Everyday people

Sci-fi civilians
15mm

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do

 

Sure, the swashbuckling space smugglers, adventurers, alien death bots, and heavily armored troopers get all the glory... but somebody has to live in the universe of the shiny spacey future.  Those somebodies are all the workers, merchants, spacers and countless other "little people".  And they deserve their own figures :)

I had a lot of fun with these; I think they turned out as real little characters, all unique.  The minis are from CP models and Ground Zero Games, with a few light conversions.

 

Come and play, everything's a-okay
Friendly neighbors, yes that's where we meet
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

Exobiology Major

First Contact

15mm scale

Dr. Phan watched in amazement as the roiling mass of spheroids churned this way and that, finally elevating itself to over two meters off the ground.  The individual globules seemed to grow and shrink smoothly, matter flowing between them in a faintly discernible phosphorescent process.  As she peered at the entity, it slowly arched forward, several large spheres taking up position an arm's length from her faceplate. Particles seemed to travel through its body, coalescing in a constellation of bright spots in the sphere closest to her. "Hello," she said, "Who are you?"

This piece was a "quick" (2 days) response to a friend; I asked for a prompt for my next piece and she offered "first interplanetary meeting".  The astronaut figure is from Ground Zero Games, the alien is my own design. I tried to come up with a truly unique concept for an intelligent alien: a sort of syncytial giant slime-mold-like entity that's not formless, but doesn't have a fixed skeleton or appendages either.  I wanted to hint at sensory structures that float free in the body and are recruited to whatever part is proximal to the object or direction of interest. 

On a technical level, the alien is just a collection of balls of greenstuff, stuck together as haphazardly as possible.  The blue life form on the ground is a mixture of blue paint, acrylic gel medium, and sand.  The photo backdrop was hastily painted today, I've never done that before!

Watcher of the sandy sea

Desert dweller and solar droid

15 mm

Perhaps they're a roamer, seeking salvage or hidden wisdom in the deep desert.  A moisture farmer gleaning a living selling water pulled from the dry air.  Or a reclusive hermit, anxious to remain alone.  Whoever they are, along with their trusty but worn droid, repaired and rebuilt a dozen times, they probably know the ways of the desert as well as anyone ever has.

I've had these figures kicking around for a while... the human is from Alternative Armies HOF sci-fi range while the droid is from Ground Zero Games.  They're both converted a bit; I added the respirator pack and the antenna to the human (a definite improvement to a fairly generic sculpt!), the solar array to the droid. The human's attire is inspired by real life desert people - the Berbers of North Africa.  The colour coordination with the droid's solar array was unintentional, but looks pretty good.

"Sss-sss-sss, how are things huuuuman? All quiet out here?"
"You're the first visitors in weeks. Will you share water?"
"Sss... it would be an honour."

It Followed Me Home

New friend
15 mm

"Hey guys, this is Genet-Subspeaker Slaa, I think he's like, a kind of plant or something.  But he's cool... can he come in?"

Just a silly project I put together from some figures (girl: GZG; Slaa: Ion Age) I've been trying to decide what to do with.  Inspired by the possibility that First Contacts might not always be the exclusive domain of giant inscrutable spaceships showing up and asking to speak to the leader...

Huey and Dewey

Horticultural droids
15 mm scale

Back to 15mm for a bit here, with a quick couple of GZG robots...

When you're a scientist on an ecological preserve ship in space who's mutinied against orders to destroy your cargo, murdered your crewmates, and set off for the rings of Saturn, sometimes it's handy to have a few mechanical sidekicks along to help with the gardening:

"Not wargaming"?  The battle against aphids NEVER ends!

 Obviously, these are not- versions of the funny little bots from "Silent Running" (1972):

Kind of hokey, kind of preachy, VERY 70's, but still surprisingly enjoyable...

Star Speeder

Scout Speeder
15 mm scale

When the People's Planetary Protectorate military procurement team requested a speeder design from a collective that made agricultural equipment, they really should have known what to expect: a speeder that looks like a tractor.  But, built around a compact power plant designed to drive 30-ton megaharvesters, the unattractive result was what the committee ultimately described as "extremely zippy".

Model is a Ground Zero Games "Eurasian Union Jet Bike".

Forest patrol in a remote area offers an opportunity to "punch it"

Wall-E World

Refuse Compactor Bot
15 mm

There must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.

I recently took a little break from our hectic summer schedule to paint up this cute little trash-picking automaton from Ground Zero Games. He's less grungy and battered than the guy in the film, but I like the sculpt and didn't want to obscure it behind a bunch of rust and weathering.  Or I'm lazy, pick one.

Big Damn Heroes

Captain Tightpants

15 mm

"This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then... explode. "

A former rebel, a thief, a freelance trader and an all-round rogue with a heart of gold, the Captain inspires loyalty in his crew of misfits and outlaws.  His battle-worn brown coat reminds him that while he may once have been on the losing side, he's still not convinced it was the wrong one...


Ship and crew

Well, that makes the entire crew... definitely a couple of nice sets (1, 2) from Ground Zero Games.  I picked up the perfect ship for them too, the "Glow-worm class freighter", in roughly the same scale as the last one I painted.

 

You can't take the sky from me...

Let's be Bad Guys

Warrior Woman and Hired Gun
15 mm

"Are those grenades?"
"Cap'n doesn't want them." 
"We're robbing the place, we're not occupying it." 

Here's my second-last post of GZG's spaceship crew figures: the muscle.  Here we have the Captain's loyal war buddy turned First Mate, and a distinctly more mercenary fighter from the crew.  Both very deadly in a fight.  I'll admit to sculpting on the mercenary's hat after painting was well underway... not the first time I've done that.  Sometimes you just start to see that a figure needs something extra.

Crate Draggin'

Container Transport
Scale unknown

I don't normally paint spaceship minis, but Ground Zero Games has a pretty nice selection of civilian ship models, so on a whim I picked up a few in my latest order.   I'm not sure what scale this model is supposed to be: if the containers are standard modern sea-container size it could be around 1:700, but that would make the ship pretty small.  I would assume at least 2-3x that.

I decided this cargo hauler looked like a suitable ride for a couple of scruffy-looking characters I'd already painted, with a bit of influence from the amazing 1996 film "Space Truckers" thrown in for good measure.  Maybe one of those containers has square pigs in it!

One of the better effects in the movie, which TBH isn't saying much.

Sightseeing... out of this world

Valles Marineris
15 mm

So I saw this orange stone in a shop and instantly knew it'd be the perfect base for a couple more of these GZG astronauts.  I suck at identifying rocks, my best guess is that it's metamorphic... something.  Here, it's Mars :)

Family Ties

High Class Doctor and his Eccentric Sister
15 mm

"You gave up everything you had to find me. You found me broken. It's hard for you. You gave up everything you had." 
"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here."

The children of a wealthy family on a comfortable world, he saved her from government brainwashing and now they hide among the outlaws and smugglers of the outer rim planets, where she turns out to have disturbingly good survival skills...

Figures are, once again, by Ground Zero Games.  Still a nice set, but some of the sculpting here was really frustrating.  Even in 15mm, you don't make a painter's life any easier when you take a character who looks like this:

and sculpt him like this...

Fly the Friendly Skies

Cutie-pie Mechanic and Cheerful Pilot
15 mm

"Everyone's got somebody.  Wash, tell me I'm pretty."
'"Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion."
"'Cause I'm pretty?"
"'Cause you're pretty."

 

Another pair of Ground Zero Games' spaceship crew.  This time it's the perennially upbeat yet lovelorn ship's engineer, and the goofy plastic-dinosaur-playing pilot.  These are also really fine sculpts which I made look sort of like Smurfs.  But still enjoyable to paint with a few opportunities for teeny tiny freehand.  I don't actually yet own the Captain, First Mate, and Security figures, but I do have the Physician and His Weird Sister that I can have a go at next.

The flesh and the word

Courtesan and Preacher
15 mm

 "So, would you like to lecture me on the wickedness of my ways?"
 "I brought you some supper. But, if you'd *prefer* a lecture, I've a few very catchy ones prepped. Sin and hellfire. One has lepers."
 "I think I'll pass.  But thank you for this."

Two of Ground Zero Games' not-quite-Firefly crew figures.  These were challenging to paint, as the sculpting is very fine (though not quite to the extremes of Tom Meier's work).  I did not do the lady justice at all; her face was almost impossible to paint well, though I have seen others who pulled it off.  Her glamorous sari-like dress is very in character, I'll admit.  The preacher's humble attire and downcast face were easier to approach and I quite like the result.

Moon walkers

Spacesuited research team
15 mm

Wearing light-duty environmental suits for planetary surface exploration, these civilian scientists carry various sensor gear.  A semi-autonomous rover accompanies them with larger instruments and communications equipment.

Figures are Ground Zero Games  SG15-V10 and SG15-V17 (astronauts) and V15-69C (rover).

The rover.  It's intended to be a military sensor drone, but I think yellow suits it.

After the horrific events of November 22, 2048, the artifact must now be kept
in hard vacuum and studied only by personnel wearing fail-safe devices.