Papercraft: Mel Ebbles' Hummingbird

The past week I've been building another papercraft model, this time a Hummingbird attack skimmer for one of my 15mm scifi forces.

The model is designed to a 25mm (1/60) scale. To build it in 15mm scale, I simply scaled the print to 60% and printed it on photo paper that I cut down to 5.5" x 8.5". After that, I built it like normal. I found that the existing glue tabs did not work well at this size, but cutting off the existing glue tabs and making new ones from colored paper worked out fine. Some pieces ended up a little fiddly and hard to put together, especially the engine thrusters and intakes and the chin gun and sensor pods.


(Click on the images for larger pictures.)




The model is very lightweight. I was going to glue a washer inside the hull to give it some heft, but I forgot. The file includes patterns to make a flying stand, which I'll put together after I find the necessary transparency sheets. I am planning to glue that washer to the bottom of the model, and stick some magnetic sheet to the top of the stand so the model is easily removable.


No in progress shots, but here are the tools I used to cut out and build the model.

I did my cutting on a glass cutting board. That self-healing mat is under the glass, and I only put it there to give me some contrast for the brown bits of paper I was using for tabs. The white tool is a bone folder, used to crease the cardstock without cutting it. This lets the heavy paper bend much easier and in a more controlled manner; just drag it across a fold line like it is a knife.

The cutting was done with a snap-blade utility knife. Cutting on the glass goes through blades pretty quickly, and these are cheap but still sharp enough to get a good cut. The sculpting tool next to it I used to apply glue, and I used the tweezers to hold fiddly pieces while gluing and to clamp glue joins together until it set. I used the pen (and another brown one) to color exposed paper edges and the backs of pieces so the white bits don't show through.

At the top of the picture you can see leftover paper I used to make glue tabs. I just cut a 1/8" strip of paper, folded it in half lengthwise, and colored one side with a pen. I measured a join edge, cut the paper to length, then cut off the corners as needed so it would fit properly.

I glued it up with regular pva (Elmer's) glue. the blobs at the top right of the cutting board are where I dabbed small drops of glue before using the sculpting tool to apply them to the cardstock.

Basing the SG teams

For those who are interested, here's a quick walkthrough of how I am basing the SG teams.  The bases themselves are 3/4" fender washers.  I filled the hole with wood putty then glued a figure on it with white glue.  Once that was dry, I built up around the figures' cast on bases with Golden's "Light Modeling Paste".  The paste dries white, so I painted it brown.

To texture the surface, I used white glue and Woodland Scenics railroad ballast and earthblend turf.


I put together a magnetic stand that I used while painting the bases and putting on the ground cover.  It's simply a small wooden spool I got from Michaels, with two holes drilled in it and two magnets glued in the holes.  It holds the figures firmly while I'm working, and I can move the figure around however I need without worrying about getting my fingers into the areas I'm working.


First, I paint the base with undiluted white glue.  I do my best to not get any on the figure (I think I failed in this photo); if I do, I clean it up with a clean wet brush.


Next, using the scoop end of a sculpting tool I pick up some of the ballast and sprinkle it onto the base.


I'm not going for thick coverage, just a scattering of rocks on the base.


Once the rocks are in place, I drag the base through the turf flock.


Then I turn it sideways and firmly tap on the bottom of the base a few times to knock all the loose flock off, and I'm done.


The process goes pretty quickly, maybe a minute or two per base.

SG team closeups

I've been working on the bases on my SG teams, and took some closeup pictures of the nearly finished figures.  I need to clean up the base edges, but that will depend on how I want to identify teams.

One Week project, day seven

Yesterday's work looked just like day 5, except shinier, so there wasn't anything interesting to look at.  Thus, no post.  Today I used Minwax Antique Walnut polyurethane stain to wash the figures.  Not much to say about it, I just brushed the stuff on and let it do its thing. All that is left is a matte coat to take off the shine and basing them.

 

 

I'm not very happy with how the black uniforms turned out.  They would have worked better with a bit of contrast; maybe using different shades of grey on parts of the figure.  A lesson for next time.

One Week project, day five

This really should be day four, since I couldn't paint yesterday, but I'll be a good boy.  :)

As I said before, today I painted unit badges (I know that's not the right word, but my brain isn't cooperating at the moment) and other bits I'd missed before.  The Javelin launcher tubes (back row) were painted with Ceramcoat's Green Sea to get a subtle difference form the uniforms.  The sniper teams' hats got the same color as their uniforms.  Badges are a black circle with a Rain Grey dot in the center; at this size, any more detail than that wouldn't be visible.  Pictures are below.

Tomorrow, after all the paint dries completely, I'll give everyone a coat of Future.  And then Friday they'll get the dip, and I'll be done with them.  Once I have a stack of figures ready I'll hit them all with a matte coat, and then I'll worry about basing.


EDIT:  Rather than spamming RSS feeds with little of interest, I'll just say here that day six looks just like day 5, except shinier.  Tomorrow should be more interesting.

One Week project, day three

Day three is done, and I've painted the flesh on all but one stick of figures.  Since I expected to only get about half of them done, I'm doing better than planned.

I put several colors (Dark brown, bambi brown, medium flesh and fleshtone, all Ceramcoat; while on the topic, the uniforms are wedgewood green) on my palette and switched between them from figure to figure for variety.  I slopped it a little bit, but I can clean that up once I finish the skin.

Tomorrow evening I'll be busy, and don't plan to do more than get the last of the skin painted and clean up my sloppy brushwork.  Next post on Wednesday, after I get the shoulder badges painted and take care of the details I missed (like the Javelins).

One Week project, day two

For day two I painted pants and sleeves green on most of the figures getting green uniforms, though I didn't manage to get the last five done.  The green appears too light now, but I plan to finish these off with a dip and that should get it to about the right shade.

 

(click to view larger) 

I'm pleased with my progress so far.  Tomorrow's plan is to finish the last guys getting green uniforms and start on the flesh.

One Week project, day one

Over on MacPhee's Miniature Men, Scott posted daily updates on his project to paint 250 figures in one week.  I decided to try to push myself into painting more (or at least stay on a project until its finished), and try the same with some 15mm US Army figures from Rebel Minis.  I bought their Force on Force US Army platoon box (about 60 figures) to use as Stargate Command teams and mid-tech troops for scifi games.  I like the figures;  they were molded cleanly and have good detail, with little flash to remove.  They should be fun to paint.

I plan to have about 2/3 of them in the early series green uniforms, and the other 1/3 in the black uniforms that showed up later.  I cleaned them up for painting a few weeks ago; today I glued them to craft sticks, primed them with black gesso and followed that with a drybrush of Ceramcoat charcoal grey.

 

Figures hot-glued to their craft sticks. Click the image for a closer (but not particularly interesting at this point) view.

  

Primed and drybrushed.

After some problems with the hot glue not holding the figures very well, I grabbed some more sticks and glued the figures down with Elmers' glue instead.   I'll go back in the morning and touch up the spots where I scuffed paint off raised surfaces while switching them.  Hopefully they'll come off the craft sticks easily when I'm done.