More Left from Right

Once again I find my self building a left arm weapon from a right one. This time it is the rapid firing battle-cannon. Not only is the body of the gun just made to accept the magazine from one side, the original shield is also asymmetric, which would make the guns look out of place if I just build one identical gun and placed it on the other side. Switching side of the magazine was not really difficult and it will just require some GS to fill in the gaps. The shield and the auto-cannon is another matter though. The shield is very hard to convert to get it mirror symmetric so instead I used the shield to the Gatling cannon, which surprisingly is made to fit both right an left arm. This however meant that I could not use the original auto cannons, so instead I use a pair of the back mounted auto-cannons and fitted them to the underside of the cannons instead, All in all I think they look fairly similar.

I also attach the back of the envelop sketch that I made of the trio before deciding on the project.

Knights;WIP

Just a short update on my Knights build. For the Warlord Knight (WLK) I am currently working on the shoulder armour. To fit the extra weapon hard-points I had to raise the shoulder above it normal position and hence I need to fill the gap beneath with something so that they do not look to high. On the sides towards the body I added extra rims to cover the gap between the body and the shoulders. I made some holes in them to give it some structure. I will add border trim etc with GS. Then I also added some shields beneath the shoulder rim, sort of an homage to the old beetelback Warlord.

The Warmonger Knight (WMK) got two power fists in the last post, but I could not let it be without some fire power. So I am building some mini-gun like weapon that will be held in the fists. Right now it is mostly mock-up to see how big it will be and how I can make the hands work with holding it.








Well, that is as far as I got this time.



/Agis

Making a right from a left

Games Workshop in all their wisdom as a models company have a tendency to make models that can only be assembled one way. This is not good for modellers who might want to change the pose of the model, change its out fit etc... it almost appears that the models are tailored to fit the gaming system, ...strange.

Well I need a right power fist for my knights and the kit only comes with a leftie. First I thought that they might have made the kit so that the power fist could be built either way but it is only meant to be on the left side. So to make a right out of the left I needed to do some cutting. In the end it was not a to hard conversion, but it nags me that I needed to do it at all.
First I cut the thumb socket out of the top and bottom part of the hand. Then I cut a matching hole in the other side. I flipped the thumb socket around and mounted it on the other side, The pieces left over got to fill the remaining voids where the thumb used to be. The hand is not fully symmetric so I needed to cut away some of the edges and fill some gaps with green stuff to make it all smooth. I also needed to adjust the shield that goes on top of the back hand. In this case I could not easily swap the to sides and make it look good so I had to fill the gap where the thumb was with green stuff. To help support the green stuff I used a thin piece of plasticard as backing. This will all be trimmed down to look like the original once it is GSed.

All in all I must say that I love these kits, even though GW messed up with all the static posing, lack of interior and what not. The level of detail is amazing and they actually look quite realistic and they pose a challenge to any one like me to make something non standard out of them. I have seem some great re-posing and some truly innovative conversions of these models on the internet and I hope that my contribution to this will be appreciated.

/Agis

Warlord Knigth; WIP

I managed to finish the major parts of the insides of the Knight and went on to work a bit on the outsides and specifically the Warlord Knight. As one might gather from the name it will look similar to the Warlord titan. It will have two rapid fire battle cannons on the arms and two thermal canons on the back. To facilitate this I needed to add two more hard-points above the arms. I had planed to build something out of plasticard but before I stated I rummaged through the bits box to see if I could find something that might work. What I found was the feet to an icaros lascannon. Some small modifications and I had some nice arms to hold the extra weapons. However, the armour is not designed for this so I had to thin out the back carapace were the arms go out and I had to cut holes in the shoulder pads.The shoulder pads also had to be raised about 5 mm to accommodate the arms. I will add some more details to them to tidy up the cut outs and the offset. All in all I think it looks ok, but I will leave it for now and see if it looks better or worse tomorrow.

Imperial knights; insides

 Well, I have not forgotten about this blogg, it is just that I have had a lot of other things to do and once you have been away a few weeks one more week does not seam such a big deal. This time I think it is about three mounts since last time I posted here. It doe also not help to think that you do not have something to share. I have not painted or built something special in a while, just rank an files and not many of these either. I will put them in a post later, but I did not think it was terribly exciting to show just one more skitarii or one more pre heresy Dark Angel.

So to break things up a bit I started a new modelling project in the form of three imperial Knights for my mechanicum forces. I already have one more or less built out of the box except for the interior I built for it. This time I will put more effort into re-posing, alternate weapons load outs, details etc. This will be designated, the War Lord, the War Dancer and the War Monger. I know that some of these names are also designations for Titan patterns, but somehow the names got stuck in my head so I will have to go with it. These will all have different non standard armaments so they will not be game legal but that is not really a problem.

But first things first. For my first Knight I built an interior, with gas turbines, cockpit, pilot etc. For this I used some part I had in my bitsbox. The problem now is that I do not have any more of these exact bits so I decided that I would try to replicate the interior as well as I can with plasticard and green stuff and the occasional original GW bit that I could find at-least three of. I knew I had three sentinel pilots left over from the Defiler Knights I built a couple of years back, so at least I did not have to sculpt these. I also bought some more maxmini jump packs to stand in as gas turbines in the engine bay (same as in the original Knight). I also found some Cyber Samurai heads from Kromlech that I thought would give the pilots a more chaotic look.

To start out I made some cardboard cut outs to find the right dimensions for the internal floors and walls. Once these where set I cut out three sets in Plasticard and glued them together. The floor is 60x30 mm and the back plate is 40x30 mm. The back plate needs some trimming at the to to fit with the back carapace. I also made an angled plate for the turbines to that they with with the air cents on the back carapace (which will be opened up). I choose to make the cockpit about one fourth of the internal space. This will leave a believable amount of space for what ever is needed to power the Knight. I have seen versions where most of the upper body is used for the cockpit but I think it is not really believable. Well, anyway, once this was set I made some chairs, that developed in to thrones for the pilots. The pilots got new left arms from the skitarii box to operate the throttle or what ever it is that is mounted on the side of the throne (I did not like the sentinel style where both arms operate levers between the pilot legs). I then started to work on some internal detailing in the engine bay, as some radiators, exhaust pips etc. I also started to detail the cockpit with some cables, air vents and so on. Sadly I had no control panels left over so I had to sculpt al screens and keyboards. These are not yet finished but I am well on my way. All in all I am happy with the progress and it resembles what I did before even though it will not be exact replicas. Once I am done with the internal structure I will start working on the outsides which will differ quite a lot between the three Knights as I want them to be distinct, not only having different weapons load outs.












I hope I will remember to take photos and post as I go along.

/Agis

Castellax with Darkfire Cannon

I finished of the weapons and arms of the first Castellax the other night, and I am pretty pleased with the result. The paint scheme is in-line with the rest of my mechanicum forces. I also pulled out an old "Robot" built from a Tau battle suit. I think I was a bit a head on the mechanicum as I also made some tech priest to guide it around, and this was way before the current mechanicum lists.Even though a lot of my mechanicum models have different origins I still think they go together as I have maintained the paint scheme and the nature of the army is so diverse. This is what I think makes the mechnicum one of the best armies for people like me, there is not set model, you are allowed to make your own inventions as long as you stay with in the general 40 k look. So even if I do not agree 100% with the designers of the current 40k mechanicum design, I can still build upon it and make my own conversions. So I think one of my next purchases need to be the some kastelan robots and some serious head swapping.

Castellax WIP

As usual these days I am finding it hard to find any time to paint but I have managed to finish of the first trio of Thallaxes and have started on the first Castellax. Not much to say really, it is an old and well tried paint scheme. One thing that I have changed a little bit is how I do the flaking chevrons, instead of using tejp and dry brushing I am free handing it which is easier for the smaller models. I am happy with they way these models are turning out and I think they will look really good as a group.