Interdictor O'Connor

At a time when in-system spacecraft were hard to come by, almost anything space-worthy was converted into a long-range patrol craft and pressed into service. Sensors and a long-range gun slung under a hithertoo shuttle fuselage were typical for ships like the O'Connor. This ship was named after the pilot who found it, hidden in a Nippon junkyard, and who subsequently logged over a five thousand hours in it before it was eventually replaced by one of the first of the squadrons of defense craft designed and factory-built.

Inspiration for this 'ship was the most excellent kitbash by Mr. Harugoro, "roi". I've been informed that "roi" is short for Reusch Takar, the pilot of the pictured ship, Griffon 2. The series of pictures are called "Reusch Takar's Dream" and are supposed to be a kind of photojournal of a pilot waking from "cold sleep" near the Proxima system, en route to battle... Interestingly, Harugoro was inspired by a 'ship pictured in the Model Graphix series, Maschinen Krieger Blechmann, written by our hero, Kow Yokoyama.

My ship started as a triangular fuselage that for a while was destined to be the the top layer of three of a freighter. You'll have to take my word for that, as alas, most of the curved bits got covered over by armor or exposed engineering. To me, the best part of the ship is the nose, particularly the jaw and eye made of a the side of a British armoured car, with a plastic "animal eye" stuck in the wheel-well. And it wasn't until after I did the first two layers of paint and was thinking of what kind of marking to put on it when I realized that the two aft panels - the ones with the German WWII markings - that what had been my unconcious inspiration for them were the same things on Sturmgeschutz panzers.

Painting was fun. Airbrushed black. Drybrushed light-gray. Drybrushed accent colors. Decals. Drybrushed light-gray over them. Drybrushed white to catch the highlights.

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