Dominus knight sort of done

This week I have sort of finished my Dominus knight, at least as far as I had things to paint. Now I need to finish the arm weapons to really finish it but I do not know how long that will take as I need to sculpt some alien skulls on to them and that requires inspiration and that I really can't control. 

I hope that it will look more balanced once the arms are on. Now I think it is to front heavy. Don't know if it is because I changed the legs or if it is just the way the upper body is built. It could also be the way the carapace is now with the wider front and shields... 

Well it is what it is and it is nice that it is almost done.

Now I am gearing up for the Dreadtober challenge...

WIP, Dominus knight and Opus

I keep splitting my attention between my Dominus knight and Opus. This time I have finished most of the upper body and legs for the Dominus knight. Now it is on to the weapons. The shoulder mounted siege canons are constructed and are ready for paint as well as the the AA autocannons. The arms are how ever not done yet. I need to finish of the GS sculpting, so it might be that the knight will be missing his arms for some time after the rest is done.

When it comes to Opus I am slowly working on the island. Now I have added some plattforms for some AA batteries. So far it is only the two at the top back that are done. When working on these I can up with a fantastic idea of how to do rivets. I am sure someone else has already figured this out but it was a first for me and I am really happy with how it turned out. So what is the magic? It is sculpting tools, a mouse mat and some thin plasticard. So I cut some 5 mm strips of thin plasticard and made markings every 5 mm along the centre line. I then put the stripp on a mouse mat that has some flexibility to it. I then used some sculpting tools with a ball point and presses small dimples into the strip along the markings. On the reversed side there is a small round bulge. I then glued these stripps on the the structure I build so that it looks like rows of rivets as can be seen on the icarus lasscannon platform. This is a really fast way of making these and I will use this extensively on the model.

WIP, Dominus knight and Opus Magna

I thought that I would blog a bit last weekend but somehow that did not happen, so once again it has been some time since the last update. But I have not been completely idle in this time. On the painting front I am chipping away at my Dominus Knight. The upper body and the legs have been finished and I have started on the armour plating for the legs and torso. The paint scheme is the same as on all my knight so there is not much to say about it. But the top carapace, that has been heavily modified from the original, is now starting to look its part. Before it was a bit hard to judge how it would fit with the model since there was so much plasticard and green stuff on it that it was very obvious that it had been modified. Now that it got some paint is starting to blend in and I think it looks quite in line with the aesthetics of the questoris knights.

Once the armour is done I really need to get cracking with finishing of the weapons and the base so that I can close this book, and my first super heavy knight detachment. After that there is just another five ghost pattern war glaives to to to finish of the second super heavy detachment. 

On the building side I managed to finish of the basic shape of the two gun turrets for the opus magna island. So far it is just the basics that has been assembled and I need to go back with green stuff and plasticard to finish them of, as well as mounting the cupolas etc from the original kit. Initially I had thought to have the long barrelled turret on the top, but once built I realised that the island got better balance with the longer barrels at the bottom and the shorter at the top. In this way the island maintain a staggered look instead of just being a box. I also added a wedge to the back of the observation deck to hold the radar disc. All in all I am very happy with the over all look. Now I just need to add some platforms for the anti-air batteries that will also go onto the island, five icaros lascannons and a quad auto gun (if I remember my inventory correctly).

On the outside of the island I also added som of the tower parts from the communication tower set and some other industrial parts from other GW sets to make a smoke stack and give the iland an industrial quarter. I still have some ventilation fans etc to add to the flat panels.

Once I get all the major components in place I need to go over the whole thing and close up all the gaps with GS and Plasticard.

Well that is all I have for now. I hope that one fall gets here and I there is less things I can do outside I will retreat into the hobby room and make some progress on these projects. I am so curious about how the Opus Magna will look with some paint on so that all the platicard, GS and original parts gets the same color, but that is still some way of, but perhaps not another nine years...

Div WIP, Dominus and Opus

I still have not found my mojo and so I struggle to make any progress with my Dominus knight. So far I have only managed to paint the out side of the the chest and started the legs, but it is mostly routine jobs and have not captured my enthusiasm for the model. Hope fully I will start to get something going once I get to the armour panels.

To combat my lack of hobby mojo I have tried to restart the Opus Magna build which has been sitting around for a very long time. There are a number of smaller project here, ranging from assembling standard GW kit parts to pure scratch builds, that I just need to move forward and there really is no pressure of finishing anything at this stage. So one of the things that has stalled is the Island build. Some time ago I started this by adding external floors to a GW bunker to act as the main control centre areas. Now I have added the windows and some other parts and sealed it up. Just need to go back and fill in some gaps etc with more plasticard and greens stuff. On the top I also built an observation platform that is sitting on a small tower, abit like what can be found on some WWI and WWII battle ships. And to keep with the whole 40k stuff I added two gun turrets to the top of the Island. One on the roof of the main building and one on top of the observation platform. These turrets are based on the baneblade turrets but has been widened to hold more barrels. One is a short barrelled version with three Leam russ battle cannons and the other will use two longer barrel versions from the baneblade. The observation platform will also get an extension at the back to hold a communication/radar disc. There will also be seats for some Icaros defence lasers and other AA weapons.

The size of the Island has however shown that I need to fill in the gaps in the crenulations of the landing platforms that make up the sides of the flight deck to give it a bit more width to balance the Island.

Dominus Knight WIP, internals

Now, this hiatus was a bit longer than I thought it would be. A combination of work and lack of mojo has kept me from the hobby room for close to two months. But now I have vacation and I thought I'd make a try to get some things done. The first thing is to get my last Dominus Knight finished. This is a build that I stated many years ago as an attempt to make the original kit a bit more stylish. I do not know if I managed that but at least it is now ready for paint and once done will complete my first Knight banner.

Since the body box is lager than the questoris version I decided to make a dual pilot set up for the internals. The two pilots are stacked on top of each other with the top being the pilot and the bottom being the weapons/ tactical officer. 

I made some large pict screens for the bottom pilot for a good tactical overview. The top pilot has most of his screens mounted to the top carapace and are not seen here. The compressor fans are the same as I have used on the other knights to keep the look coherent. Now I just need to glue the front of the box into place sealing the bottom pilot in place, it can't be easily seen then, but I can at least paint the rest without worrying about matching the colours.

I still need to finish the weapons and base but with the pace I am keeping now I guess they will be doen about when the rest of the Knight is painted.

Skitarii Rangers with transuranic arquebuses

This week I have done some clean-up of the workstation and cleared out some models that has been hanging around in the background for some time. When the skitarii set was released I bought a box and painted up most of the models, including one carrying the transuranic arcebus. I like the idea of the long sniper rifle but was not convinced by the model, the goofy recoil dampener and the support stick did not do it for me. So I left out the stick and mounted the model on a normal round base instead of the oval one that comes with the model. 

But I was never really happy with this. As I collected more ranger squads through some starter sets and other boxes containing skitarii models I sort of started thinking about this again. According to the rules two models in the squad my have alternate weapons and if the squad numbers ten then three may take a special weapon. I got the idea that it might be cool to have two ranger squads with two arcebuses in each but I never really made it so the two squads I started by splitting of some of the original squad have been sitting around by display case unfinished. 

Then a couple of weeks ago I finally decided that it was time to finish of these two squads. So I built the remain models and removed the original from its round base. The arcebuses got some modifications by the removal of the the recoil dampeners. I tried to mount it more like what a real version might look like but it did not work. I also used other bodies for the skitarii than the one indicated in the build guide, just to make them look a bit different, but it is not easy to get it right as the arms are intended for a aiming pose. Two of them got the sticks while the other two got some alternate poses so did not need them. Then I started painting, but I stalled and these just sat on the desk but with out any real progress. I do not really know why I have problems with these models. Might be that the two main colour fields are so interlocking that it is difficult to paint well? Could be all the filigrees on the rifles...  I do not know. And I still have two more squads on the frames. At least these will be a bit different as I also have upgrade packs from forgeworld to make hoplites and pelestas.

Apart from the arcebus wielding skitarii I also finished two normal rangers and one with a plasma caliver. 

Outrider Chaplain

This week, or rather, the ester week, I decided to paint the outrider Chaplain that I picked up as an impulse buy last time I was traveling with work. As it turned out I did not manage to finish it over the holiday so it had to wait for yet another work trip before I could finish it.

I think the model is fantastic, the pose is great and the model as such is much easier to build and paint than the push fit versions in the starter box. This meant that I could paint it in subassemblies. The only problem I see is that the pelvis of the rider is part of the bike. I would have rather seen that he was a stand alone model that where mounted to the bike so that he could have been painted as a complete model. Now I had to paint each leg separately and the torso by it self. 

When it comes to the colours I decided to do him in the dark-green-black that I have used on a lot of other "black" models. I also decided to do a blue Ultra Marine stripe on the engine cowling. Once painted it was very difficult to see any contrast between the blue and green (which would indicate that my surfs are almost black). To separate the colours a bit more I painted a thin bone white stripe between them, and then the blue became a bit brighter...  funny how contrast and colour work. Well, the rest of the model got some white metal trim where I tried to do some MNMM techniques, similar to what I have done on my custodes, but I am not really sure that it worked as well. I tried to keep it as monotone as possible to give it a stark look and hence stayed away from the boxart gold. Some dark red did however make it on to the model for a small bit of contrast. Now I only have to two remaining outrider from the box to finish, but first I have some Skiitari that needs my attention.