Opus wheels and turrets

When I am not painting I am slowly shipping away on opus in the background. Lately I have been working on the wheels for the flight wing and some extra weapons turrets for Opus (as you can never have to much guns).

The wheels have been something I have been going back and forth with for some time. The aircrafts are originally VTOL and as such only came equipped with landing pads. As I am building a carrier with a flight deck and an angled recovery strip I have been thinking that they should have wheels instead of the pads. But the big question has always been where to get the wheels, and in quantities that I need. In the end I ended up making them from scratch. I took 0.3 mm plasticard stripes and made 5 mm wide rolls. I then sanded them flat on each side and rounded of the edges using sand paper and a power drill. In the end I ended up making 28 wheels to make the main landing gears. Now I just need to make another 18 smaller versions for the tail wheels. Once the wheels were done I made some struts using palsticard rods. I angled them slightly form the wheel hubs as I thought that made them look more dynamic. Over all I am very pleased with them.

I then set about mounting them to the aircraft. On the main fighters I used two of the mounting points for the downward jet nozzles which turned out to look great. I also added some nozzles behind them to improve handling. These aircraft have the main gears at the front and will have a tail wheel.

On the fighter bombers I made the main gears at the back and a small dual carriage at the front, in a more modern set up. I really hope that the wheels will be able to take the weight of the craft as they have quite a slope (I was inspired by the F18 superhornet set up).

The remaining wheels will go onto the close air support planes that I just started to assemble. These will be mounted similarly to the AH64 Apache set up.

For the Opus I made to new cannon turrets for the front battlements. I had the turret bodies and some barrels left over and was initially thinking about mounting them on the main island but it is already very cramped with the main battle cannon turrets and all the AA emplacements. So when playing around I just tested some alternate positions and this turned out to look very good. It also solves the problem that I had with the horns on the flightdeck. With these to the sides the horns does not look so bad. Just need to beef them up a bit. I also had some heavy bolter sonsons left over as well as some las cannons, so I decided to make some underslung turrets for the battlements. I think they turned out ok and will complement what is already there.

I also made some progress on the main island where I added some lights and speakers to the siding. Still need to go in and clean them up a bit. I am also thinking about adding another row at the bottom but I am not sure. 

Well that was some updates on the Opus Magna. There is so much that needs to be build for this model. I am seriously starting to wounder if it will ever be done.

Taurox 02

This week has been a mix of building on Opus and getting some base layers done on the Taurox. So far it has mainly been drybrushing and washing. Not to much to say really. I am happy with how it is turning out. Once I am done with theses layers I will go in with some sponge weathering and add rust and grime. I think it will look great with the other Desert rats. 

Out rider smurfs

After finishing the rats monster truck and the Dreadtober challenge I needed to clean my pallet and just do something quick and dirty. This meant bringing out the smurfs. I do not know why they have become my go to army for cleansing. I guess it is because the paint scheme is really really easy and all the figures are from the starter kits so they are either pushfit our monopose, so there really is no option to modify them , just build as is and paint. As such I am not expecting anything great from them. This time around I played abit with the way I paint them. I still start out with a black base coat and drybrush cupper and white metals until I have a nice zenital highlight and somewhat smooth blends from dark to light. Then I used two shades of blue instead of one when washing them. Previously I have been using either Kantor blue or Altdorf guard blue. The later gives a bit of a lighter blue shade while the former is darker. I have by mistake used both versions on my normal troops, so they have slightly different shades. But not as different as one might think by looking at the colours. Any way, this time I decided (inspired buy the way I did the Obliteratos), to use the the lighter blue towards the top of the surfaces and the darker at the bottom, giving a more pronounced shading effect. I think it worked out great and this is probably how I need to do it with this technique on larger models. I will also try this on some troops later to see if it improves how they look. 

I did however mess up the freehand on these and since the base colours are layered up I cant repaint with out restarting the whole model. I really need to get a new brush, the Dreadtober challenge and painting with dried up paints really messed it up. But from some distance they are ok. I don't know why I do not use transfers, but I guess it is some though about getting better at this free hand stuff.

Well that is it for now. I am continuing to add things the Opus at a glacial rate and when I get tiered I am painting on the monster truck. We will see if there will be a WIP on that or if I will finish it before showing it of.

Wheeled Taurox for the rats

Hi there. So I have built something completely different again. This time in the form of a Taurox for my desert rats. I have been super keen on building one of these since the Taurox was released and people around the net started converting them, getting rid of the track units and adding proper wheels. I know there are some conversion kits out there and I have thought about buying some for some time. But I never got around to it. But I really wanted to do this at some point so when I decided to do the Deseret rats I bought the start collecting box as it both contained the Scion models but also a Taurox for a decent price. I painted infantry some time ago and added a squad of bikers based on the Necromunda models. But the Taurox just sat there and as I could not commit to ordering a conversion kit and the wheels I bought needed some serious work to get on. 

Then the Cargo-8 came around, and the trailer kits. They had some really nicely sculpted undercarriages and had eight nice big wheels (enough to make a six wheeler), and I thought that it would be nice to use this to convert a wheeled Taurox using only GW parts and some plasticard. On paper this looked like a good idea, so I bought a fule/chemical trailer (with the intention of suing the upper parts of the trailer for the Opus build). The scale of the wheels were nice, but the undercarriage that I fell for was way wider than the Taurox and would need some serious cutting to fit to the original body size. Instead of doing this I narrowed them down as much as I could without destroying the linkarms etc. Instead I added some wheel arc extensions to cover the wheels. In the end I think I prefer this look to just adding the wheels to the original body. I also ended upp adding some custom chocks to fill out the void between the body and linkarms. Make it look a bit like a monstertruck.

I also needed to extend the body to fit six wheels, one could have cone for two but I like the truck look, and I have a ridge runner to act as a four wheel transport. Vell, that meant adding some new panelling, shifting the roof backwards and making a new filler piece. I also added some interior detail.

On the outside I added some boxes, tow cables and tools just to make it look a little bit more cluttered. I also gave it two areals for long-range communication and a banner. On the back I mounted the missile rack but turned it upside down to show the structuring on the missile tubes. The front got a dozer blade, which strangely fit perfectly with my trimmed width of the Cargo-8 undercarriage.

All in all I am very happy with this version and I am looking forward to painting it. Just need to finish some ultra smurf outriders that are nearly done.

Fighter bomber

Sometimes it is best to re-do stuff rather than keep on trucking. In this case I re-did the foldable wings for the fighter bomber /CAS fighter for the Opus flight wing. Originally I had a singel large joint in the wing. But since the wing is quite thick it did not fold on top of the fuselage with out major carving around the joint. Instead of a singel joint I am now using a double joint that allows the wing tip to fold back tighter to the wing, giving the air craft a tighter profile with the wing folded.

At the same time I also straightened the wing out so that the leading edge of the wing is now perpendicular to the body instead of being swept slightly forward. I also added a slope to the back edge of the wing to tie it in with the profile of the original part that attaches to the fusalage. This make the aircraft look a bit more like a modern aircraft an not so alien/sifi.

So all in all a worthy undertaking, even if it took way more time to do than I thought.

When I was all worked up about this I also decided to make the nose cone. I had already mocked it up with paper so I know pretty much what to do. Once I stated to see the general shape I adapted it a bit and added some lower panels creating a "mouth" structure below the nose. This will be filled with the main nose gun, just need to figure out how to fit it. I am really happy with how it turned out, it looks like a hybrid of the A6 intruder and the A7 corsair, just as intended.

I also decided that it was time to start the undercarriage project and set about making some wheel hubs with shock absorbers. I think they turned out great, Now I just need to see how they look with wheels. I also need to decide if I will make the undercarriage permanently deployed or if I will make it removable for flight. I am a bit uncertain about this as the risk is that they will not be sturdy enough or that I will lose them at some point.

The foldable wings works like a treat and I can stack the craft either along the side or just cram them in at the back.

Dreadtober, done

So, today I finished up the last details on my Dreadtober project, and I finished in time. At some point I thought that I would not make it with all the pieces missing, me needing to go away for a whole week with work, paints dried up and pieces not looking like what I wanted. But once I got things sorted the painting was rather fast. This paint scheme is actually really easy to "speed" paint, as it really is just a lot of slapping on colours in patches and dry brushing a lot. No real need for fancy brushwork, except for the banner and to some degree the bone white markings. Over all I am happy with how it turned out even though some rather obvious pieces are missing. I think it was the right move to go back and re-do the crouch plate as the plastic one was too different in style form the rest (it is still a bit of an odd match, but it is what it is now).

I also brough out the two Domitar Iron circles I did last year to take a group foto. I actually had them on the painting desk for most of the time so that I could try to match this one to the previous ones as much as possible. These models were bought many years ago as the body guards for my Forge lord and his command staff. So now I might need to actually build him and his crew. 

I also could not resist bring out the Thanatar and the ghost pattern War glaive I also did for Dreadtober a couple years ago to see how they all match up.

So now these models are done. Still have two knights left to do from this FW order, a Porphyrion and a Cerastus. I also bought the new plastic hours heresy battle force, so I now have even more automat to paint. 

Dreadtober, chapter 5

Almost there. Just a few small things to fix, such as the base, some badges and a few patches where the paint has rubbed of.

I decided that the crouch plate that I made from a knight wrist guard look to big, so in the end I ended up making a smaller, simpler version out of some plasticard. I it is not as ornate but I think it looks better on the model. I still kept the banner though. Freehand could be better but the brush is just shoot after the weathering and painting with dried-up paints.

Hopefully I can get the last details fixed up over the weekend so that I can finish this model before the end of the month. Once done I take some proper photos and add in a family photo with all three Domitars.