Mechwarrior Hubert is said by many to be off his rocker. Although no one can deny his record in a fire support role since joining the 115th Merc Command. With 3 unassisted kills to his record and more assisted kills than any other pilot, the unit puts up with his strange behavior.
Hubert was once a sergeant in the Lyran Armed Forces and had a promising future ahead of him, until that fateful day when it all changed. Hubert was out walking his beloved bull mastiff Milo when the accident occurred. Milo broke loose from his lead and took off after a Jackalope, right into the oncoming path of an Atlas battlemech. Needless to say, Milo lost... This broke Hubert's spirit - the only thing he loved in this world was now nothing more than a red stain on the ground and a broken collar.
After recovering Milo's collar and tracking down the pilot, Hubert beat the living snot out him and for that was kicked out of the LAF. He wandered for many years from planet to planet. When one day in his wandering across the cragged plains of an undisclosed planet, he came across the remains of a Clan Naga battlemech. Scrounging all of his remaining resources, he was able to get the mech up and running again.
Naming the mech after his beloved Milo and recording his kills with painted doggie bones on the side of his mech, Hubert seems to have found a new life with the 115th. Although it is said that there are times when Hubert can be seen wandering the hills with a collar in his hand and calling for Milo....
Welcome to Round 2 of The Last Painter Standing II, a fantastic contest put on by the wonderful editor here at TMP.
I would like to apologize for the low class of the photos for the how-to section of this contest, but my main camera went into the shop and I used a smaller backup camera. I would also like to let ya know that because of several goof-ups (3, to be exact), I was up against a time barrier - so I skipped some photos, to make sure I made the time limit.
So now, on with the show....
After spending 4 days searching the internet for ideas for my nose art. I decided to go for something a little more on the cartoonish side. One of the things that I found most interesting is that a lot of planes used cartoon characters for their inspiration. So once that was decided on, I just needed to find a scheme. I went to look into one of my favorite areas for ideas, and ended up settling on my favorite plane: the F-4U Corsair.
Here is a link to one of the sites that was a real help. I decided on the 2-tone paint scheme.
For this round of the contest, I decided on the Naga Omnimech to paint up - but it required a few changes to fit my ideal. Here is the Naga as it comes from IWM:
The first thing I did was remove the Naga from the large chunk of metal attached to the feet. If this is left on, the feet hang over the edge of a regular IWM base.
The second idea was to file the sides of the Naga to give me a smooth surface to place the nose art on. I also decided to file the base down to a smooth surface - this was for the first 3 boggled attempts of creating a really dynamic base.
Now, the funny thing is that I like this idea for future minis that I do - it gives you a larger surface to work with, and no footie overhang. It also gives a lower profile to the base.
All right, here is the mini assembled and primed for action:
