"Scratch Built Spaceships" Topic

Years ago I scratch built a couple of spaceship fleets (roughly the same scale as the old Zocchi/Gamescience Star Trek models), based on silhouettes of ships from counters at the time. I copied the silhouettes of the ships from Starfire and also Alpha/Omega.

I really miss those ships. A Lot.

So much so, that I thought it might be time to scratch build some ships again. You know, just for fun! :)

Does anyone out there scratch build their own spaceships?

I used to have a really nice set made from earrings mounted and painted. Wish I still had them.

Grape Ape – that sounds cool, what kinds of earrings (shape, etc)?

Lots of folks make their own ships:

There is even a Yahoo group for them:
groups.yahoo.com/group/s_s_s

Perhaps not the most active, but some nice tips and photo of their ships.

DyeHard

Just have a look on the forums at Starship Combat News, or even take a run through the archive here on this board :)

Inspiration and tips a plenty . . .

Virtual Scratch Builder just posted some pics of some great looking Star Trek ones on another thread here recently.

They look nice enough to put into production.

cturnitsa "Grape Ape – that sounds cool, what kinds of earrings (shape, etc)?"

The shapes would be difficult to describe, but the easiest thing to do is go to a Family Dollar, Big Lots, or similar store, go to the earring rack, and look through the dollar ones. Just try to imagine how you would paint up or modify each one. This is a good way to get some really alien looking ships.

I do a bit .

link

Velbor you sick little monkey, those ships vary from quite interesting to a whole bunch of really s'nice.

Well done. Color me green for having ideas and plans but not following through…as you have.

Very nice indeed.

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As far as iteas that can be easily converted…hit the findings section of your local hobby/craft store. These include buttons, backings, posts, crowns, gems, etc. to make small crafts/jewery/etc..

Another interesting source would be common items around the home: disposable lighters are a great find for small springs, wheels, gears, injectors, etc…if you ahve never taken one apart, stop what you are doing right now and do so…you will be quite surprized at the amount of cool stuf fin one of those little s.

A shell shop will give you tons of sized variety of coolness to work with.

A dried floral section of the craft/hobby store can provide some real gems…seed pods, seeds, the body of dried flowers, thorny stems, etc..

Found sculpture is one of my passions, large scale normally but small stuff is a blast also. I have collections of small bones, jewery findings, watch parts, broken down electronics, etc..

Good luck and post your new ships!

I had a favourite little 3" freighter model I made out of Sculpey and toothpicks. It was certainly a one-off, but fun to make. These days you can "cheat" a lot with rubber molds and micro cookie cutters available at the craft stores.

I should get at it and make some again. :)

I love scratch-building ships. Here's a bunch from my site:

doodlebot.net/redoubt

Velbor

That was sweet Fireball XL5. I used to love that show when I was kid.

8)

Hers's the link to SCN
star-ranger.com/Home.htm

Just go to the message boards, then to the scratch building forum and browse for a few hours, you'll find everything you could want.

Robert

Warlock your one ship reminds me of the Earth Alliance ships from Gundam Seed some what. Interesting.

I'm trying to figure a way to make scratch build Sathar ships, mainly destroyers. As they were supposed to be the more common Sathar ships yet minies of them were never made.

Those very ships from the Alpha-Omega game have been available as miniatures from Valiant since my high school days! Here they are, still available:

veltd.net/stardate.htm

These were among the very first starship minis I ever owned, and they're still kick-butt IMHO!

Hope this helps!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Velbor, your ships look GREAT!

Velbor, why the aren't your ships in full production for other loonies like those present here to enjoy?

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Thanks for the compliments guys !

I'm hoping some of them will be available soon .

The manufacturer in question has a much larger range to release first . Sorry I can't say more at this stage .

thanks all, great suggestions

I will be working on a project related to this in the near future, I'll report back here with links to progress and maybe some photos

The only picture I have is in this pdf but when we did a Silent Death campaign a few years back, a very talented mate of mine (Adam Jenkins) made a large alien ship to go with the SD Aliens out of a Walnut amongst other things. Did a great job too! Have a look at the photos on pages 12 and 20 of this PDF report on the campaign we played link

John T

John,

the link leads to a few shots of ships very cleverly mounted inside clear plastic bubbles for a 3D Star Trek game, but that's it.

Got another link?

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Hmmm – you're right: that was another thread I was writing on (Zochi Plastic trek ships in my 3D Star Trek game I invented 20 years ago salute.co.uk/3dstartrek – sorry about that!)

The PDF link I wanted was this one: PDF link

Like I said pages 12 and 20 are the only shots, other than a line drawn illustration (I'd done an SD play sheet for it which I probably still have somewhere…)

John T

John,

that was an excellent presentation!

That walnut ship is superb IMHO, and deserves to be given some appropriate *official* recognition…

Would you permit us to link to that PDF from the Metal Express site? We're in the process as of this writing of migrating to a bigger, badder server for more bandwidth and copious amounts of *eye candy* photos…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

The walnut is great…fantastic use of found items.

(Stands to clap…claps…and sits back down)

Leland

Of course you ca – I'd be glad to have a link from the pdf to whereever.

If I can find any better shots (or even the SD playsheet for the Walnut (or the upgunned 'Super Walnut' that replaced it) I'll stick copies where people can find them!

And thanks also 28mm man.

It's been a few years since we did the 'Damn the Torpedos' campaign and – I have to say – this has rekindled my interest.

If necessary, I'll see if I can dig out the ship and re-photograph it!

John

Leland

I couldn't resist it. I dug out the Super Walnut and took some snaps – link

Enjoy! I'd forgotten how much the painter/designer Adam had used natural products like peppercorns as well – you can find some stuck to the ship in the photos plus all of our 5 different sorts of jump pods for the aliens were different kinds of painted herb!

John T

Euuuuuwwwww it is all gross and fleshy!

Classic!

Fun stuff there.

John,

bookmarked! That thing is just… DISGUSTING!!!

Simply brilliant bit of craftsmanship, and it will no doubt inspire others to see what can be done with such materials…

Now where did Sandra put that eggplant…?

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Trying to think what the 'V' shaped front bit is made from: some sort of child's toy, I believe…

JT

That is one incredibly bizzarre piece of xenotech . . . It makes most Tyranid Hivefleet minis look conservative.

Loved the battle reports BTW.

I just wish we'd chucked it in a mould and produced some resin castings before Adam painted it…

Two or three to back up a fleet of Muskellunges and so forth would have been great!

John T

John,

that silly beastie now has me wandering the aisles at the local craft supply stores…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Found this:
artships.com

John is a master…met him twice and competed (tied :) in at least one pro build off…good guy.

holy old thread…but a good one!

Scratch building is a ton of fun and spaceships are some of the easiest since you can let your imagination run wild. Some tips I'd offer for making better looking ships:

- Avoid just glueing random chips of styrene to larger chips of styrene. This works in a pinch but a little more effort goes a long way. It's a pet peeve of mine aesthetically, it just looks like chips glued to chips and not ships!

- Sketch out your design and give it some purpose. Figure out what the ships design philosophy is and give it some features you think would be apropriate. Sketch it out whether you have any artistic talents or not.

- Settle on a scale then give yourself a rough size category for different types of ships. It goes a long way towards helping identify ships on a table if ships of certain classes are similar sizes.

Those very ships from the Alpha-Omega game have been available as miniatures from Valiant since my high school days! Here they are, still available:

Used to love those! Valiant is not really doing themselves any favors with the manner of presentation of the models on their site though, and they appear sometimes to be badly cast, ironic as Valiant is a leading caster.

But I've been sort of spoiled since that guy came out with the spacecraft that are based on a very hard-science approach to space combat. They just look real, and are crazy cool. Since then I have not been able to look at the sci-fantasy star trek/wars type spaceships the same!

Zombie threads are going to be my ultimate bane.

Read the first post, started to flame 'didn't you see the unofficial contests we just had/are having…' then saw the date. ;->=

Grabula's comments mirror some of my own thoughts, in spite of the direction some manufactures seem to be going. On the other hand, I'm still starting with complex shapes, and not getting far in gluing anything on them, so 'tis a glass abode in which I reside.

I'm up to a half dozen smaller chopped razor handle hulls, though, two of the largest, and looking at the spoon handles again.

Thanks again for the nudge provided by great contests, 28mmMan!

Doug

Kingscarbine, thanks a ton for that link – totally unknown to me, and a really great source of inspiration! Nice work!