Shortly after the Bembel Miniature Cup 2025 Roman Lappat started the Beyond Your Imagination 2 challenge.
As I had just returned to the hobby and was still absolutely thrilled by my result at the Bembel my imagination went into overdrive!
I started to collect ideas for astronaut models like there was no tomorrow :)
Over the weeks I gathered a total of 81 ideas
Yeah! It's official, I'm totally nuts - and I'm proud of it.
If I recall correctly the "Wilma and the Secret of the Palamonire Rose" was the first model I completed.
Little did I know what this little "cover" idea would trigger later on.
Of course with the tiny astronauts it was very tongue-in-cheek.
Around Halloween I had another crazy idea!
The "Raiders of the Orkitchen" - a group of astronauts attempting to steal from an Ork's kitchen, but getting caught by the guarding Pumpkins and thus hunted by the giant Ork.
For the birthday of a dear friend who incidentally plays the Alphorn I created the tiny "Starbläzer" or as it is officially noted in the "Ultimate Traveller's Guide to the Known and Unknown Universe" by Wilma & Vladimir it is
"
a holy monk of Fischleé greeting the sun with his sacred horn of the Alps".
For "Joyride" I explored new ways of integrating light and UV-resin into the build process.
A quick, kind of slapstick model was SPLAT! which I created for a little competition at the
Miniatures Guild with the topic of "Impact"
A typical astronaut scene is "Yes, we're lost" with 3 astronauts gathered around their stranded capsule. It is now officially part of the Wilma & Vladimir timeline and opens their Carsendo story.
Part of the Wilma & Vladimir adventures is "Atlan Tisi Slost", a frozen planet with a lost civilization.
And "The frozen vestiges of Atlan Tisi Slost" is the opening scene where Wilma discovers a statue (of an astronaut), while Vladimir is already investigating for a passage down.
There they discover a hidden hallway.
(this set was later, after the competition, completed with a model of the throne room)
Of course Star Wars is a topic no serious astronaut builder can ignore
As the world felt like it was (and still is) spiraling out of control an old cold-war-era song became more current than ever. Ultravox's "
Dancing with Tears in My Eyes".
And in a similar mood was "The Longest Night", though it actually reads "Even the longest and coldest night ends when I'm with you".
Which neatly ties into "Reunion"
Another (kind of) political model was "The Pen is mightier than the sword" with an astronaut in the pose of Major TJ "King" Kong out of the movie "
Dr Strangelove"
In a lighter mood I created a little astronaut homage for "JAWS"
Another movie homage was "
Silent Running" in memory of Dewey and the last trees from Earth. For this diorama I even sculpted a Dewey droid
And then there was my largest piece of the competition.
"The Legend Rises Once More!" - a complex diorama with the New Hindenburg Space Zeppelin on its travels from Earth to New Hope.
The competition ended on 28 February 2026 (luckily, otherwise I would've created even more).
And it took a while until the winners were announced.
Check the gallery of all the entries!Well, what can I say.
I had 20 entries.
I won 18 medals (out of 433 entries).
Not surprisingly I won the Quantity Award :-P
But I also made Best of Standard with the Legend!
Looking back, the challenge did much more than fill my shelves with tiny astronauts. It became a huge playground for experimenting with storytelling, lighting, sculpting and all sorts of crazy ideas.
Somewhere along the way, Wilma & Vladimir stopped being just two little astronauts I kept using and started becoming characters of their own.
Quite a few of these scenes eventually found their way into their official story — and others planted ideas that I'm still developing today.
So yes, I'm definitely looking forward to the next challenge :)
Comments
Post a Comment