Dropship update

My time has been a bit constricted lately due to the painting of our house. It is strange how things turn out. I spent one week on painting the house with the base layer and two days for the second coat. The last two days where 11 and 14 hours shifts but I am still surprised that it went so much faster the second time. Well, now that it is done I can work some more on the Dropship ( I re-designated the storm bird as I was not comfortable with the name). I have build most of the custom parts and are now starting to fill in gaps with green stuff. It is getting quite massive and I had to do a test assembly to see that it balances on the flight stand. It is actually quite sensitive so all the major parts has to be on and at mostly the correct position for it to stay level on the stand. Once al parts are even and smooth I will start with a second layer of plasticard to give the surfaces some texture and detail, then it is of to paint. I am pleased that my learning curve with pasticard is quite steep and I do not feel as uncomfortable as I did in the beginning with cutting out parts and scratch building what I need. I am still using bits and pieces from the plastic kits when I can as they have a level of detail I have not achieved yet. All in all I am pleased with the progress and the result. It could have been going faster but I do have to get the house done before autumn and that means that it has priority when the whether allow for working on it.

Stormbird? WIP

After the successfully conclusion of the Desert blade I felt embolden to try another plasticard project. So of I went out into the internet for inspiration. I actually came across a few potentials but some are a bit out on the left field for what I am currently doing and some requires some more skill than I posse. But I did come across a "summer of fliers" hoax, a sisters of battle flier. This was actually two imperial Valkyries and a Landraider. Not a very impressive kit bash but it had its points. I have been looking at the Valkyrie for some time now and I decided that this would be the time to try to do something with it. So I went down to the local hobby centre and bought two Valkyries and some plasticard. Then I set to work, well, I am trying to paint the house at the same time so my hobby time is limited, but this is as far as I have gotten.

The idea is to make the hull more or less tight, then start with some layering on the outside to give the large flat surfaces some texture, there are also some things that need to be scratch built. I am also trying my hand at the interior, and so far it is looking ok. It is far from as neat as I would have liked but some of the techniques are turning out ok and I think I am improving. So if I can get a few more projects like this under my belt I might feel confident enough to try out the holy grail, a Warlord. But that is another project for another time. At the moment this one is taking the little time I have.

I have not really decided what to call it. It would be tempting to name it as a Stormbird, however, there are pictures on the net of what is generally though of as the Stormbird and mine does not look anything like it (if the old drawings are correct). Mine is also a bit to small. I would guess that it is slightly shorter than a Thunder hawk and according to fluff it should be bigger. It is probably large enough to carry 30 marines plus a command squad and the crew. This would equal a Horus Heresy tactical squad and as such would fit nicely to that size. I might even get me some heresy era marines to go with it if it turns out ok.

We will see

The Desertbalde

So, I finally finished up the Desertbalde. I am very happy with how it turned out. I can improve in my plasticard skills but I think it is still on an acceptable level with this build. I do have some Ideas for the next step in practising my plasticard skills. It will still be a kit bash but with more scratch than on this one. As I am currently also painting away at some thing much larger (our house) than my models it might be awhile before this new project. In the mean time I will paint up some marines that have been hanging around my to do shelf. I will also return to the northern ghosts and finish some of the myrmidons and knights as they are mostly built and only need some greenstuffing before going to paint.

Another short update on the Desertblade

Well this will be another of these short updates as I have not really anything new to say except to show the progress of my work. In short, the stomach flue is over, which means that I have some more energy again, most of that energy is spent on the hose and garden at the moment as the weather is nice and as the proverb goes, strike while the steel is hot. The other day it was cloudy and a bit of rain which meant that I did have time and peace of mind to work on the Desertblade, I got the tracks mounted, the main gun painted and started out on the heavy bolter turrets. Regarding the tracks  how is it that a computer generated model does need so much fiddling to come together? One would have thought that it would just be to smack on the track peace and they would fit nicely, but o no! Luckily I had not attached the drive wheels so I could adjust the position a bit but I would have expected the to come on more smoothly. Well they are on now and the position will have to do. They are just base painted now and they need some more attention but that will be for another day.

Short short update on the Desertblade

This will be a very short update on what has been going on since not much has happened. Last week we had valpurgis night here and we had some friends over which was very nice but did not leave me any time to paint. Then I got hit by a stomach flue which also has prevented me from painting. So nothing much has happened from my last post. The main hull is now painted and I have started on the chipping and some details. Hopefully I can get some more painting in next week before I have to go away on work for a whole week.

Desertbalde update

I have been busy at work and with the house now that the snow finally has gone. But I have managed to get some hours in on the Desertblade build. Once I got the hang of working with plastic card things moved along nicely. I wanted to keep as much of the detail of the original as possible so I keep the amount of plasticcard as low as possible but I still had to make a new top to the hull as I lowered the turrets position and extended the rear deck. Once the plasticard was attached I added some bolts buy using a wire and some paint. The wire picks up the same amount each time and you can just add it as a drop. Two or three times of this will create a raised bump. Much easier than making plastic nuts, especially as they should be rounded on marine vehicles. Once all the parts where assembled I gave them a coat of black and started painting. As I dry brush my models I have learned not to paint to large surfaces at a time as the drybrush will get clogged and you might get lazy if the areas are to big and not work them over properly. Currently the base colour is 15 layer of paint before adding detail and battle damage and weathering. The turret is now painted as well as the centre part of the hull. I am starting out on the track covering and the side plates, after this I will add details and such before starting on the smaller parts and final assembly. I do like how it is coming together. I suppose this will take me some time to finish. Then I have some marines to paint, but I have already come up with the next conversion project, it will be a dropship, smaller than a thunder hawk but larger than a thunder chick. We will see when that happens, hopefully the Desertblade will be done by then.

Desertblade

During ester I had some vacation from work and it was spent divided among fixing with the house, eating and drinking with relatives and doing some plasticard work. I have always been envious of those who can scratch build anything from plasticard and make it look like it came straight out of the GW factory. Me, I am just proficient in reassembling models in new ways making new models but they are basically just combination of parts already available.
Now I thought that I would try my hand at some basic customisation of a kit using platicard and a base model. What to build (as if I do not have a lot of unfinished projects as it is)? I have always liked the baneblade, ever since my first games of spacemarine. But I have never owned one, not in epic nor in wh40k. So a bandblade it would be, but my days as an imperial guard commander is far behind me, I only have time for my Chaos, Mechanicum and Desert Eagles. The Forge World Fellbalde is however a spacemarine super heavy tank used during the heresy which shows that marines could have super heavy tanks and it fits right in with my back story of the Desert Eagles. They are after all guarding an abandoned weapon storage containing wargear collected over a period of some 10k years, containing any thing from the heresy to current times spanning all chapters and so on (it is a mystery of how this stash ended up on a desert world and who put it there, but once found it had to be guarded).
In the beginning I liked the Fellbalde model a lot and I was almost about to by one. But as I though about it it looked to bare, I dont know how to express it but it is just tracks, with some rather flimsy side panels, some large las-cannon mounts and a cupola with two large pipes. Instead I decided to use the Banebalde model and some plasticard to make my own version of the Fellbalde. So I started searching the net for what other people had done, mostly it came down to two approaches, either you just take the Baneblade, paint it in marine colours and say it is a Fellblade or you by an upgrade kit from a company ( have no clue which one they use, but they all look the same) and add it to your Banebalde kit.
To get a feeling of what I could do with the original kit I stated to play around with MS paint and some pictures of the Banebalde and soon came to the conclusion that it would look much better to make a model based on a modern tank like the M1A2, T90, Leopard II or Merkava and paint it up for my Desert Eagles. This also meant that the original Banebalde weapons out fit would be more suited for this build than the dual barrel turret of the Fellbalde or the quad lasers. However, the Banebalde is very similar to a post worldwar II tank like the centurion and it needs quite a substantial rebuild to look modern and like a space marine tank. So the M1 Desertbalde was borne. I made some ad on side plates to go over the original side plating but kept it small as not to loose al the detail. I also bought some Landraider upgrade kits, ie some predator parts, so that I could exchange the gun turrets of the Banebalde with marine versions. I also choose to swap places between the twin linked heavy bolters and the las-cannon turrets. I also decided to remove the housing beneath the turret and lower it so that it came more in line with the track coverings. This however meant that I could not mount the heavy bolter turrets on top of the track coverings where the las-canons used to be as the turret would hit them. But this was solved by my need to make the turret larger to match the look of a modern tank. I added some angled plates to the front of the turret and some gun boxes to the back, putting the Heavy bolters on top of the turret. I also made some changes to the back, removing the shrine and the double barrels. The back is now sloping upward like on the rihno and the fuel barreles are mounted in a row across the back.
Well that is as far as I have come, now the model is resting before I add some more details, I find that it is not good to do the build in one go. In stead I let it bee for some time and then I come back to it with fresh eyes and see if it still holds up. So this might not be the final look but so far I am happy with it.