Fantastic Plastic's Colonial Defender Buildup

Modeling Subjects Science Fiction
1

EDIT: This thread, like almost all of my others, needs to be updated and I’m working on that, albiet slowly.

This’ll be the build thread for my Fantastic Plastic’s offering of the Colonial Defender-class escort cruiser design, a model in 1/3700 scale.

First impressions: It’s a bit smaller than I thought it was supposed to be(totally my perception, nothing on Alfred or Allen’s part!), but I’m still more than happy with it. Bit disappointed in the casting, tho. Voids and airbubbles in a couple of spots that are going to be hard to “fix”, as well as pour stubs in odd places that takes out some detail…

Regardless, I can clean it up with minimal effort and am pretty certain it won’t take much in the way of seam filling and the like to get the build portion lookin’ good. The instruction sheet is pretty straight forward and easy to follow. In fact, I think it’ll be a really easy build and paint job. Just gotta make myself stay focused! Painting is the area that I usually do the poorest job during the overall build of any model. Technically, I know what I need to do, but I just can’t always achieve the end result I want.

There was little in the way of flash on the model, tho a couple of the aforementioned pour stubbs were in somewhat bad spots. There are also several airbubbles/voids in spots that required filling before I get too much further along in construction. Otherwise, cleanup went fairly smoothly. I gave it a thorough “brushing” with an old toothbrush and Scrubbing Bubbles, afterwards giving it a solid wash in warm water and allowing it to air dry .

Some minor sanding to take a couple of rough edges off, clean up pour stubs after using either the Xacto or RazorSaw, little bit of putty here and there and then the subassemblies were ready to go together. Toyed w/the idea of drilling holes so I could pin the engines to the main hull area, but chose not to. We’ll see if that was the right decision or not, I guess.

Added a few pieces/parts from my stash of battlestar accurizing parts from the Marko Osterholz battlestar accurizing kit. I made a copies of a couple of the more recognizable parts (and informed Marko of that, and yeah, I have plans to purchase at least one more if not two more of the kits when they become available from Odyssey Slipways - whenever that might be after waiting three+ months!) and added them to this buildup. I figure that since we never get a really clear, close look at this thing that I could take a bit of artistic license. I think that they’ll allow for some homogeneity (sp) between the other TOS-style ships.

I then did some putty work to make things flow a bit more smoothly. After the putty cured for about three hours, I then did some light sanding. Some more minor putty work and another sand job were in order in a few spots, then it was ready for the next stage.

I used a primer I’ve never used before - Dupli-Color Self Etching Primer. I’d heard from several folks that it’s a great primer for resin kits, so purchased some a couple weeks back while at Wally World one day. I guess it never really hit me, but this stuff is GREEN! Like an olive drab green. That really thru me off, lemmetellya!

I kept it to two sub-assemblies, regardless - the main hull and then the flight pod assembly. I also still haven’t decided how I’m going to mount it, so that’ll delay assembly of the two remaining sections. I was going to use a standard TOS BSG Galactica symbol base with single mount point, but that’s just not going to work due to this thing being back-end heavy as Heck.

Still haven’t decided on a base color, either. I’m thinking of hitting it with flat black and then lightening it up a bit in sucessive, lighter layers of gray - sort of pre-shading, I think is the what the procedure is called. After that, I’ll give it a wash to bring out the details a bit better if that’s necessary.

I’m excited to have it and highly recommend it. I’ll definitely have to get another, as a matter of fact. This first is going w/my RTF, particularly the TNS RTF. The other will be buffed up with guns and the like for my ever-growing number of Colonial Fleet ships.

Thanks for offering these up, Allen!

Pics to follow in the next day or two. I’ve got to edit what I’ve taken thus far.

2

First up is the box art:

Here we have the layout of pieces/parts.

Closeup of the forward hull area. There was some pour-stub “damage” here that I had to carefully clean up. I used a sharp Xacto blade to carefully cut off the excess resin, then used a pin-vise to drill out the round sections.

Aft section of the main hull where the engine pieces go. Pour stubs here were trimmed. I then had to trim up the matching “tab” section so that I could get the engines to align in what I felt was a more proper fashion. They would have been to far inboard, so my trimming allowed me to move them outboard a bit more. To my eye this balances out better.

Forward flight pod section where pour stub covered some of the detail. This is supposed to be opened up to a tapered point. I’ve filled and sanded this area smooth and then filled in the other side of the same forward section to get them balanced out.

The assembled flight pod.

Underside of the main hull. There are some minor symmetry issues w/the kit, but none that are what I consider to be glaring. Some of them are only obvious when you view from a certain angle, and even then you’ve got to be looking with a critical eye.

Primered. Here you can see some of the small detail pieces I added.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll get more pics up as time allows.

3

Please finish this quick, I really want to see it finished. My poor eyes pop out every time I go on that site.

Thanks for the post, looking forward to seeing progress.

Regards,

Terry.

4

Thanks. You realize that you’ve jinxed me now, tho, right? [:O]

[:)]

Took a few more pics tonight, to include some pics w/the Revello-gram battlestar kit that I’ve had in-work for something like a year now! Pics were taken for one of the fellas at Starship Modeler - madcap974 - who wanted to see the kit next to the Big G for comparison’s sake.

I also took a bunch of new pics from different angles w/the primer and then took it down to the garage for a coat of Model Masters gunship gray. I"m going to then hit it w/a coat of something lighter to see how it looks, tho that likely won’t happen for a few more days as I go in for surgery (outpatient stuff) in the morning.

Anyhow, I’ll try and get some more pics edited and uploaded later tonight. If not, it’ll prolly be a few days.

5

BTW, this kit is 10" / 25.4cm long.

Some additional information about the design itself: The original listing at Todd Boyce’s Battlestar Galactica Wars - Ships of the Colonial Fleet page lists it as an escort cruiser. There are no obvious Viper launch tubes, so my theory is that the Flight Pod can land and store Vipers, but not very many. It also likely only has the flight pod for landing and storing shuttles in a general capacity, but not to field Vipers as a form of offense/defense. In it’s capacity as an escort, I imagine it is fielded as part of a defensive screen of ships and has fairly respectable anti-starfighter defenses.

Someone at Starship Modeler mentioned that they’d like to build theirs as something akin to the ST:TNG Nebula-class ship w/the pod being mission specific in nature. I thought that was a pretty kewel idea.

BTW, Todd Boyce is the guy who designed this extremely original ship.

Those comparison pics for madcap974 over at Starship Modeler follow. That’s a Revellogram battlestar kit that I’ve added some detail pieces to, some of which are from the upcoming Battlestar Accurizing kit supposed to be cast and sold thru Odyssey Slipways, but mastered by Marko Osterholz. I added a few of the same pieces to my Colonial Defender, as well. And yes, the battlestar isn’t finished, either. [;)]

Pics :

Took more pics late last night and just got thru editing some of them. Will post them a bit later today.

EDIT: Fixed the second link!

6

New pics!

Sorry for the delay. The area I had surgery on really got to hurting Wednesday evening sort of late and so I’ve been like a Redneck Stay-at-home-Dad, 'cept I don’t watch soap operas and don’t like bon-bons. Lounging on the couch is kind of kewel the first day or so, but after that it gets old quick! Especially when your choices are bed, couch or standing up. Wouldn’t be as much of a problem if it weren’t for bending over trying to paint/work on models suxxor!1!!

Things have finally gotten to where it doesn’t hurt so much and I can finally sit “side saddle” in a chair for up to thirty minutes at a time now. Much better! I go between sitting for a bit, kneeling on a pillow for about 15 or so minutes, standing bent over for 10 to 15 minutes and then back to sitting for a bit. After about an hour or so, tho, I have to go lounge on the couch.

Anyhow, updates. These pics show the Defender after I put a coat of Model Masters Gunship Gray (from the rattle can) on her. I really didn’t like that color, tho, so decided on the aforementioned Tamiya’s Neutral Gray (USAAF), AS-7. It’s a much lighter color that looks tons better, IMNSHO.

Gunship Gray:

I’m painting detail colors with a mix of Tamiya acrylics and Model Master and regular Testors enamels, hand painting the majority of details as it’s just faster and I’m not looking for perfection in this model, anyhow. Most of the colors I’m using are gray-based as I’m trying to keeping there from being major contrast between the main hull color and the details.

I’ve done some more painting on this than is shown in these last three pics. However, it’s been mostly using enamels for the metal tones and so painting has slowed down quite a bit due to cure times. I’m mostly just doing the piping and some other minor “greeblie” painting, then will add the flight pod - which is nearly finished, as well - and then just giving her a wash. The colors I’m using for the piping is Testors Aluminum and Steel, as well as Model Masters Jet Exhaust.

While I’m waiting on paint to dry, I’ve gotten back to doing some detail work on my Timeslip Creations battlestar, as well as some of my RTF ships. I recently picked up several new RTF members from Ravenstar Studios, as well as on eBay from Armoury Toys and Hobbies.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll eventually post pics of the RTF buildups at some point in the not-too-distant future. Just don’t hold your breath and you’ll be alright, methinks. :smiley:

7

Looks great Griff!

It’ll make a nice escort for your Galactica.

Keep up the good work!

8

Thank ya kindly, u-boater. I appreciate that. This one is going to be a part of my RTF, tho, not as a Colonial Fleet ship. My plan right now is to purchase a second at some point in the not too distant future for building up as a full-on military model. This one will have been de-MILed for civilian use, so to speak. :slight_smile:

Been slowly working on this, as well as a few others as paint dries, as already mentioned. Almost there!

More pics to follow a bit later tonight.

9

Yeah, I know… Couple days later!

Worked on it off and on all weekend. Again, the main delay while actually up at my workbench was waiting on the paint to dry, as well as family and home related stuff all weekend. The winds from Hurricane Ike were much stronger here than the previous hurricane that rolled thru (was that Gus, right?) and blew more debris around our yard than the last, as well as knocked down three tree’s in our neighborhood. Thankfully, the city I’m living in has all of it’s utilities underground, so we didn’t lose power here because of those tree’s. What that means, tho, is that we had to go out and pick up all kinds of limbs, pinecones and leaves/pine needles out of the yard.

But I digress…

First new pic:

I added some more additional details. Most notably - I armed her!

The guns are some resin castings taken off of the resin TNS BSG Galactica kit from… I forget the name of the company. I picked these turrets up off of eBay as part of a lot of resin bits-n-bobs. The actual barrels were beyond salvage, so I drilled out holes in the main section of the turret and added some Evergreen rod stock as barrels.

There are two sets of these turrets on the model. I put two on top at the angled outboard position, as the pic shows, and two more on the bottom hull. I added a 5th turret of a different type to underside the flight pod as that position was sorely lacking. I figure this one is slightly smaller, thus slightly smaller caliber (or power for TOS, if you will), but capable of more rapid fire. This particular turret is one of the extra’s that the BamBam Productions Cygnus-class escort comes with.

On a related note: the small ship in this view is one I picked up from Armoury Toys and Hobbies, tho I picked up this and a couple of their large freighters on eBay. They call this the Celestra-Type Deep Exploration Ship. I added the mast and slightly oversized “radar” dish to the mast. I’m thinking of seeing if I’ve got any additional details to add.

I added three more different detail pieces/parts. In this shot you can clearly see the guns from a battleship kit. I snipped off the front section of the barrel, as well as the canvas covering section. I then drilled out the fronts of the barrels and painted them jet exhaust - which I don’t like.

I also added an antenna dish I grabbed from one of the many Bandai StarBlazers 1/2500 scale ships I picked up some years ago, most of which I got directly from Federation Models when he was still selling those. There’s a lot of nice little detail pieces in those kits and you can still find them on eBay, as well.

The other detail parts that I added are a set of four small turret-like things that I believe came from a Tirpitz kit. I put two each on the outboard sections of the engines, figuring them for some sort of long-range sensors or maybe come gear. Maybe they’re part of the weapons arrays (or in the TOS 'Verse maybe they’re shield projectors?) or just vents. I dunno, but it’s fun, if geeky, to run that stuff thru your mind.

Last pic:

View of the underside of the model. Bews fiew for the underside of the pod w/the gun that was added there. I’ve been weathering it using Tamiya Flat Black acrylic (XF-1) heavily watered down. I think I’m on the third wash for the main body area and have only hit the engines once. I’ve also hit the flight pod part with a wash at least two or three times, as well.

I painted the entryway for the flight deck section flat black since it’s not a hollow piece. I briefly toyed w/the idea of cutting the flight pod in half and hollowing out that area, but decided that’s just too much work on this at this time. Maybe when/if I go ahead and purchase a second kit.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll press on and try to finish her by the end of this coming weekend.

As always, constructive comments and criticisms welcome. If you see something I can fix or that I should perhaps do differently, please don’t hesitate to comment! Especially before I dullcote her.

10

Seems that AOL is having some sort of problems w/their User FTP Space, as all of a sudden pics aren’t viewable, tho were fine last night.

If you’re having problems seeing the pics at the direct AOL Links, check out Post #33 at Resin Illuminati in this thread: http://www.resinilluminati.com/showthread.php?p=67921#post67921

11

Some how, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist at least putting some defensive weapons on her.[;)]

Been following your build on RI.Great work to say the least!

Your paint sheme wonderfully accents the panel lines and is subtle enough to really show off the surface detail without it screaming…“HEY!!!OVER HERE!!!LOOK AT ME!!!”.

In other words,your work is up to its usual par. [#toast]

12

Finally remembered today that I’ve been meaning to add these pics and info. I entered it in to the Starship Modeler BSG contest entry from the Winter timeframe. I didn’t win anything, but it was fun to build and enter, none-the-less.

I’ve included both the pics and the text I entered for the contest, as the contest pages are no longer up at SM. I’m sure they’ll eventually be uploaded again, but for now, there’s nothing.

The pics:

The last shows one of the plaques that a user at Resin Illuminati name panther96 produces. I’ve got several fo them and have every intention of purchasing several more for my other RTF and Colonial Fleet ships.

13

Bravo, well done - and now we need it defending ‘the fleet’!