Dreadtober, chapter 4

This weekend I pushed on with the freehand patterns and chipping. Sadly the brush hade taken some damage from painting with dried out paints so it could not hold a tip as well as it used to. So some of the detailed work, such as the emblem and stars are not as crisp as I would have wanted them. But, adding chipping and damages covers the worst of it. I am also not sure if the star on the chest was a good idea. It looks kind of funny. I will have to think about if it is worth removing it. 

The skull mask needs some more work. Not happy with the cracking etc... so this will have to be addressed. But all in all I think it is getting there. 

The crotch plate still looks a bit clunky, but I will wait until I have done the banner before deciding on what to do with this. I could basically make a new smaller, less ornate piece and just transfer the banner.

We will see what can be done within the Dreadtober deadline, or if I will just finish it and then redo some parts later.

Dreadtober, chapter 3

Well, isn't this the project that just keeps on giving. After sorting the issues with the missing pieces I got everything base sprayed black, and just as I was about to start laying down the base for the rusted metal I realized that the paints had dried out. And I do not have time to get new ones due to work. So I tried to re-moisturize them a bit by using a wet brush and gently dragging it across the surface of the dried out paints. in this way I managed to get enough pigments in the brush to keep working... but it is tedious. Well, in the end I got it sort of fixed. Not the best version but perhaps good enough.

Once the metal was done I added my brown-green to the armour plating. These paints at least was fluid so the dry brushing worked. Not much to say about this really. I have done this so many times that it is standard at this point. The base was also painted gey and sand-brown. Just need some gravel and it will be done.

Next up will be to add free hand markings and chipping.

Dreadtober, chapter 2

Well, of course the thigh pistons were not the only parts on the missing gate, the crouch plate was also on there. That meant that another highly visible part is missing. So I hade to dive back into the bits box to see if I could find something that could replace it without me having to build it from scratch. In the end I settled for a writs guard for a thunderstrike gauntlet from a knight kit. Problem is that the plastic is more clunky than the resin so I decided to shave it down somewhat. I removed the trim on the edges and rounded the edges of a bit. I also thinned it out a bit from the backside. Then I added a banner from the chaos war dogs kit just to fill it out some more. In the end I am quite happy with how it turned out.

Once that was sorted I started to assemble the legs and got the legs pinned to the base (it is still removable for painting) so that I could sort the rest of the pose. Then it was on to the dreaded cable bend. I first tried to bend just the cables to go from the body to the arms but I do not have enough hands to hold everything in place while I bend them and I do not want to glue in the arms before they are painted. In the end I ended up gluing the cables to the arms, then holding the cables in boiling water and bending them to the body. I think they are fine for painting. Once the arms are glued in I can gently reheat them a bit and make the final fit. Or I just glue in the cables on the body as they have some spring to them. Once everything is in place I will heat them with a hair dryer to release any tension in them.

The legs really do not have any great opposability in them and I did not fell like doing to much conversion work, instead the pose will come from the upper body alignment, the arms and head. I have not yet settled on the final pose but I think it will be ok. I noticed that I put the legs a bit to far forward on the base so the model looks a bit front heavy. But it is what it is now. I will not redo the base.

Dreadtober 2024, chapter 1.

It is time again, Dreadtober, this annual opportunity to do something about the pile of two legged grey plastics hanging around the cupboard of shame. This year I will continue to work on my collection of Forge World robots for my Legio cybernetica in the form of a Domitar battle-automata. This will, together with last years Iron circle Domitars, act as body guards for my forge lord.

As it is a resin model, the first action was to soak the parts in hot soap water over night, rinse them with an old toothbrush and then laying them out to dry. As I was doing this I noticed that one part was missing from one of the gates. I did not think to much about this at the time but as I started to inventory the parts I realized it was the face plate that was missing...  this is quite a central part of the model. As it turned out, the face plate is about the same size as the head masks for the defiler kit, and I have some spare parts from these laying around since my initial defiler knight builds. So after some trimming I got one of them to fit quite nicely. In the end it actually turned out to be a good thing as the skull mask I used ties in better with the face masks of the Iron Circle Domitars.

Well, I was happy that that was sorted so I removed the rest of parts from the gates and cleaned them up. Then I started to play around with the legs to see if I could find some interesting dynamic pose or so and I realized that the thigh pistons was also missing (must have been a bad batch model). This is a bit more serious problem as these are very specific parts that can not easily be substituted with any other random part. That meant I needed to build my own custom replacement parts. I used some plasticard rods, frame cut-offs and two Necron wrist weapons to coble something together. I will go over them with some greens stuff once the glue is dry and try to make them look a bit better. But this is what I have to work with as the model was bought a long time ago and getting replacement parts from FW will probably not work.

I also made a quick scenic base to make it a bit more interesting. Nothing to fancy, just something more structured than the flat base.

Once everything is dried I will start building, and hope that it will look good even though some parts needed to be replaced.

Obliterators

These guys have been on my to do list for a long time. Initially I did not like the idea of the Obliterators, and the first iteration of the models were not were good. But then these came along, and I thought they looked really cool. I have been holding of painting them as I were waiting for inspiration. And after painting Vashtorr, with the blend of machine and corrupted flesh I finally felt that it was time.

I decided to paint them in the same scheme as my raptors (Crimson Angels), i.e. a purple metallic with white metal borders. This scheme came to be when I painted Gulliman as I came up with it for the chaos marine that he is standing on. As such I never put much thought into it, and I never developed any real method for painting charters this way. In stead it kind a looks a bit sloppy the way I previously painted it. So for these models I decided to put some more effort into shading to get some more depth to the armour plates. I think I managed quite well, so I will have to go back to the old figures and do some touch-ups to get them to the same level. The flesh was done as my usual chaos flesh with a green and brown wash to get a sickly done to the flesh. Love how the weapon feeds blend with the back muscles. When I added this lighter done to the models the armour plating's turned darker and got a stronger red tone which is a bit strange. Just go to show the adjacent colours do influence how a colour is perceived.

Over all I greatly enjoyed these models, they are highly detailed and the poses are quite different so it does note feel like painting two identical models. I do however not think it would be fun to do multiples of them as they are very distinctive and do not offer any options to make them individual or re-posable. I am actually quite surprised that such advanced models were provided in a boxed set (presumably for people new to the hobby). These usually tend to be more  simple monopose models. Well, now they are done. I still have the 10 chaos marines, so I might do them in the same scheme at some point.

Next up will be a transport option for my desert rats. I have been working on a wheeled tauros transport, but more about that in a later post.

Opus rear update

Apart from some painting (more on that in another post) I have been working on some details of the Opus.

After some thinking I decided that the SAM pods should go on the back as originally planed. This meant I could finish up the platforms by adding some curved riveted shields to the out sides. I also added rivets to the three bolter platforms as wells as some bases for the turrets. All in all I am happy with how it turned out.

Then I needed to relocate the AA-quads. So I built two new platforms on the corners of the rear decking. As I did not have any more tops for these (as I used them as missile doors on the tactical launchers) I had to build some new tops with receiving rings for the guns. This was easily done by cutting some thin strips of plasicard and gluing them up into rings (that were matched to the bottom of the guns). These were then added to some form fitted plasicard tops. i will have to do some decorations of these to make them match up with the rest of the platforms.

I have also relocated the CWIS pods to clear the deck as well as matched up the cut-out so that the guns can swivel without hitting the edges. I am also planing a underslung four piece las-cannon array for the center pod (that lacks the downward facing twin linked las-cannons). I am not sure if all four of the cannons should be individually elevated or if I should to them paired two and two. This will go on both midsection pods.

Then I started to build the frag dispensers that will line the battlements to discourage any jump troops from getting to close. Idea is also that this should look a bit like the emergency pods mounted on the sides of IRL carriers. When I did this I had to cut a small tab away from the original piece. This was repurposed as decoration on the plasticard fillers I made for the flight deck.

I also started two new gun turrets to be added somewhere. I am thinking to put these on some outriggers on top of the observation tower, on each side of the three barrel main turret. But I am not sure how I will treat the observation windows. Either I block the side windows with the outriggers, only leaving a view forwards, or I place the out riggers above the windows, but I am not sure if that will look strange. Or I will have to find another place to put them. But I am sort of running out of space to add larger weapon systems. Except on the tower (which will likely make any Orc proud in the end).

Not much done on each part but over all I am slowly ticking of small things that has been floating around the back of my mind.

Opus Magna, rear bolters and surface to air missiles

So, I have been slowly shipping away on the Opus build. This time around I focused a bit on the rear quarters. As I built the fighters for the Opus the Nephilim the kit came with the options of either wing mounted bolters or missiles, I went for the bolters so had the missile inserts left over. This made me think about building some surface to air missiles (SAM) pods to mount on the rear platforms. So I started the build and after some nights of tinkering I had to pod arrays with 12 missiles in each pod. However, when I tried to mount them were I originally planed to have them they turned out to be to big to fit in the space available without interfering with the flight dec (and I was not about to cut in to the deck for these to).

So I needed to find some were else to put them. I already had some smaller platforms built for the quad autocannons so I tried a quick swap. But these platforms were sticking out to much, which is fine for the smaller quad guns but it looked strange with the SAM's. So I decided to reposition the platforms and move them up and in to get them closer to the hull. While doing this I just put them SAM's on the tower instead of some icaros Las cannons and it really looked cool. It gave the tower a more aggressive look with the two pods on each side of the main battle cannon batteries. Once I relocated the rear platforms I tried the SAM's also in this position and now they looked good there also. So now I do not know if they will be on the tower or the back. The mounts are the universal disk so I can move things around so do not need to decided now.

When working on the back I also came up with the idea of mounting three heavy bolter towers on the back platform to mirror the three turrets that are mounted on each side at the front. Originally I hade the idea to have these on the tower but I could not really find a good position for them. In the end I am really happy the placement. Now I just need to get the towers mounted on the platforms.