Belter Station Workbench

Given that I’ve started taking pictures of everything Jump War-related, it’s no surprise that I took pictures of the Belter Space Station in progress. For those who don’t remember, here’s what it looked like at the start:

Belter Trading Station, by Irrational Designs

Here’s what it looked like after priming white, and then adding a grey base coat. Specifically, Reaper Miniatures‘ Stone Grey #09086.

Base coated with Stone Grey.

As I was base-coating the station, I noticed small pits and bumps that I hadn’t noticed before. Given where they were, I assume the were artifacts of the printing process that weren’t quite polished. On the bright side, they were in spots that could be painted in shadow, and observers would never know the difference.

Still, I decided to avoid washes and inks. I went semi-Dallimore and put together a triad, using the adjacent Reaper shades, Shadowed Stone (#09085) for the lining, and Weathered Stone (#09087) for the highlights.

Lined with Shadowed Stone.

(Y’know, with all these links I put up, I ought to get an Amazon affiliate account, and link to where that’s sold on Amazon. Don’t be surprised when it happens.)

Highlighted with Weathered Stone.

Then I moved onto the detailing, and skipped taking some photos. Here’s a shot of what I did to one quadrant:

Belters refuel with Octan!

I’m not sure you can tell with the orange bottle cap beneath, but the antennas got orange lights put on top, and the big navigational lights were painted green on the “top” of the station, and yellow on the bottom. Here’s another quadrant. (You can see the moss green I used off to one side, while the yellow was GW’s Flash Gitz Yellow.)

To a belter, an In-n-Out burger is a great luxury.

The crossed palm trees weren’t painted on. Instead, I used a red 05 Micron pen.

I continued my corporate theme going around the station. In this third quadrant, I added a Hilton hotel. (Click on the picture if it’s not immediately clear on your screen.) That logo was painted on.

Belters stay at the Hilton when they’re at the station!

Here’s the finished station, showing off the fourth quadrant. That flag on “the roof of a building” is the flag of a human colony on a planet that orbits a red dwarf. It looks a little more colorful to them, because that black is actually an infrared that the colonists have been genetically altered to see.

The finished station.

Finally, the station in an action shot, being visited by Ven’Tril.

Ven’Tril visits the station.

Some final thoughts:

As I’ve mentioned, even the “polished” version of the printed material shows evidence of the process. It doesn’t show up on the painted station, but that has to do with my painting choices. (That experience painting Xtreme Hobby’s miniatures was good for something!) Otherwise, the model held primer and paint very nicely.

As for details, there was an awful lot of bare canvas. If that kind of thing is not for you, then steer clear of this model. But for me, it gave me the opportunity to do some things that I’d been meaning to try, and I’m pleased with the results.

Finally, the design of the station was kind of space opera. (I can’t decide if it’s intentional that the center ring looks like the outside of Space Mountain.) Filling and emptying the fuel tanks* would require re-balancing a spinning station, as would a docked vessel. While you could argue that the inner sphere is full of ballast that gets relocated to balance the station’s center of mass, the structures suggest an artificial gravity running through the station like a plate. That’s the main reason I didn’t paint any windows — painting them looking outward would mean that the station wasn’t spinning for gravity, and painting them perpendicular to the spin would challenge the observer in a way that I’m not sure the design suggests.

That said, it fits right in with any ship that looks like it’s got artificial gravity.

*Somebody better skilled than I could paint them as greenhouses.