'Water Feature' from SanderS: All Aboard!

Hoi,

Before this Challenge started I decided not to have a plan, sure I had some figures I really looked forward to painting, but no specific schedule was made. However every time I want to start some of the figures I really want to paint (my Necromunda stuff, Gaunt's Ghosts and some Indian Mutiny figures) I get side-tracked. First by the need to paint my Blood Bowl Goblins for the Sports Theme round, next the Austrian 7YW figures, most recently all the Heroquest figures as well as the GI Joe vehicles. So now last week I thought I could start some Necromunda figures. WRONG! I misjudged the schedule for the Theme rounds, I actually believed the Water Feature Round deadline was next week. So freaked out of my mind I have started my entry which, as a result, is not quite done yet but well enough to enter anyway.

Funnily enough when Curt anounced the themes I basically had ideas for all of them except this water feature thing. Blood Bowl for Sports, Battletech mechs for the Mercenaries round ( I never came round to actually painting and entering them) and I still have loads of options for the Fellowship round, but none for the Water Feature, I even grumbled at the stupidity of this theme, seriously who comes up with this? What do you want me to paint aquarium plants? Then my brother came to visit, he looked at my cluttered games table and said in an accusing tone of voice "I gave you that GI Joe platform to actually USE, it's been lying in this table for 1,5 years now..." The proverbial lightbulb above my head shone so bright it hurt.

So without further ado here's my converted GI Joe Battle Platform: (if you click the link to the left you can see the difference between the painted and un-painted version)

Let me start by saying that it's not finished and I had some real posers while constructing it. Since I wanted to keep as many original features as possible and keep the surface "playable" and easily accesible, I decided not to remodel the interior. I have quite a lot of resin terrain pieces like computer stations, armoury closets, medical facilities and the like I can use to dress the scene but none of them got painted in time due to lack of time. There's two "rooms" on the platform, one is the control room seen here at the top right corner, which I covered with a roof. The glass windscreen is the original one which is actually placed on a computer console rim, but that made the walls too high for 28mm figures so I left it out and roofed the windscreen.

The strange colomn in the room is the leg of the swivel chair for the action figures, but I willl use it for a great many options: operations table, map table, computer console etc. This picture also shows the moulded on stowage items which really benefitted from the painting.

The other room is the armoury and has no roof yet, that as well did not get done in time for the deadline. The armoury has moulded on crates of shells and a small ladder leading to the main platform.

Next up is the ramp this is a fold-up ramp that can be set up in 3 ways.
Folded in stowed position:

Deployed as a jetty for craft to dock on or to connect with the shore:

Or sloped down into the water for amfibic vehicles to enter or for access to a beach.

The hinges were broken and I had to fix them with plasticcard, not my favourite job.
There's also 3 smaller pads on the platform. I had to get rid of the original weapons mounted on them because they were action figure scale. Luckily I had two die cast HAL lasers (they are 28mm scale) of which one had a broken carriage so I made a mount for it to be placed on one of the pads. It is magnetised and looks great.

The two smaller pads have hatches on them that lift-off to reveal mechanics underneath.

The second smaller pad has the Platform's original crane on it (still working by the way) which was sited on the square base behind the armoury, but I put it up on the pad.

The last of the pads is the Chopper-pad. 

Next to the platform itself I also finished two Devilfish speedboats and 8 torpedoes (long live WI's free Cruel Sea goodies). The yellow torpedoes are for the COBRAY Moray, i.e. the big red boat which I had already painted. The orange torpedoes are for the two little orange Devilfishesheshes.

Some more shots:

So painted for this entry is:
- one Battle platform, when cramped together the size is 6"x 12"x 14"
- 2 x 28mm vehicle (40 points)
- 8 x torpedoes (I'd suggest 2 points each?)
All the other figures and craft were already painted and are purely for scale and scenic purposes only.  

No Water Feature Theme round would be complete without a suitable nautical song: