AirCaptain Gosswell

Its been a while since my last post. It's been tough recently to get any quality hobby time in as other projects have been filling up my time.

The fun thing about making a little story out of these figures is trying to work them all into a coherent plot. I did the same thing when writing up an adventure for any roleplaying games that I ran. Grab some miniatures that I liked and try to stick them all in there without it being totally unbelievable. Of course with this is the added complication of trying to get the three basic shots of each figure in, front, side and back. I decided to try out a comicbook style for this one which was fun to put together if a bit more work.

I couldn't come up with a good way to add in AirCaptain Gosswell so I added a flashback and made him the alluded to tipster. He also got some new digs to take pictures in as seen in last post. On to the story...

U File: 239 Part II

A Room Without a View

This was just a quick side project to go with photographing my figures. I only really had two scenes to take pictures in at the moment, the farm and the ruined building. Somewhat limiting to storytelling. So I knocked together a room of a typical Victorian home.



Assembled out of odds and ends I had lying around.

It's put together the same as what I usually build, foamcore walls with the flooring and panelling in bass wood with the planks scribed in. I also used one of my cast windows and then sculpted some drapes around it. Finally, I glued down a piece of thin plastic card, filled it in with wood filler,  and covered it with flock the same way as I did my tile board.

Forgot to take a picture before I painted on a brown undercoat. Now its all sepia toned.

Painting was straight forward. I went with a tan and burgundy scheme loosely based off some reference pictures I found online. The walls in any proper Victorian home would be wallpapered so I made a simple stencil and stippled on some patterning. The rug got stippled as well but this time more or less freehand. Finally some gloss varnish for the window glass and satin varnish for the woodwork to give it some shine.


Might come back and repaint the rug at some point. My freehand skills aren't really tight enough for the detail at this scale. 

"I knew the American has big pockets but this was not what I was expecting!"

I should make some furniture and other odd and ends to go with it as well but I'll leave that to the future. Maybe I'll do some pictures to hang on the walls to cover up some of the mistakes I made with the wallpapering.

Barn Storming?

I've been able to make some progress on the barn although not as much as I would of liked. Some poor planning on my part has forced some changes in the design. First, I've switched to swinging doors. I couldn't figure out a good way to slot the doors in to rails without making the whole assembly far to thick. The doors aren't finished yet since I'm waiting on some thinner basswood to complete them, but I'm going with a simple wire loop and piece of wire to use as a hinge. Also due to the hayloft covering half the barn I needed a crossbeam in the middle of the barn. That would of put it right in the middle of the doors so they had to be moved over and a new piece cut for the front. Old Man Rutger should of fired his architect!


That's the hayloft floor in the lower right.

Second, in order to put the hayloft on I needed to start painting the lower level. I first brushed some wood filler randomly across the floorboards as dirt and such. Then the interior got a coat of brown paint and worked up from there. I almost forgot to paint the bottom of the hayloft and put in the rest of the supports too, but remembered right before I was going to glue it in. Once it was in I kinda wished I made the side doors openable too as its more than  a little dark inside.


Hayloft floor glued in and some support beams glued to the underside of the overhang.

I also built a little shed thing onto the front of it to give a little more interesting layout. I saw a similar thing in a picture of a American Civil War era barn. I figure it's probably a tool/junk shed like you see on most farms.


The shed out front with the old roof just before I decided that I didn't like it anymore.

Side view showing off the shed door and the overhang area.

I framed out the roof but the more I looked at it the less I liked it. So back to the drawing board there. I have a good idea how I want to due it but its going to be a time consuming and fiddly job that I haven't psyched myself up enough to complete. So that leaves me with finishing those doors, the roof, and the rest of the painting.

The Inspector and the Bull

One more painted up. Inspector Collins was also sculpted way back when. Both he and Gordon "Bull" Sweeney are wearing Bowler hats, which I'll admit to having quite a fondness for. Probably why I painted these two up first.

 I've also come to think of the two as the mismatched main characters in a buddy cop story. Inspector Collins is the more cerebral and level headed one and of course an actual member of law enforcement. Bull (who I imagine got his nickname both for his size and his tendency to rush into things) supplies both physical muscle and connections to the criminal underworld from his prize fighting days. Together they solve crimes and try to keep each other out of too much trouble while investigating the bizarre cases in the U Files!

 U File: 239

 Bull: "What are we looking for again?

Inspector: "The tip wasn't specific. I guess we'll know it when we see it."














Inspector: "Hmm what do you make of this strange substance in the corner?"

Bull: "You get that in these old derelicts. Vagrants you know."

Inspector: "This warehouse only burned down last week. Besides its on the inside of this wrecked crate."

Bull: " You mean some one was shipping ..."

Inspector: " Shh! Did you hear something?"

One Year in the Steamworks!

It's hard to believe that it was around Christmas time of last year that I first started working on my steampunk project. At the time I thought I might sculpt a few figures that would go with an idea that I had rattling around for a while. I never expected to still be working on it a year later or for it to have completely taken over my blog. I certainly didn't expect to still be excited about working on it for the foreseeable future.

I was thinking about putting together some pictures of everything that I worked on over the last year but that seemed a little boring. So instead I decided that I'm going to paint up everything that I sculpted over the next month or so. I had been holding off on painting them because I was toying with the idea of making casts of some of them, but the more I pondered it the more I realized I'd rather just sculpt some new versions if I ever need duplicates. So to start off here is the pugilist that I first completed way back here at the end of January last year.

I also wanted to lay out some near term plans beyond that painting project. Other than finishing off a couple of pieces for the Rutger Farmstead the next big project for me is to make a Victorian cityscape. I'm going to start with Coopers Street, sort of a typical mixed use area. I'm planning on some storefronts, row houses, and the cooper's yard/ brewery that lends the area its name. It gives me a starting point to expand downhill into the slums, docks, and warehouse districts or uphill to the government buildings and well-to-do mansions. Hopefully, this will also let me recreate one of the key images that I've had for my whole project, a giant steam robot battling a huge monster in a Dickensian city street as Victorian citizens flee in panic about their feet. I'm excited to see how close I can get!

Taken unawares outside of his usual stomping grounds of Coopers Street, Gordon "Bull" Sweeney gets ready to fight his way out!

Finally, I've grown tired of referring to everything as my steampunk universe. So I've decided to christen my little world The Steamworks. I'm hoping that this year I'll get the chance to describe more of my vision of a Victorian/Steampunk monstrous apocalypse.

Down on the Farm with Fritz

I realized I hadn't taken any shots of the farmstead with figures. That was sort of the whole reason for making it, to give some scale for the miniatures I had finished.

One thing I ran into with the tile board was that the magnets in the trees I made aren't strong enough to grip through the thick vinyl. So I ended up making a few small metal pieces to use as bases for the trees. I did them basically the same way as the board but I picked up some different turf colors to mix in as well.

I'm kinda going around in a circle on the bases with terrain. It just seems faintly ridiculous to make a base for a tree, that was made to not need a base, so it will stand up on the board. I might need to rethink this whole basing thing. While I like the baseless concept, at 1/100 scale I'm not sure how practical it is. I've already used small, partial bases on the buildings I made to protect some of the more fragile parts. I'm thinking something similar would work with the trees as well. I might be able to get away from the thick trunks then and keep it more realistic looking, which was the original goal anyways. I'm gonna keep experimenting but I expect I'll be going with more bases in the future. 

Laying Some Groundwork

A little while ago I started work on a simple section of board to take pictures of my farmstead on. It didn't go so well. It just wasn't flat enough for the house and other terrain to sit on nicely. So I decided to take another approach. I borrowed an idea from Spacejacker over at Tiny Solitary Soldier and picked up a simple vinyl tile at a local hardware store. Its a foot square and I looked for one that had the most surface detail. I sprayed it black and dry-brushed it up through brown in the recessed areas.

Next I layed down some ground scatter across all of the areas that I wanted to get covered with grass. I used the same fine turf that I've used previously on the trees.

I forgot to take a picture of the tile after just the dry-brushing. Here it is with the turf applied.

I've always had a problem with the turf wearing away in the past so I experimented with soaking the whole board with a mix of watered down glue. I also wanted it to act like an ink wash so I mixed a little paint into it as well. I applied this with a pipette so it thoroughly soaked all of the turf.

While still wet I also put some glue directly on in spots and then hit this with some static grass clumps. I sprinkled more static grass around as well. 

Just after I put the static grass on and still soaked with glue.

Coming back the next day I saw both good and bad. The turf was attached very solidly so that worked out well. The paint in the mix though didn't act so much as an ink-wash as it just colored all the turf a similar color. It also left distinct edges anywhere it didn't get too. Not a total loss though. I dry-brushed some greens and browns on to blend things together and give some more definition.

 Room for improvement but I think it turned out fine. I'm considering getting 4 more and making a quick and easy board to play on.