Cheap 20' Shipping Containers

Went to Daiso with my wife this morning to get some garland to redo the wreaths for the door. As we were browsing the home decor section I noticed these tins that were styled after ConEx/Shipping containers. Eyeballing them at the store I realized they were pretty damn close to 28mm. I bought four to take home and check.

Measurments put them at about 1/53, which is a little smaller than the 1/50 I would prefer, but at ¥100 for fully painted containers that I just need to seal and weather... I am more than willing to overlook the slight reduction of size. They come in two basic liveries, ONE - Ocean Network Express (in pink and light grey variants) and CTNRX "Everything you can imagine is real" (in blue, maroon, and dark green variants). The roof of each is actually the lid and is grooved to allow another one to nest on top. I imagine I might be able to make some craft foam inserts to allow them to double as miniature storage as well - probably a small gang/fireteam of four minis to each container.

So after picking my son up from school I went back and bought all of stock they had. Here they are in all their glory. Think I need more...

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UPDATE: On Tuesday I was working in Kanazawa, where there happens to be another Daiso... so I bought all the containers they had as well. I am currently at 31.

Eyehole Brush - you know, a brush... for your eyehole.

Back from a makeup-brushes-for-painting-minis run at the ¥100 store... got me an "eyehole brush".

I'm still not going to paint eyes on my minis... but it's nice to see daily proof of your job security.

Vietnam-era Flying Boxcar

I have two of these Disney Planes Cabbie toys. They are a wonderful compromise on scale for table top use. Shorter wings and thicker fuselage fits in well. One of them will be a mercenary plane based on the seaplan from The Expendables, and the other will be a Vietnam-era transport.

Paint is mostly done (it still needs a red prop warning line on the fuselage), and I began applying decals - from a number of different sheets - today. I need a decent day of low humidity to clear coat and I probably will add a few warning decals still. Cockpit windows, weathering, prop magnets, and landing gear need to be finished up.

Markings and paint scheme are fictional. I decided to do a Marines C-119 painted in a manner similar to the AC-119 gunships with black lowers and "South-East Asian" camouflage upper surfaces. GreenStuff World's decal sheet had an appropriate name, "Rice Pattie [sic] Hattie", that seemed something a Marine aircrew might paint on the aircraft. The scorpion tail marking is from Gnomish Workshop and is a call out to a fictional squadron from a t-shirt I got at Target years ago.

Elevated Train

I began disassembly and priming of one of the two train cars I picked up. I had originally seen these trains at Toys R Us in Matto about nine years ago. They are a deluxe version of a popular line of friction powered train toys that have light and sound effects. These are Hankyu 9000 series trains, a later version of the trains I used to commute when I was an exchange student in Kobe in 1997.

I didn't pick them up at the time because they were about twice the cost of the regular trains in the line. However they recently went OOP and I managed to snag two used ones on the intertubes. I wanted these because of the walk-through cab design that reminds me of the El in Chicago and NYC subway trains.

The intent is to use the bronze-base metal technique to make them look like scuzzy urban trains, then apply some blue striping and grafitti decals, before finishing off with a few washes to dirty them up more. For those not aware, the 'bronze-base' technique is a way to quickly paint tarnished metal by applying a drybrush of aluminum or gunmetal over a bronze basecoat. The peek-through of the bronze creates a rusty or grimy effect in the crevices. I tried this technique out on an Ameri-Towne building I had laying about and was very pleased with the results.

Atenociti's Metro Terminus

I assembled and primed this a while back, but I wasnt satisfied with the poster images supplied with the kit. The downside of speaking Japanese, is that when random text is copied and pasted to make cyberpunk graphics... it bugs me. So today I searched for a some advertising images from the Cyberpunk 2077 video game.

I resized them to the appropriate dimensions in GIMP and printed them on photo paper. The result is a much more appealing bus stop shelter.

Dai-Kanon Statue Terrain Piece

A repaint of the gold Kaga Dai-Kanon statue I bought years ago. Verdigris'd up for use in Far Eastern settings.

Weathered Buildings

This is a tenement from TT Combat. It's not a particularly detailed MDF building, but they are extremely affordable. It went together quickly and I modified the garden appartment to place the balcony away from the street. Basic paint, and then lots of washes. Added some grafitti, both decal and hand drawn.

I also built and painted a few of the Sarrissa Precision South-East Asian building I got. Its just a basic brown undercoat with lots of washes to make them look aged and weathered. Going to cut up some old towels for the thatch roofs.