Well I started with a some pixels on a screen as I designed what I thought would be two warring factions in my new rules that I am in the process of writing.
Actually to be honest I wanted two forces to use in my own games, so I set about designing the two lots of ships.
I next printed out all of the models… a few times as the files were not exactly right, but eventually I ended up with the 3D printed models on my desk and I thought they looked good, and very very close to what I had imagined they would look like.
So I started the process of getting them ready for painting, I based them on plastic sheet and they were ready for the next stage.
I then added milliput to the bases to represent the sea and waited for it to dry, my sculpting skills are not the best, but they turned out ok.
Next up was priming everything, black for the bases and light grey for the ships.
The Valtrois Imperium fleet was going to be heavily armoured so for them I then added a coat of dark grey (Luftwaffe Uniform) as they were going to be mainly grey, nothing fancy for them.
With the Zephyros Coalition fleet I wanted something a little bit different, so I went with a whacky camo-striped colouring.
This was Faded Grey (Denim colour), white and Luftwaffe Uniform again, this I just painted randomly diagonally across each ship.
Next up was to add a little detailing so I hit all the gun barrels and the Zephyros ship funnels with Matt Black, then added the deck colour where needed on the ships, this was just a base coat of Leather Brown.
When these were dry I hit the funnels with Tinny Bits and the gun barrels with a coat of Gun Metal, when the funnels were dry I added a very thin coat of Hammered Copper.
The last thing I did before adding any weathering was to give all the decking a light dry-brush with Buff.
At this point things were still looking ok, even with my bad painting.
Once all this was dry, I added a very watered-down coat of Agrax Earthshade over everything and let it dry.
For the bases I watered down three paints to make three washes, a Turquoise, Faded Blue and Luftwaffe Uniform, these I “sloshed” that’s the very technical term for splashing them on the bases around the ships randomly… I will be honest I really didn’t know what this would look like once it was dry, so I had a really uneasy couple of hours waiting for this all to dry.
Well it may not be perfect but it doesn’t look to bad, at least now that it has a coat of Gloss Varnish covering it.
So back to the ships to finish off, I added a few very watery and thin streaks of Rust paint to some of the panels on the ships and did a few last-minute tiny touch up corrections on places where I had painted over bits etc.etc.
And then I hit every ship with a good coat of Matt Varnish, and that is it, two fleets done and ready for gaming.
So there they are, two starter fleets for the new Steam Ship rule set, looking fairly good for the tabletop.
