Saturday, 25 October 2025

"Now Known As The First Country To Land A Man On The Moon..."

 "...The Soviet Union developed a proud and complex relationship with space travel."

This pair of 32mm Soviet Cosmonauts are produced by "Black Site Studios" for their "Lunar" skirmish game, and was created using "Elegoo" Water Washable Resin on a Mars 5 3D Printer. The STL (Standard Triangle Language) file comes as part of the company's Two-Player Digital Starter Set and were actually upscaled by 1% and 2% due to the sculpts appearing somewhat smaller than the cast resin Eastern Bloc astronauts I already own. 

Indeed, the entire set came as something of a major disappointment to me, as rather than provide me with six multi-piece rocketeers (three NASA and three Russian) - similar to the bitz found on their five-figure sprue SKU: LNR6805BSS - Soviet Cosmonauts, it instead just provided me with three fully-posed miniatures instead. As a result, having noticed that the model's air-tank was noticeably shorter than his physical comrades-in-arms (despite him being stood on a rocky base), I enlarged the STL on "Chitubox" Basic and mirrored one of the spacemen to provide a little more variety.

"Black Site Studios" WIPs - This trio of NASA Astronauts have been primed in "Two Thin Coats" Celestial Blue 

The Cosmonauts were first super-glued onto a "Citadel" 30mm circular stand and undercoated with plenty of "Two Thin Coats" Sanguine Scarlet. They were then both drenched in "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson, dry-brushed with (more) "Two Thin Coats" Sanguine Scarlet and had their face-plates/mass shotguns layered in "Citadel" Abaddon Black.  The Soviet's helmet visors were subsequently treated to a combination of "Vallejo" Heavy Sienna, Gold and "Citadel" Agrax Earthshade.

Lastly, each figures' firearm was given a lick of "Citadel" Abaddon Black, "Vallejo" Gunmetal and "Citadel" Nuln Oil. The hand-drawn illustration on the hand-weapon's item card for "Lunar" shows part of the gun also being red. Yet having already used this colour on the astronaut (as well as using a red flock for my Martian/Moon basing) I thought this was probably overkill - so just left the shotguns metallic.

"Wargames Foundry" WIPs - This Napoleonic British Grenadier is being progressed from the boots up

Alongside my latest Russian reinforcements, I have also started working on three more NASA astronauts too. Just like the Soviets, this trio of spacemen come from the Two-Player Digital Starter Set. However, they were created on my old Mars 3 Pro 3D printer and suffered a few failures - which has resulted in two of them receiving some additional cast resin hands/equipment and bitz that came with the original Lunar Core Game way back in July 2021.

In addition, the end is now most definitely in sight with the (tiny) four-figure British Grenadier unit I want to field for my Napoleonic "Black Powder" games. I've still got a few more details to pick out on these soldiers taken from the "Wargames Foundry" blister B041 Late Line Infantry Flank Company Shouldered Arms. But I should still manage to get the quartet fully-painted before my personal deadline expires at the end of the month...

No comments:

Post a Comment