Quick Build of the Kauth ATV

Built this quickly last night just to verify the color scheme. Still some adjustment needed where the tracks attach but it's minimal. Still very impressed with how this came together. Next time I'll build the interior cabin as well.

Download your own copy here:
http://roebeast.blogspot.com/2019/11/digitally-colored-version-of-kauth-atv.html

Digitally Colored Version of the Kauth ATV

I finally finished my first version of the Kauth ATV tracked vehicle. Thanks to the image wizardry of Rubén Andrés Martínez A., I had a clean copy of the Dennis Kauth ATV to work from. I went with a basic olive color scheme and tried to keep it from looking overly militaristic since I see this as more of an exploration vehicle along the lines of the Star Frontiers Explorer vehicles.

There are no instructions for these models but Rubén's built versions should give you a good idea of how to build them.

Several of the symbols that I used are from Ron Cobb's Standard Semiotic Symbols from the film Alien. I used the Scotch and Soda icons from this post.

My coloring on this model is not perfect but I think it should go together fairly easily. If you find anything truly catastrophic please let me know but otherwise I'm considering this first version as done.

I'm also posting the cleaned up versions that Rubén sent me so that others can have a go at creating their own color schemes. I'd really like to see what you come up with so if you create a new color scheme, please leave a comment with a link to where I can see it.

Thanks to Steven Hildebrand and Rubén Andrés Martínez A. for the imaging help and as always, thanks to Dennis for designing such a cool set of vehicles. I hope he approves of our efforts.

NOTE: Be sure to right click and save the linked image and not just the thumbnail. These should be 8.5"x11" at 300dpi.

Star Frontiers Adventure Squares.

My love of the 1982 TSR game Star Frontiers has made me a bit of an obsessive, at least when it comes to the miniatures. Although I've had to slog through a good amount of lead rot, I've managed to collect nearly all of the SF monsters and player characters. I recently scored a lot of blister packs that included the Star Frontiers Adventure Squares on the back of each. Now while these would have been really cool when I was twelve, forty eight year old me demands a bit more pizzazz. So I scanned all six, I think the whole collection, and colored them in Photoshop.

We're having an adventure... JUST LIKE THE GOONIES!

I think that these were originally created by pasting up photocopies or the like and so many of the elements are used several times. I used the same system but did not have time to completely polish each final image so there might be some oddities and inconsistencies.

Another issue was the the squares were actually 7/8" and not perfectly square so they won't always match up. I think they were meant to be rooms and not necessarily tiled together so this would not have been a huge issue. And trying to put them together leads to a lot of awkward floorplans with portals going into the back of computer banks etc. The versions posted here are exactly 4"x3" and I've included a blank image of the floor-tiles so you can use them as connecting corridors.

Let me know if you know of more than the six designs shown here and if you plan on using these in your own Star Frontiers games.

Monster Man Contest Voting

The first round of voting has begun on James Holloway's Monster Man Contest. Bop over to his page and check it out!

Anyone can vote for their three favorite entries.

And may I humbly suggest a favorable vote for my own meager offering? 

Number 24...

THE SLATHAX!!!

If she's chosen as the final winner she'll be resculpted and turned into an actual metal model!

You have until December 13th!!!

Monster Man Contest Entry: The Slathax

Cheers to whoever did the layout for Star Frontiers for choosing Univers for the interior text. Makes matching it up very easy.

James Holloway of the Monster Man Podcast has recently launched a contest to reach back into our gaming past and use cheap toys as inspiration for monsters for our games.

Many of the original D&D monsters came from such toys, such as the owlbear, rust monster, and bulette, and James has given me a great opportunity to add my own spin on things. 

Artifacts of our shared fantastical history.

While at Gen Con 2017 I got to both see some of these plastic monsters in the 50th Anniversary of Gen Con Museum but also picked up a pack of the "lost monsters", a group of "could've been" creatures that never made the cut into D&D proper.

"Exit, STAGE LEFT!"

Radio Controlled Armadillos and Hug-A-Saurs might still make the big time someday.

These included the above creatures plus the subject of my contest entry. At first glance this toy seems to be a simple T-Rex style dinosaur doing an MC Hammer dance. But on closer inspection it's clear that the torso and tail are more like an earthworm body than a true dinosaur. Since I've recently been running a Star Frontiers campaign my first thought for baddies goes to the worm-like Sathar race. Sather like to breed terrible monsters and unleash them on unsuspecting frontier planets to sow death and destruction.

Thus the Slathax is born!

"Slathax feel pretty. Slathax go on date. Slathax choose lip-color suit Slathax complexion."

All I really did was repaint the toy. This was actually a lot of fun since it was more like painting a toy soldier than a detailed gaming miniature. The mold lines were a pain but came off somewhat by using a sharp hobby knife and slicing them away.

Then I just painted it without using any sort of primer. Like Reaper Bones, this rubbery plastic will not react well to spray enamels and really doesn't need any priming, just go straight to heavily applied acrylics.

"He’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes after ya, he doesn’t seem to be livin’ until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white, and then – aww, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin’,"

I also did a drawing of the Slathax so that I could create a set of Star Frontiers style monster stats. This is really where the fun of this process happens as you look at this little piece of plastic and try to imagine what a "real world" version of it would be like. The wormy body, rockily squamous limbs and shark-like mouth lead to the determination that this creature would be a large, burrowing predator. Thinking about Sathar military tactics gave me the idea that this beast would be an infiltration unit, designed to sow fear and terror behind enemy lines.

"You guys hear something? Dudes! Seriously! I HEARD SOMETHING!"

A bit of color to the original art.

I really had a lot of fun with this contest entry and encourage you to do the same thing and to ENTER JAMES'S CONTEST!

Trash Bashing a Dralasite Observation Speeder

The Dralasite observation speeder, "Poogie's Punchline".
Shown are crew-members Poogie, Drizzyl, and Hamook.

Thanks to James Hall for his "Barrels and Bottle-tops" challenge on the Trash Bash Bits Facebook page. The challenge was to use the standard barrel shape created by gluing two bottle caps together in a new and interesting way.

My entry is a Dralasite Observation Speeder, a fast, long-range flyer designed to explore a planet's surface and to be able to out-run anything that might want to do it harm.

After first building the engines out of several types of caps, I then found a broken kitchen timer to use as the hull. The rest just developed organically as I glued stuff together.

I wish I would have had more time to add more detail to this and for a better paint-job but sometimes speed is of the essence.

The metal bits on the back are from Jeff Wilhelm at Dragon Forge Design:

http://www.dragonforge.com/…/for%20sale/conversion_parts.htm

The Kotobukiya Option Parts are available from Hobby Link Japan:
http://hlj.com/product/KBYP-115R/Sci

Painting a Trash Bash Building Video

Four months later and I finally managed to paint the observation tower/power plant.

Coloring Vintage Game Stuff: Star Wars and Star Frontiers.

Just a quick post about a couple of pieces I've digitally colored lately. 

The first is an Adventure Square from TSR originally printed on the back of Star Frontiers Miniature blistercards. 

The computer screen says "SATHAR ARE STINKY".

Always with the Dralasites. The place is lousy with them.

The original art.

The second is a FireHawke RepulsorTank from the West End Star Wars Miniatures supplement Imperial Entanglements. I use these pieces to practice my coloring plus it's just fun to revisit this classic art.

With a blue Imperial symbol as per the description in the book. The templates by Stephen Crane, as seen below, are incredibly precise and filled with cool details. The book contains extensive descriptions of the unit markings and other information about this particular unit, the Hell's Hammers.

With a dark Gray symbol, my personal preference.

Painted Star Frontiers Megasaurus

Back to the vintage Star Frontiers minis. This time it's the massive, powerful, deadly, but still cute as a button Megasaurus. Mostly damp-brushing and washes for this fellow along with static grass and jute twine weeds for the base. I like this mini a lot but I'm not sure it captures the dread and fear these creatures are supposed to inspire.

Scared yet?

Good thing Dralasites are so chewy.

Painting Vintage Star Frontiers Minis.

Having played Star Frontiers in the early 1990s, I have a soft spot for this forgotten game from TSR back when that company was the galactic center of the gaming universe. I found some of the miniatures a few years back and thought that it would be fun to paint them up. Unfortunately the boxes that I found had severe cases of lead rot and most of the minis were unusable. Luckily my buddy Dave, who also ran our SF sessions in the 90s, had some beautifully clean castings so I at least got to paint a few of them.

Lead rot can be caused by acids from cardboard leeching out and causing moisture in the air surrounding a mini to begin the rot. Shrink wrapping causes this to be even worse. Be wary of shrink wrapped boxes on Ebay and keep you minis in plastic that has good airflow. Don't let this happen to your vintage minis.

So far I've finished five minis. 3 Dralasites, 1 Vrusk in spacesuit, and the newest, a human in spacesuit with jet-pack. I now working on a Sathar in spacesuit, then a Yazirian. I'm also thinking about sculpting some of my own minis to add to the collection. 

I really enjoyed Star Frontiers and was greatly disappointed by Alternity which promised to be SF's sequel in spirit if not actuality. But luckily I still have some of these fun minis and all of the original rules and modules for SF are available online. Might be time for another Star Frontiers campaign. And this time I'm not playing a Humma medic.

The amoeboid Dralasites are one of my favorite races.

They both seem to be pointing their pistols for shooting birds.

A Vrusk in spacesuit and "Doorknob" pistol.

Because ringed planets mean SCIENTIFICTION!

And finally a human! Spacesuit and jet pack. I really dig the guns on the shoulders.

Notice base sculpted to show blast effect.

A bit heavy on the ratio of Dralasites but still a solid party.

A cool Wiki site about the various races:
http://starfrontiers.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Playable_Character_Races

Lost Minis wiki with all of the Star Frontiers minis:
http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Star_Frontiers_(TSR)