This is a project that I cooked up a few years ago, made a start on, and then abandoned. Way back in the mists of time (2004-ish) Tom Roberts, a good mate of mine, came up with an online comic called “The Jamshed Strip” which was on deviantart, and was a sort of collaborative venture with half a dozen people putting up their own comics, with their own characters, but all of us working to the same format and template. My own efforts evolved into MiniShed, which featured a mixed cast of anthropomorphic animals (based off three talking dogs I’d been doodling for years in sketchbooks at college), and humans (myself, Tom, my missus Amy, and later a fourth character called Harmony/Happygoth, who’d evolved from a character created for a photography project).
Minished faltered away a bit after we all left University, and I was looking around the 2007/08 point for a way of evolving my characters. I had all the props and miniatures from the Britannia Model Village (indeed, the project was still ongoing at the time), so I came up with the idea of doing a James Bond-inspired comic featuring drawn characters, and using miniatures for backgrounds and effects shots, something I’d worked a bit into the shorter comics.The plan never properly got beyond doing some sets, and the ‘hero’ vehicles for Team SHED, largely because I couldn’t work out a satisfying storyline. The mini comics changed instead, the anthro animal characters were redesigned to resemble their original animal forms, and the comics gradually died a death as the other contributors gave up, and Deviantart became basically a free stock site for bored American teenagers to nick art from.
Team SHED
Largely inspired from my love for Gerry Anderson TV shows and 70’s Dr Who, SHED was equal parts U.N.I.T (Dr Who) and SPECTRUM (Captain Scarlet). The idea was that the shed of the title concealed the entrance to a huge underground secret base, and the characters were a secret and not particularly effective counter-espionage force. SHED worked for the Britannia Government (it all being ‘set’ in the same fictional universe of the model village project), generally fighting evil, each other, and random passers-by in an attempt to preserve the rule of law in Britannia.
In the best traditions of Gerry Anderson TV shows, each character had their own vehicle, and these are shown here:
HMS Skyshed
The most blatant homage, or rip-off if you will, regarding Captain Scarlet was to have a stratospheric Aircraft Carrier. This model was originally sketched during the model village project, but the idea was dropped as it would be scientifically implausible and doubtful to even get built with British workmanship.
It’s built roughly to N scale, and mainly made from foamboard, with odd bits of model kits here and there. I constructed it when I was doing a spell of Jury Duty and thus had long spells of time during the day waiting to be called in, in which I could sit and sketch more random bits to add to the model. It never ended up getting as detailed as I’d have liked though, and spent several years gathering dust before it was unceremoniously scrapped and destroyed, with a few bits getting reclaimed for the spares box. To be honest, the model was too large and fragile to store, yet too small for practical photography purposes for the project.Landy.
Because it wouldn’t be British without a Land Rover. Inspired by the pointlessly-over modified Range Rover in Torchwood, and an intended running joke in the story would have been how often the Land Rover got blown up, being as you can pretty much guarantee that if a Landy appears in a Bond Film (or any other action film for that matter) its probably going to get wrecked.Modifications were of the make-it-up-as-you-go-along method, just adding random bits, but it did have a swappable chassis so it could run on railway tracks.
Battletank
Another nod to Captain Scarlet, a metallic blue tank. Intended for a “Goldeneye”-esque chase scene, the model was modified from a cheapo toy Bradley APC, with moved turret, bigger gun, and a few other odds and ends bodged onto it.Love-From-Above
Harmony, or Happygoth as her nickname would have been, was based on a character I’d created for a fashion photography project at Uni (some pics from a later reshoot of the project here ***) - the archetypical girly-girl. Hence the pink and purple fighter jet with huge aerodynamically-implausible rocket boost on the back.Hercybird
Another simple conversion, a Hercules with jet engines, mainly because the original and somewhat fragile propellers had all snapped away by this point (I’d had the model half-built in a box since about 1997). And yes I realise the airframe would have shattered apart had anything like this actually been built, but hey-ho.
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So the project was abandoned- some shots from it ended up in the last throes of the model village project before it was abandoned. As mentioned above, the aircraft carrier was broken up; all the other models survive though.
A different take on the comic idea has arisen lately though- shorter (24 page) comics, featuring the characters as they were at the end of the Minished run, and shot using miniatures as backgrounds. The stories are shorter which allows for more jokes crammed into a shorter space. Team SHED as a concept is sort-of still around, though it won’t be in the form shown here. Will post more on that at a later date, but production is pencilled-in to begin after the Steampunk stuff is done later this year…
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