Dropship interior

  I have been working on the interior of the dropship  so that I can close it up and start on the outside. One thing I noticed is that it is a pain to paint the interior details on an already built model. So if I am ever to paint an interior again it will be before assembly of the whole thing. That was of cores not an option in this case as I did not know how it would look in the end and I had to build it before painting. But if I am ever going to do another I will do the inside first. I will try to do some touch ups but I am afraid that it will look pretty much as it does. The big thing in the middle of the CIC with the screens is the VTOL manifold if anyone is wondering. Since I added the intakes with turbines on the under side of the fuselage I had to put something on the inside to represent the air duct the leads to the downwards pointing exhausts. It looks abit out of plase but it will do.

I have also done some work on the Opus Magnas flight deck and will hopefully have it assembled shortly so that I can post about it. Right now it is more or less what was in the other post but with more details...

Dropship update

Just to end the day on a more positive note I post some WIP pictures from the painting of the inside of the Dropship. This is before adding any wear and tear or internal electronics. I am just putting the base colour in before starting with the details. As soon as the inside is done I will seal it up and start with the outside. I have already started somewhat with the underside of the tail section and the landing gear.

Know thy self and stick with what you know.

I have been visiting a site called www.coolminiornot.com for some years, looking at the stunningly painted models presented there and getting inspired. There is a great span of models on the site from pro painted to ordinary players putting up their favourite mini. I have also thought about putting some minis up on the site to share my work on a dedicated painting site.

So the other day I created an account and put some pictures of Joluns Wrath up there.

So what is the problem? Well it is me. I do not play games like cards, monopoly, trivial pursuit etc.. or for that matter much of 40k, because I get competitive, not that I need to win, but I get the adrenalin pumping and I do not like the feeling of being in a competition as I cant relax end enjoy it. And this is what happened. As the models on the site get a score from viewers I started to compare my models with other models with the same score, and it became competitive and it took all the joy out of painting and displaying my models, which is to bad because I like what I have done. Now I start to view my models according to the score and not what I really think about them.

So I am a bit out on the question of whether I should remove the images and forget about the site or just leave it for a few days to see if I can get over this feeling of being in a competition.

The point of this post is not to be winy about the actual score of the model, it is what it is, but about listing to yourself and what feels comfortable with how you present your work.

Putting my work up on this blogg has never bothered me as there is no score and the comments I get here is positive and constructive and they only relate to my work. I do not have to care about what score my models would get. The only feed back here is the number of visitors which is kind of an indicator about the interest of my work.

Well this was just some rambling from my side. Now I will get back to painting on the dropship so that I have something new to show you all. Until later.

Northern Ghosts Titan shoots

 The other day while on a business trip I scanned through my old posts and discovered that I never did take any "final" pictures of the titans as I promised to do. So today I took them out of the cabinet and put them in front of my photo background. The lighting is sadly not as good as it could be but the models are so large that is is hard to get an even bright illumination. But at least here are some pictures with a non cluttered desktop background.

So here they are, The Northern Ghosts titan legion.

Joluns Wrath

Unbearable Desire

Wolfish Perversion

Opus Magna, flight deck

I did get some time between sneezes and blowing my nose to day to lay out the flight deck of the Opus Magna. Once again I am struck by the sheer size of this project and I am starting to wonder what I have started. But so far I am sticking to my initial drawings and as they where made to scale I am assuming that it will all turn out ok in the end. On the launch ramp I put my Desert Eagles Storm Raven just to see what it would look like. It is actually fitting quite nicely. I can not have a dual ramp as on a current day super carrier which is fine as the model actually only measures about 160 cm which corresponds to about 102 m in length and as such is only a third of the length of a real super carrier or half the length of assault carriers or helicopter carriers. I am still going to go for an angled deck even though most of the 40 K fliers are VTOLs. One might argue that it makes it easier with hot landings in a combat zone if one does not have to come alongside the carrier and hover before landing. Here you can just make a normal approach and touch down any where along the strip or bolt if you can touch down safely. The same goes for the launch ramp at the front, even if this actually is slightly more realistic as most VTOLs like some help to get up without spending to much fuel. I also have to make small tow-tractors to carry the fliers around deck as they do not have wheels but still needs to get moved around a crowded flight deck.
At one point I also started to wonder weather such a contraption as the Opus Magna really would work. Could you just ad a set of tracks to a ship and make it land borne? There are plenty of tracked landing craft with this ability in reality but none of this size. Aside from the military fact that such a contraption would not serve any real strategic purpose as it would be to vulnerable to survive (tracks) it is actually quite feasible. The largest tracked self propelled vehicle is the NASA crawler-transporter. It can carry an amassing 8 200 metric tons. As it happens the Iranian frigate Jamaran is 95 m and weighs 1 500 tons and has a small flight deck for helicopters. Put one on top of the other and add a real flight deck and there you have it.

Dropship painting started

Finally I have started painting on the dropship. It will be painted up in the Desert Eagles colours but I am thing about adding some free hand to it to cover some of the larger surfaces with more detail. I started out with the nose and the pilots and then I went for the CIC and door gunners. Over all I am happy with how it turned out and I am excited to see how the whole thing looks painted. I will paint the interior first then glue the roof and tail in before starting on the outside of the hull. In this way I get coherent painting on the outside while still being able to paint the inside. Just have to make sure that no paint slips in to the interior though. I am down with a cold so we will see how much painting I can get in this week. Other wise I am travelling quite a lot with work right now so I cant get that much painting done. And then there is the house that needs attention. But it will soon be winter and that is the time when I can get the most painting done as I can't do to much on the house or garden. I hope to have finished the dropship before Christmas together with some mechanicum stuff that is almost ready for paint. Then I will focus a bit more on the Opus Magna. I did have a sprint with that one get most of the ideas that I had for the lower levels done. Now it is just to fill the gaps with GS and then on to detailing. I do not want to rush that part and I need to see how the detailing on the dropship turns out once painted before committing to that.