M-14

The scene is simple: a pirate operator sitting on the hull of his drone, a can in his hand, taking a break between one mission and the next.

The drone

M-14 is part of the Pirates of the Death Fangs, my sci-fi universe. The code identifies the scene: as a personal choice I decided that every scene is identified by a letter and a number, picked at random, there’s no logic behind it, it’s just a way to avoid waiting for inspiration to strike with the perfect name every time.

The drone is an assistant for recon and stealth warfare operations; it has no visible weapons but it’s lethal all the same. Like all the pirates’ drones it’s curious, protective and chatty, but precise when it works. In the scene the operator rests while the drone looks around and meets the viewer’s gaze.

The design

The first blockout took shape in Nomad Sculpt: square blocks for the hull and legs, and a mannequin sitting on top with the can already in hand. The hull and the mechanical parts were designed in Plasticity, then I went back to Nomad for the details.

The pilot was sculpted from scratch in Nomad, like all the pirate characters. In the test fits, next to the hexapod, I had placed a standing mannequin in 1/20, the scale of every work in this universe, which I used as a size reference.

Printing

The scene was printed on an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra with Elegoo 8K resin, 0.03 mm layer height, slicing in Lychee. There are more than 60 parts, and I redesigned the hull several times to make the pieces fit together better. The details, on the other hand, gave no trouble at all.

The break

By February the base was finished and the hull painted, but the pilot was still grey. The work stopped until the end of September because in the meantime I built a real hexapod: an autonomous six-legged recon robot. But that’s another story.

The base

The base components, that is the frame, the grating, the pipes and the concrete block, were designed in Nomad and Plasticity and 3D printed, like everything else.

For the ground I made a mix of aquarium sand in different grain sizes, acrylic filler and floor wax. Polishing floor wax behaves like an acrylic medium and has the advantage of being cheap: if you make groundwork mixes, you can use it instead of medium. I added acrylic paint to the mix for the starting tone, in four shades: black, grey, dark brown and light brown.

The painting

The drone was painted with airbrush and brush. The base coats are all Tamiya colours, thinned with a mix of acetone and isopropyl alcohol: I change the ratio depending on how matt I want the finish. The bright colours are from the new Vallejo AIR range, both Model and Game, which I found excellent. The figure was painted with the same Vallejo, also with airbrush and brush.

The hexagon pattern on the hull was done with the airbrush and a stencil, cut with a cutting plotter from airbrush masking film, which bent to the shape of the part without any trouble.

The pirate logo on the platform is a stencil too.

The sensor lenses are in UV resin, to give the look of polished glass.