Monday, 22 October 2012

The Ship sets sail!

At last, the ghost galleon is assembled and painted!
Ghost Pirate Crew not included

The kit itself was fairly roughly moulded and required a bit of flashing to be sliced off with a sharp knife or scalpel. It fit together well enough, I suppose, with the only major challenge being the fixing of the hull together. Lucky for me, my wife has a set of large and small clamps that held the troublesome halves of the hull together. (Thanks darling!)






Ghastly ghostliness.
Painting the model with Revell's 'Night Color' glow-in-the-dark paint was a novel experience. I would describe it more as a resin than a typical enamel or acrylic paint, in that it requires several coats and fairly heavily laid on, to get a decent glow effect. I started with a light coat to get the ball rolling and found that, whilst wet, it has an opaque milky look, as soon as it dries, it is transparent and seemingly ineffective. The real magic happens as the paint in the bottle starts to thicken, and I began coating the model with thick goopy strands of seaweed-like paint that really gave the ship a drowned and decayed look.
By the end of the painting process, I was slathering the stuff on like wallpaper paste. It may not be pretty in the daytime, but at night, with a quick blast of the UV torch, the ghastly ghostiness is splendid!

Cursed crew now aboard
I was pleased with the final product, but there was something missing; a ghostly pirate crew! I knew just the thing.











A few years ago, my friends and I played a game called Zombies!' by Twilight Creations http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com which featured some really nifty little zombie playing pieces that were fairly close to 1:72 scale. Best of all, there were special edition versions of the zombies that glowed in the dark! So naturally, a skeleton crew was press-ganged into service and shall forever roam the decks of my ghost pirate galleon...