Fenrir done

Well, well. After the near disaster the other day I reassembled Fenrir and got him set up for a photo shoot. I really like how this came out, and from some angles he looks down right mean. The hip bones and the shoulder cables with the extensions of the armour has closed up some gaps in the design, making the titan look more solid. Now, if FW only would release the AT carapace weapons for 28 mm I think this titan design could become more in line with the ascetics of the newer titans.

I am also happy with how a lot of the details turned out. I have not been as throughout as I could have been with the GS sculpting but I think it is ok. Next time I might use the scalpel more to make sharper edges and add some more definition to at least some of the sculpts.

So, even if this was intended to be a quick build and paintjob with just the addition of the back mounted laser blaster it turned out to be a massive project where almost every bit has some modification or sculpting. But I am so pleased with the result. 

See you all for the next titan, Surtr.

Weapon armour for Fenrir...

Finally, this week I finished the last pieces for Fenrir, the armour plating's for the arm weapons. I am really happy with how the extensions worked. But the next time I do something like this I will cut away the bottom of the armour trim so that I get a single plate rather than the divider at the middle.

I am really starting to like the look of the chaos growths coming up through the armour rather than just sitting on top. This does however take longer both to sculpt and to paint so I will probably be a bit restrictive with this.

Well, that is it then, Fenrir is done? Well, noop, not really. As I was mounting the last laser blaster to the titan, Fenrir decided to take a nose dive, and not only onto the table, but the floor. That meant that instead of having a completed titan I now have a titan in its constituent pieces. Luckily no resin parts broke, some of my GS work got a beating and broke of, but other wise it was just the glue joints that came apart. Also the paint job was mostly undamaged, There are some small chips on the edges that hit the floor first. So now I need to go over all the parts, fix the shipping and re-glue the model.

As this is the second time it does exactly the same stunt I need to re-evaluate the waist joint. So far I have relied on a strong magnet to keep things in place, and it has worked when the model has been sitting by itself, but when I have interacted with he arm joints things has gone badly. The problem with magnets are that if they are subjected to a torque/leverage they quickly come apart if they can not stay flat against its mate (that is how you normally separate strong magnets). To counter this I used a steering pin in the centre of the magnet to prevent it from tilting and coming loose. However, lately I have come to trust in the magnets inherent strength and skipped this pin (I found larger and stronger magnets). So after Fenrirs first nose dive I re-introduced a pin for the waist magnet, but it was just sitting in the lower part and was not fixed to the upper part. So when I accidentally tilted the upper body it just rose up and of the pin and then rapidly onto the floor. Now I have glued the pin to the top part so that it can not lift of the pin, and the pin needs to be lifted out of the bottom part and that can only be done straight up (have not tested if I can separate the waist at all now).

Now, this has me worried about Varangian, that has a similar design in the waist and arms. I will need to take him apart and introduce pins to the magnets here also to prevent him from also collapsing. And I think for the future I need to come up with a better way of fixing the body to the legs and the arms to the body with out relying to much on magnets. 

It would have been nice if the models could have been designed with this in mind, as the AT titans are prepared for magnets.

As soon as I can reliably get Fenrir together again I will take some finished picture.

Fenrir armour WIP

In the last few days I finished the leg and knee armour as well as the carapace for the back mounted laser blaster. The leg piece turned out well and I am happy with the over all look. Now that Fenrir as armour on both legs as well as the beginnings of shoulder armour he starts looking more beef.

As for the carapace of the laser blaster it turned out a bit messy with the flaked chevrons and the bone breaking through the armour. This made me a bit unsure about my plans to have the shoulder plates also with blue white chevrons...  will see how it turns out. Only fore pieces left to go.

I also painted up the tail that I made. In the end it turned out ok, but a bit small. If I had to redo it I would make it flow better with the rest of the body and make it larger. I need to think about it a bit and see if it stays or goes.

Fenrir GS WIP

So, I am getting close to the end of my Christmas vacation and will soon have to return to work. I have not been doing as much hobby work as I had thought but I have been spending time with the family and doing some wood working instead so all in all a productive and relaxing vacation. But I did get something done and most importantly is that is am finally done with the green stuff work for Fenrir and now it is "just" to paint up the last armour panels and he will finally be done.

For the right leg panels I tried to do something similar but updated to what I did on Joluns Modh, i.e. a pair of wings and some chaos growths. The knee pad is basically original with some piercings at the top.

The shoulder guards have been modified to have some extra plating going down in front of the arm socked to give some more protection and also give the titan a bit more bulk over the shoulders. I had to restart the modifications to the top once I the "bone" things I designed did not look good. Instead I reverted to a submerged chaos pattern of chaos growths splitting the skin of the armour. On the right shoulder I also added some scrollwork and a set of bone laurels to give it a bit more imperial vibe. I had initially made a pair of shields to go with the shoulder armour but decided to skip them as they altered the look of the Reaver to much.

The cowling for the back mounted laserblaster also had to be redone as the original design did not work out. Instead I went with the rib structure that I have used on other parts of Fenrir. From the top it looks a bit like a skeletal angel but I am not sure that this will come across in the end.

For the arm mounted laserblasters I modified the cowlings to have a lower part on the out side (which means that I now have a dedicated left and right hand weapon). Here I hade some great plans of making an advanced heraldic sculpt with a shield, laurels scrolls etc...  but in the end I ended up with two rather simple chaos patterns breaking through the skin. I will had the rest as freehand paint instead.

Most of the weapon and shoulder armour will get blue white chevron patterns to tie it in with the rest of the Northern Ghosts as Fenrir otherwise is predominantly green. We will see how that works with the growths. I did something similar for the cowling for Varangians volcano cannon.

Serberys

This year I got a pack of Serberys from my lovely wife for Christmas. I loved the look of these when I first saw them upon release but I have for some reason did not picked them up before, so it was a perfect gift from the wifey.

I could not decide whether I should build them as sulphurhounds or raiders so I choose the parts I liked the look of which probably does not make them WYSIWYG but who cares as long as it looks good. So I set about building these puppies and I went for the dog/horse head without the flamer as I think they look far better. But dual wilding six shooters were way to cool not to build so I went with that. I also gave the alpha the sword from the Raiders but swapped the gun for the sulphurhounds variant, just to keep with the theme. I also stripped the rifle case from the sables for the two normal riders just to give them the potential same load out as the alpha (which also have a rifle as backup).

As for paint I went with a dark metal for the legs, skull and spine/tail. The "bag/cloth" containing most of the body was painted a brown leather while the armour plating got my standard ghost green treatment. The raider also got a dark metal body with a red coat with leather inside to keep in with my other mechanicum troops. Over all I think they got a good blend of my green/brown scheme and the metal/red so that they can both work with the main core troops and with my rangers/scouts. The models have quite a lot of small fiddly parts that are easy to break if the model is painted un-assembled, which I recommend as it is very hard to get the brush in between all the legs and cables etc on the underside.

I also got a pack of Pteraxii that I will make more in the style of my rangers, but that is for another day.

Blade guards

This week I offer you some Smurfy Blade Guards. I love these models!, even though they are monopose. The three models form the Dark Imperium box are all different so there is no repeat and I do not think it would be possible to do these as anything other than mono pose as the tabard connects the legs to the torso and then it is only the arms that would be posable within some range. And as the legs and torso is sculpted in a dynamic pose I do not see great variability by repositioning the arms either. So all in all, fantastic sculpts, in limited numbers (unless they do more sculpts). I am looking forward to doing the ancient and the lieutenant to complete the group.

The colour scheme is the same (I think) as for most of my Ultra Marines, i.e. a dark blue metallic. Painting it this way almost feels like it could be for real. The base metallic is basically metallic marines that is then lightly washed in blue, like a marine painting the bare plates in the chapter colours. This technique is very simple and at the same time very difficult. The base metallic is dry brushed on over a black base in four shades. This stage is very straightforward, and one could leave it at that and go for the details if one want silver/metallic marines. The next stage is also simple but also very hard to get really good. Using watered down base paints I paint over the sections of armour that I want coloured. That basically is just filling in the fields and will give a ok result as is. However, if one is careful with the direction of application and has just the right water to paint ratio it is possible at this stage to shade the plates with a smooth gradient, but it require practice. And since I do not paint these to often it is a bit hit and miss if I manage the last stage, and in this case I was off. The plates turned out a bit to even and I hade to try to sort this by using other shades of blue and some black wash.

The gold details also did not get the depth I wanted, which is strange as I more or less followed my basic recipe for this... I must have been un focused.

Apart from this I am happy with the result, they look good and go well together with the rest of the collection. Some part of me is really looking forward to seeing all the marines form the last three starter boxes painted up in this scheme (if I ever manage that).

Custodes Wardens

This time I finished the Shield-Captain and the Vexilus Praetor of my Custodes Wardens form the to do pile. These were a present form my wife some times ago together with with Captain-General Trajann Valoris. I painted up the three Wardens with axes some time ago but has held of on these ones as well as the Captain-General as I did not want to do them all at once. I really do like how these turn out but they take some time to do. As per my usual Custodes pattern the base armour is a white metal with golden plates. I think this gives the models some more depth and character than just painting everything gold. I added blue stones and yellow lenses to the armour and helmet. The robes where done in crimson with a purple or bone white lining. I was a bit surprised that the Captains cloak did not have any raised reliefs like the captains cloak from the base Custodes kit. So I tried some improvised free hand, and I do realize that the main sign is from the titan legions but it was what I came up with at the time (I really do need to plan what I am to do before setting the brush to the model). The conclusion I think is that I still need to practise my freehand a lot more.

Next up for my custodes is Trajan Valoris, and at some point I am tempted to do a converted dropship based on some conversions I found on line, but more about that if it happens. It would also be interesting to do a tank or something and see how the paint scheme translates to something bigger. The dreadnought I did for last years dreadtober turned out quite well so at least on that scale it works. I might need to get me the codex and have a look at the options.