DropShip markings

Double marking

First thing I did was to measure the max width of the Clan emblem that I could fit nicely on the side of the Overlord-C. 35mm looked like it would sit in nicely, so I took the simplest of the Clan markings I could find to print with the b&w laser of ours. There wasn't quite as much to choose from for the Galaxy marking, so I used the official one. Like I said, I scaled the Clan one down to 35mm, and the Galaxy one to 30mm width. 

Preview was polite and offered the option to print the same image multiple times on the same A4 as long as I remembered to readjust the scaling back to 100%. Due to the complex shapes of the Clan emblem I printed that out nine times to give myself some space to fail, the Galaxy emblem I expected to be ok with just two layers so I went double to be safe.

The Galaxy insignia

Because the Gamma Galaxy marking could be achieved with two simple stencils, I started with it. I cut the planet off from one of the prints, using a fresh blade. Of another one I cut the bird out. The beak of Turkina would be painted by hand anyway, I really wasn't going to use a separate stencil for those tiny things.

This left me thinking how to achieve a nice result with the smartest - or laziest - approach. I'd start with the planet by painting it white, then doing some sort of a crescent or a C-shape with grey, depending on how my airbrush handling would be. My jade green wasn't from any of the Vallejo $foo Air series so I'd either have to thin it down by gues, or optionally I could blast some dark grey or black for the outline and then sponge the green on that. The latter option sounded pretty decent now that I thought of it.

A snow white world

I taped the first stencil onto a nice spot on the hull. The surroundings got covered by a hectare of masking tape to avoid any and all possible and impossible overspray. Unless I sneezed while airbrushing, that is.

To get a first planet shape done I based it with stonewall grey to get it completely done. I tried to keep my painting angle straight to avoid shooting paint under the edges.

Right after I blasted a bit of white to the right top corner, probably I'd been ok with a bit smaller surface for the effect.

Checking the results after peeling all the protection was quite a tense moment. It looked neat. Now I just needed to not make a mess of it with the second layer.

A Jade Falcon over a planet

Thinking of this whole thing I came up with the idea of painting the bird black to begin with to get the outlines done. This'd make it look more like the source material.

Instead of trying to thin down the VGC jade to pass through the airbrush I went with the sponging approach, to introduce some subtle surface texture on it as well.

Otherwise it was nice but there was some passthrough visible on the right wing.

I covered up the most visible mess with cold grey. I didn't use the last minutes of my painting time to try to fix the feather gaps, those were a task for the next session if I remembered and was bothered by them. Then I painted the beak with yellow ochre, and added the chest line and eyebrow with black, all the time comparing agaisnt the printout.

Clan insignia

The Jade Falcon emblem was a rather complex setup, so I started simplifying it straight away in an attempt to reduce the failure probability. I wasn't going to airbrush all of the little angles and tilts. This first part was going to be the dark violet thing that was also a colour I didn't possess and I had to mix one up before starting. RLM red and either Magic or Electric blue was the probable set for mixing, maybe darkening with dark grey if needed.

I chose a higher position on the opposite side to the Galaxy emblem for the new mask, and started taping. My paint mix was a pretty much 50/50 (RLM23, Magic Blue) that didn't require any darkening. And yes, I left a gap around the tail feathers and the katana on purpose, I did not forget to cut those.

Again, it worked surprisingly well. I was going to add the red line to follow the outer edges at some point, as that was in the source image.

Jade Falcon with a katana

As my second layer stencil I cut off the Falcon and the katana. Because I liked this idea on the other emblem, I blasted the background black now as well.

To make the Jade Falcons look alike I sponged some slightly thnned down jade green onto the opening. I could've gone further with the tail feathers but I was mostly interested in getting the texture and overall coverage done, not a 100% printed out quality which would've been absolutely unattainable.

Just to be sure of this I made a third mask only for the katana and the talons, I didn't trust my freehanding skills to get a nice enough straight line. This also gave me a much clearer placement idea for different pieces than what mere eyeballing provided.

I left the katana handle as it was, and painted the blade only starting with gunmetal. Then I did a bit of an attempt at the specific edge for the blade with steel. The beak and talons I painted with yellow ochre. From a bit further away it looked pretty fun, looking as close as the camera did I spotted more issues. One of the little things that bothered me was the grey area between the left underwing and the purple bit, somehow the masking had gone misaligned. Fixing that wasn't going to be super easy because I didn't trust my ability mix up a perfect match for the purple. Maybe I had to try anyway.

The final key detail was the red line on the purple thing. In this next photo I had two layers of RLM23 red, probably a third one was still needed.

One evening I mixed a new small batch of red and blue and filled what gaps I dared. Then I added another, final layer of red along the edge to make it stand out better. Now that had to be good enough.

Glossy

To save my progress so far I applied a good layer of gloss varnish (Vallejo 70510). In addition to a savepoint it was also good for the flow of the upcoming oils. If nothing else, I was going to do a pin wash for the panels.

DropShip detailing

Getting to the tiny bits

Painting with a figurative massive brush was done now so it was the time to switch to smaller ones. Nice!

A series of tubes

Each of these struts had three massive hoses going into the hydraulic bits. Painting all in the same way would've been so very boring. It would've also been so very boring to paint them all in the same sequence. To add a tiny bit of variety into all this I chose a few colours (VMA 71315 Tire Black, VMA 71028 Sand Yellow, VMA 71003 Red RLM23, VMC 70942 Light Green, VMA 71111 UK Mediterranean Blue) and spread them onto different pipes as my sick mind desired.

Tire blacks

Sand yellows

RLM23 reds

Light greens

UK Mediterranean blues

Washing would bring out some surface texture later on. The rubbery ones stood out the worst, and I was pondering if I ought to repaint them some other way as I already had a healthy amount of greys all around.

Door edges and engine nozzles

Because I forgot to fix the edges of the landing strut armour panels in grey, I did that at this point. I remembered to fix the lower ones as well, even if they were easy to forget behind all the other stuff. I thought that the touching edges - the dark grey inner parts - not the freshly painted outer parts, could benefit from some caution stripes. Painting those at these angles was going to be fun to say the least but they'd bring more life to the greyness.

On the fusion engine nozzles I followed the same approach that I found useful in the earlier Starscream F-15: sandy tan. Maybe I could drybrush it a bit after the upcoming dark wash.

Jade bits

Being a Gamma Galaxy ride it of course had to have jade highlights (VGC 72026 Jade Green). The turret armours were to me a clear place, and another simple choice was the bits in the crown. Maybe there could be something else still, I just couldn't immediately point out what that would or could be.

While waiting on inspiration to strike I painted the caution striping onto each of the twelve doors. Thanks to the unpainted metal they already had the dark grey base, so I just added the yellow ochre bits over that. On the bottom end of the upper doors they were quite easy to paint and one could actually see them. To compensate the upper edge of the lower doors, that was going to come into contact with the counterpart just painted and the main reason to add hazard markings in the first place, was in a more difficult place and angle, so I just added a couple of bars per piece.

Edge highlighting 

It wasn't the time for chipping so I built a bit on the earlier drybrushings with a light grey by just making them stronger and clearer using a thin paintbrush edge. Most of these were done on the upper ends of the landing strut doos and the upper edges of the bigger chunks on the upper hull.

At this point I figured out that one of the engine nozzles was painted differently from the three later ones. I fixed that by painting the first one to follow suit of the others that only had the outer ring in dark grey. The difference was simply caused by me A/B testing which looked nicer and I had not taken the time to complete the setup.

DropShip like the skies in November

Greyscale

I started my painting process by blasting the whole mini with a layer of Cold Grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey). Right after that I picked out pseudorandom panels with a different grey (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey) and some other equally pseudorandom panels and the whole top cupola with a lighter grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey). My idea was to avoid the panel lines but I didn't go out of my way to absolutely not touch them.

As the photo below showed, the coverage and texturing was purposefully dynamic. Maybe a later washing stage would tie them all together. My idea was to give some more liveliness to the hull, and hint at the fact that the armour panels would occasionally be changed and things would change between fights. I might try to work more on that with some battle damage later on.

The tip of my airbrush has been for years a bit larger than what detail work would require. Despite that I didn't start masking off panels, I wasn't going for anything that tight. 

Above/below views:

Landing struts on and greyshaded

Before gluing the landing struts on I scraped any paint off to ensure a stronger bond. My Overlord-C was nicely standing on the table with only three legs.

It was a sturdy construct, but as the landing struts didn't sit flush with the hull, and I didn't want to start poking around that much, I had to paint a bit more grey.

While I was at it I also painted the upper and lower armoured doors of the landing struts, which obviously overflowed a bit on the hydraulic bits. Painting those by hand was the next event.

Bare metal

Like so many times in the last couple of years, this was how I did the unpainted metal. Dark Grey RLM66, a component at a time.

After all six landing struts were painted I continued on with the grilles, gun turret blisters, and the two gates. Those were the fighter launching bays of a smaller Overlord-class DropShip, but I wasn't going to start filling and smoothing those so I let them be.

After the paint dried I drybrushed them with Cold Grey for gentle highlighting.

Any battle damage and chipping would come much later, after all the important stuff got done. I also forgot to take a photo of painting the four engine nozzles.

Project VII/25

A Map-scale Overlord-C

Nothing got me more excited about the DropShip than anything else in the Mercenaries KS loot, so that's what I properly started with. Since I had taken the first photos in Spring I had washed all of this with soap water, which is when I noticed that the engine nozzles were fully open.

Build prep

Cleaning the landing struts was pretty simple. I filed and sanded the worst mold lines from the upper and lower doors. From the inner curve I also scraped with the roughest quarter of my nail file to give them more to glue on.

 

I also scratched some crossmarks onto the receiving ends in the hull, so that the glue could have more to hold onto. The nail file would've had the best surface for this but it didn't simply fit inside this shape. I decided this was better than nothing, and I wasn't really concerned about the glue even without this step, it was just another "just in case" moment.

Black primer

No real explanation here. I primed the hull black with Vallejo's Black Primer. I was already thinking of how I'd actually paint this, but before that I had to get the landing struts also done without making a fuss out of it. 

The remaining six pieces got primed the next evening. One of them, as the photo revealed, got to be a test piece for how the grey looked like on the upper armour plate.

Next up, following the November's overcast theme: shades of grey.

Finished: Project VI/25

Two Clan people

This was the first time I did this sort of a mass operation. Painting two very different schemes in parallel wasn't specially time consuming or more complicated than concentrating on one. Maybe this was slightly more productive, as I could work on one gang while the other one was drying instead of just packing my stuff away until the next painting session.

Hell's Horses

A Star of Hell's Horses 'Mechs brought more colour to my odd collection of BattleTech minis. Each of the Clans were not represented by a minimum tactical amount of units, I didn't see a reason to paint singles or less than five Points on purpose. My main reason for choosing the Hell's Horses was the peculiar paintjob and that they were politically Crusaders.

Fire Moth

The fastest of the Light tripled was a Fire Moth that ran over 200pkh with its MASC-powered legs. It originated from the Ghost Bears.

Such a fast one was naturally a bit lighter on the offensive side: two ER Medium Lasers in its praying mantis -like arms, and both SRM-6 and SRM-4 launchers. The larger launcher was in the Right Arm and the other one above the cockpit.

Cougar

On the opposite side of the Light class was stolen from Jade Falcons at some point. The Prime configuration had ER Large Lasers in both Arms and LRM-10 launchers on shoulders. I liked the twin ER PPC -carrying B config so much more myself.

Huntsman

The first Medium 'Mech was a Diamond Shark -designed jump-capable 50-tonner whose production rights ended up at some point to the Nova Cats. The clearly heavier weapons load was much more punchy on this one: four ER Medium Lasers, a Streak SRM-6, an LRM-10 with Artemis IV, an UAC/2, an unmodeled Flamer, topped up with two AP Pods against infantry.

Pack Hunter

This Star's second jump-capable unit was a one-trick dog from the Wolf-in-Exile. On its right shoulder the Pack Hunter carried a lone ER PPC, and it was a pretty quick one on its feet to make the most out of its one weapon.

Nova

Nova was designed by the Hell's Horses, this invididial had been marching in the Jade Falcon Touman for a couple of decades before returning back home. The Prime config was, as we have admired before, built around 12 ER Medium Lasers. Alpha striking with those got your Omni shut down pretty quickly. In case that wasn't enough heat for the pilot, it also sported Jump Jets for a true sauna session.

Jade Falcon

No excuses were required to paint Jade Falcons, maybe I needed some motivation to keep completing the three Trinaries instead of painting individual Stars halfway quickly. This triplet was at this point, for record-keeping, in the second Trinary's third Star. I'd get to the actual assignments when the whole Cluster was done. Each of these Points was gloriously won Isorla.

Nova Cat #232

Nomen est omen, the Nova Cat was a Totem 'Mech by the Nova Cats. This kitty had long and sharp claws: one hand had two ER PPCs and the other one three ER Large Lasers.

Kingfisher #231

This over a hundred year old 90-tonner was designed by the Snow Ravens, and its design was based on an even older 'Mech from the Not-Named-Clan. So, we didn't talk about them much. Being an Assault unit it carried a fun array of tools with somehow funny placements: one of the Large Pulse Lasers was in the arm, while its pair was in the middle of the torso. A pair of Medium Pulse Lasers were installed in the shoulders, an LRM-10 in the side like on the Atlas, and an SRM-6 in the Left Arm. Below the SRM was a single ER Small Laser.

Crossbow #234

This model was a couple of centuries old as well. Designed by the Steel Vipers, a second generation OmniMech was funnily armed only with LRM-20 launchers in its arms. At least they had the Artemis IV fire control, but it was a bit weird considering the Clan style. The reason for the weapons living only in the arms was that the development team couldn't make the OmniPods work anywhere else. For this same reason the older Crossbow frames couln't use Jump Jets.