2000h MST, 20 March 2167
A squad of Mars Expeditionary Force troopers is
dispatched from Chryse to investigate.
2300h MST, 21 March 2167
One of the MEF survivors is quoted during debriefing as
saying, "We need bigger guns!"
The Model
The figure is the Armoured Infantry Trooper, a.k.a. Starcraft
Terran Marine, from Academy in approximately 1/30th scale.
The kit itself is small, simple and inexpensive. It went
together very easily with only a modest amount sanding and
filling. Being a "snap together" model meant that some of
the parts had to be adjusted to ensure a good fit. For the most
part, the figure remained poseable.
Painting was very straightforward. The base colour is
"Martian Sand" (actually Vallejo "Red Leather" #818) with splotches
of Polly Scale "Sand" (#414302). A brush coat of Future provided
a deep glossy finish for the visor. The decals were rescued from the spares box: unit numbers, badges
and even a "license plate" for the left "calf".
Weathering and finishing was a simple black wash followed by a
dusting of pastels and a few touches with a silver pencil to simulate
wear.
The Base
The design of the base was simplified to avoid building
a shadow box for the interior but even so turned out to
be more work than expected.
The base itself is simply styrofoam. The building wall and interior
were built up from plastic sheet and various rods. I wound up
creating a raised floor, after the fashion of your average datacentre,
in order to give the creature somewhere to lurk. Corrugated plastic
sheet was cut into tiles and laid over plastic strip stock or I-beams
where it might be visible to an observer. Having the wall and flooring
out of square with the base created some awkwardly shaped tiles.
The solution was to draw the tile grid, at the appropriate angle, on
the reverse of the plastic sheet and then cut the sheeting into tiles.
This greatly simplified the planning and cutting some of the
stranger shapes.
The subfloor was painted "British Interior Grey Green" (Polly Scale #505270)
and the tiling was painted Dark Gull Grey. The flooring was weathered
with a black wash and generous amounts of red-brown pastel to represent
dirt tracked in by the inhabitants.
The wall was a sandwich of two pieces of 0.040" and 0.080"
plastic sheet, set apart by 0.080" plastic strip to provide
a plausible recess for the door. The details were a combination
of textured plastic stock and some vacuum-formed wall details from
an accessory set intended for a Sci-Fi RPG. The inner surface
was painted Dark Gull Grey and the outer was painted German Grey
(Tamiya XF-63). Weathering was a mixture of washes and drybrushing
to highlight details. The red and green "Open" and "Close" buttons
are actually red and green crystals provided by MV Lenses and intended
for model railroad lights and lanterns.
Decals were once again from the spares box; mostly warning
labels from an F-14 and the large "10" is from an old
Monogram Do-335.
The groundwork is Celluclay with a few resin boulders
embedded in it. The colouring was achieved by spraying random
patches of "Red Leather", "Brown Leather" and "Red". There is a thin,
deliberate overspray on the lower portion of the wall to simulate
the accumulation of dust and dirt.
The tentacles of the creature are simply green polymer clay formed
over a wire armature. The skin was textured before baking by
lightly rolling the knurled surface of a hobby knife grip over the
surface before baking. The tentacles were airbrushed yellow and
dark green on the lower and upper surfaces respectively. The skin
texture was highlighted with a drybrushing of light green and then
heavily coated with Future to make the limbs appropriately slimy.
Image: Front view
Image: Turn around!
Image: Bird's eye view
Image: Profile
Image: Rear view
