Work in Progress Wednesday Special

It’s Wednesday but we’ve got something different for this week. Having completed the Dropship conversion I started last week, we present a step by step guide to how I converted the miniature from 15mm APC to 6mm (or 3mm) Dropship. You can see the finished model above with some 6mm tanks and powered infantry.

The project started when I was on the hunt for a real bulk dropship for my 6mm and 3mm forces. I went for the 15mm M58 Sugama APC from Brigade Models.

The main hull is resin and the grav engines are separate metal pieces, so I had a play around with those to see how I could make them into the dropships engines.

I used the ends of 8 wall plugs to act as the engine thrusters and cut the tops at an angle so the metal engine pieces would rest at a nice angle.

I then started removing some of the model detail and replacing and adding more that would be in keeping of a space going dropship. This included domes, bits of angled putty, some turrets and even bits of paper which work quite well to break up surfaces.

I then sprayed the whole thing with a grey primer.

And because I was going to use a Vallejo Xpres color over the model, I painted some areas a different colour to provide some contrast.

I didn’t actually have a black wash and so used Vallejo Xpress color Wicked Purple. This worked fine, but was a bit tricky to cover such a big model.

After that was dry I went over the whole model with a gun metal drybrush. I thought I was going to leave it at that but decided I wanted some more colour to the model. So I did a second dry brush using grey to dull down the metal, and then painted whole sections with Tank Drab. A little bit of white for various markings and some blue for the bridge completed the paintjob.

I wanted the dropship to work for both 6mm and 3mm miniatures, here we have the finished dropship lifting off after disembarking a 3mm force of tanks and mechs.

I’ll definitely be looking for some more miniatures I can convert into dropships for the smaller scales.