STAW Nebula Class - A postmortem

[Badi_Dea]

Hi all! love the work you guys are posting; however I'm still learning, and hoping for some useful pointers.
I painted this Nebula class from Star Trek Attack Wing last night. The first thing to consider is that these minis vary GREATLY in quality, ranging from god-awful to almost decent. The second thing to consider is that they are pre-painted, and don't seem to take well to being stripped, so these are paint-overs.


I didn't think to take a picture of what it looked like before the paint, so here's one from the Internet: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J-VyJG8V_J0/VgB7r_J-k6I/AAAAAAAAiLU/pbJ683dA8Hs/s1600/2015-09-18%2B14.32.10.jpg


Base coat, I think I managed to get this thinned properly, it took two coats to cover all the shiny stuff.



Started painting all the little details. I used Armor Celestra Gray for the darker bits - I think this was a mistake.
I painted the red and blue for the nacelles in this step purposely, prior to the dry brush. I think it gives it a nice degree of haze over the parts where they meet. Not to mention that it makes it easier to correct overflow mistakes.




Dry brushed with just regular white, I could never get good results with the clumpy white made specifically for dry brushing.




Tiny details added, Phaser arrays/Escape Pods/various greebly bits.
I went back over the nacelles to get rid of the white spots and bring the color up a little.




Ink Wash.. now here is where it all goes a little goofy. The Celestra Gray must be water soluble to a certain extent, because it just started coming off! The stuff is labeled as a layer paint, but it doesn't seem to behave as all the other colors. As a result; even though I thinned the ink pretty far, it picked up the color from the gray and made everything much darker than it should have been.. I'm going to have to give Administration Gray a shot for the next one.

After the wash, I went back for all the colors that need to be vibrant, the nacelles and deflector got some love with a watered down light blue to give it a little glow effect.




All in all, I think it turned out reasonable, I like it a lot more than the chromed looking ship straight out of the box, and the tiny scale hides a lot of the imperfections.
Now, what can I do to make the next one better?
Thanks for reading 

[Landlubber]

I think it looks great! Big improvement over the "out of the box" version. Tough subject, too...that's a LOT of work to do on a VERY small miniature.

Regarding future attempts...the only thing I think I'd tell you to try is to go back over the model with a drybrush of the hull color AFTER the wash. This would need to be VERY light, because the model is very small and you don't want to undo the wash. That might make the ship look less dirty. However, I think it looks good as is, and as long as you're happy with the result, that's what matters most. It's a very small model and if you think about it, it only needs to look good at arm's length...very rarely will anyone look at it as closely as the pictures you just took.

STAW miniatures aren't featured very often on MBS, and not all of us play the game...can you post a picture of the ship with something else for context, to give us an idea of its size? Like maybe a quarter or something?

[Badi_Dea]

STAW miniatures aren't featured very often on MBS, and not all of us play the game...can you post a picture of the ship with something else for context, to give us an idea of its size? Like maybe a quarter or something?

Gladly! Here is a shot of some of my (in my opinion) successful paints - Paint pot for scale 

Regarding future attempts...the only thing I think I'd tell you to try is to go back over the model with a drybrush of the hull color AFTER the wash. This would need to be VERY light, because the model is very small and you don't want to undo the wash. That might make the ship look less dirty.

Interesting that you mention it, I attempted something like that on my less than successful paints, I think it made them end up kinda grainy looking. I'm willing to chalk it up to being a noob though. I saw a post about a painting day, I would love to see how some of the pros around here do it.


Just because these models can be a bit itty bitty


Doesn't mean that it's not a hell of a lot of fun to paint something that no one will ever see 


Thanks for the CC, it's much appreciated

[Landlubber]

Yeah, I figured those were pretty small ships.

I guess it just comes down to personal preference. I don't play ST:AW, but to me, Federation ships should always be shiny and sparkly. It's the Federation, after all.  But like I said, the work you've done still looks great and makes the details on that miniature really pop.

You could also try using a very, very fine brush to apply the wash only to the panel lines, but on a model that small you might go cross-eyed and/or crazy doing something like that.

Not sure if we're going to do an official painting day. Some of us (read: me) need to get a bunch of stuff painted before Adepticon, so we had kicked around the idea. Maybe I'll try to see about putting together a semi-regular MBS-Colorado painting day at some point. 

[Ruckdog]

Looks pretty good! I like the red panel highlights on the BOP. The fed ships don't look too bad I think. With the Nebula, maybe stay away from the yellow you used on the lifeboats? A lighter shade of grey maybe.