[Redscorps] Thunderbudgie early stages WIP.

Morning/evening all,

Today I've got about the earliest stages of WIP I think I've ever shown before but I wanted to give you an idea of what I am working on at the moment. About 6 months back I built up a Stormraven to use as part of my gaming board's terrain. The standard model is decent enough if you're a 'build and paint' type of character but I wanted to give it a little aerodynamic freshen-up via an easy tail extension.

I read a while back about the Antanov 225 aeroplane and how when they wanted to transport the space shuttle on it's back, they found that the drag created by the shuttle infront of the tail section was making a pocket of air around the tail rudders which would have caused the plane to be unable to steer properly.

Looking at the SR you'd probably think, 'why bother, I doubt it would fly looking like that anyway' but still, the tail sitting in behind the fuselage of the plane was bugging me a little so I wanted to extend it back and up. It's actually a really easy conversion as there is an obvious line on the tail section you can trim at. All I did then was mock up a stepped piece with the right angles from several thicknesses of plasticard, drill some aero-style rivets into the plasticard to replicate the style already on the tail and pin it in place.

With this model I have also chosen to go weapons free. I am painting it up to be part of of my table which is an exploration station on a desert world, I wanted to make a little cargo freighter that would be going from the RT ship to the FOB. I've added a few other bits and pieces from my bits boxes to fill in the areas where the weapons and top intake would have been.

As far as paint goes I just wanted to block in a few of the primary colours tonight and see how it looked. Being a neutral vessel I painted it a seafoam green colour and the yellow areas you see I have blocked in around the VTOL jets and the edge around the turbine intake are all going to be hazard striped.

The rest of the vehicle is going to undergo a fairly heavy weathering but be mostly damage free due to the nature of it's non-combat role. I think it's going to come up pretty well and I'm quite excited to keep working on it. I'll have it sitting on top of a skyshield landing pad which is joined to a custom bastion, should be able to get a photo of the whole lot together in a week or two.

Then it's on to making some accessories and crates that can go around it on the landing pad to further cement it's role in the narrative. I've already got a little forklift done up in a 40k style but I'm thinking some cargo and a few containment cages with xenos in them ready to transport.

Super early WIP, so yeah, apologies for the crapness but you might be able to imagine where I am headed. Checkit:

Bwarrk!

Bwarrk!

Haha, a seafoam green Stormraven, can anything be more pleasing on the eye?! Surely not!