Irrational Number Line Games, LLC
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Cherry Pie Angel
This is the Cabbie toy from the Disney
Planes: Fire and Rescue
movie. It is a slightly deformed c-119 at roughly 1:56 scale. The fuselage
is pretty decent for 28mm, but the wingspan is about 3" short on each side.
This still results in a [b]big[/b] plane to eat up some tabletop for a 28mm game
and it is reasonably sized for vehicles. In fact, two 1:56 diecast cars
can fit inside the back and roll in or out. So this makes a nice base for a
(later?) pulp era cargo plane.
To make a good pulp (or maybe near-future postapoc) plane, this sleek toy needs
to be roughed up a bit.
Before roughing it up, I cut the ailerons and flaps and bent them to give the "pose" of the plane a little variety. From there, I added some bullet holes on one wing and the side. Then I went to scaring up the leading edges and props. The last bit was cutting along the panel lines to lift up a panel.
All in all, removing the stickers and damaging this plane took a lot of concerted effort. I still recommend it as a base for a big plane. I also recommend it for a toddler ... if they can break this thing, good luck with the rest of your house!
An aluminum paint job was in order. I used my standard silver/black paint mix to give me
a less shiny and more realistic looking metallic color. Then I went ahead and hit it with
some silver/brown to put rust in the joints.
I followed all the seams with the brown metallic, the drew it "down" for vertical surfaces
or "back" for horizontal ones. Each bullet hole got its own little rust trail!
The next step is to take an ultrafine point black pen and highlight (lowlight?) all the seams. This adds to the realism of the piece and helps make the rust look better.
Any good pulp era plane will need its very own pinup nose art. This one is my wife
as "Cherry Pie Angel". I used
HeroMachine
to make most of this piece. There was no pie, so I made her without hands, then
went through some royalty free archives on the Internet to get the line art pie I
wanted and colored it in. This is the result.
I printed her out in several different sizes so I could cut her out and decoupage her on the side of the plane. I put one on the each side of the nose (standard) and then added one to the tail since that would be more visible during play.
Here is how she looks on the finished product, with a 28mm figure and car (that fits
in the back) for reference.
Figures stand up pretty well crawling all over the plane, so this functions as much more
than a big (and beautiful) piece of blocking terrain. You can go over, under, hide,
and even run inside the back if you want.
