Moebius Colonial Viper Mk. II

You know you hear the theme song in your head looking at this :D

So I finally completed my Moebius Viper Mk II model kit.  It's a fantastic kit - very well put together, with great decals.  I had a lot of fun putting it together.

After assembling the cockpit, I painted it and put on a few decals.  I actually skipped a lot of the decals for the instrument panel because they are tiny and I just do not have the confidence with decals yet to apply them.  Still I think it turned out very well, I drybrushed some of the little switches with lighter grey to make them stand out, and painted the little joystick buttons.  The seat is tan, the base color is neutral gray, and the joystick is dark ghost gray.

Next, of course, I glued the cockpit tub into the fuselage.  Everything snap-fit together wonderfully, and it would probably have held together even if I didn't glue it.

I did paint the engine assembly and guns in Testors Gunmetal Gray before glueing the entire model together as you see here.  The rest would be easy enough to paint after the model was fully assembled.

Next was the decals.  Some of the larger decals did rip while applying, but I managed to even them out before they dried.  All in all it was pretty painless decal work, and you never really notice just how many tiny emblems and warning notes are on these planes!  For example, it's not even readable in this picture, but on the front edge of each wing reads "Do not step!"

Finally, the full painted, complete model!  Details were painted, the name and serial number were added, and it's looking sharp.  Moebius makes a really great model kit, and I'm really wanting their Original Galactica kit in the future.


BONUS!

If you've made it this far, I got a few other things painted this past week:

First up, the beautiful and deadly star of Babylon 5: Crusade - The Excalibur.  While mostly a gray ship in general, I managed to do a very muted red detail on the front, as well as little window lights along the winds and hanger bay area, not the mention the engine glow and the bridge.  I also happened to paint those tiny Vipers in the background!

The muted red design on the bow

It's a beautiful and unique ship that I'm happy to have in my collection.

Finally, just tonight, I finished painting a few fighters.  To the left, I painted 4 Colonial Raptor miniatures found in the Battlestar Galactica Board Game.  They're detailed little miniatures and fairly easy to paint.

In the center are my Centauri Sentri fighters.  Only seen a handful of times in Babylon 5, Centauri fighters are deadly and advanced fighters on par with Earthforce's Starfury fighters and clearly superior to the Narn's Frazi heavy fighters.  The paint scheme on these guys is ostentatious and regal, and came out surprisingly well considering I had to mix the purple color myself.

Thanks so much for taking a look, and I'll be posting more soon.