Tag Archives: kitbash

Science Fiction, Terrain

BSC 2025 – Wirelizard’s Shuttle, Part Four

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Another photo dump of the last ten days or so progress on my Build Something Contest 2025 entry. My LAF project thread is getting much more regular updates (new photos every other day or so at this point) if you want to follow along!

As of the last blog post the nose had been skinned but not much else. Since then I’ve tried several designs for the wings, disliked every single one of them, built and detailed the removable roof for the cargo bay, and started doing detail panels on the nose.

Check the captions of the photos below for more details.

Engine/wing mockup in cardstock. This is the second, smaller, angular wing.
Second wing in place, with the first bigger slab-like wing on the cutting mat. Still not happy with either design, so I left the wings alone to do other stuff for a bit!
One of the wing mockups taped in place alongside the open cargo bay.
The underside, showing the three landing gear bays and the un-skinned belly.
Primer! I’m going to be painting the cargo bay before gluing the rear bulkhead & ramp in place, so it got primed.
Rear ramp deployed, couple of 28mm figures hanging out for scale.
Wider view of the rear bulkhead & ramp with the whole shuttle propped up to about the height it’ll sit on it’s landing gear.
The ceiling of the cargo bay all detailed.
Roof! The start of the removable roof of the cargo bay.
The top of the roof, with the docking port/escape hatch detailed. It’s recessed into the roof.
The roof in place, looking foward toward the nose of the shuttle.
Detail panels in 0.5mm styrene being installed. When installing across a bend like this, much easier to glue one side down, let the solvent glue cure, then do the other side across the bend!
Second detail panel installation, side view.

The belly skin will be installed today, and then I’ll be able to carry the detail panels aft from the nose, down the belly, and around the landing gear bays.

I’ve also (finally) started building the actual landing gear, because I need to set the height of that before I can make some detailing decisions for the underside of the beast.

Then it’ll be back to the engine & wing subassemblies, where I have a third wing planoform I want to try out that I think will work better than attempts 1 and 2!

Science Fiction, Terrain, Tutorials

BSC 2025 – Wirelizard’s Shuttle Part 2

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Progress on my Build Something Contest 2025 entry, the small shuttle.

Some of these photos have shown up on my Lead Adventure Forum BSC thread but others are original here. Captions have more details.

Mocking up the sides with light card. I didn’t get a photo but there’s three pieces under each of the big side panels to give strength.
Mockup stage showing the in-progress underside of the shuttle.
Local supervisor hard at work.
Styrene sides cut and installed, with the angular extensions at the back.
Designing the initial panel of the rear bulkhead.
Never enough clamps. Or clothes pins in this case. Adding bulk to the underside of the extension on top of the rear bulkhead.
Rear bulkhead and ramp complete and detailed, outside view.
Rear bulkhead and ramp, inside view.
Rear bulkhead and ramp dry fitted to the body. I won’t be gluing the subassembly in until quite late to make painting the interior easier.
Rear subassembly dry fitted, outside view. There will be small panels in each lower corner to cover the groove the ramp hinge pin rides in, and detail panels on the insides of the fuselage extensions.

Very pleased with progress so far. Up next will be either the engine/wing subassemblies on either side, or the nose, depending on my mood. Both are going to require more cardstock mockups, especially figuring out how the nose is going to join up to the front of the current body assembly…

Fantasy, Historicals, Links

Dead Animal Bits, A Kickstarter

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Conversion bits for strange projects can be hard to come by, even these days when high quality plastic figures make kitbashing and bits-finding easier. One of the staples of a certain flavour of folk horror, though, is folks with antlers, either on their helms or straight up growing out of their heads, and nobody has done horns, antlers, and such… yet.

Enter Pete The Wargamer, who has partnered up with Wargames Atlantic to do Dead Animal Bits: Plastic Wargaming Bits as a Kickstarter. As of writing this it’s got about 16 days left to run and is over 2/3rds funded, which is promising for full funding!

Some of the planned bits. Image ganked from the Kickstarter page and cropped.

His campaign video is also over on YouTube and is nicely done, and one sprue will give you enough related bits to do whole units up similarly, which is always nice.

The Dead Animal Bits intro video

I’ve backed for a pouch of bits, 3 full sprues, and I’m really hoping to see this funded and produced so I can get inspired to get back to my weird folk horror 17th C stuff sometime in the new year!

So, if antlers and horns and bones and teeth and feathers and other gribbly conversion bits are an interest, have a look before December 18 2023 and consider backing Dead Animal Bits.

Not a paid endorsement or anything, just one of those chance finds via social media that slots very, very neatly into some of my specialized wargaming interests!