Blomping along…

Primer! Got the gondola spray-primed grey and the balloon envelope brush-primed black.

The LAF Build Something 2017 contest rules ask that you not post painting progress photos of your project past the priming stage, so this will be the last photo anyone sees of the Blomp itself for a while. I’ll try and remember to take some in-progress shots and save them for a post-contest photo gallery, though.

Up next is finishing the base with a bit more putty and then paint and flocking, and then working on the half dozen or so goblins who are going to be crewing this thing!

Deadline is Feb 18th, which is coming up awfully fast!

Greenstuff all over the place this time!

I’ve started on the heavy leather harness that the troll uses to tow the Blomp along, as well as structural greenstuff to secure and cover the magnets in his base, hold the barrel in the right position, and secure the steel plate the barrel magnetizes to.

There’s at least one more round of greenstuff here, the front and belt parts of the troll’s harness don’t exist yet, and the base needs some more patching up.

Up on the gondola the various joints in the pipes have greenstuff seals added. I’ll be painting them up as leather, which has historically been used as a seal and still is to this day in some applications. I also smoothed out a few parts of the hull, and on the first photo above you can see the putty filling in the underside of the bridge wings to secure the three eye-bolts on each end.

The eye-bolts are jewelry making supplies, intended to be posts on earrings or something. I have a little baggie of dozens of them, and I think they’ll come in handy for all sorts of things – parts of railings, for example. It pays to cruise slowly down the random aisles of your local craft store, the jewelry and bead aisles are full of all sorts of interesting things!

The greenstuff work on the gondola means it’s finally ready for priming and painting. I didn’t get a photo but the fabric patchwork is also finished on the balloon, so painting will start on that this weekend. I also need to get stuck into the (mostly minor) conversions to the half dozen Reaper Bones goblins who will serve as crew!

The Feb 18th deadline looms like an irritated troll with a big club!

Progress, the purpose of the troll revealed, and IT FLIES.

Well, sort of!

I got most of the structural parts of the base done today, barring more greenstuff putty to solidify everything. The big troll – an old prepainted WotC figure that I’ll be repainting – has a hole drilled between his shoulder blades and one end of a length of heavy steel wire inserted. The wire goes up to a detachable section of keel on the underside of the Blomp gondola, then comes back down and ends in the small barrel behind the troll.

There’s four rare earth magnets in the troll’s base, one in the bottom of the barrel, and two more in the keel piece at the top of the wire. Everything seems solid enough to hold the thing up, although I did have to shorten the wires from their original height because everything was flopping around like a lying orange liar’s toupee in the wind.

Here’s how the whole thing looks at present! Since this photo I’ve added more to the keel assembly at the top of the wires, which strengthens and stabilizes everything a bit more.

I’ve also added wires disguised as piping on the gondola, coming out of the central Improved Non-Explosive Flautulator Engine. The piping into the lower part is largely decorative, but the upper piping will be the structural supports connecting the gondola to the balloon envelope overhead.

I’ve also gotten almost all of the fabric glued on to the Blomp’s envelope, but didn’t get a photo of that.

The next round is going to be more greenstuff putty action on the plumbing, base, and troll. I also need to get started on converting Reaper Bones goblins for camera operators, flight crew, and famous Blood Bowl announcer & personality Gobb Cherry, host of BB Nite in Gobada! I’m looking forward to puttying and painting a suitably loud suit and tie onto Gobb!

Blomping onward, in a classic goblin-engineering “make sh*t up as you go” fashion!

The front half of the gondola has been skinned with styrene sheet, cut in one continuous strip for strength. I also glued in more styrene strip on the inner edges of the gunwale. The edges of the flying bridge received similar treatment; both areas will be getting more detailing/decoration to finish them off.

On the underside of the gondola I superglued a pair of 40mm X 20mm galvanized steel bases, and some scrap styrene to keep everything level. The keel went on next, long strips of 1/8th x 1/4th inch basswood. The metal bases and the slot in the keel will hold another piece of the same basswood with two or three rare earth magnets embedded in it to hold it into place, and a long steel wire (possibly two) leading down to the ground as the “flying” part of the Blomp’s flying base.

Finally I cut sections out of two plastic tubes (till receipt paper rolls salvaged from the recycling bin at a previous job!) and glued them just behind the flying bridge as part of the lift/propulsion machinery – tanks of whatever mysterious, hazardous lifting gas the goblin alchemists have invented, probably! The end caps are wood craft circles trimmed slightly to fit, and the tanks will get detailed with rivets, weld lines, pipes, and such in due course.

More soon as we progress! The February 18th end date looms like a looming thing!