don’t have a problem with females in the unit, just the arms looked totally wrong on the larger plastic body. I even tried adding a female torso but it still looked wrong. The heavy weapons came from the ganger set and not the trooper one.

I am considering painting these up as ‘fleet rescue’ but we shall see. It all depends on how my Star Saga minis look.

I managed another giant leech or two (the other is still printing) …

I cannot remember what percentage increase I put into the splicer… but he does look rather imposing.

Finally we were redecorating a wall in the lounge so my birthday present from a good few years came down. I thought I would take a photo of him.

A nice original watercolour that is close to 100years old. One of these days I will try and find out some more about him/ the regiment.

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Light Infantry…Almost there

Yep the LI are almost done. Some highlights on the weapons and packs and I think I will call it a day…

But of course me being me, I just had to start on something else… so next up are some large scary leeches and a very large scary leech.

The one in the middle is the same as the two either side except I increased the size by 150%. The one at the back is 100% scale.

I just fancied printing something different. The first attempt was dire, they pretty much fell apart. Heads fell off, the fangs on the big one all snapped. All in all a bit rubbish. So instead of binning them I got the gel superglue out. I reprinted the head of the big one. The damaged on will be used on a base and will be erupting out of the ground. I will have to redo the teeth/fangs with Greenstuff but it should work fine.

I have forgotten the designers name. I will add it into future posts relating to them.

And finally I had something new to read this morning…

I rather enjoyed them. I think I will have to try and find another set.

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Gloves, Boots and A Bumpy Ride.

Well I managed another half hour or so tonight. Boots and gloves done as well as various bits and bobs too.

These are getting close to being finished, if I compare them to the start of the week then there is a whole load of differences. Every day there has been less and less white as the week went on.

As for the bumpy ride? Thankfully I was not on the Fivla today. Not my photo either, I nabbed it from Facebook, but left the photographer’s name on it… as you can see getting about up here can be a smidge tricky…

When I was head teacher on Skerries this was sometimesmy boat to and from the island and quite often over the winter this would be my commute…There were a couple of times I wouldn’t have lasted another 15 seconds.

This is her coming out the other side…

The Whalsay run is 20 minutes, a bit longer if they have to go into Vidlin instead of Laxo. My run to Skerries was over an hour from Vidlin and over two to Lerwick. Ahh the joys, this is today by the way…. 3rd May strong winds, a heavy swell and really heavy hail.

I have a parcel waiting for me at the post office, I reckon it is my Starship Troopers comic type graphic novelesque thingies…

My Starship Troopers audio book ended and this 40k Novel started automatically… I am quite enjoying it to be honest… 40k is normally not my thing, but I have found I want to carry on with it.

I am hoping to get the troopers finished tomorrow, then onto the Plasma Bug.

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Troopers … Packs and Pea Shooters

I managed another half hour tonight, I used to manage a couple of hours straight, but right now I can just about manage half an hour painting. My wet palette has been really useful as it allows me to do the half hour, close the lid and come back to it in @ day or two.

Anyway I mixed up a batch of dark blue and black at a ratio of about 1:1. This is the base colour for my packs and weapons. I am getting there with these but they seem to be taking their time.

Part of this is the 30 minutes a night and Zi think the other part is that I am trying to do more shading and highlighting.

I did a day’s teaching in one of our smaller schools today and snapped a view from my commute home. The photo was a panorama, but is all squashed up on here… still not a bad view. It was a bit rushed as I was avoiding the heavy hail showers.

Tiny is doing well, still the only one to hatch but has grasped the intricacies of eating and drinking. I am hoping that he/she will get some chums soon…

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Another Smidge on the LI

Yep another hardly noticeable amount done on the Light Infantry.

Not that you can tell from this photo anyway. But to be honest when you hold them up to the light the highlights on the armour are in fact now visible, I reckon another going over tomorrow with the same colour and then they will be almost visible to the naked eye.

The plasma bug got a couple of thin coats of white to allow the blue to show up better. It might have been better if I hadn’t done it with a size 0 brush. Took bloody ages!

Oh and congratulations are in order as I have evidently just become a grandfather which is a bit concerning as my middle child is only 10, but her baby ‘tiny’ arrived at 18.40 today. He/she weighs very little and arrived after around 10 hours of pushing.

No siblings have appeared yet, nor are their any indications that any are on their way.

Next year I want to leave it to the hen, as it was a very stressful for all humans involved.

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Light Infantry… a smidge more done

Ye gods I am Knackered…. so only a little bit done on my Troopers tonight.

They are slowly getting there. I highlighted all of the armour, not that you can really tell. Luckily I opened up my wet palette so the mixed paint should still be good tomorrow.

I also repainted the medic’s armour white in places. I know it isn’t cannon to either the book or the films/series but hey they are my figures and it kind of works.

Tonight I also had a mooch about my Humble bundle downloads… somehow I nearly ended up with a 7 and a half hour print of a Carthaginian war elephant. It was more to see if the printer could manage it as it seemed it wouldn’t print without supports. Luckily common sense prevailed (as I don’t have any ancients and at least no Carthaginian forces) so it went back into the downloads.

The one thing I should try is my fighter bomber I found on Thingiverse… it will make a nice TAC fighter for the ST world.

Strange Fact… that probably everyone knows… Starship Troopers was originally going to be called Bug Attack on Outpost Nine (or something like that). The director had never read the book and was advised to do so, and thus Starship Troopers was born.

Tomorrow we are going to carry on play testing my mates new RPG… some how I don’t think our characters will make it out alive.

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Big Bugs and Light Infantry

I decided to spray my Plasma bug black today to help speed up the painting. My major issue was that I had already sprayed the bulb white… a quick ponder and out came the cling film.

It worked really well or so I thought. I bet you can’t spot where the cling film was torn!

I gave it a blast with grey to help add some highlights. I was quite pleased as I managed to get get this done before work.

When I got home I did some more on the Light Infantry. Mainly the armour on the troopers as well as a bit of splinteresque camouflage on the sniper.

Still a whole lot to do but I am getting there at a rough rate of half an hour a day… day 17 so far.

Whilst I am painting I have been listening to an audiobook on YouTube…

https://youtu.be/EOQMpb_R41Y

It is about 30 years since I read it last. My Starship Troopers obsession is now taking me into comics… the first 4 should be with me soon.

I suppose I should make a comment on the YouTube comment, it is in fact quite a big thing… 2 weeks ago my internet download speed was 0.2 at its very best.

I am now sitting at this…

It is amazing how much easier it is to watch YouTube at this kind of speed 🤯

Off to listen to more of my story 😁. 4 hours in and not a bug in sight 🤔