Hello! It’s been a while since I have had any quality time in the studio but I have some much needed time off work now and I intend to enjoy it!  I have had a lovely time with my family and now it is time for me to sit back at the bench, relax and escape…….

I often get sidetracked when looking through my kit stash and this weekend has been no exception! I was browsing some posts over on Brexitmodeller.com and I saw a WIP on the 1/32 Revell Viper Mk.II by Michelle Edwards. This reminded me that I had one of these kits in my stash (I actually have the Moebius release)  and I sort this kit out from the stash to have a look. Well, the next thing I know my imagination began to run riot and I found myself thinking about making something a little different from this kit.

The Viper Mk.II came from the critically acclaimed 2004 TV series and it gave the Viper a new more edgy look. In 2012 a spin off series called Blood and Chrome was piloted with a TV movie featuring a new fighter designated Viper Mk.III. This design was much more purposeful looking and came painted in a low vis grey military paint scheme that I really liked! Alas, model kits of the Mk.III are all resin kits that are beyond my means so I wanted to make an in between “What if ” fighter from the Mk.II kit that would have some of the characteristics for the Mk.III fighter.

 

Here is the standard Viper Mk.II :

The kit comes with decals to portray this Cylon War livery in Galactica markings.

This is the Viper Mk.III from Blood and Chrome :

As you can you can see the Mk.III paint scheme and more aggressive stance makes for quite a striking appearance. This is what I wanted to do with my build so I am going to convert my standard Mk.II Viper into my imaginary Viper Mk.IIA

So here’s the story so far!

The kit:

Test fitting:

The plastic on these Moebius kits is quite hard and not flexible so dry fitting everything and studying the assembly instructions is critical as the design of this fighter calls for some clever engineering. If you test fit everything first then you shouldn’t have any problems. The figure in the background is going to be my pilot once she has been modified to look like a Colonial Fleet pilot.

Work began on the cockpit:

I added a few details here, but most of what you see is out of the box. The seat harness is from my spares box and laid out from using set photo’s from the TV series as a guide.

Painting:

I had assembled the Viper as per the instructions with the exception of the afterburners. These I have removed as I plan to replace them with new ones from my spares box. More on that later! After watching videos on the Black basing paint method on Doogsmodels.com I wanted to give this method a try. A visit to Matt’s website and YouTube channel is well worth it. He’s a very talented modeller and I think i can learn a lot from him.

So first up in the paint process is to paint the entire model black:

Next, we take a darker colour than the paint scheme colour in my case, a dark grey and I paint a random marbling pattern all over the model. This was my first attempt at this technique and I have to say it was much easier than I expected it to be. The trick here is to get in close with the airbrush on a narrow spray band then move in a fluid, random pattern across the models surface. I repeated the process using medium blue paint to add more depth.

I then sprayed my primary medium grey colour over the model in several fine mists to build up colour and also to show the paint effect to its best advantage. I am quite pleased wit my first attempt at black basing and I hope to improve on my technique as time goes on.

This is how far I have got for today. I am going to add markings and weapons to this Viper in due course. Right now, I need to crack on with some other builds that require my attention!

Take care and Happy Modelling!

Darren.