Stars & Lasers!! I’ve painted my 3D printed ships.

Well I have been fighting a cold for the last week or more so I have not been doing much hobby stuff, no gaming at all but I did feel well enough to sit and finish off some of my 3D printed ships.

The design of these ships fits in well with ships from a heavy industrial Human colony, they look like sections are mass produced and welded and bolted together to form the hulls of these ships, there are no graceful lines or sweeping wings, cheap and quick to produce.

I wanted these to look like they were no-frills fighting ships, but wasn’t sure how to get that effect, someone suggested that I paint them “grungy” all dark with metal panels… so I started off with a Black primer followed by an all over coat of Gun Metal.

This gave me a nice dark start for the ships, I then started to pick out a few random panels on every ship with Tinny Tin, once that was done, I looked at them and wasn’t sure if I liked them.

I am so used to painting in brighter colours for my fleets and these looked… odd.

I decided to paint all the engines next to try and take my mind off of the way the ships looked.

I coated all the insides of the engine ports with Bright Silver when this was dry I added a wash of Blue Ink leaving the very centre of the engine ( the deepest part ) once this was dry I lightly dry-brushed the edges of the outer rim of the engines with Electric Blue.

Once this was all dry I then went back to those panels on the ships and added a few random White panels on each ship followed by some Copper ones, with the Copper I picked out some of the tiny details as well.

Once all this was done I added a coat of Strong Tone to all the surfaces of the ships trying to avoid the white panels as much as I could.

And that was that, a dirty / grungy / industrial fleet ready for the table… this is a strange paint scheme for me and I am not 100% convinced by it.

I look at the ships sometimes and I think they look great the paint scheme fits them well, then I look at them another time and it doesn’t feel right!!

I am working on some decals for my space ships if I can get them done then I may add some to these, perhaps they will give these the something extra to make them feel right.

Still they are very playable as they are and I will definitely use them in my games so I am not going to worry about them too much.

So here they are see what you think.

Dreadnought
Battlecruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Fighter Carrier
Light Cruisers
Frigates
Corvettes
Engines
The blue of the engines doesn’t really show in the previous photos, hopefully in this one you can see what it is like.
The fleet so far

Come on over to my Discord server to chat about your ships that you use in Stars & Lasers!! and how you have painted them.

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6 Comments

  1. Zac

    Hi Mac
    Well I think they look awesome!
    However they don’t look ‘grungey’ they look like they just come off the assembly line!.
    But still great work.

    • Mac

      Thanks Zac,

      I was thinking that they could do with a tiny bit of “slime” or “dirt / dust” on them to grime them up a little.

      Some of the look may be because of my light box, they are not that shiny or clean looking, I think maybe the light is wrong or my camera is rubbish.

      Mac

    • Mac

      I must admit I do like the fighter carrier as well, I have just started painting the escort carrier, that has two “launch bays” one on each side, that looks fairly good as well.

      Mac

  2. Vic

    Hi Mac,
    Very nice! They do look good – and should look even better in numbers on the table top.
    And I suspect it’s the bright light giving them that ‘fresh out of the shipyard’ look – all the gunmetal schemes I’ve used in the past have looked utilitarianly dark.

    Wheres the Lebiathan? I’m sure you did one … or am I thinking of that DN?

    Bigger is batter, so they say …

    • Mac

      Hi Vic,

      Thanks, I think you may be right about the bright light as they don’t look so clean and new under normal light.

      The Dreadnought was the Leviathan!
      I had to swap it as the Leviathan wasn’t big enough so I made it a Dreadnought, I now need to design a bigger ship for the Leviathan.

      To give you an idea of size the ‘now’ Dreadnought is 100mm long x 50mm wide x 25mm high, so I may be looking at 130mm x 60mm x 35mm!! not sure yet.

      Once I do the new design I will do a test print and check the size.

      I still also need to re-do the Battleship as it didn’t turn out as I wanted so it is back to the drawing board, the only other ship I didn’t do was a Destroyer, so still some work to do.

      Mac

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