Shadow Fighter

This is a one piece resin garage kit made by Kip Hart of Howling Wolf Productions. Kip was one of the few people making Babylon 5 kits when I started collecting them. He’s not making them any more and he has developed a bad reputation of not fulfilling kit orders, I never had a problem with him, though.

He has a 1:1 scale PPG, as well as a Shadow Crab cruiser, a Shadow Creature, a Shadow Scout, and a Shadow Fighter. I own them all. After years of owning them, practicing on other models, I finally got around to making one of them.

I chose the Shadow Fighter because it was the simplest kit. There was no construction involved, since it was one piece. There was a bit of seam line clean up and I filled a couple of bubble holes with Magic Sculpt. I had to re-sculpt the tip of one of the fat spines, but nothing too difficult. I bored out the front “weapon” recess with a Dremel tool. I drilled a hole into the recess to hold a painting rod.

The real challenge of the model was to make the basic paint scheme look accurate and compelling. I airbrushed the model with straight Liquitex Basics Mars Black. I later figured out that I could have used a brush and saved boat-loads of cleaning, but I used my Sotar 20/20 airbrush all the same. Several coats later I had a deep dark Shadow Fighter.

Kip did a wonderful job sculpting “veins” along the model. Though the shape of the kit is wonderfully accurate and truly conveys the sinister spider-like menace of the shadow vessels, the veins bring this simple kit to a higher level.

To approximate the shining energy veins of the ship, I used Liquitex Basics Iridescent Silver mixed with a touch of Ultramarine Blue. Using a fine liner I picked out raised veins.

The finished color was a bit bright for the dark ship. I misted over the model with very thinned Mars Black. This blended the colors together and muted the bright silver giving me the effect I wanted. The final touch was to add several coats of gloss coat.

It’s amazing how the simplest models can be so rewarding. It was a fast kit to build, a very cool subject and a new prize for Johnny’s menagerie of eclectic spaceships.