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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Jan 9, 2011 22:41:02 GMT -9
I had a pretty good time putting together and painting a few fleets of ships for Firestorm Armada. When I found how much I liked the game, I wanted to have models to play with, but I did not want to spend all the money the publisher's modles cost. I made my own. First I made a couple of fleets of foamcore, then I tried Sculpey for a fleet and did not like the results quite as well, so for my fourth fleet it's back to foamcore and paper and balsa. Thanks for peeking.
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Post by Parduz on Jan 10, 2011 0:50:17 GMT -9
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Jan 10, 2011 4:33:44 GMT -9
Wow! Thanks. I feel great, now. For the paper fleets I used the paper cut out fleets from Spartan Games as a demi-patern. They are about halfway down this page. Also from the front Firestorm Armada page, where it has links to the various faction in depth, there are some line elevations of the fleets that were useful. Knowing the general shape and feel of each type of ship, I roughly cut out the foamcore, and then began sticking bits on as I thought necessary till I had the ships I wanted (or that would do, anyway.) Not a whole lot of planning went into the first two fleets. With the Directorate battleship, I mended my method a little. Foamcore takes an impression traced on the printed page atop it quite well, so I traced first the outline of the whole ship. Then I measured and drew in some extra cut lines for the gun bay and engine mounts, as I wanted them seperate pieces. Then I again traced, but about halfway into the drawing to create the upper and bottome layers of the foamcore structure. Then the circle for the bridge deck. The engines are simply three blocks of 5mm foamcore, 20mmX40mm glue and then carved to shape. A note: Foamcore doesn't sand to shape very well, at least with my methods. I put on some construction paper to unify the engines before gluing them on. The last step (so far) was putting on the main guns at the front and the main hull armor panels (the orange paper). The guns are balsa, cut from 10mmX5mm stock and carved and sanded to shape, and went on quite easy. The panels are a series of pieces, First two rectangles at the sides and then triangles for which I measured the area to be covered, cut a rectangle and then cut it into two triangles to make each side even. Then I trimmed off the paper that stuck out too far. A whole lot of guess and by golly, really. I aim to make the rest of that fleet on much simpler terms as I did with the others. Probably little more than cut outs. Then again, I believe they will all have the more squarish engines, as I like that look better than the original.
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Post by Parduz on Jan 10, 2011 6:35:04 GMT -9
Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to read your post with more time to get what it means (it's not your fault, it is my english that is so bad). But, if i can ask, i'd like to see images of the building process of your next models, and if you have time some closer shot of the models you posted here, so i can look closer and guess/learn what you did. Do you think you'll have the time to give us more images? I'm not in a hurry (i'm a sloooooow builder and i already have projects running) but some of the folks here are a lot faster.... Really, i want to build that things.
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Jan 10, 2011 7:25:17 GMT -9
Well, I do think I need a Carrier or two, and then all the smaller ships of the last Battleship's faction. I shall make it a point to show my work then.
For basic materials, I used simple construction paper, foamcore and balsa wood. In most cases the foamcore forms the main body of the ships and the paper and balsa are used for minor decorations. The exception is the Terran Frigates. They are made exclusively of balsa. This excludes entirely the fleet I made of Sculpey oven hardening clay, but that's not paper craft, so I didn't mention it before. Also, I found I prefer the foamcore.
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Post by sammo on Jan 10, 2011 18:46:00 GMT -9
These are freakin' sweet! Excellent work chugosh!!
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Post by Dominic on Jan 13, 2011 1:35:35 GMT -9
I love the direacorate ship... and I need more spare time... Great builds, too .
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Post by Mike H "Chugosh" on Jan 22, 2011 20:12:19 GMT -9
The requested tutorial is now up on youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM2kIoC-k8IWill that do or do we need a still pic tutorial? (I'd have to invent another project to do that.)
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Jan 22, 2011 20:36:16 GMT -9
Great job on the tutorial, Mike!
onemonkeybeau
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