I've been really enjoying reading about and looking at tiny spaceship games lately, Void Admiral and A Billion Suns specifically. There's also a great community around building tiny spaceships out of found materials, especially clothespins. And suddenly I had two fleets of 12 ships all built and painted. Each fleet had two of the biggest ships and then five each of the two smaller classes. They were tough to photograph as an entire group so there's only a few in each photo below.
These are the first ones I made. They bodies are various drywall anchors with toothpick wings/guns and engines made from beads and washers. They're OK for a first go around but I don't know that I'd expand this fleet anymore unless I needed extras as NPCs for something.
This second batch I like a lot more from a design perspective. The bodies and fins are balsa wood / toothpicks with nuts as the engines and beads on top. The flat sides left some room for freehand details that the drywall anchors didn't and I think it turned out really well. I didn't think about sanding the wood before painting so some of these look a little rough. I honestly don't know if I'd bother to sand any new ones that I build - these were built and painted quickly and they still look good. I absolutely would expand this fleet, especially to add a bigger class of ship to do some more freehand.
Drywall Anchors
- Gray - VMC Basalt Gray, Druchii Violet wash, reapply base, base mixed with VMA Pale Blue Gray
- Purple - VMC Blue Violet, wash, reapply base, base mixed with VMC Pink
- Yellow - AK Deep Yellow, wash, reapply base, base mixed with white ink (this didn't really work so maybe try a real white paint)
Balsa Wood
- Green - VMC Intermediate Green, VMC Light Green
- Black - VMA Anthracite Gray, VMC Basalt Gray
- Orange - AK Deep Orange