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.

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.