I have started doing a new art form based on making scale models. Rather than just having random posts on modelling forums, Bluesky and Mastodon I thought it was worth collecting these here.
Most of the models I’ve done have been set in science fiction and urban fantasy author Charlie Stross’ Laundry Files and New Management book series, informally known as the Laundryverse. The series premise is that there is an occult variant of British intelligence service MI5, known as “The Laundry”, which deals with threats by horrors from other dimensions, which have been multiplied by unintended computational demonology brought about by the IT revolution.
Here, I’ve portrayed two much loved characters from the series, known as Pinky and The Brain, housemates of the series’ main character (and very unreliable narrator) Bob Howard in The Atrocity Archives. They are a gay couple who work in the Laundry’s research department.
In this diorama, our queer heroes are despatched to deal with an incursion by what is presumed to be a Lovercraftian horror, but which turns out to be a pansexual, hyper-gendered deity whom the Nazi Abwehr’s paranormal intelligence force sought to to exploit in world war 2.
Naturally the deity objected to being bothered by nazis, and dealt with them with a flick of its wrist, while comprehensively redecorating the ME262 involved.
In this scene, Pinky is riding the couple’s own Kettenkrad, inherited from Bob, while Brains is taking the ME262 up to the divine being for one more psychedelic love-in in the sky. Good times! The Me262 has been kept in a force field within a temple, which features sentient semi-mobile paintings on its walls.
Technical details:
This kit is a classic Airfix ME262 German jet in 1/48 scale, with an entirely non-standard paint scheme, from the package which includes a Kettenkrad.