Helian Frigate

[mangozac]

It will be pretty obvious to my followers that I'm a big fan of small scale, highly detailed space ship models. As with many of you my good hobby friend and mega talented artist Vaaish and I were both bummed at the demise of the Battlefleet Gothic range over a year ago and set in motion plans to create our own line of highly detailed space ship models in the aesthetic that we love. Thus Battlegroup Helios was born.

Vaaish has come up with a beautiful style for the first fleet (known as Helians) and created a stunning 3D model for the cruiser sized vessels (you can read about it here). Now that the 3D printing is under way (we had a couple of false starts) I have begun work on the Helian frigate design. I'm doing this as a traditional scratchbuild (although maybe I should call it a hybrid scratchbuild, considering the processes I'm using), since I prefer to work like that rather than 3D modelling.

Fortunately Vaaish flexed his creative muscles again and drew me some awesome sketches to work from:


I then used Inkscape to draw vector artwork over the top of the sketches, working out all of the shapes required for the main forms of the design. Note how close Aaron's freehand symmetry is!


From there I used my CNC router and a 1mm diameter cutter to cut out the shapes from various thickness styrene sheets. I forgot to take a photo by the result looks very similar to CNC cut terrain as it is supplied. It's then a matter of trying to work out how all of these tiny bits are supposed to go together. And I do mean tiny: the parts look much larger on screen, but the overall length is approximately 55mm.

The base shape is starting to take form. Things are very rough at the moment and not many details are actually glued on (they've just been sat in place for this photo), but it gives a pretty good feel for the design. It's now just a matter of slowly filling in details. My next step is to fill in the prow area with Milliput.


I'm trying to get a little bit done each night, so hopefully it shouldn't take too long to complete. Once I have some resin copies I'll then be cutting them up to make other weapon fitout variants.

Thanks for looking!

[Cneo]

/clap

 

[Zorcon]

Awesome!

[horizon]

It will be pretty obvious to my followers that I'm a big fan of small scale, highly detailed space ship models.

Slick ship.

[Jimmy Zimms]

Awesome to see the process at work. And yes, Aaron's artist competency sickens me in the best possible way!

[Pix]

  Incredible !!!
How many are thinking to produce for this fleet ?

And your were talking about a seconf fleet ?
Really ? 
Could we have some spoiler on it ?

[mangozac]

Thanks guys! I slapped some putty on the prow and began initial work on the engines last night! I'll post another update when I have the engines attached

How many are thinking to produce for this fleet ?

We'll have a standard range of ships from small escorts right up to a battleship.

And your were talking about a seconf fleet ?
Really ? 
Could we have some spoiler on it ?

We actually plan to make 3 fleets (gradually, not all at once). The next one is still secret. And the third one we haven't even started thinking about designs for yet.

[Pix]

  3 ?

Thanks for the quick feedback.
I am really looking forward to see the development of this fleet(s).

By the way will you develop some fleet list with them ?

(A french BFGaddict lost in an english forum)

[mangozac]

The concept of new rules/lists/etcc has been kicked around, but at this stage people can just use them as proxy models for their favourite fleets/games

(A french BFGaddict lost in an english forum)

For a French person in an English speaking forum you're doing well. I know lots of French BFG fans so maybe I should try to come and post in a French forum. I'd have to use Google translate though, as my French is very poor!

[Pix]

For a French person in an English speaking forum you're doing well. I know lots of French BFG fans so maybe I should try to come and post in a French forum. I'd have to use Google translate though, as my French is very poor!

Hahah !! And i am thinking we should also start too shake our ass to be more english-friendly with the BFG community. There is so much good stuff too share on BFG FR. Hevygear is working on the same idea.

But we should also be more present here

I am closing this extra-forum discussion, and will wait too see the next step of this project.
 

[mangozac]

Just a quick update with a bit more progress to share. The prow and bridge areas have been puttied in and engines have been mounted. As you can see I've started detailing the engines, but there's still a bit of work to do there. I need to hit the prow with some primer to check for smoothness and ensure there are no issues where the putty meets styrene. It's hard to tell, as there was superglue involved in the construction and because of its relative translucency it will appear as a gap to the naked eye.

[mangozac]

Made some more progress over the weekend. The prow banding has been done (which was actually far easier than I was expecting) and more work has been done on the stern. The really fine detailing has begun too.

I'm now deciding whether to chop the prow off off or not. It will make casting easier if the prow is separate to the rest of the model, but it makes casting faster and cheaper if it's all one piece. The downside to having it single piece is that there will be a gate attaching on the bottom of the prow, so removal will leave a flat, featureless area...

Anyway it's progressing nicely

[Jimmy Zimms]

I'd go for a single piece. The featureless area on the bottom isn't going to be seen and can easy be gussied up with a wee bit of plasticard strip if needed. The relative size and the narrowness of the hull will mean that a 2 part ship will be weak there and will require a drill and pin operation to make it secure. It's bringing back bad memories of the metal space marine strike cruiser which was notorious for getting knocked off.

[horizon]

Yeah, I agree with jimmy, single piece seems better to me.

[mangozac]

There's still a lot of bulking up to be done to the middle of the ship, so I'm sure that there would not be issues like the strike cruiser. The fact that this will be resin helps a lot too.

But at this stage a single piece is the way to go so I'll progress with that in mind.

While we're on the topic of parts, does anybody think it will be preferable to have the little dorsal turrets as separate pieces? The alternative is that I mould them with the turrets already attached but all oriented slightly differently, just to give a bit of variation. Of course, separate parts is a pain for me and increases the cost.