[GZG] Model Planets and figs

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Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lHi All,

Got my first order of ships, yesterday, from the very nice Nic at Eureka
Miniatures.  One of those ESU starter sets.  Hoo-rah!

A question about the FT210 Petrograd Battleship - the 'wing' seems to
fit nicely either way up, one side is fairly plain, the other has a
domish shape moulded on it, and elsewhere, what appear to be fuel lines
or similar in a recess.  Is there a 'correct' way up for this wing?  

At www.pantoffelhelden.de, you should find a German gaming group's
homepage which has, in English, a couple of good articles on modeling
space.	They recommend slicing polystyrene balls in half to make
planets.  At a local fabric wholesalers, in amongst their hobby and
craft supplies (for quilting, teddy bear making, scrapbooking, etc), I
discovered large plastic globes, seemingly designed to make large
christmas tree-type decorations.  These globes come apart to form two
hemispheres which are just the berries to make planets out of (and less
messy than polystyrene).  The globes appear to come in 8cm and 10cm
diametres (that's about 3.2 and 4 inches, I think).

I coated them with PVA and pasted on tissue paper.  Then painted them
with poster paint over a black undercoat.  A light wash with watered
down white, dabbed off with a paper towel, gives quite a nice
'atmosphere haze'.  The larger ones are gas giants (one in shades of red
and brown, the other in blues and greens), the smaller are rocky worlds
- one with seas and atmosphere, the other one I rolled in my daughter's
sandpit first after a second coat of watered down PVA, then painted in
reds and brown, added an 'ice-cap' in white but didn't 'atmosphere haze'
- it looks quite Mars-like.

All in all, a very pleasing result for a couple of evenings work while
half-watching the TV.  While at the fabric shop, I picked up a couple of
metres of black cloth.	Our German friends play on black boards and
suggest an interesting way of creating starfields using inverted spray
cans.  I'll have to have a bit of an experiment to see if this technique
will work on fabric.  Now to paint the ships!

Regards

David