Dark Future - Renegade Car Conversion & Paint Job

Hi there! In our last Dark Future post we took a look at the game and what comes in the box... Today we're going take a closer look at one of the Renegade cars and look at a bit of conversion work and the paint job itself... 'Make ready road warrior, cause' the Maniax are comin'. And your death is comin' wiv em!!'

The first thing to do was to inset some wire mesh on the inside of the chassis, helping to give the car a rag-tag look of improvised driver protection... The wire mesh itself is used in car body repairs and is readily available at a cheap price from your local auto center (i.e. Halfords).  The mesh is handy for all kinds of hobby conversions, for example, you can cut it in thin strips and curl it round a pencil for some quick and easy lengths of barbed wire. Stick it in your spares box.

I measured off 3 bits of mesh to fit around the inside front and side 'windows' and using some superglue and a pair of tweezers, held the wire in place. This can be a bit of a tricky process as you wait for the superglue to 'bite' and hold the elements in place... you will likely end up sticking your fingers together... ;)

Next up, I wanted to add a bit more weight and menace to the front of the car... It needed a nasty looking ram for smashing into any Sanctioned Op's that got too close... Here's where a good collection of Plastruct items comes in handy - well worth adding to your arsenal. The ram itself was made from a length of girder and was 'bolted' into place using various sizes of rod to create a supporting frame onto the main chassis of the car. Finally the ram was given a few impromptu spikes and thoroughly scuffed up and aged with a few hacks from the ol' hobby knife...

Finally, I added an old cow skull to the bonnet of the car, converted up from an animal skull from the GW Beastmen sprue and 'long horns' fashioned from an old chaos warrior helmet. I also added a human skull totem on the back of the car,  using a small skull lifted off a GW Space Marine, to keep things in line with the 15mm Dark Future game scale. I should also add that I extensively weathered the rest of the car body work to make it look suitably post-apoc...

With the conversion work complete, it was onto the paint job. Starting with the car chassis and working over a black undercoat, I dry-brushed on some GW Charadon Granite and added further various shades of brown to help dust up and whether the car. All metal work, such as the front ram and engine were given a coat of Bolt Gun Metal and a wash of Badab Black. These elements were also dry-brushed to give them a dusty, weathered finish. To give the drivers cockpit a bit of character, I also picked out the various buttons and targeting screens - very 80's!

The car bodywork was completed in the same way as the chassis - lots of dry-brushing and weathering to help add to the aged, battle scarred look of the car. The skull trophies were base coated with Dheneb Stone, given a wash of Gryphonne Sypia and a final highlight of Bleached Bone. Finally, the car needed to proudly present it's allegiance to the 'Maniax' gang and so had their name scrawled down the side of the fairing...

Well, I hope you like this first addition to those highway hell-mongers, the 'Maniax' Gang. I'll continue to paint up the rest of the models from the Dark Future boxed game and report my progress on this ere' blog!

Cheers :)