Mercury Class Battlestar 'Pegasus'

I love this sculpt and casting. Its a monster model of the Pegasus from BSG and fits in scale with the Titanium Galactic available as a collectable.  The model is cast in pewter by Jim Fox of Fox Miniatures, a stand up guy who goes the extra mile for his customers. 

I'd recommend his range over Ravenstars, they often use the same masters but Jim's casts are superior, particularly his pewter casts which are TOTALLY worth the extra £££s. I have two of his new basestars as well and they demolish Ravenstar's version (future post to come). 

The only disappointing thing about this model is that the detail on the engines is quite soft compared to the sharp details elsewhere. This takes the model from a 10 to a 9 in my opinion. 

I painted the Beast in the same manner as the Valkyrie. I know some people like to add colour to their battlestars but I'm actually quite a fan of the plain grey. I saw that in the cannon the hangar entrances have red outlines but after painting this on went over it with grey. It was just too much red and looked cartoony.

 I did however ass a splash of colour to the engines and did a touch of basic OSL (not that visible here).

I even painted the internal hangar lights! if simplistically. When/if I get some airbrush skillz I intend to buy another and paint it with tons of OSL.

 Wish I'd had the presence of mind to change my background to a star field!

Group shots below to give you an idead of just how big this monster is and how it looks alongside the other minis.

Valkyrie Class Battlestar

Finally took some pictures! Not the best but they're better than I've managed for the best part of 5 months. First up is a Valkyrie class Battlestar. 

This one is from Ravenstar and is in resin. Frankly I'm really not a fan of Ravenstar's castings and find them to be very rough (even if the original masters were stunning). I had to rebuild the engine nozzles on this as they had come out mishapen and airbubbled. 

The detail on the model is otherwise outstanding and took drybrushing fantastically. I used vallejo Granite for the base and then drybrushed with light grey and light grey mixed with white. The highest points then got a highlight with thinned pure white. The running lights on the hangars etc were done using the 'gem' method. They don't show up much in these pictures but look good in person.

A quick shot WIP shot of Kobol from BSG. I'm planning to do a day side and night side to the planet as I think It'll look a little more realistic/interesting. The planet is from CorSec, sort of money for old rope but just easier than hunting down the right size sphere from a different source. Also don't have to worry about mounting as it comes with a hole and stand. 

The stand is from CorSecs omnisystem and seems to do the job nicely, no chance of that snapping!

Sorry, I just stepped outside for a while...

and now I'm back, well... not quite.

I'm still around but haven't blogged anything for months; I was writing my dissertation and then started a new job which is extremely demanding (who said public sector workers had it easy!)

I've been doing some hobby related stuff but not nearly as much as I'd like. As ever something shiny caught my eye (this time on the pendraken forum) so I'm currently painting up some 10mm AWI figures for Maurice, so far so good but I'm not making nearly enough progress!

I've also got the itch lately to do some moderns or sci-fi  so I may return to 15mm sci-fi (although I really need to get an airbrush... christmas present to myself perhaps?) soon.

I'll stop blabbing and take some pictures this weekend, its been too long!

PS. I've noticed than even though I havent posted in four months or so I'm still gathering followers that stumble on the blog. Welcome: I'll try and be a better host in future!