Giiirls just wanna have... work ? - Colony 87 Mechanic

Today's is a special model... what's so special about it ? Well this model hasn't been released yet ! You might remember the Colony87 range run by Jon/Axiom and the splendid miniatures released in the Colony87 Kickstarter last year ? Well, there's another wave due for Febuary and this model is part of it. I've been kindly given the opportunity to paint those in advance and I have to say it's both an honour and a pleasure to be able to get my brushes on those !

As for the last project, the model is based on sketches from Will Beck and sculpted by the very talented Michael Anderson. Once again, the kickstarter is based on generic  28mm sci-fi models to use in RPGs and wargames.

The character here is a female mechanic which is nice as we tend to get a lot of models for men of all sorts and women seem to be left to showing their shapes... 

Her hood protects her hair and sort of hides part of a feminity and her suit conceals her shapes too. She's here to do her job.

She actually reminds me of an iconic character of the Sci-fi genre :

I really hope I don't have to tell you who Ellen Ripley is...

Painting wise, I was lucky to paint a resin master of the model which means that despite the little preparation involved, the level of details is astounding. Given the nature of the character (well, as I'm picturing it) it would have made no sense to just paint her in flashy colours so I kept real basic colours to emphasize the "mechanic" look. Just to make sure she looked like in a futuristic seting, I painted the barrel she's holding like a battery with glowing parts. I imagine those are the sort of devices needed for space crafts and all.

The battery has been weathered but I tried to keep her suit clean enough for 2 reasons : First one is that you can often notice in mechanic workshops that the best mechanics have the cleanest suits (probably because they work with care) and I wanted her to look like a good mechanic (I'll probably feel like painting a fat, careless and greedy mechanic at some point). The second reason is I wanted to let the sculpt talk since those are masters for display. Maybe I'll be tempted to add some stains here and there before varnishing her but to be honest I rarely come back on models.

Here's a quick pic of her next to some of the guys she must be used to working with... poor guys, lost and with a broken engine, how are they gonna do ?

- MAYDAY MAYDAY ! We are down!, I repeat : we are down !
- Oh my god Oh my god ! Where are we ? We're going to die, I knew it !
- It's alright guys, I'm just going to change the power module and things the turbo generator and we'll be good to go...

So here we are, I have more models coming for this project so watch this space if you want to see the rest. After my Goodwin spree, I might very well go on a Anderson spree as I've found the models I was looking for to finish a group in which I'll have some models of the first wave of Colony87. I might even end up with the complete set done ! In the meantime expect some more Frostgrave and surely some unexpected (for me) odds...