General WIP and an Exalted Sorcerer.

This week I have mostly finished some of the models I was working on when the Entropy project hit. First of I finished the Dark Angel terminator I was working at the time. I had also started a  I also finished a Vorax for my Mechanium army. Once this was done and I had settled some of the itching I had for working on the rusted up armor plates of Entropy I decided I would treat my self to a "character like" model, butterfly syndrome. So I picked up one of the exalted sorcerers I got from my wife I while a go that I had been saving for such an occasion. These models are crazy detailed, even if they are not true character models, and they are a joy to paint. Due to the very high level of detail I could work with a very simple color scheme as I the details will give the model all the depth and contrast it needs without having to many color fields. That being said I did choose to make the armor in the same way I did on Magnus and Ahriman, i.e. a silver metal with streaks of blue, violet, green and yellow. I think I managed to get the colors a bit better this time and I really like the effect. The rest was also done similar to Ahriman, purple robes and a color shifting white cloak.

I also decided that it was time to start with the arm weapons for Varangian. This is something I have been putting of, waiting for the back piece to be finished, but I am starting to realize that the amount of work I have to put in to the dragons is taking to much time. So I drilled out the barrel of the volcano cannon and added some magnets for the shields. For the fist I decided that I would magnetize the wrist so that I can rotate the hand later on to the right position. So I added two 10 mm magnets with a 4 mm central hole to the wrist pieces and a 4 mm M4 rod going through both magnets and being anchored in the elbow. This should make it solid enough not to drop off. I have also been thinking about the mega bolter and how to magnetize it. Both the back of the hand and the underside of the mega bolter is rather detailed so adding big magnets was out of the question. The two pieces are however extremely well molded to each other so the mega bolter is really well oriented and can not move in the plane of the hand two pair os small, 4.5 mm, magnets is enough to keep it from falling off. I put them on the armor trim and hope that the thicker metallic paints will keep the magnets covered. I still have not added all the parts to the bolter but so far it is sitting still. I could add another pair of magnets at a third position if it turns out it is not enough.

Well that is all for now...  I will add some small standard chaosifications to the volcano cannon and then I can start painting. The shields need some more advanced green stuffing so they will have to wait a bit.

Resent progress...

It has been some time since my last post. That does however not mean that I have not been working. There has been some holidays and family occasions which have taken a large chunk out of my hobby time but the most time consuming has been building my new models cabinet. Our house is shaped like an L which means that on the second floor the rafters are intersecting in the joint between the two house bodies. This area would normally just be a dead space in the wall, but instead of sealing it up we decided to build a shelf with some storage there instead. I had hopped that it would be an easy build but it turned out that the space was not just 45 and 90 degree angles so I have been running up back and forth between the garage and the hobby room trying to get everything to fit. It is not done yet but most of the difficult stuff has been done. Now I just need some lighting and some glass doors. The I need to see what will move from my glass cabinets to this new cabinet.

Since I have also be working this means I have been away from home a bit to, so I had time to finish my Kataphron destroyers. I like these models but I am not sure that they fit in with the mechanicum. For me Mechanicum are walkers, not tracked... . Here I thing GW/FW missed out an opportunity to make some really unique transports/tanks.

And at home I painted my first Tzaangor. Here I choose the same color palette as I used for Magnus and Ahriman. I think the multicolored metal I used of Magnus really works for these guys. Still have nine to go, and some sorcerers.
I have also been painting along on the inside panels for Varangian. I think they are turning out ok. I which there would have been an official inside for the Titan, but I guess this have to do.
I am also trying to finish of the Knight I have been working on for some time. Here it is mostly painting all the green parts and getting the pistons etc blocked in. As soon as that is done I will do the armor panels.

So even if there has not been that many posts about it I have not been idle. Hopefully I will get back to some more regular blogging now that the cabinet is coming along.

Ahriman Arch-Sorcerer of Tzeentch

Finished the disk for my Easter egg Ahirman. I really like this model apart from a few practical and aesthetic things. First of I don't like when they add things like smoke, magical effects, flames etc to the models. These things are hard to paint in a realistic way as they would need, in most cases, to be semi transparent, which they for natural reasons are not. I which they would add al these things as add-ons that are optional for the model. Second thing is an inevitable point of 3D CAD sculpting vs plastic castings. When they do large flowing objects like robes and capes etc. it might look fabulous in the CAD model but once you cut it up for casting it happens, like on this model that it turns out you need to cut pieces of the cape of to be able to cast it and then glue the pieces back together afterwards. This means that you need to green stuff the glued together pieces if you do not want edges in your large fabrics, which might be hard to do. In this case I must admit that I was lazy and just glued the model together and painted it, which means there are some unseemly seams to be seen. But apart from this the sculpt is really nice and there are tons of detail that does not really need to be "painted in" but shows up with some basic contrast in the color. So, even if I think the sculptors really should think more about the casting when sculpting I still enjoy this new era of plastic highly detailed quality models. In fact it might even come to a point when the models are to detailed so that it takes to long to paint them to actually make an army of many models. But that is a luxury problem that I will gladly live with.

Easter egg, WIP

So its been Easter. I managed to take some time off from work last week and set about working on some things needed for the house. These are things I have been postponing for close to a year now so it was time. This meant that I did not have much time to paint anything as most my time was taken be house work. Then, just before this weekend I got an Easter egg from my wife. In it was a lot of small plastic pieces and some heart shaped chocolate. After an initial survey I concluded that Ahriman was hiding in the egg, and as I had finished most of the things with the house that I set out to do I treated myself to some hobby time over the holidays. I am not quite done with him yet as I still need to finish the flying disc, but I thought I would show some WIP pictures. I decided to do him in a similar fashion to Magnus, with the multi color metals and pastel cloak instead of the blue armor of the original. I think it turned out ok, some of the colors are not as I intended as I realized a lot of my paints as gone bad and does not behave as they should. Hopefully I can finish him in the days to come.