Wh 40k modelling blog by Agis

Space Wolves

2012-03-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

Once again I have been away for the week on work but I managed to get some solid painting time in this week end. This time I am focusing on the Space Wolves. They where my first wh40k army. And as I have said before my painting methods have evolved somewhat sine then. I have always had a lite bit of a problem with the blue withe gray color. In my first attempts I base painted them in shadow gray, then a coat of blue ink. Then some heavy drybrusing, which, sadly enough left a lot of dark blue showing. Well, it was my first attempt to paint an army. The problem is that the whole army is painted this way.

At some point in the past I decided to try another darker scheme. So I took two of the old models and and repained them (seen on the right in the pair pictures of the blood claw and the wolf guard). This time I used a washed out black ink insted of the blue. After some drybrushing and wet blending I got a better, darker color. However, I did keep the original palette of the space wolves as presented in the 90ths codex. Even if the models got a cleaner look they where not that different and still felt a little bit like happy vikings. Then a time back I saw Astorath the grim, I loved the model but could not bring my self to paint a Blood Angel, I am more of a Dark Angel guy (but in rality I am mostly afraid of starting a new army). Well, after reading Dan Abnetts "Prospero Burns" from the Horus Heresy series I got inspired. So I got a finecast version of Astrorath and started to slap on some green stuff to get him in to his wolf state. I then pained him in a dark grey using Shadow grey, badab black, codex grey, fortress grey and space wolves grey. I then pained the ribbed parts in a dark brown to resemble the plated leather mentioned in the novel. I also keep the color palette to the black, brown, yellow and earthy tones. This gave him a much darker look as befits the emperors executioner. I am quite happy with him and I am a bit curious about what a whole squad would look like, so I might have to paint up some more space wolves to see how it turns out, and they have just released some nice new models, so I will have think about this. The last picture is of an old space wolf and a possessed space wolf from my chaos army based on the old palette.

Thunder chick update

2012-02-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

So, a small update on the thunder chick. I have painted the las-cannon tower and some small details. There are still some things to do on it, as it is on the whole army, but that will have to wait until I have decided on the details of the army. I am not sure if the army should just be in a base color or if I should start adding details. Lately I have started to add the imperial eagle in blue... as a testament to their former loyalty instead of removing it as I did in the beginning. I dont know if it as or subtracts from the idea of the army. Well after this I have the demon prince that I have started to finish up in green stuff and a then I have a surprise. Or if you have been vigilant you might have seen it in earlier photos in this blog...

Dark Angel

2012-02-19T10:47:00.001-08:00

I am back from an extended work trip so there has there is not much new to show. But since the job involves quite long hours with a lot of waiting a spent some time browsing the internet, looking for inspiration. Early in the week I came across some demon princes and I thought that I might get me one. I still have not finished my Balrog conversion, but it is almost done and I wanted one of the new plastic demon princes since they look quite cool. But as I do not just build standard models these days I got the idea to modify it some what (this was before I actually got hold of the model). I thought that it would look great with some duel swords, some robes and both wings and powerpack exhausts. After doing some initial sketches I realized that it looked a bit like a Dark Angel on steroids, and as it happens this is not to far from the fluff, so The Untouchable was borne. A fallen Dark Angel made a demon prince, one whom the interrogator chaplains will not be able to make repent. As this idea took rot I encountered a dilemma. I do not like scenic bases as the base makes the model into a diorama rater than some thing that just makes to model stand up. But one of the demon princes I encountered on the net stood with one foot on top a stone witch made a good pose. This of course made me think about exchanging the stone for a loyal Dark Angel. This idea was to good to overlook so I got the demon prince model and started out to re pose it to fit my vision with a marine under his feet. Now, working with plastic marines is ok when it comes to reposing them, but the demon prince model does not make for an easy re-pose. To many of the joints are pre-positioned in a fixed position and can not be changed without some cutting and greenstuff rebuilding. But as the model will include a lot of greenstuff any way it did not matter so much. In the end I think it looks cool, now I will just have to make all the small details before starting to paint it.

Thunder chick.

2012-01-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

So, after taking a little break with my 40k modeling. But now I am back, at least for a while, I am going away for some weeks so it will be a while until next update. But a few months ago I built a stormraven gunship. Now was the time to start painting it. During the Titan project I did learn about weathering and some other techniques that I wanted to test, so this will be the opportunity. I read an article over on FtW about painting vehicles, and I did not recognize myself. In some details it is in line with my own ideas but in some it was quite different.

In my bock painting vehicles is all about non uniformity, the base paint does not need to be smooth and even, rather the opposite, the more color variations the better as this will give the model a realistic look. I tend to start with some thing that looks very sloppy and then I work it over by layers building up a more coherent color but with subtle variations in the background which I find gives the model more depth and realism. Add some nice weathering to this and you go from something that looks like a painted toy to something that looks more like a miniature of something real. Of course the method to use depends on what results you want.

So the first step is to paint a thing layer of your base paint over a black base coat. This layer will look strange but dont wory.

Second step is to give it a bit of a wash or ink to give the recesses some deeper color. One can also paint in the lines with a darker color by hand, you do not have to be super neat about it.

The third stage is to drybrush the model with the base color.

The fourth and fifth stage is just to bring the color up by latest two additional tones.

After this you start over with stage two and work your way up again. you can do this as many times as needed. I usually go for two turns to get some more shades in there.

Then it is on the some weathering, details and such, that will be the next stage for me.

Until later then..

Final

2012-01-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

So, I finally finished the trio of titans. Well they are mostly done, I still have to finish of some parts on the inside of the back carapace and the banners. But apart from that they are base painted to a reasonable standard. After this it will be some freehand, battle damage and weathering. But for now they are done. I will take some better pictures once it gets light around here again and I will try to make them a little bit more in game. The things that got painted since the last blog is the last warhound weapons and the reaver crew. The weapons where quite straightforward as they have to mach the other warhound and the reaver. The reaver crew however I have been putting of for some time as I did not feel comfortable painting them. Now I decided on a simple look and not to fancy. The are not glued in to the cockpit so I can revisit the later on if I want.

This has been quite a project, about one and a half year, but I have to admit that I have not been painting full time on these guys, there has been some other things in between. The next thing now will be to paint up the thunder chicken that I bought for my Desert Eagles. This blog was started to follow the progress of the titans, but I have gotten quite used to it now, I was not to sure about it from the beginning. Thanks to all of you who have followed my progress and to those who left me some comments of encouragement. I hope you will still visit my blog once in a while to see what I have been up to. And there will most likely be some updated on the titans two.

Gatling blaster

2012-01-07T13:00:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is realy great for getting some painting done. All these lazy days with no obligations. This is just the time to get somewhere. Or on the other hand there might be no time at all. Well, for me it has been a good time where I have managed to get in a quite a few days of solid painting. The latest thing to get painted is the Gatling blaster. I am, well, I am not sure what I am, paint wise I am happy, I got nice shading and the individual pieces look ok but I am not happy with the overall look. The barrels are too uniform compared to the rest of the titan.I could have gone for metal barrels look but it would have been slightly contrary to the over all look of the titan which I have kept to a believable military pattern. I think I will have to go back and add some with/bone to the barrels, I have seen withe bands around tank barrels so I will see if I can make something lake this. Well, this more or less concludes the reaver, the crew is half painted but otherwise it is base painted and the look as it is is. Now i only have the two remaining warhound weapons left to paint and they are not horribly advanced so I think I might have them painted quite soon.

AML with side order

2012-01-03T06:25:00.000-08:00

So, after some much needed alone time with painting I have finished the Reaver AML. I am sure I am getting more and more sloppy with my painting but this was almost a low water mark. For a while there I thought about striping it and starting over. Well nothing is glued in yet so it might still happen. I will leave it for now and keep working on the green stuff so that I can get the last peaces painted. Now back to painting before my wife gets home, I have promised to not paint this evening...

Holiday progress

2012-01-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

It has once again been a while since my last update (seems like this is starting to be a standard introduction). Things are however moving along. Since last I have painted the head of Wolfish Perversion and now one can see what he will look like when he is done. I am not quite happy with the bone and I will have to go back and try to smooth it out so that the brush strokes are not as obvious, so please have this in mind. Aside from that I am happy with the way it turned out. The stance is quite low and the titan looks very compact compare to its brother which is very elongated as it is running upright. This was the over all look I was aiming for. One warhound driving the pray towards the other one.
I have also painted the power plant that goes into the pack carapace but I forgot to take pictures of, so that will have to wait until later. I have also started out to work on the chaosification of the two imperial weapons that I have, once for the reaver and one for this warhound. There are some green stuff work needed but I got the FW chaos things on and now it is mostly clean up. As the main parts of this titan is now painted I will go back to the reaver and paint up the missile launcher while I finish of the rest of the weapons and get them ready for primer.
Well this will be it for now, but I will be back.

Warhound details

2011-12-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

Once again it has been a slow week. Most of the weekend was used for other things than painting. But I did manage to sneak in some painting time. I am mostly done with the last warhound body so I did some detailing. I am happy with the way my green stuff modeling turned out once painted. I am not really confident yet with making it fit the model and I must admit that my skulls could look better. I really havent gotten the teeth part down yet. I am currently working away on the last parts for this titan. I have started one the cockpit and the power plant that goes into the back carapace. Once I get these done I only have the weapons left before the battle group is done. Then there is the green stuff that has to go on to the imperial weapons before this can happen so this might be a task for the holidays, how knows I might get these guys done this year after all. I will keep going and we will see.

A little progress

2011-12-04T07:14:00.000-08:00

I have not been blogging for some time now. The trip to the US and our planing for huse building has taken a large chunk out of my time for hobbies. I also find it increasingly difficult to keep my mind focused on the titans at the moment. But I try to do some painting now and then to keep them going as well as for my on peace of mind. But I have made some progress with the upper body and back carapace of Wolfish Perversion. There are not that many more details to paint so I can soon start painting the head. Then there is only the weapons that need some green stuff and paint before they are done. I have also been thinking about the future, what will the next project be. I still have my Desert Eagles that could do with some attention. I also felt an urge to paint some wolves after reading prospero burns, but now I am more fascinated by the necron models. So the other day I got an idea, what if my titan legions explorator team found a dead tomb world. And as they had already started making scitarii constructs found the de-powered necrons and started to experiment with them. This could perhaps lead to some enslavement of the nectrons by the mechanicum. It would be orthodox and certainly not within the imperial code, but some renegade legion would perhaps do some thing like this. And I am sure you would be branded a traitor if you did. That could make for a good background story for a renegade mechanicum legion with some necron allies... at least it would give me a reason to paint up some necrons without having to start an entire new army. Well I will have to finish the titans first, as it happens I will not do this before Christmas but hopefully I can have them done soon there after.

Slow going

2011-11-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

This week I have not had so much time for painting and modeling. We are looking in to the possibilities of building our own house and this has taken most of my spare time. But I have managed to squeeze some painting time in to the schedule. I finished of the red field on Joluns wrath as well as painting the weapon shield on the side of the back carapace. I have also managed to paint the back carapace and reactor cowlings of wolfish perversion. So now all the Titans green armor are painted. Now it just to paint in the metal boarders, the chaos growths and the imperial remnants and the body is done. Of course there are some free hand stuff that i will have to do but it is minor. Then I just have to finish of the head and the remaining weapons and I am done. At least they will be base painted. There will be a lot of touching up later on as well as adding freehand and weathering. The coming weeks I fear will be no better than this week as I have to go to the US for a buiessnes meting as well as a lab conference. So It might be a few weeks until I have something new to show. I might do a post with some old minis in the meantime.

Reaver progress and Storm Raven mod.

2011-11-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

The titan project is moving forward. I haw painted the power fist, shoulder guards and I am almost done with the back carapace wich means I can see the end of the project, which makes me sloppy. I noticed that I tend to speed up at the end, when I can see that I am almost done, this is not good as I have put in so many hours on this project to screw it up so close to the finish line. So to counter this I started a new small project to focus my mind. I had some thought about a valkyer but that would have meant painting more green. I also thought about something space wolf or why not a necron command barge or something. So I went to the local hobby center and started browsing around in the shelf's. One model that I think is cool but sadly, not so nice looking is the storm raven gunship. After some thought I decided that I should try to reassemble the kit in a slightly other way just to see if it was possible to get it to look better. I am not sure about the result, it did not turn out as it was in my head, it is not bad but not as good as I would have hoped. Well it will suit my Desert Eagles perfectly as they are a renegade force operating on the fringe of the imperium and as such they need small insertion crafts and close fire support. So I will fill in the gaps with green stuff and the trash it up to fit with the rest of the army.

One year achievements

2011-10-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

I thought that I would make this post on the anniversary of this blog, but I forgot so I will make it now instead. This is what I have painted during the last year.

Last year at this time I was going through a rough time and I felt that I needed something to occupy myself with as well as having something relaxing to do. For a long time I had wanted a Forge World titan, actually the though of a titan was awakened some time 20 years ago when I visited a gaming club and someone had brought a armourcast reaver. At the time I did not have the financial means to buy one so I thought about scratch building one but it never happened. When the FW titans where released I once again found the urge to paint one, but I could not really motivate myself to by one. But as I needed a large, all consuming project last year I finally decided that a trio of titans would do. I did have my wive's blessing to buy a titan but I think that she was a little shocked when I ordered three. I did pay for them form my own stash so the family funds did not take the hit. Well, as I was looking over the internet for inspiration a came across a lot of titan WIPs. So I decided that a blog would also be a nice way to document the project. I also came across some ad-mech armies and different paraphernalia. One thing that fascinated me were the different defiler knight conversions. This gave me the opportunity to build something titan like to have as a test bed for painting techniques before applying them to the titans. Of course a knight and and some titans can not be without scitarii troops to protect their feet so I had to build some of them to, so I took the opportunity to make a tech adapt with a robot and servitor as well. Then if you look carefully you will see two chaos marines that where the first models painted to try out the color scheme of the legion. And then I also had a predator hanging around that I finished of while waiting for the titans to get assembled.

So now we will see what I will do next year. The titans will be done soon so I will have to find something else to do. I have thought about some models that I would like to paint. But I have also thought about doing a new space wolf army but we will have to see what comes up.

Note to self

2011-10-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

"When starting a big project, like painting up three Forge World titans, check that the paints you are going to use are still in stock, or that you are absolutely sure that the amount of paint you have will be enough for the whole project!"

I am not sure, but I think most of the paints that I use in this project are no longer sold, so I am reduced to scavenging paint from "find boxes" or depending on the charity of the local hobby center that has kindly provided me with some of the out of stock paint jars form their hobby corner.

Apart form worrying about the amount of paints left the project is rapidly moving forward, painting armor goes quite fast and as that is what is mostly left I can now count the total of unpainted pieces on my fingers, and not using to many on the left hand at that.

Then of course I can go pack and add details and free hand to the titans later, but soon they will be covered in paint and all the major details will be done. So all in all I am looking at about a one year total time for this project.

Reaver work and green stuff

2011-10-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

In the last titan post I realized that I was running out of thing to paint as the titans are getting close to completion. It is only the armor plates left to do. So I decided that I would start to clean up the Reaver and second warhound weapons so that I would have some more things to paint. However, some of the parts needs a lot of green stuff to get them to match up with the rest of the Titan panel work. At least two of the weapons are also pure imperial versions and will need some chaosification. I started out with the weapons already modeled as chaos and began adding the same patterns that I have used on the other panels. I then realized that these are the last emblems that I make on these titans so I added several of them together to make more complex designs. These designs where put on the power fist and on the back mounted missile launcher.

But then I stated thinking about the shoulder plates that I had already made some work on. The undersides are quite barren, which is in contrast to the rest of the titan. After some thinking I decided to ad the cog wheel design to the under side. I do not know if I am satisfied with them. But they are on the under side so they will only be visible if you look for them. They might look better with some paint.

But is has not been only green stuff. I have also painted the reactor covers on the reaver and the upper part of the arm holding the power fist. Here I put the legion insignia and the titan serial number on the "biceps". It turned out nice so I think I will do the same on the other titans, i.e. not put things on the biceps but combine the the legion and the serial. So now I will paint up the power fist, the back armor and the shoulder plates, then the reaver will be mostly done. As I have the option to change weapons I have decided not to attache the power cables to the weapons. On the guns this is ok as the ports are not to eye catching. But on the power fist the cables are attached to the elbow armor and either it was to file them away or do some thing else. I chose the later and attached the cables as on the original, but instead of having them go up to the titan I bent them so that they attach to the shoulder instead.

Then I only have to paint the outside of the upper body of the second warhound with its back armor and it will be done so far as the titan. I will still have to paint up the weapon as well as green stuff two of them. So I am not there yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am fairly confident that I can have them done before Christmas if I can keep up the pace. So now I will go back to the hobby lair.

Dark Angels from the past part 2

2011-10-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

According to the statistics of this blog the "Dark angels of the past" is one of the most popular post we have on this blog. It is constantly in the top even if its quite some time since it was published. So here is a follow up.This time I am presenting my Death Wing army. This is actually the part of the Dark Angels that got me going in the 90th. I was at that time a dedicated Space Wolf player and my army was expanding.

Partially due to their Nordic culture fluff and partly because it was the only space marine army with dedicated figures. So when the Death Wing terminators where released I just had to by a set of them. At the time we where on a holiday car trip around the UK and I just had to visit every GW store we came across. During tis time I also bought all the fluff I could get my hands on, Wh 40K compendium, 40K compilation, 40K "vehicles" etc...

So as soon as I got back home I started out to plan the painting of the Death Wing as a liaison to my Space Wolves. Fluffwise this was a bit on a stretch as the Dark Angels and Space Wolves do not get along so well. At the time the Death Wing was mostly known from the space hulk game expansion Death Wing.

As the new terminator set was introduced they where presented as bone white which I found was in contradiction to the fluff background found in the Death Wing expansion. In the original fluff a squad of Death Wing space marines in their original black canopy returns to their home world which is based on a native american back ground. As they find their home world usurpered by a genestearler cult they realise that they probably will not survive the cleansing of the planet so they prepare them self in their cultural way for death by calking their bodies white with lime. Well aplying a was of white lime over a black armor will not give you a bone white look so I choose to paint them bone white, ink them black and then dry brush them back to white using bleached bone and bone white giving them a withe washed look.

Well as I got the first squad painted I realized that they looked better than my Wolf guard counterparts and as time went I slowly brought the wolf guards over to the Death Wing, creating this army. In its time it was a complete 2k army, now I don't know if it would muster up to that amount. As my Dark Angel army grow I also started out with the the inner Circle of the Dark Angels, painting Aszrael, Ezeikiel, Asmodai ets a also decided to paint some green terminators with robes similar to the inner circle models. At this time no terminators where available in robes so I had to sculpt them using miliput. Well the army is almost finished and I am thinking about painting up the last elements once the Titans are done. I will come back and present the rest of my Dark angels in another blog post, so until later then.

What happened?

2011-10-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered something strange. After having had the warhound assembled over the summer I had to open the back carapace the other day and realized that the insides had taken on a wet shine. It almost locks like I gave it a coat of clear hard coat but I didn't. So what happened. In the picture to the left you can see the inside of the back carapace, it was sprayed with a mate black base paint and has not been touched since, but you can clearly see a line dividing the front form the back. This line matches the contour of the warhound body. In the other picture I compare the newly painted firewall to thew reactor room in Wolfish Perversion with the one that has been mounted in Unbearable Desire, and it is a clear difference in color. Admittedly some difference in coloration can be expected as since I might not have exactly mixed it the same way, but the surface texture is completely different. The newly drybruched surface is slightly rough and looks dry, like stone while the one out of Unbearable Desire is smooth and slightly oily and has a wet look. This can be seen on all the interior parts of the titan while the outsides look like the newly painted surfaces. I have no idea why this has happened but my guess would be that during summer and the temperature has gotten the resin sweating and that on the interior parts the oils released form the resin got stuck while they evaporated away on the out side, but I don't know. There might be something more sinister going on, the descent into chaos is under way.

Joluns Wrath part2

2011-09-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

This week thing has been going fast. I started painting on Joluns Wrath upper body, I thought that it would take me some time to paint, but suddenly the front part was painted and soon the I had started out with the armor plating covering the head. Now one can see what it will look like when it is done. I have not really thought about it much, but once I saw this picture I realize that all the green stuff work that I have done, together with the painted patterns and all, it is really quite cluttered. Actually a little more than I aimed for but now it is what it is. But I am happy, it is looking good and I am looking forward to finishing it up. Speaking of finishing things up, there are currently only 7 major pieces and three minor pieces left to paint on all the titans. This means that I will have to start cleaning up and assembling the weapons for the remaining titans.

As I am moving forward with painting most of the the things are at this point standard since I have already figured out how to paint them. This might actually be the reason for the pace at the moment, it is just painting and no thinking. But once in a while I come across a feature that is unique, or atleast some thing that has not been painted so far, such as the teeth on the head and on the armor. On the titans I have seen these are painted in a bone/white color. Since I have the imperial remnants on the armor painted in a similar color I thought that I would try another color scheme. I ended up painting them a brown/black combo with the lighter areas at the base and black tips. I am not sure about this, they are quite dark and tend to be lost among all the other details of the titan. This might be good and it might be bad depending on whether I want them to pop or not. I will leav them as is for the moment, I can come back to them later on.

The Cockpit has also gotten a coat of paint, I am not satisfied with the look so I will go back and try to clan it it up a bit. The screens look too flat and the dials are too jolly. This is a chaos Reaver and not some nice imperial thingy. It might look better once the crew gets installed, they are looking suitably chaos. I have also done the last parts on Wolfish pervertions legs. The thigh plates got painted and attached. So now all the titans legs are painted which was part of my goal before the one year mark of this project. Now if I only can have the upper bodies painted as well it would be nice, but we will have to see about that.
I is nice and a bit sad to see them growing up. It has been an intense journey over the last year but is has really gotten me into painting again. I will have to find a new project to work on after these bad boys have moved out onto the fields of battle. Talking about battles, my primary idea with these titans where the painting experience, but now I am thinking about actually finding me a apoc battle and let them lose. But to do this I need to find the rules for them and as far as I know there is not one book with the rules but several so I will have to try and find some information about what is needed to play them. Well, this is it for now, until next time then.

Joluns wrath

2011-09-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

This week I have been working on Joluns wrath. I had promised my self that I could start painting the head of the Reaver once I got the last war-hound insides painted. So I sat out to paint it in a base green with the green struff modes painted as a broken bone mask covering the skull. I this is one of the pieces I have made the most extensive modifications to so I realy hope that is will trun out fine, otherwise I am in a bit of trouble as the Reaver will be the center piece of the army and the had is the focal point of the model.
So I started out with a green base. This was pained in the same way as the green canopy of the titan armor, green covered with brown ink, drybruched three shades of green and then inked again and drybruched again. This give me a feel for the 3D structure of the surface on the parts that will be painted later.
I have discovered that it is easier to get the shading right if I use a slightly watered down paint, covering the under lying drybrushed parts. In this way the drybrushed shades will shine through the new color. This helps later when I start painting on the highlights. In the pictures to the left you can see the process. The first picture show the green base color, In the second picture I have painted the bone in a light brown tone, washed it in dewlan mud and then highlighted it with the same brown color. In the following pictures I add lighter and lighter tones going towards bleached bone and with. I always paint these things with watered town colors, letting the underlying colors shine through and slowly building up the highlights.In the last skull picture I have reached the last highlight. I am stopping here at the moment,
I am thinking about washing it again in dewlan again and then highlighting it again. But I will leave it for the moment and maybe I will do it later on. Well I think it turned out quite well. It is obvious that it is a sculpt and not the original but it is not to intrusive for the model.
Apart from the skull I have also managed to paint the rear crotch plate. I will have to attach the cables going from this part to the legs. This I do not look forward to as it involves reshaping the resin and I have not figured out a god way of doing this. The position of the legs also makes it a bit hard go get them into place. I will forgo the cables to the weapons as I will have them exchangeable but these cables actually looks good so I will have to mount them. And as if this was not enough I also managed to paint the last two leg armor parts with wings. They turned out really nice. So now it is only the front crouch plate left on the legs and then they are base painted.
To keep up with the progress on the head I have also started to paint the main upper body. This is mostly large green surfaces and does not demand so much fine detail painting and should go quite quickly. I can feel the titans progressing and I can actually see the end of this project within the next couple of months. It is a strange feeling to not have a lot of titans pieces lying around and in stead have three large, mostly painted models standing around. Well there is still much to do on them but I am starting to get a feel for what they will look like.

Titan progress

2011-09-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

So, since last week I have painted the chin guards of Wolfish Perversion. I have also made some green stuff work to finish of some more armor plates for painting. These will be featured in later in another post. Since I was quite happy with the knee guard of Jolun´s Wrath where the demon face breaks through the loyalist patterns originally on the knee I thought I would try some thing similar with the demon face on the warhound leg armor. On Unbearable desire I just painted it in metal to match the boarders and the contrast with the imperial eagle underneath, so to make them a bit different on this Titan I thought I would make it breaking through the original leg markings. I decided to paint the whole armor piece in the blue white striped pattern in contrast to the half pattern on Unbearable Desire. This would mark the difference between the leader and the wing man in the pair and I think I will do the same with the back carapace later on.

Well, ideas some times sound better than what they are as they can be a bit hard to realize. This was the case this time. I am not sure it turned out as I wanted it but from some distance it is ok.

The other leg plate has the chaos star with a broken imperial aquila. This was a more straight forward paint job and it turned out looking good. The broken imperial insignia really give the titans some character and as long as they are not to intrusive I think they add to the look.

Reaver leg plates

2011-09-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

So I have finally gotten around to painting the armor plates of the remaining titans. The reason for not painting them sooner is because of the green stuff work I did on them. In principle they have been done for quite some time but after making the first patterns I was not sure if I would like to add some more later on. It is after all quite an expensive model and it is not like I will by another one just because I came up with some nice stuff to add. So they have been around for a while, waiting for me to come up with some thing. However nothing has come up so I figure that I am satisfied with them as they are. It is also a question of less is more and keeping it nice and simple. I am after all, not a professional sculptor. So on with the painting. I decided to use the striped pattern used on Wolfish Perversion also on the left armor plates of the Reavers legs. I used the same technique as I did on the warhound carapace and leg armor. I am quite happy with the appearance of the striped pattern pealing of. I use a technique where I use masking tape to protect the under lying paint as I paint the patterns. This gives actually give a authentic edge between the layers of paint. Well, they are not completely done but they are looking good. I have also gotten all the Titan bodies assembled so that I can put them on top of the legs, so in less than a year I have the three titans up and standing and at least one of them is more or less painted while the other two have the legs painted but not the upper bodies. I though that it would take me longer to get this far. Now can actually see the end of this project. Now it is just to finish of the last green stuff work and get the rest painted.

On another point. I have thought about all the other Titans sold by forge world. Wouldn't it be nice to have an index with the name and number of the all Titans together with an image. I have found some titans in other WIPs where the number is known but there are very few that can be identified. Well, that is just a thought.

So until next time. =)

Titan progress

2011-08-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

So I am unstuck. After last weeks blog I was a bit beaten but I have recovered. After a few evenings of painting I finally managed to get the insides of Wolfish Perversion painted and have now started to assemble the parts. As soon as the glue is dry I will start pinning and then I can assemble the rest. As I felt good about the progress with the warhound I decided to give myself a treat and paint up the knee pads for the Reaver. Once I get the upper body mounted on the legs is is time to start cleaning up the weapons so that I can mount the arms in the proper position. I hink I will alos do the reaver weapons at this point as I will be needing them as I start to pose the Reaver. Well this will be all for now. Hope fulle things will go a bit smother now.

I am still here...

2011-08-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

So it happened. I knew that eventually it would, but still it is a bit saddening to be right. I am stalling. My hopes for the summer was to get some real painting time with the titans and move them forward but other thing got in the way and at the same time I got to a point where I need to paint something which I dont like and then I start to stall. I am currently painting the inside of the last war hound and it is a pain. At this point I am just trying to get it done, which means that I am not painting at my best and as It will be almost impossible to do some thing about it later on I am stalling even more. So what is so bad with the insides. They are horrendously detailed and hard to get at with a brush, and there are tons of web growths all over the place. The first time I did it, it was new and fresh but at the end it started to feel stale, and now... it is just a pain. So I am making slow progress now, hopefully I will get it done without messing things up to much. After the insides are done I will have to go back to some green stuff work as I will be moving on to the armor platings and such. I will also revisit the head of the reaver, ad some new ideas that I have and then paint it as sort of a bonus for painting the insides. As far as insides goes, the reaver is much nicer as it is more clean, not so much detail and the best part is that the servitor panels are removable so that you can paint them separately and the rest of the model is also easy to access before assembly. I will also start assembling the reaver weapons and the weapons for the last war hound. The war hound weapons will be straight forward but the reaver will need some work. I made them removable using an M5 screw, This makes it easy to remove them and the screw will holdup, but since the area of resin holding the weapon assembly is much smaller than if I had glued them in the sockets I am a bit worried that the resin will just fracture. So I will have to come up with some way of reinforcing the resin as well as spreading the load over a larger area.

Well I am still here working along on my titans and I am sure that I will once aging pick up some momentum and get them done. We are soon coming up on the one year point of the project and this blog so it would be nice to have all the titans on their legs looking hungry.

Chapter 1: The Secret Meeting (silly, very silly)

2011-07-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

We just played our first game in a year or so... And it was silly. Very silly, indeed. It was over before I even got to make my first move...*sigh*

There had been rumors of a secret meeting. Reports had come of a scitarii squad leaving town and heading for the ruined temple city of Gomar. What the scitarii could possibly have planned at such a site was beyond the imagination of Marlie Rour, Veteran Sister Superior, but she sure knew not to question orders. However, as the the orders came from Canoness Wilmix to rush towards Gomar in order to simply "observe" what was really going on there, Marlie felt slightly irritated. They had just returned from a brutal training session at Malova Jungle, stretching over two weeks and leaving her entire squad exhausted. Of course, Marlie would never admit to such weakness, and accepted the mission without question.

The entire objective felt strange. Sending the Adepta Sororitas to spy on the internal affairs of the Mechanicum?

At the last minute orders came to bring along Priestess Annah and a Penitent Engine for extra backup, which just confirmed that though the initial command to "observe", violence was undoubtedly a possibility. And, as Annah mentioned in a hushed voice, there were supposedly two deathcult assassins already at the site.

As they were closing in on the temple city of Gomor, Priestess Annah extended her mighty axe to the sky and prayed in silence as the Penitent engine thrashed ahead across the thick vegetation. The Adepta sororitas spread out, vigilant as ever.

Closing in on the ruins, the sky seamed to come crashing down on them. First, two sisters at the very front were torn apart, and before anyone had time to react there was a second, devastating blast.

The other sisters were completely shocked at the sudden and violent turn of events, seeing their superior torn apart in an instance together with the pious priestess and the handful of sisters surrounding them. It all went too fast, blood and body parts scattered across the bush and all they could see was a huge figure stepping out of the ruins.

Instinct told the sisters to raise their weapons and fire, yet the absurdity of the situation stayed their hands. It was a Mechanicum Knight! Why would the Mechanicum fire at them, without so much as a warning? Why?! The penitent engine shrieked and raged ahead, mindless of the gravity of the event, as the surviving battle sisters took cover, trying to make sense of everything.

Then they saw. There were not only Mechanicum fighters hiding in the ruins of Gomar.

"Fall back!" cried a battle sister, her voice breaking up. "Fall back, we have to inform the Canoness of this treachery!"

A voice, shrill and commanding, penetrated the communications network.
"Leave immediately, get the news back to headquarters. We will delay the enemy, but hurry!"

At the same moment, a deathcult assassin appeared from the shadows and went to attack. The target, a squad of grim looking renegades in tarnished power armors, emissaries of chaos, didn't even flinch. It all went too fast, and the assassin fell to the ground before she even got to strike a blow.

From the other side of the ruin, the second assassin attempted to reach the scitarii. Two quick shots from afar stopped her right in her tracks, killing her instantly.

The penitent engine crashed into the Knight and for a brief moment there was an expression of bliss on the poor penitent's face. The ground shook as the great Knight fell, destroyed. The penitent shrieked in pain and pleasure, her mechanical extensions torn apart, leaving her immobilized. Seconds later a giant chainsaw ripped her open from behind, ending the sinner's miserable existence for good...

Update, Scitarii

2011-07-29T05:05:00.000-07:00

A short update. I have painted another three Scitarii and I am starting to get the hang of the assembly process and the painting. Now I is just a matter of buying and building enough of the guys before GW changes the Necron models. Al in all I thing they look suitably wild and non uniform for one to forget their origin. I also include a picture of my AD-mech "army "so far (except Titans and Knights). Now it will be back to the titans, finishing of the insides of the last Warhound. I might also make another Defiler conversion, Mordian 7th has a nice Myrmidon that I might like to imitate or it might be another Knight, but with close combat weapons this time. We will see.

I just got a question about what the original models look like so I show I picture of the necron warriors from the Games-Workshop website (© Games Workshop Limited 2000-2011)

Reactor room, Wolfish Perversion

2011-07-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

I have had a few days now of painting and things are moving along. I have finally finished the reactor room of Wolfish Perversion. It has taken me some time to get around to this. I think it is all the organic growths that has been putting me of from painting the insides, I clearly remember it from painting Unbreakable Desire, and it was new and fresh then but got a bit stale at the end which sadly has not changed much with time. Now I only have the front and weapons servitors left before I can assemble the upper body of Wolfish Perversion. It will be nice to start cleaning up the figure cabinets from random titan parts and assemble them.The paint scheme is similar to the of the previous warhound since they are supposed to be brother and so. On the out side there will however be some changes as the green stuff is different and Wolfish Perversion is the leader of the pack, which will be represented in the paint scheme. This is it for now...

Robot and Adept

2011-07-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

After some inspired speed painting I now have my first Robot prototype base painted together with its controlling Adept. And I am currently working on the Adepts side kick in the form of a servitor and might post pics of it later. I think the jury is still out on the robot. I thought the bluetacked mock-up locked better with the launchers closer together but now that I look at the pictures it is not so bad. The problem is the alignment of the exhausts that interfere with the back of the main body. From Behind it is logical to place them as I did, as well as from the sides as there is a suitable cut out in the launches/jumppacks to fit nicely over the shoulder. However from the front I think they look like they are about to fall of. I will have to give it some thought and make a new attempt later on. But I think I managed to hide most of the Tau look as it is not to intrusive. Well it was a nice short project that could be assembled more or less straight out of the box so I might make more of these guys later. The Idea is that an Adept might control up to three robots by himself and by bring the servitor along he might have another three or the servitor can be removed instead of the adept in case he is killed preventing the robots form going into emergency protocols or something similar. I am not currently planing this as a playable army, so I will build and paint models in line with what I believe a mechanicum army should be like. There are a number of fan-dexes out there with the ad-mech armies. I have looked at some but I am not following anyone in particular. My basic line is that the mechanicum will not send a man to do a machines work and as such I will try to minimize the fleshy parts of the army at this stage. Later I might ad some guard/praetorian guards to fill out the lines, but we will see about that. Now I will finish of the servitor and then go back to paining the interior of Wolfish Perversion. It is a rainy day and I am on vacation so it will be a full day of painting I hope.

Back to 40k-work again...

2011-07-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

I am back, again. I have had another project, non 40k related that has a deadline this weekend that needed to be done and the only way to get it done in time was to pack all the 40k stuff away. Hide the paints and brushes, and occupy the work space with other stuff. But now it is all done and my hobby table is once again filled with titans, robots, scitarii and other stuff. The first thing i did after my seclusion was to finish of the robot prototype. I had some sugestions to change to leg armour and it might have been best to do so, but this prototype should be build with out of the box parts and a minimum of green stuff so I will save any major modifications for the next one.

Then I also put some scitarii together, I tried to experiment a bit with using guitar strings to make cabling to the weapon as well as modifying the cuts of the parts to improve some things I was not happy with. I also cleaned up the engineseer and the iron brother and got them all spray pained and ready for painting. This was a few days ago and I have not had so much time to paint so I will just give you some pictures of where I am and I will have to get back when I have some more to show.

Robot ideas

2011-07-01T00:53:00.000-07:00

After some tinkering with the Robot idea I now have a concepts so I have officially upgradet this to a new project, project robot. My big question right now is if I should have the "launchers" on the shoulders or not. And if I should have them, exactly how should they be mounted. The legs turned out slightly different than I thought they would but I think they are ok. Originally they where shorter and sat more closely together as they where mounted in the original leg recesses. The spacers used to fill the large holes in the main body did however change this. The alternative would have been to use green stuff to cover it up. Apart from this I think it will work, it needs some green stuff and so but otherwise I am happy. I try to keep the amount of customization to a minimum at this point, using as much of the original models parts as possible, as this will make it easier to make more of the same without having to make to much sculpting. There will always be some green stuff filling to cover-up some mismatches and such and I can always make a more advanced version later when I have worked out what needs changing.

General updates

2011-06-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

So I would like to repport on some general updates. It seems to me that I don't have as much time now to paint as I had during winter and spring, which is not so surprising realy, there are a number of other things that has priority at the moment. But I do manage to squeeze some time in for painting. I have painted and assembled the legs for the next war hound titan, Wolfish Perversion. This was a bit of a nostalgic moment as I was reminded of my first encounters with the titans about 10 months ago. It is a bit saddening to realize that I am starting to finish the titans, even if there is still much to do. I have also started with the interior. At the moment it has been painted green, inked brown, drybrushed three shades of green and inked brown again.

To prolong the titan task I have some smaller projects running parallel to the titans. Last week I did finish the first Knight prototype and this week I finished a space marine tank that has been sitting around half painted. As I currently have no other project running I got the idea to start something new. I have already started my scitarii battle constructs, and I will make some more of these and see if I can make something more of them. But I also need something more directly mechanicum so I decided to go for a battle adept controlling a group of robots. As there are currently no robot models for 40k I had to come up with a way to represent them. The Battle adepts are represented by the techprist enginseers from the imperial guard line, these are accompanied by a henchman from the ironbrother line from Micro Art studios.

The later addition was not planed, but as I searched the local hobby stores for the techpriests I found these and I have seen a lot of people using these models to represent mechanicum forces. As I have mentioned before in my blogs I do not intend my mechanicum to be an imperial guard army painted red, even if the models are slightly different so I will limit my self to using these kind of troops as commanding characters. It will be an army of robots, mechanized warriors, titans, knights and tanks. All the big funny stuff that one could not afford to build an army from before. Well enough about that. At the moment the robot is just roughly blue taced and it need some more tinkering and green stuff, but I think it will be ok. It is based on the tau crisis battle suit. As with the necron scitari, it is all about distracting the eye, remove the things that make it distincly tau/ necron/ what ever, and add your own mark, then you can ( hopefully) use other models to represent your special type of unit without it being distinctly tan/ necron... You just have to be careful to find a theme that is coherent for your army, this makes it much easier to pull this of. So to make my battle suit less tau and more mechanicum I removed the head, which is definently tau, the jump pack had to go, and where repositioned on to to make it more bulky.

The legs are mounded upside down to provide armor over the lower parts of the legs, which is a thing that is common for imperial stuff, the titans has it, dreadnoughts has it, the knight has it and so on. This helps tie it together. The tau feet also had to be replaced. I have not decided on the weapons yet but they will most likely be mounted under the arms or extending from them or directly from the shoulders. Mounting them on the out side would be to much tau. Well I will return on this topic once I have done some more tinkering with it.

Defilers

2011-06-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

This week I have started to paint the legs of Wolfish Perversion, the second war hound. Since I have shown quite a lot of pictures of the war hound legs during the painting of Unbearable Desiere I will not post pictures of these until they are finished. So instead I will present my defiler knight that is now base painted. I will go over it at some point and add some final details. I will also keep it handy if I need to test some thing before putting it on the titans. I am quite happy with how it turned out. There are some things that I will change for the next one. The feet will be modified to get some more range of motion. I will also putt the driver cockpit further back in to the main body. The next version will also be a close combat version featuring power fists and an enclosed cockpit. I also have a more traditional Defieler that I painted some years ago. I thought that I would present it here as a comparison. This defiler has also been modified to some extent. I did not like the battle cannon sticking out of the chest so I made and arm of it together with the battle cannon from a leman russ. This defiler is part of my Khorne battle group, making up part of my mercenary chaos force. Well, I will be back with some more process photos from the titans later in the week.

Witch hunter inquisitor retinue - first henchman ready!

2011-06-13T13:42:00.001-07:00

Hi all! I haven't painted for some time now, so Marcus's projects have filled the blog lately... But tonight I found a sudden spark - most likely due to the news of the new SoB coming out in just a few months! So I decided to finish my first inquisitor's henchman, which I've put together from pieces of three other models.

Now I must say I am slightly disappointed. I love the actual model, and I'm happy with the way I put it together. But after looking too much at other people's marvellous work I can't help but feel that my painting is... well... a bit crappy. But hey, I am what I am and at this point I couldn't have done better, so I guess I should be pleased anyways. And I did enjoy painting it!

So here it is, ready to be judged by cyberspace. Can anyone tell which three models I took the pieces from?

More insides

2011-06-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

After a family night around the painting table I have some progress to show on the Reaver, I Finally managed to paint the last of the internal panels. I will probably not glue it together right now so that I can go back and work them over one more time before closing it up. Sadly the insides of the Reaver is not as accessible as the inside of the war hound. This means that once put together it will not be possible to view most of the work I have done on the insides, so it is good to have this blog so that I can go back and have a look at it in the future. I have also started to work on the legs of the next warhound. It is fascinating how much one can get done in an evening if one has several parallel things to paint on. The Knight also got some details painted but not enough to show yet. This will be all for now, until later then...

Evolution

2011-06-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Well, to day I thought that I would talk about evolution, both my own and the plastic space marine. Once upon a time in the mid 90´s I got involved in the 40K hobby. A friend of mine introduced my to the hobby and I soon got caught up with buying and painting models. Already from the start I fell for the space marines, I thought the models looked cool and the plastic marines offered a multitude of possibilities. So the first marines I got was the almost legendary plastic mk6 plastic marines, 30 to a box, multi part marines. This box was ideal as a starter kit since you got enough marines to start you of with a decent army in the Rough Trader days. This was before there where any codexes and you had to get your inspiration from the rule book or from white dwarf. For some reason that I don´t remember I choose Space Wolfs. Now this turned out to be a lucky choice as the Space wolfs where the first marines to get their own codex and a new range of models. The first painting technique that I learned was dry-brushing, I had built quite a few model airplanes and cars before using flat colors, but this was my first attempt at painting models with such levels of detail in this scale (I actually had made some tries with epic scale marines first) that should be shaded. The models where primed with a white spray paint, then they where base pained and heavily inked blue. They looked more like ultra marines at this point then space wolves. Then it was just a question of drybruching as hard as you could using two or three shades. Then slab on the final details and you had a marine.

As you can see I started early to converted my own characters using this kit. Well once the metals where out I bought and pained one of each, blood claws, grey hunters, long fangs and wolf guard as well as the characters. With this I had quite a substantial army for the time, over the years I added some vehicles and other support units. But that might be for another post. Now onwards. After slobbering away with a not to sophisticated drybrusching I realized that I could do better. At some time during the final stages of painting on the space wolf army I started to paint some Dark Angel auxiliaries, and they turned out better than the primary army. So I started a Dark Angel army, and once again, this was just before Codex Angel of Death was released so I got some new models to paint. Now most of this army is metal, and here we are talking about plastics. At this pint, GW made a strange move, they released new rules, which where in a box with marines and orks.

The marines where two piece static pose marines that look slightly strange. I did paint some of them using the same method as I used on the metal marines. Now I had developed my painting technique to be a hybrid between painting shades and dry brushing. The models are base painted green and then inked black. Then I use different green paints to shade it and highligt edges etc, then I use a small dry brush to smooth the edges of the painted shades. I never really liked these models and the few that got painted got sidelined as much as possible. Then I remembered that I still had one of these old multipart plastics left and decided to make some Dark angels of them. Now I tried a new method again, this time the dry brushing is skipped altogether.

The models are still based green and inked black, but before the ink has dried a paint on the shades and highlights, mixing the colors with the ink on the model and in this way get rather smooth transitions between shades. I also decided to give these dark angels a camouflage scheem as portrayed in the rough trader book. I like the appearance of these models. They have a spacial forces feel, no parade uniforms, more usable battlefield equipment and dynamic poses.

Once again GW released new rules and this time it was spacemarines and dark eldar in the box. But this time is was multipart models. They where much better then the static mk7 marines released in the old rulebox and they reminded me of the old mk6 multipart kit. I decided to paint some of them and at this point I was quite tiered of painting green and the way of shading was to time consuming. So I retreated back to dry brushing. This time I did not ink the models as hard ( watering down the ink and using a lighter ink) as on the original space wolves, also had made some battle damaged to the models to give them some more texture. To enhance this I use a dark brown ink to black line all the features on the model before starting to dry-brush. I also did the dry brushing in two layers, going back to the darkest color once I reached the lightest one and starting over. After this final details and metallic damage is added. This technique is the same as I use on the titans, but in this case I also ink the model in-between the two layers of dry-brushing.

So as the plastic space marines evolved so did my painting methods. I find that I can not paint the same army for a long time, I need to change the palette once in a while and also the painting technique. Depending on what I am painting I choose different techniques some times on the same model, but that might be a topic for another post.

Reaver insides

2011-06-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

There is much to do and not enough time to do it. I find myself constantly apologizing for not being able to do as much work on the titans as I would like to. There is however something called the real world out there and I do have other commitments, which will infringe on my time with the titans. So with this being said I will report on my progress. After the last post where I brought Unbearable Desire out for an outing I noticed that the legs had started to warp under the weight of the titan body. When I assembled the legs, feet and hips the feet and all the toes where firmly on the ground (after some fiddling that almost made my panic). Now however the back leg only touch the ground with a small part on the front of the middle toe. It does not feel unbalanced and it is standing steady but I am worrying that the warpage will continue until it can not stand any longer and falls over. I am not quite sure what to do about it at the moment. I do not feel confident in warming up the resin and bending it back into position without seriously damaging the paint job. I could mount it on a base and "make sure" that the feet are firmly on the ground, but this is a last option as I see it as this would make it to clumsy in my opinion. Well I will have to think about it some more on it, or someone out there has a good suggestion on what to do. Until I have a good solution I think I will keep it dismantled as not to place to much strain on the legs.

Well that is that. I have also been working along on the Reaver, I have already posted some pictures of the interior panels, now I have pained the front end and the hallway. For some reason my camera does not like to photograph yellow, highlighted with white in a nice way. The black and yellow areas are not as bad as they look. I will however go back to these areas and see if I can improve on it, either with better painting or photography. My next task will be to paint the back area of the interior. This piece was assembled from three parts that fit nicely together well dry fitted, however as mentioned in a previous post the parts could not be assembled in this way and still fit on the hallway, so after gluing the pieces together on the hall way I was left with some rather large gaps which I needed to fill with green stuff. Now It is primed and ready for paint. Once the interior is finished, or at least base painted I will start on Wolfish Perversion, I have not give that much attention to this titan yet as I got caught up in finishing Unbearable Desire. Now however I need to get going on the legs and then on to the interior. I also plan to make some more green stuff modeling on Juluns Wrath as well as on Wolfish Perversion so I will try to keep from painting the armored out side just yet. I will try to post some more things from the ancient 90s, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Imperial Guard or something else that I can find. I also plan to make something on my possessed marines, of which some has made an appearance in the other blog posts. Well I will see, if I can do some painting on the titans I will post this, if I cant make something new I will post something old instead. =) Until later then...

Public apperance

2011-05-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

"The morning mist was starting to lift, the ground trembled under his feet, the wind was rushing past his armored hide. Unbearable Desire was running free. He was scouting ahead of the main force, looking for an intercept point. As he cleared the woods a small gathering of houses appeared, a cross road. Slowly he walked up to the intersection , head swinging back and forth, sensors sweeping the area. No enemy forces around, but he could smell them on the wind, they where heading this way. This would make an excellent battle field. He chanted the coordinates back to command. To bad he was not allowed to stay and rip into the loyalist scums, but there were other things to take care of. He started to run again, picking up speed... he was running free, sensors seeping ahead looking for the next objective."

So today Unbearable Desire made his first public appearance. There was a apocalypse game on at one of the local stores and I thought that I would bring him along. I did not have time to stay for the whole battle so Unbearable Desire had to sit this one out, just scouting a head before the main battle begun. I think he was appreciated, at least there was no direct bad comments about his appearance, apart for him skipping out on the battle. We will see if he can find another engagement to participate in at some future date (I will have to read up on the rules a bit before that).

Apart form bring Unbearable Desire out for a walk I have worked on the Reaver. Another panel has been painted. I have also pinned the back parts and shoulders. I am doing revers pinning as I first glue the parts in to place, then I drill holes into the parts and fix them in place with metal rods. The rods themselves are quite thin and I have no illusion's that they will hold any great loads but they will stand up for the moderate loads of the weapons and reinforce the glue, I am more worried about the resin in this case. I have noticed that Unbearable desire is starting to lose its pose due to resin warpage. The feet are no longer flat on the surface so I will have to keep track of this development so that he does not take a nosedive of his shelf. I am currently working on the insides of the Reaver and I hope to come back with some more picture once I get them painted in a day or two.

Defiler knight

2011-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Parallel to the Titan project I am working on a Defiler Knight. The aim of this project was to make a Knight out of the Defiler kit and the Sentinel kit. The assembly of the model was a fairly straight forward affair as I had had a lot of thought about how to do it. But what I did not realize was that the model could be viewed in two ways, maybe more. In my mind the model was a mini version of the reaver, with the cockpit sticking out in front, and a long body behind with a missile launcher on the back. However, once I started painting the model it changed character. The missile launcher was no longer on the back but became the head of a humanoid with a cockpit sticking out of its chest. Now I see both versions which is a bit disconcerting. I might have to make some changes to the concept on the next one. As far as this one goes I will have to play along...

... so I will paint the amour over the missile launcher bone white as with the heads on the Warhound... and we will see how it goes.

Reaver panel

2011-05-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am back, again! =) Well after the last post I had to take care of some real life stuff, like work and such things. But now I am slowly starting to roll again. I have once again started to paint on the reaver. I started out with the inside panels with the weapon servitor. I will do the reaver as I did the warhound, first paint the insides, then put it all together and then paint it. But first I had to put some of the minor parts into bigger blocks for painting. One of the things I needed to assemble was the back parts of the reaver, i.e the reactor parts. Compared to the warhound the fit of the parts are generally much more snug and it has a more intricate design to lock all the paces in place. This however makes it much more sensitive to warpage of the parts. I had assembled the parts, dry fitting it and it looked ok and everything seamd to be aligned. To make the glue stick better to the rater flat surfaces that needed to be glued I used a modeling knife to score the surface to make the glue adhere better. However once I started to apply glue and try to stick the parts together I realized the sides where not as flat as they looked. I also attached the parts, with out glue, to the center part of the upper body. One I did this I realized that the parts did not fit quite right on to the center part. After some serious manhandling of the model I managed to get all the parts in to the right place. However the seams where not quite meeting up at this point. The solution to this was ducktape. Squeezing the model together and then wrapping it hard in ducktape made all the joints come together. I sincerely advise that if you are going to have the back part separate for painting that you assemble it on the central part to get every thing aligned, it is not enough to mount the parts to each other with out fitting. After it was all glued together I pined it at several places to reinforce the glued joints. Next up is filling in the gaps with green stuff.

Unbearable Desire

2011-05-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

Unbearable Desire is finally painted, at least ground painted. Now I just have to go back over all individual peaces and do final detailing, weathering and so on. There are also the spinal spikes to do but it is now in a state that I can bring it to the battlefield to see what kind of damage it will do. Now I think it is time to move on to the other titans for a while. I am thinking about starting with the internals of Joluns Wrath (the reaver). I might also start out with the legs of Wolfish Perversion (second warhound), I have not decided. I also have to start with another project that I have been postponing for a while. This is however not a Wh40k thing so that will be posted on our other blog (agiscraft.blogspot.com). During this time my progress on the titans will probably somewhat limited, but fear not, I will not give up on them. I also have the Knight to finish, it is mostly painted but awaits some detailing.

Painting goes on

2011-05-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

Painting goes on. Now I have finished to groin plate of Unbearable Desire. It turned out ok. The green stuff mods are quite simple but still makes it look a little more detailed. The green, bronze, grey and red of the armor plates give a nice contrast to the green legs. I was a bit worried that the armor plates would not pop and just melt into the background. It appears that this is not really the case. I have also painted the bronze borders of the rear reactor coverings and painted the void shield projectors. These are details and will not big breakthroughs but that is all I have to report right now. Taking pictures with my compact at night with sharp painting lights does not convey the colors in a good way. I am planing to have a real photo shoot with it later when it is more finished and post more pictures then. As for now you will have to make do with these.

Warhound progress

2011-05-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

I am making progress. =) Unbearable Desire is starting to take shape. One can now see what it will look like when it is done. There are still a lot of details that needs to be fixed but the general paint scheme is there. I have also painted some of the green stuff mods that I made to the armor and body work. I am quite happy with the over all result. Sadly I do not have a camera to give a really fair representation of what the model looks like in real life. It comes across quite dark, but on a well lit table it really looks god if I may say so.

I have not done so much to the other models, I use the ´knight as a test bed for some techniques that I am trying out before applying them to the titans, mostly how to paint flaked motifs without them looking painted flaked. I am pleased with the blue with striping flaking that I do with masking tape. However this technique is not suitable to smaller motifs as I cant make the tape peaces small enough. So I have started to use paper cut outs as templates for the shape, then I use a brush and sort of dot on the paint so that it follows the out lines of the template but I can choose to leave some areas sparsely painted or not at all and still retain the appearance of the motif. I updated the kneepad of the Reaver to include the legion insignia which will be a black diamond with a white spade in the middle. I tried some fancier designs but they all look "unrealistic" and as I try to keep the paint scheme as real as possible I came up with this. I am not sure if I have seen it on some real military unit but its probably been used by some. My legion is however not connected to any real military unit and any likeness to such insignia is coincidental. =) I just like to have a simple insignia.

I am also thinking about using the paper cut out method to make base areas when free handing some more complicated designs. I will then print an image that i like in multiple copies, then using a scalpel cut out the different colored areas, make some reference marks on them all for alignment. In this way I think it will be easier to transfer the image to the model and still keep the relative size of the fields even on curved or uneven surfaces. Well I have not tested this so I don´t know if it will work.

When painting on the model I have also thought a bit about how engine wars would be fought. In the fiction titans are portrayed as walking machines of mass destruction that will be on their own or in groups making war where ever they can find targets and that they only return to base to reload once in a while, but in general staying out for days or weeks. Well this all sounds fine in books, but when you look at the model you might start to think that things might be somewhat different. Sure, the magazines of the weapons are huge, but so are the barrels and hence the ammunition. Which would mean that a titan probably would empty the ammunition store with in minutes in a fire fight. This would mean that the titans would be running back and forth between the front-line and the reloading stations with some regularity. This would also make bringing a CCW more or less mandatory to fend of other titans once the bullets run out. One might also wounder how you reload titan weapons in the field. The weapons are after all siting a fair distance from the ground and as I sad before, the magazines are huge. Well I am sure they have solutions to this in the 41st milenium but there are no models for it as far as I know. It would be interesting with some titan support vehicles.

Well that was just a though. Now I will return to the titans and paint some more. I will post on the progress of the details and try to make more frequent posts.

More scitarii

2011-04-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

So after a quick paint job I now have two prototype scitarii painted for my mechanicus army. The knight is also coming along as well as the warhound. I give you a "family" picture to look at until I have some more details to show.

Scitarii

2011-04-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

Once again life has intruded my plans for the mechanicum. But don´t worry, I have a new project again. This time its time to tackle the Scitarii. What would a fledgling titan legion be without Scitarii. The titan, and knights for that matter, needs foot sloggers to protect their feet. Most people that I have seen on the net are using guards or dark angel (or marines in generall) models painted in the Mechanicum colors to represent the scitarii. Others are using the Ironbrothers (or something similar, can´t find it). Looking at the fiction the two main sources (that I have reed) are mechanicum and titanicum. In mechanicum the scitarii are described as mechanical cyborgs, more machine than men, in titanicum they are portrayed as savage warriors with cybernetic upgrades.I rather think the mechanicum description sounds better. Why would the mechanicum, that revers the machine, use biological warriors if they have the technology to use servitors in battle chassis. It don´t want the the scitarii to be just another imperial guard army or dark angels in red robes. So to represent my scitarii I choose to use the necron warriors. So to make them look less like necrons and more like scitarii I planed to use some guitar strings and green stuff to make a gas-mask and some power cables. So I when to the music store, picked up some guitar strings and a box of necrons. Once at home I opened up the necron box and took a lock at the sprues, and then it hit me that I could build them another way that did not require me to sculpt. =) Now I can here some of you thinking that then they will only look like necrons. Well as with the defiler, there are ways to assemble the parts in a kit so that it does not look like what it is. Of course you can see what the ground model is but the trick is fooling the eye to see something else. So what do they look like then. Are they just necrons dressed up, I let you decide.

The head is made from the front of the fleyer gun and the necron head. I took the weapon and attached it to the left arm. The lower support of the weapon with the axe blade makes a close combat weapon. The small scarabs make exelent backpacks. I will paint these two and then decide if they will cut it or not but I like the feel of them. THey have a dynamic pose and they are easy to build. If it does not work I will go back, add some wires and green stuff to make them less necron.

Imperial remenants

2011-04-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

I am satisfied. The first broken imperial icons has been painted and I am satisfied, they are not as good as they could be, but they add the feel to the titan that I was looking for. I think that it will give a good over all look to the titans once all the different armor pieces has been painted and are in place. There are still a lot of details left to do on the titan but I can now see what it will look like once I am done.

Now it only to get the rest of the titan painted and then there are two more to go. =)

Grey Knights

2011-04-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

I thought that I had to say something about Grey Knights now that the new codex is out. I have not looked in the codex, I don´t even own any of the new models but I have a squad of really old Grey knights terminators from the time when they first appeared in the Warhammer 40,000 compilation. These where in the old days of Rough trader when there was really hard stuff around. A grey night terminator squad where 1200 points.

They where all lv 4 psykers. For those of you who are not familiar with the old level psyker system theses are the max level which includes some rather special powers like temporal distort, stasis, change allegiance and telekinesis 4. Temporal distort gives the player a number of options such as altering the turn sequence or repeating any one turn sequence. If a sequence is repeated only the players models may act. =). Change allegiance allows the player to steal a unit from the opponent. Telekinesis allowed the psyker to lift and move objects equivalent to a large vehicle which could be used as projectiles causing strength 7 attack causing D10 wounds. In CC the grey night could expend psi points through the nemesis weapon to increase the strength and lower the armor save of the opponent. They could also deliver a Psychic blast that causes 2D6 wounds. Then you could take a lord for 600 points without extra equipment. So the models presented here where in their own time a 2000 point army. =) I don´t believe having a 6 man army is line with the current philosophy of GW .

Then I can not help to say something about the mega night or what it is called. I do like the model to some extent but I do not think it fits in with the fluff. If you need large battle machines you call in the mechanicum, you do not strap in your marine in a super exo-skeleton, but that is just my opinion. Then I do wounder why they put the extra pistons on the outside of the shoulders for... they do not fit in.

Just to say something about the color scheme of the models. When I bout these models there was not official way to paint them so I choose to make them grey instead of the metallics of today. The shield and banners do however sadly reflect my age at the time and the way models where painted in the 90th. These models are not as detailed as the current ones but I like the Gothic look of the armor. I like the new grey night models, the details are superb and since they are plastic they offer some interesting modeling opportunities so I might have to get me some and paint them up. The question then is if I should make them in the the same color scheme as my old ones or if I should give the metallics a go, we will see. For now I will return to the fallen mechanicum and continue on the titans. I guess there will be an update on these later today once I do some detail painting on Unbearable Desire.

Legs legs legs

2011-03-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

Legs, I have been painting legs.Now I have one set of warhound legs, one set of reaver legs and one set of knight legs. Most of the work is touch-up and complementary parts but not that much new that has not been shown before. But this means that I can move on towards paining the upper body of the warhound. I also painted the kneecap with the face on the reaver. Here I tried to go for a look of a face appearing beneath the old knee paint and slowly breaking through. The patterns where made using masking tape and drybrushing in several layers. The boarders of the plate needs to be painted and I might do some thing more to the lower left quarter, I am not quit happy with this. Well I will be back when I have some thing more substantial to show.

Bluetack

2011-03-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

So, I have kept working on the knight and now the legs are assembled. I could not resist to bluetack the rest of the knight together to have a look at what it will look like. And as it was assembled I thought that I would take some pictures and present here so that you all know what it is that I am working on now. There are still a lot of green stuff work to do in order to fill all gaps an so but I think it is starting to look the part. For those of you that are conscerned that I have given up on the titans, you can all take it easy. The reavers legs are now painted and I will move on to the pelvis as well as continue with the green stuff work. I put a death guard in the picture to give a sense of scale. The model is part of my pre-heresy possessed space marines. These guys are all loyal legionaries that has been possessed either in or after death.

The Agis Knight project

2011-03-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

So I made a detour. I got myself a defiler and a sentinel for my birthday and I promptly got to work, cutting it up.My main goal with this "small" project is to make it out of what is in these two kits, not raiding my bits box, except my be for the pilot. I have been surfing the net, looking at what people do with these conversions and I have got some ideas of what to do and what not to do. The biggest part to figure out is the legs. Most people seams to use the front arms as legs, using the claws as feet. The problem as I see it is that the front claws has to many joints and they tend to make quite long and spider like legs. They also tend to log very chaos, which is not wrong in a chaos army, but my guys are new converts and I would like to have a more imperial look to the knight. The other problem is the pelvic area. If you use the defiler lower body as it is you tend to have very far between the legs.So my solution to these problems where to use the middle and rear leg instead of the front claws. To pull this of I had to cut the model up, separating the legs at the joints using a small jeweler saw. I also decided to use the back leg claws to make the feet. The pelvic was made using only the joints, cutting them of from the body and gluing them together. In this way I got the width of the pelvic to become smaller so that I could use more human looking leg construction. All in all there are quite a lot of parts that has been cut up and re modeled. I have not used the parts of the models as they are, but I cut them up and re-assembled them to fit my purpose. At the moment there is not much to see, just a lot of parts that will be assembled. Well I will just present a picture of the parts and I will have to get back on the details later on.

The upper body will consist of the defiler upper body with the sentinel cockpit attached up front. I used the rear of the defiler lower body to make a new engine assembly to put on the back. Cutting up the lower body also provided me with the shoulder mounts for the arms. The battle canon was made in to a handheld six shooter version with a drum magazine. Well we will see how this develops, it is a fun project to play around with in-between painting sessions. I am not to strict about the rules so the armament will be a battle cannon in the right hand, a twin linked auto cannon in the left and a missile launcher on the back but no direct close combat weapons. If it will be played I´ll probably be using as a defiler and claim kicking as close combat attacks. =) Well now it is just to glue it together in reasonable chunks, green stuff all the holes and miss match and then paint it up in the same color as the titans.

Green stuff

2011-03-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

Life caught up with me. I know it would sooner or later. Things could not last and I have to realize that things will go slightly slower from here on. But to be honest I was a bit surprised about the pace of this project. But now its been two weeks since last and I have not done that much painting. The other day I did the metallic borders on one of the Reaver feet and it took me three evenings to finish. I cant remember that its taken that long to do before, or I did not notice? I have however made some progress with the green stuff. This is the grate thing about this project, I can switch between all manner of task, painting, sculpting and assembly.

My idea with this trio of titans is that they are new converts to the ruinous powers and as such has not fully mutated to the true chaos look. But the FW models are a bit to "pure", they have the chaos iconography but it is not a full chaos mutation. In-between the chaos icons unblemished armor is visible. On the imperial titans these areas are covered with imperial insignia. If the titans are newly converted there should still be some imperial signs left, unless someone has taken a plasma torch to them and removed them from the titans.

With this in mind I decided that I would ad some imperial eagles and mechanicum cog-skulls to the empty armor plates in-between the chaos icons, or beneath them. The first ones I did on the warhound leg armors was free handed and the result was, well individual. After some thinking a came to the conclusion that first drawing a outline on the pace would help me get the green stuff to the right shape. However once again the pattern was fee hand and a bit unsymmetrical. Then I got the idea to use paper cut outs as patterns and then copying them on to the armor. This was then used to ad some imperial icons beneath the chaos icons, leaving cracks and missing parts where the chaos growth had forced their way through the imperial ones.

Once I got around to the Reaver I added the same marks to the armor using the same templates as on the warhounds but I did not get around to add the green stuff. So the Reaver just sat around while I painted its legs. Then I got the idea to make some alterations to the Rever head. It already has a quite evil look, a bit more sinister then the imperial counterpart, but it still has a lot of flat surfaces. So I wanted to ad a bit more of a skull look since they will be painted in the same bone color as I already painted Unbearable Desires skull in. This took me some more time than i thought it would as I could not get it to the shape I wanted. I am reasonably pleased with it but I might ad some more stuff later on, but it will do for now. Now I also have started with other imperial icons on the rest of the armor plates. I also when t back to the foot and leg armor and added a cog-skull on the leg, split between the three armor plates below the knee. But since I have started to paint the foot and the lower armor this meant that I had to sculpt over the paint. I hope things will not start falling of. I know this is not the way to do things but I did not want to repaint the foot. This might be something that comes back to hunt me later on, but I do not want to lose to much momentum with this project. There is enough temptations as it is and I do not need to ad a reason to switch focus.

Speaking of distractions, as I had my birthday the other week end I treated myself to a present in the form of a defiler and a sentinel. These two kits will be joined together into a knight. I will not model it after one of the known night models used in the epic game since I can not reproduce the look. It will however be interesting to build. I have seen a lot of different versions of these conversions on the net but I will try to put my own twist on it. I will ad a new topic for this once I get going. So this will be it for now.

Paint Frustration

2011-02-28T10:53:00.000-08:00

This week has been a combination of frustration and satisfaction. Half way through the week my brown ink ran out. This is the main base color for the titans on top of the green. So I went to my local hobby store to resupply... but inks are no longer sold by GW. Instead they have something called a wash. Last week I bout a black wash as my current black ink is running low. According to the attendant that should be the same. But it is NOT. Luckily they also have the P3 paints so I bought a brown ink from them. I have not figured out what the wash is for but it is not as a replacement for inks. I have now tested both the new ink from P3 and the wash. And I must say that the wash was useless, at least for what I wanted to do with it. The P3 ink was more like what I am used to. So the main paint scheme of the titans are saved for the time being. But the black ink is also running out which is a greater problem as they did not have a black P3 ink, I dont know if there is such an ink but if there isnt I am in serious trouble.

Well, apart from my paint troubles painting has gone well. I have now painted the Reavers legs and one foot, or actually both feet's are painted but only one has got the border work and red areas. I am quite satisfied with the idea, but I am not sure it comes across as a paint effect rather than some red lighting. I still have the other foot to do the same way, then it is on to the hip and pelvis. There is also some green stuff work to do on the armor plates. I managed to do a nice mechanicus emblem on the Reaver body, I might put a pic on that here later on. Once I get the legs attached to each other it is the second warhound that will get its legs done. Painting is going much faster than I though it would, which might be that I have had more time to put into this project than I usually put in to painting.

If I am good and paint a bit on my deamon prince (featured in a previous post) I might get to start on a defiler night also. This is a bit of a risk but as most of the construction work is done on the Titans I could do with a conversion project. =) well we will see about that later on.

Reaver work

2011-02-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

Its has once again been a while since the last update, which does not mean I have not been working on the titans. As I states in the last post I intended to bring the reaver, Joluns Wrath to more or the less same state as the war hounds. As can be seen to the left, It now stands by it self. I have magnetized the waist so that the torso can traverse. Putting the foot together was a pain, the pistons to the toes where a nightmare to cut to the right length and get them mounted, especially at the extreme position of the foot. I am pressing the envelop of what the feet and legs where meant to be able to do, but I think I can get it together.

I have left the foot and the leg unattached at the moment. I have pinned them together for the time being. This lets me paint them separately but still assemble them temporarily. I started painting the legs which got the same green brown paint as the war hound. I opted not to paint the "hip balls" in metallic as on most reavers that I have seen. I am trying to keep the paint scheme as military as possible, which means that i try to avoid having to many base colors.

Hopefully they will not be to uniform at the end. It is a risk painting everything in the same color as it is easy to lose details and structure. But I hope they will look more like gigantic war machines rather than large colorful toys. I think I will have to get the armor plates and upper body of Unbearable Desire painted soon to see how it looks. I do not want to repaint all three titans if it does not work out. Still I am pleased with the results so far so I will keep going.

I could not stay away from the war hound so the mega bolter got some paint. It is still only base painted and it should receive some more attention with details. Now it is only the body left to paint, and the armor plaiting. I will probably spray it some time this week and start with the painting. I also have to try to find some more paint, I am starting to run out. I hope that I can still get hold of the right colors as the ones I am using now are quite old.

More plasma blast gun ...and something else.

2011-02-07T14:14:00.000-08:00

So I have painted some more on the plasma blast gun. I added the borders to the armor plating, the chaos growths etc.

It is basically finished, i.e all parts are painted but I have not done any free hand like numbers, warning signs etc. This is something that I will come back to since it requires more concentration than I can muster at the moment. Right now I will stick to painting by numbers. =)

This is another project that I have been working on for some time... 5 years or so. It is still not done. I really dont like to paint chaos trophy racks and it has been kind of holding me back. If I get stuck with a detail that I dont feel comfortable painting I tend to stall the whole thing. Most of my painting is done as relaxation so if it upsets me, then it get put on the shelf. Well, eventually it will be a demon prince leading my chaos space marine army, or at least his own contingent of jungle chaos marines. The army is teamed around different mercenary bands lead by a champion. They are not necessarily attuned to specific chaos gods, it is more a way of getting to paint different schemes and still use them in the same army. Though I have to admit that there is one troop from each power... except nurgle. We will have to see what happens with this army. The titans are sort of demanding some ground support in the form of scitarii, defiler nights and perhaps a robot or two.

Reaver legs and War hound plasma

2011-02-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

So, now I am almost at the same stage with the Reaver as I am with the Warhounds. The legs have been constructed, pinned and magnetized. The leg assembly can still be broken down for painting. The only things remaining are the toes and gluing the hip joints to the pelvis. This time I use super glue to attach the hip joints to the legs when dry fitting the stance, I have learned from the Warhound not to use blue tack for this... Hopefully they will break away easily once the joints are glued into the hip. Then it is only to start painting the inner leg structure. =) I will hold off with the armor platings so that I can green stuff them in the same way as with the Warhound armor.

I could not stay away from Unbearable Desire so I started to paint the Plasma Blaster.It is not finished so I will put more pictures here later when it is done. At the moment only the green plates are painted and the inside of the barrels.

Assembly

2011-01-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

So I finally got around to painting the last interior detail of Unbearable Desire, the wall separating the reactor control room from the elevator room. Here I opted to paint the serial number of the Warhound, 2089 on the inside of the reactor room and I also painted the titans name in runes above the entrance on the outside.. After this part was done I attached the rear part of the upper body to the front part and put the wall in. At this point I could attach the upper body to the legs, and it did not fall over. =). As I saw this I decided to magnetize the arms and weapons. I drilled out the arm stub and attached a 10 mm diameter neodym magnet with a 4 mm hole and a 4 mm iron rod in the recess. Then I drilled out a 4 mm hole in each weapon and a small 10 mm diameter recess at the bottom of the socket. In the recess I glued in a iron disc.Once all parts where fixed I could not resist to assemble the titan. I know that it is unpainted and a lot of the smaller parts are missing, but it is the first time it stands more or less ready for battle. =)

I have also started to assemble the Reaver titan's legs. I started with the magnetization of the outer armor plates and now I am moving on towards cutting the pistons to the right length. I will keep the lower leg lose at the moment and only glue the toes, and piston guards in the right position. This gives me the possibility to paint the inner leg before assembly, which is good since the outer armor is removable. =). I don't understand why people say that the Reaver legs are easier than the Warhound, I find these more complex and not as flexible as the war hound feet. Well I will try to squeeze the pose that I want out of them and if it does not work I will have to use a more standard way to assemble them. I also have to think about pinning. I have not had any problems with the epoxy so far but it is not worth taking any chances with the legs.

I will probably take a break from the Unbearable Desire to work on the other titans, so that I get them to more or less the same state before starting to paint the armor. I still have some green stuffing to do. This will in principle mean that I have to paint every thing that I have done again =) but on another titan. We will see if I can keep away from the armor.

It stands!

2011-01-27T00:29:00.000-08:00

After being away for a few weeks it's time to show you all what has been done to the titans lately. Both legs of Unbearable Desire have been painted and assembled in their walking position. It was quite a scare to glue them together! I had glued the legs in their position and the hip, leaving only two joints unglued and held together by blue tack. This was done so that I could paint the parts separately before assembly. However, when I applied glue to the last joints and tried to get them to fit together I could not make the joints flush at the same time as all the toes where in contact with the surface. This was due to the fact the the blue tack that I used when gluing the other parts used more space than the final glue and hence the parts did not fit properly. Since the walking pose puts a lot of strain on the legs I did not want the feet to be in contact at just one point. After about an hour of fiddling back and forth I finally managed to get them into a position where the feet were flat on the ground and there were only very small gaps in the hip joints. I will have to fill the gaps with more glue or green stuff at some point, but it's holding and standing so it's not critical right now. However, it has to be done before the upper body gets attached. I have also worked some more on the shin guard, adding the border and Chaos icons. I also tried the idea of having a red paint scheme (Khorne type) starting to grow out from the Chaos icon, taking over the original paint scheme, though I'm not sure if it comes across right or if it just looks like something else. We'll see if I want to enlarge the areas so that it becomes more of a painted surface but I don't want to make it too cluttered; I don't want the armor to look like a colorful camo paint. Sine all of the armor plates are either loose or magnetized I can hold back on painting them until I know what I want.

Great news: New Sisters of Battle coming up!

2011-01-25T00:17:00.000-08:00

Ok so at this point I'm closing in on 'extatic' here.... A couple of weeks ago I heard from my local retailer that gw was dropping the SoB, which of course made my horribly disappointed. The Sisters of Battle have always been my absolute favorite army and actually the only one that has ever stirred my imagination and enough to spend money on. Now, the disappointment has been turned to joy, as I read on the great net that not only are gw keeping the SoB, they are actually releasing new models!!!!!! YAY!!!

I first read about it in Faeit 212, where was passed on from stickmonkey on Farseer. Rather than trying to rephrase the whole thing, I think it's best to simply pass along what was originally said. Read it while I try to regain my breath. The plastic (!) models coming up sound amazing (despite the traditional and oh so unpractical haircut which is still there).

(Link to original HERE)

I'm posting this in the rumor section on purpose, but it's more of a review.

I got to get a good look at a new protoype basic sister, and I'm hoping one of our other sources can sneak a picture out once they see it. The reason is, this sister has a "veil". Words cannot describe...the detailing is phenomenal. The veil is a separate piece, but it looks gorgeous. If they can get this right in molding the sisters wave will be beautiful models. If you've seen this one, you know what I mean... I begged to take a photo for here, but no luck.

The model maintains the existing armor styling, but with more filigree. Little details like lace boot tops, small details in the armor. Look at the evolution of daemonettes to wyches, and think what the next step would be.

The bolters however are now streamlined, they are not the marine bolter we've known and loved, but still recognizable. Feminine.

I know I'm getting folks worked up, but sisters are still a long way off, it will be a long wait. So temper any enthusiasm.

EDITED:

I've had a chance to gather notes and thoughts a bit more now that I've completed my work today and had time to get a pint and a bite...

So to clarify a few bits.

The lace, is not laces, its lace around the top of the boot. at the knee. the model has like a pirate style boot and the lace is around the top edge..or thats my take away of what it was.

The bolter is still most certainly a bolter, but look at the existing line, the bolters are disproportioned...especially the bolt pistols...to the models. the new ones are much more like the AoBR SM bolters. With straps, etc. and are separate pieces from arms. they "look" slighty thinner than a SM bolter and have a different shape to the over all gun, but they are not "Girly" i did not have a SM handy to compare directly, so it could just be impression. Also, they have abandoned the banana clip completely it seems.

the veil covered the whole head, its an alternate to the helmet, the face piece is just separate. think cobra commander vs vera wang wedding.

the torso has small details in the corset, i think skulls.

the tabard between the legs had flur de lis details.

there are "sleeves" similar to the image on 19 of the current WH book. similar, but not identical.

I'll reiterate this is a prototype though, not what has necessarily been approved. But as a beta stage model, i really like it, and I think a teaser of it would really build up excitement...hint hint GW overlords... Maybe wait til closer to release...

Overall when i see the current sisters their are very "bulky" these new ones are very graceful, but in a brutal way. the poses are much more dynamic and agressive. not everyone has their feet planted shoulder width apart torso straight on to their opponents....

I was told there will be numerous head options for the sisters, in the way theyve been doing all releases, but the "bob cut" is the preferred hairstyle.

I'm also told sisters repentia, priests, celestians, and seraphim will get new models with seraphim likely to adopt jump packs similar to the sanguinary guard...though I saw no evidence of this. No word on arco flaggelants.

Penitent engine is getting reworked as well.

And of course you saw my Jan rumor post. To provide a clue, Dominion squads.

Inq forces should all be updated by the GK release, so no news there for SoB, but they are expected to be present in the codex.

I also know of a few more "new" units that are being developed.

Cheers.

Prospero Burns... and so do I!

2011-01-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

I should say that it is hard to impress me when it comes to pseudo-Viking sagas. I am very familiar with the Old Icelandic literary tradition and Iron Age Scandinavia, which obviously the Space Wolves' culture is modeled upon. I have sat by the fire, huddled up under my heavy fur-lined cloak, and listened to the sounds of the night. I have felt the chill of the ocean, and held the coarse wooden oar between my hands as the waves crashed against the mighty ship. Don't come to me with half-assed accounts of comical, barbarian Vikings because I'll see right through it. Am I being presumptuous? A bit arrogant perhaps? Hell yeah. But you better believe it's true.

With that said... Prospero Burns, the latest addition to the Horus Heresy series, has truly gotten my blood pumping and put some fire in my heart! I often find myself speed reading when a book doesn't completely manage to grip me and I just want to get it over with. Dan Abnett's Prospero Burns, on the other hand, took unusually long for me to get through. I wanted to taste every sentence, every word of this epic contribution to the 40k universe. It almost felt wrong to simply read it. I wanted to say it out loud, and hear the words, feel the words. They are brutal and honest, just like the Wolves themselves, and completely knocked me out.

Already after a few pages, I was happily cast back into the coarse, short-spoken and very clever style echoing the language of the Icelandic sagas. I couldn't help smiling at terms like "Upplander" (born and raised in Uppland I am, wee!) and shudder at chilling descriptions of finger's scattered on the snow. Defensive wounds. Yeah, that's nasty. And very true to life, so don't even think about trying to stop the blow of an axe with your hands.

If you are the least squeamish, and faint at the sight of blood, you really shouldn't read this book. The violence is almost too... violent... It is so very direct, carnal and feels way too real. The descriptions poke at your insides in an almost disturbing manner. Bodies fall from the sky like "human hail" and hit the ground "with a noise like smashing eggs and snapping celery". Yet the Wolves of the 6th legion remain true to the chosen heroic ideal, never even flinching. When Heoroth Longfang falls to the ground, mortally wounded, his brother remarks that it's "a fine day for sitting on your arse." Longfang casually replies that he likes the weather here! Unrealistic? Yes definitely, but that's the beauty of it! When characters in the Icelandic saga's present such comments it is accepted as an unrealistic yet charming cultural trait, which probably had very little to do with reality. But the warriors of the 6th legion are not human, they play by a different set of rules and they become more true to the ancient ideal than regular humans ever could.

Now of course, Prospero Burns is not only about the 6th legion. With unexpected ease one is suddenly thrown back into "regular" imperial culture, and regards the Wolves as a part of imperial mankind while at the same time being utterly separated from it. Dan Abnett is a master of transitions! From ancient to modern, from dream to reality, from bestiality to great humanity, from the physical to the transcendental; the crossing of these intangible borders is a recurring theme throughout the novel. In a way the theme runs through the entire Horus Heresy, but it is never as forcefully and exquisitely expressed as in Prospero Burns.

If I could only recommend one of the Horus Heresy books, it would surely be this one. You don't even have to be a fan of 40k literature, or even familiar with Warhammer 40k in general! Dan Abnett has created a masterpiece and I look forward to going back into his world, tasting the bloody words again, once more hearing the wolves howl and smelling the fear of enemies as they are torn to pieces. As Prospero burns, so do I. And I love it!

Dark Angels from the Past

2011-01-14T05:50:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my Dark Angels space marines. This was the second army I painted (the first was a Space Wolves army). These models where pained during the mid 90th. After finishing my spacewolfs I wanted to paint something in a diffrent colour and to try out some new techniques. The space wolves where mostly dry brushed, while here I tried a combo of drybryshing and layering to get nice blends between diffrent shades. The colour scheme fn the inner cirlce is sligthly different from what is common today. Instead of bonewhite robes I have used purple. This was inspiered by a diorama by Mike McVey that appeard in the first Blood Angel / Dark Angel codex (Angels of Death) . The Raven wing comander on a bike was made before the release of the Raven wing master mounted on a land speeder or the subsequent master on a jetbike. The chaplain on a bike is part of the raven wing masters comand squad.

This is one of the first Death wing terminators that I painted. It does not have the typical bone white canopy that is seen today, but is based on the original Death Wing saga told in the one of the Spacehulk rule books, (can't remember wich) where the story of the death wing is told. In this case story a squad of terminators return to their home world to find it overrun by a genestealer cult. Their armour is the pre-heresy black. As they knew that they were not going to survive the cleansing of their planet they washed their armour in lime paint in preparation for death as was their custom. Doing this over a black armour would not give you a bone white colour, so I choose a more grey/black/white combo.

This is my master of the Death wing, the first terminator captain released by Games Workshop. It might not be as detailed as later versions nor as dynamicaly posed, but I like it. Especially because of his heroic stand against a genestealer hoard (where single handedly drove off 30 or so genestealers!) during a battle in the mid 90's. He could withstand a serious amount of damage under the rules back then!

My first sculpting attempts where made on this dreadnought. The imperial eagle on the leg and shoulder is made with miliput. First I made a mould from the standard coming with the model. When this was dry I used it to mould wet miliput on to the model. So I didn't really sculpt it, just made it a bit special. I also added an extension to the assault cannon to make it a bit longer.

These are some of my scouts. They don't have a particulary story, but I still thought that I would show them. I remember that I was quite pleased with them at the time when I painted them, right at the end of my active work on the army. It is still not fully painted! I have some scouts, attack bikes and land speeders left to finish, as painting has been slow going for the last 15 years for this army. /M

Faith & Fire: Review

2011-01-12T06:54:00.000-08:00

What do I look for in a good novel? Of course the author has to have more than a sufficient grasp of the written language. Furthermore the characters need to be believable and the plot captivating. Now when it comes to 40k literature there are some additional points worthy of consideration. The author has to show a degree of insight into the 40k universe (obviously!), and managing to stay away from descriptions and plots that require too much prior knowledge from the reader. And, what I find most important, the author must always portray people and events, not gaming pieces and tabletop wargames. In other words, the reader should be able to forget that the novel is based on a game, and accept both characters and plot as they would in any other good novel!

Previously I have read the not yet completed Horus Heresy series, as well as Dan Abnett's Ravenor Omnibus and the Eisenhorn Omnibus. I also began reading an older 40k novel, the name of which I can't even remember, which was horrendously bad and inspired nothing but despondent laughter, after which I decided to stick with more recent contributions to the literary 40k universe. After having read a few other books by James Swallow (those wihtin the Horus Heresy series) I eagerly started to read Faith & Fire, in which my beloved Sisters of Battle hold the center stage.

Unfortunately, after finishing reading it, I must say that I am disappointed. My main critique is simple; I was never swept away by the story, and not for a second did I feel the characters come alive! To my surprise, Swallow never managed to step out of the 40k game, and I kept getting the feeling he wasn't actually describing characters in a story, but elaborate miniatures in a fake battle scenario.

At their head was a tall rail of a man, draped in fine silks and priestly regalia. Red and white purity seals hung off him like the medals of a soldier, and the rage on his face matched the crimson of his robes. In one hand he clasped a heavy tome bound in rosaries, in the other there was the clattering blade of a gunmetal chainsword, the adamantine teeth spinning and ready.

(Faith & Fire page 45)

Now what is this? A righteous preacher charging across the battlefield, ready to strike down the unbeliever? No, this is how high priest LaHayn is first presented, as he storms into a chapel for a heated discussion with the Sororitas. Why on earth the high priest would run around carrying and a spinning chainsword while not on the battle field is above my comprehension. And the large tome he is carrying in his other hand? Oh, that has no purpose other than looking cool I guess, since it is not used for anything or ever mentioned again. Similarly, though not as bad, is the description of Canoness Galatea as she goes to battle, constantly showing off a large book with one hand in order to inspire her sisters. Very practical. Yeah. Right.

Another irritating thing is Swallow's tendency to play 'lets try not name as many SoB terms as possible'... No, casually namedropping every possible SoB troop type, vehicle and title does NOT automatically make a believable SoB story, it just makes the author seem slightly desperate. The same applies to the oh so discreet mentioning of certain objects, like the Cloak of St Aspira. Remember Chekov's gun? If you've placed a gun on stage at some point it will have to be fired! The entire discussion about the Cloak on page 186 was just tiring and almost amateurish, I'm sad to say.

Should I even mention the slight tendency to sexualise the SoB simply because they are women? "Women like these" apparently do not inspire fear, respect and awe amongst the imperial citizens, but rather "thoughts that ran the spectrum from lustful fantasy to violent distrust". Some even consider them "as much concubines" as soldiers, able to "bring pleasure and damnation to the unwary in equal measure". Shortly thereafter the Sisters Hospitallers are presented, and the idea presented to the reader is not one of piety and healing, but rather something connected to the stereotype naughty-nurse imagery as the nearby man "amused himself thinking of how he might like them to comfort him in bed one night". Now even though Swallow doesn't actually let the sisters themselves speak of such tings, the fact that he feels compelled to revel in sexual imagery is irritating to say the least.

Before I end this all too long and depressing review, let me assure you that there also are other problems which are common not only in bad 40k literature, but in bad literature in general. The characters are incredibly flat and show no personal development whatsoever. They speak in artificial and overly embellished lines and embrace the classical mistakes such as "oh, lets make the villain explain all the details of his plan to his prisoners" and unnatural one-liners meant to make the main character sound like a truly hard-boiled heroine.

I could say so much more about this novel, so many quotes that should really be adressed. But, I am running late and have to go and therefore you won't have to endure any more of this depressing rambling. If you have read Faith & Fire and have a different opinion I'd be happy to read any comments! And of course if you agree with me, I'd be very glad to read that as well!

Faith & Fire

2011-01-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Today, as we went downtown to get some new paint brushes and some new paint (Marcus' collection which was bought several years ago has been in desperate need of a refill!) we also came home with some books... To the left is Faith & Fire by James Swallow, which I have wanted to read for some time now. Sisters of Battle is of course dear to my heart and since I love high quality 40k literature, this book is simply essential in my book collection. And since I enjoyed Swallow's contributions to the Horus Heresy series I'm sure Faith & Fire will also be good!

Speaking about the Horus Heresy... The newest book in the series, Prospero Burns by the great Dan Abnett, we've bought but not yet read! So Faith & Fire will have to wait until I'm up to date in the Horus Heresy. I'll probably find the time to write short reviews of them both afterwards! =)

Today's second addition to our book collection is Titanicus, also by Dan Abnett, which I more or less forced onto dear Marcus. Yeah, of course he has to finish Ravenor first (which I absolutely loved!)... But now that he's working so hard on his titans he can't NOT read Titanicus, right?

Shin guard

2011-01-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

Well, I could not help myself. After painting a bit on the legs I got an urge to try the painting scheme that I had in mind for the armor plating. But since I am still working on the green stuff mods and I had decided to hold of on this until I was sure I did not want to add something more so I was not sure I really should do this. Well I have one more titan I thought and did a quick base spray of one of the shin guards. I had an idea of having the armor in a base green and then having a blue-white striped pattern on half of the guard. The blue-white paint should be chipped and pealing off, showing the green armor beneath. So to do this I first painted the armor plate in the same way as the rest of the green areas on the titan.

I then used masking tape, teared into small pieces, that would be where the paint has pealed. I then painted a sand-bone-white over the green area and tape patches. Then I striped the white area with masking tape, removing every other stripe. I intentionally left a gap

between the stripes to make room for a dividing line between the blue or white fields. After this it was just to paint the in the blue stripes, re-attach the masking tapes over the blue and painting some metal stripes in-between. Then it was just to carefully peal all the masking tape away. Unfortunately some of the base coat came off the resin, I dont know if this was because I started painting before the base coat was really dry of if it was due to the thickness of the paint covering the tape. Well, it achieved the effect I was looking for and I can always cover up the patches where the resin is showing. I just hope this is not a sign that the base-coat has a generally bad adherence to the resin, which would indicate a repaint at some point. I have not finished the rest of the border and the chaos mark, since I just wanted to test the pealed paint thing at this point. I am rather pleased with the result so far, but I will have to finish the piece to see how it will turn out in the end.

Twelfth Night Titan Mayhem

2011-01-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

Finally I have had the time to spend some days (whole days) on my titans. Firstly I have cleaned and washed the Reaver. It has been on my conscience for some time that I should get around to it. It is after all a project of building a titan battle group of three titans, not just a pair of scout titans. Well now it is cleaned up so that I can start matching the green stuff work on it.

Then I have finally started with the painting of the exterior on Unbearable Desire. I began with the legs as I don't plan to do any green stuff mods on these. They are painted in the same dark geen/brown colour that I used on the interior. The green is drybrushed over a green base coat that has been inked with brown, red, and black (in different areas). After the first layer of drybrushing, three shades of green, it was inked brown again. After this it was once again dry brushed with the three greens. Then I used the water that I clean the brush in to water the model. Once dry it was another turn of dry brushing and some more watering. Hopefully this will give the model a smooth look but where the details are seen. Once the base color of the legs and hips are done I will start on the details such as pistons, skulls, and border work. I will see how many extra features I can paint on them without it looking crowded.

More Desert Eagles

2011-01-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

A squad leader from my Desert Eagles army. I try to find more dynamic hero poses for my models in this army, epecially for comanding personel. It might not be too realistic but i like this guy advancing, fiering his bolter at one target while casually shooting someone sneaking up on him from behind with his bolt pistol. /M

This dreadnought was built in the beginning of my Desert Eagles project, even before I knew that it would be an army. The inspiration came from a White Dwarf article about custombuilt vehicles with rules for using them in battle. I had always been a bit annoyed that you couldnot have your choice of heavy weapon on each arm if you did not go for the close combat weapon option (which by the way are available in pairs). So I equipped this dread with two arms with gatlingmounted autocannons. /M

I really gotta continue with these!

2011-01-04T07:46:00.000-08:00

I really should get started again with these two ladies; my most heavily modified miniatures so far. Any suggestions on the colour scheme? I am a bit short of ideas at the moment...

The titans are progressing into 2011

2010-12-31T03:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

I'd like to celebrate the end of 2010 with a couple of pictures, showing the latest progress. Marcus has been working hard, using greenstuff to make visible the titans' former loyalties. After all, the titans were imperial to begin with, before being corrupted by chaos...

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-22T23:09:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

2010-12-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

So, it has been some time since the latest update. I have been splitting my time between painting the interior of one of the war hounds and assembling the legs for both of them. The idea was to have one upper body assembled so that i could see that it balances the right way before committing to gluing too much. I started with gluing the legs into the position that I thought they should have, one titan will be walking/running and one will be at a low, wide legged, braced position. The problem with the assembly and gluing of the leg parts is that the joint fit is quite poor. So it leaves approximately 1 mm of side way mismatch. To correct for this the joint has to be pushed to one side which gives the model a slightly of center look. If the joint is centered it will not have any support from the large side areas being glued to each other. If one use glue with a filling capacity this might work out any way. But since this is my first try at a FW-titan I am not taking chances. So I decided to first glue the parts on all contact areas, center the joints for a nice look and then pin it through the joint. I bought some two component epoxy glue that will make a super strong bond and also works as a filler, however it has a curing time of 24 h, and parts are adjustable up to 12 h. This is kind of a problem as things might get out of alignment while it is drying and once it sets I don’t think that I can remove it again without damaging the parts themselves. Later on I decided to complement this with a fast curing, but not as strong, epoxy. In this way I could use the slow curing glue on most of the area and only use the fast curing one to hold the pieces in place until the stronger clue hade cured.

After gluing and pinning the legs it was time to start with the feet. The instructions say that you should start with the feet but as I think is the wrong way around as the feet has to adapt to the leg positions and not the other way around. So using blue tack I attached the legs to the hips and to the feet and tried to find a good looking pose, once I had a fairly good idea of how it should look I started out with the middle front toe and the back toe to so that I could get to the joints for pinning. Once again I dry fitted the legs to the feet so to see that the pose was right. Then I a glued on the outer toes and pinned them. At this point I had not started to use the mix of glues and one of the toes slipped so that the attachment to the foot part was not even. This was the reason to start using a fixing glue to hold the parts in place while the strong stuff cured. I can cower this up with green stuff to some degree. I also made a mistake when attaching the parts that holds the toes to the back foot of the running pose. In this pose the foot is raised up from the ground and only the front toes are in contact with the surface. My first attempt started with attaching the holders for the toes to the foot. In a flat normal position these are all mounted in the same way, parallel to the surface that the foot is standing on. However when the foot is lifted and tilted forward the outer toe mounts should rotate so the toes are still in full contact with the surface. This is due to the angling of the toes. This I discovered after the holders ha dried and it was no longer possible to remove them. This would have meant that I Would have had to change the positioning of the titan which would not have been easy as I had already glued the legs together for a running pose. So in this case it was good that I had another set of feet lying around (for the other titan) so that I could make a new attempt at the running pose. One thing that I came across in a comment on another WIP blog (don’t remember which one) was that running is done by setting one foot in front of the other to make the run smother. So I decided to use this in the running pose which meant that it has to have the feet in a line but still be able to balance (which is not a real problem in reality as the forward momentum helps to keep you up). To solve this problem I tilted the feet outward while leaning the legs outward so that the hip joint ball is on top of the foot joint. The legs are actually able to balance individually without support, even the one that is up on its toes. After getting the leg position right, using the two glue trick I decide to fix the hip joint. So I attached the legs to the hip balls with blue tack and glued the balls into the hip. At this point I was careful to make sure that the pistons regulating the hip would be able to fit at the chosen position. For the spread stance this is very important as the hip joints almost touch the pelvis. I also used a spirit level to make sure that the pelvis was in a more or less horizontal position. On the running stance I tilted the pelvis a little towards the front leg side so that the torso would be leaning towards this side rather than the side of the back foot.

While gluing and pinning the feet and legs I started work on the interior. I kept the same color scheme that I used in the head. The walls where painted in the same green that I will use on the outside, then al the organic parts were given a green brownish tone. The tech priest and weapon servitors got a deep red color while the rest of the crew as blue overalls. I also tested the idea that I new color scheme is growing over the old in the same way that the chaos iconography is growing over the armor. After all, looking at the crew I don’t imagine that they would crawl out side to repaint the titan. The idea is to paint a red color around the chaos iconography and let it cover the old imperial color scheme as the markings grow larger. I will also make some more imperial iconography that is being destroyed and covered by the mutations. Once the interior of the torso is painted I will glue it together, pinning as I go. Then we will se if I start on the other titans interior before I start with the out sides. At some point I will also start cleaning up the Reaver titan and assemble the legs for it. I still have not figured out what pose it will have, and if this is possible to achieve. I am looking for something, more dynamic than just standing with legs apart, looking straight ahead. Well I have to think about that some more.

Moving on from the head

2010-11-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

I have finished the head of Unbearable Desire, at least for now. I might go back there and do some touch up later on. I put some pictures up here of what it looks like. The color scheme is greenish. I know that it might look slightly Nurgle but the titans will be more towards Khorne in the end. I also started on the interior of the main upper body. I decided to make it in the same green as the rest of the body. I am looking forward to putting the body together so that I can start with the outside. I still haven’t seen one of these titans live so it will be interesting. I also have to start with the assembly of the feet and legs. From what I have read on other WIP blogs this might be quite tricky. My main worry is how much to pin, and where. I will have the foot up on its tows and I am a bit unsure of how much the araldite will take and how much extra support it needs. In any case I will glue first and pin later to give the glue as much strength as possible. Then when the glue is dry I will drill the holes for the pins and glue them in. This also goes for the upper body. It will take some time to do but I think this will make for the strongest bonds. In the end I think the resin itself is the week point and I might have to think about strengthen it a bit.

Assembling the titans

2010-11-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Since the last entry we have decided on the names of the titans, they are taken from an old medieval Scandinavian curse inscribed on a rune stick from Bergen,Norway. The two war hounds will be Wolfish perversion and Unbearable desire. The reaver will be Joluns wrath. The idea is to paint the entire spell onto the armor of the titans using the futhark. Well, we will give some more info on this when we have gotten a bit longer with this.

After cleaning the parts of the two warhounds I started with the magnetization. The first thing to do was to put a neodymium magnet into the top of the nose of one of the warhounds so that the covering armor plate would be removable. I use the first warhound, Unbearable desire,a little bit as a test model before moving on to the remaining warhound and reaver. I bought two window drills at the local hardware store, 10 and 20 mm diameter, this matches the diameters of the magnets previously purchased. The magnets have a central hole that I might use to put a guiding pin through at some point. After drilling out a hole in the warhound head I put the magnet in and then I used an iron washer that I attached to the head armor so that it matches the location of the magnet. In this way the armor is attached but can be removed to access the interior of the cockpit. And then, when I was at it I also went ahead and magnetized the waist. I used 20 mm magnet with a 4mm central hole that I attached to the upper body, and a matching washer that went in to the lower leg part. Before attaching the magnet and the washer I drilled out a 20mm hole in to lower leg part so that the upper body rested on the lower part when the magnet and washer was placed inside the waist joint, this also had the benefit that the magnet is guided by the hole in the lower waist when attached. The plan was then to use a 4 mm pin attached to the lower part to guide and hold the upper body while the magnet secured the two parts together. However, after gluing the magnet and the washer to the waist and fitting it together I realized that I might have to use too much force to separate the parts if I use a pin since this will prevent me from tilting the two parts as they are separated. The bond seems to be quite strong.

I still have the option though and I will see how it feels when the whole titan is assembled. I will use a similar scheme with the weapon arms but in this case I will use two 10 mm magnets but I will get around and a pin, if necessary. I have not done this yet however.

After this successful magnetization I felt a strong desire to start painting something. Since I plan to paint the interior of the titan I will do this before assembly so I prepared the upper body parts for a spray paint. I used masking tape to cover the areas that will be glued to each other. After spraying the parts I started to paint the head. I had already tried the paint scheme on some chaos space marines so it was only to start out with the head paint scheme. This will be a bone white color with some painted cracks. I will also try to weather the model and so as I paint. I have not done anything like this on such a scale before so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. These models are so detailed that it will take me some time to paint the interior. Meanwhile I will assemble the feet’s and legs. Hopefully I have assembled an assembled upper body with a painted interior when it comes to fix the leg position so that I can see that the titan will balance with the leg position that I want to use. Í will see how things develop; I will have to try to match the progress of assembly to painting without rushing this project. I do it as a type of relaxation after all and I do not want it to turn into something that has a time schedule.

Sisters of Battle

2010-10-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

Just a few days ago I was told that gw is dropping the Sisters of Battle. Noooo! In honour of this soon-to-be-forgotten army, here are a few of my beloved sister.

2010-10-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

I have started to trim and clean the titans. This is somewhat of a time consuming and none to exciting task but it needs to be done. I have also started to look at magnetising the head and back armor to access the interior, and also the waist and weapons will be magnitized. I saw a nice thing on youtube (have forgotten the link) where the arms themselves where attached with a treaded rot and a nut concealed under the shoulder armour. I am thinking about doing somthing similar. I have not figured out if I will magnetize the cables going to the waepons. Well, I will not be able to start assembly and painting untill these questions are solved.
/M

Desert Eagles by Marcus

2010-10-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

These are a few of Marcus' Desert Eagles!

Here we go!

2010-10-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

The titans have arrived!

Still waiting...

2010-10-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

We are still waiting from the package from Forgeworld... Marcus seems to be a bit worried, since it was shipped on Tuesday and we thought it would be here by now... I am not sure what to think, but I hope it hasn't gone missing! =(

A somewhat unusual wedding cake topper!

2010-10-14T07:37:00.000-07:00

When we got engaged, all I asked Marcus to take responsibility for was the cake topper. I wanted something special, and I wanted him to make it himself. This is the result! I loved it, the guests loved it, and never before have I seen the cake topper get so much attention at a wedding party!

The "bride" is of course based on a Sister Superior from the Witch Hunters, while the groom is based on a Dark Angels Chapter Master.

Agis has entered the blogging community!

2010-10-14T02:07:00.000-07:00

My name is Fanny, and I want to welcome you to this blog!
My beloved Marcus has since the mid 90's been painting Warhammer 40k models, and shortly after we met he also lured me into the wonderful world of 40k. This blog is first and foremost focused on Marcus' work (though my own will also most likely appear at times!), both looking back through the last decade or so but mainly looking at the challenge ahead.

We welcome tips and opinions from other enthusiasts, and hope that you will enjoy this humble blog.

Thank you for visiting!