Its been a while since my last post. Brain weasels have been misbehaving. Today though, I have a day off work so have been able to finish a project I started a couple of months ago.
I’m not sure where I first saw the idea. It seemed to pop up all over the internet a while back, converting a kid’s toy for table top gaming, like Stargrave, 5 Parsecs from Home or any number of Role playing or wargames.
I’m always impressed by people who can see the potential of things like this for conversion or scratch building wargames stuff from odds and ends. One of the YouTube Channels I watch, Greig Johnson Making has some great examples. Greig just seems to have an eye for seeing the potential of all sorts of junk and stuff to be used in making amazing models and costumes.
First step was finding a Buzz Lightyear Zurg ship cheap enough and managed to find one on Ebay.
Preparation
First steps were to glue the canopy shut as I wouldn’t be needing it to open and adding some stuff from my bits box to make the ship look a little different. I also made a mould of some parts from a Kill Team Into the Dark sprue that looked like they could be generic ship parts.
I didn’t think the ship looked like it would have room for more than a couple of crew so I scratch built a compartment from mounting board. It doesn’t have to look totally accurate scale wise just give the impression of having space for a Stargrave crew. The ship will really be set dressing so again it just needs to give the impression of being the crew’s ship. I also added some strips cut from an old tea strainer to top of the jet intakes. The effect didn’t quite work out but I decided to leave them on anyway after the hassle of cutting them and stabbing my fingers multiple times with bits of wire.
After priming the ship with my airbrush and some Vallejo Mecha black primer I painted the whole thing with metallic craft paint. I didn’t want to use up any of my model paints for this so chose the cheaper alternative, which is fine as not a lot of the metallic paint will be seen.
With the metallic paint dry I painted the whole thing with chipping medium and masked off the jet exhausts and intakes with poster tack, before airbrushing the whole ship with Army Painter Angel Green paint.
The next stage was adding some detailing with Two Thin Coats Beserker Red, Warpaints fanatic Weapon Bronze and Army Painter Gun Metal. Then I did a series of dry brushing highlights and washes to get the shadows and darken the panel lines.
I also tried adding some water slide decals with ‘print your own decals’ paper that is supposed to work with a normal printer. The result wasn’t great. The problem is any light colour tends not to have a lot of ink printed on to the paper and so becomes more or less transparent. More experimentation will be needed to perfect the process.
The finishing touches
It was time then for the fun part, the grunging! I wet the areas where I wanted chips to the paintwork and using the wrong end of a brush chipped off paint. I then used some Green Stuff World Earth Liquid Pigment – Light Earth, which I added with a sponge on the bottom of the ship. I also painted over the ship’s name transfer with some Army Painter Warpaints Drake Tooth. I gave the whole ship an all over wash using Green Stuff World Dipping Ink – Zombie Dip, which is my favourite for adding a bit of dirt. And so the ‘Quintessence of Dust’ is ready for the table.
Final Thoughts
Overall I am pleased with the results although they are not exactly what I wanted. I think if I do something similar again I will add two coats of the chipping medium as some areas didn’t chip very well. I also might see if there are any generic space ship type waterslide decals to buy and add them later. Another thing I might do is add the missiles that I’ve currently left off. I’d cut them so that they fit flush with fuselage and make them look part of it. That is, if I can find them, I pinged them off somewhere in my lounge and haven’t seen them for a while. Some things don’t change much with age as this was the fate of many of similar darts and the like when I was a kid.
Have you done a similar conversion for your gaming? Or do you have any tips on cool effects you can use to use on similar models? Let me know in the comments.
[Update – I just posted a link to this post on Bluesky and was just looking through posts from people I follow and saw that Mr Peach had posted a video about doing the same conversion about an hour ago! Synchronicity or weird nerdy gamer psychic resonance? Who knows? Any way, to see how to do a similar project properly have look here!]