Ho-kay. Damn, where to even start? This log is going to be a continuation of a project over on Warseer that has been running since Summer 2013. I got banned from that forum because somebody got their panties in a twist over a pinup on the side of a tank or one of any number of other similar projects of mine. It happens. I guess there's no accounting for the sensibilities of some people. Anywho, this is my Dubstep Tau army. When I started this army, I only had a color scheme (stolen from a White Dwarf issue) and a vague idea of wanting to build an army that somehow embodied the dubstep genre. I know, it's a little odd to be so inspired by an almost entirely synthetic and instrumental genre with little to no associated imagery, but I wanted to bring some of the feel of the music to the table. Dubstep is the sound of robots having crazy sex, of dinosaurs with jetpacks battling space pirates, of cyber-zombies desperately trying to connect via fax modem. Alien janitors. Vampire pimps. That guy doing that thing in that place. The utterly absurd and yet undeniably awesome.
This initial post will serve as a table of contents when the thread gets longer, and a general purpose gallery. It is important to note that this army is going to feature more than just conversions and lights. There is movement, there is sound. There are remote controls. There will be animation. I'm even going to see if I can add an olfactory element by secreting an incense burner into a model. I want this army to overwhelm the senses like an apocalyptic bass drop. Most importantly, I want this army to inspire. Sure, it's corny. But I want people to look at my army and say, "Damn, that give me a great idea."
XV900-R Leviathan, Colony Assault Walker, Counts-As Warhound, still WIP
EDIT: As multiple people have asked, this is based off a Metal Gear Rex model by Kotobukiya, available at HLJ.com
XV30 Seraphim Battlesuit, Shas'El Silvertongue, Member of the Order of the Plume, Counts-as Shadowsun:
XV117 Abyss, Shas'Vre Snowflake, Member of the Order of the Plume, Counts-As Riptide/Rvarna
Shas'Vre Shagnasty, Leader of the Desert Pimps and founder of the Order of the Plume
Desert Pimps, Fire Warriors
XV11 Diplomat Battlesuits, Fire Warriors
Sonic Pimpmobile Hammerhead:
Scratch Built Remora Drone Fighter
XV8-W Support Battlesuit, Super Dangerous WubWub Sonar Cannon
That's all for the initial slew of images. I expect that by now you're tired of waiting for them all to load anyway. More to come as I keep porting in the rest of my old Plog,but until then...let there be LIGHT.
@Theophony: Yes, it actually is a naked female tau. There are going to be lots of these, but she's the prototype. You wouldn't believe some of the conversations I had with fellow painters about theoretical tau genitalia and how to best represent it. In fact, there's a whole squad of naked water caste 'morale officers' on the docket for a much later project. And that's before I even get into the TGG Kickstarter troops...
Glad to see that some folks are enjoying the log so far. I have a few more suits and builds to port over from my Warseer log. The basing on the crisis suits is still WIP, as I mostly just slapped a slab of epoxy on the base and left it at that. A crisis suit of some type will likely be my next paint project after the Piranha is finished.
One of my goals for this project in terms of how it comes together is that I want to have things completely painted and based at around the same rate as they're getting built, which often means pausing on my builds to spend a few hours with the brush. Previous armies have been all builds all the time, and then I'm left with so many models to paint that I get frustrated and lose interest.
Automatically Appended Next Post: XV8-XL Riot Battlesuit, Double Fusion
Water Caste Envoy, Space Samurai, Leader of the Diplomat Squad
Often found pretending to be an Ethereal in the presence of other races, and not much fun at parties until he gets really drunk and starts chopping things on a dare.
Personal Battle Armor of Magos Melvin Fortinbras, author of "Xenogynecology: A Cautionary Tale"
Unfortunately, Melvin's armor met with an unfortunate accident or two and needed a significant rebuild. Let's take a look at how he's faring these days:
Just put the final touches on the Hot Rod Piranha tonight, finally clearing it off my project table. Here are the results:
In the end, I don't think that the base was able to be seen well enough for my liking. The Piranha covers it almost completely, but this was a good proof of concept for my "super saiyan" bases and DIY concrete rubble, and I did end up learning quite a bit in the process. The big application of this base design will be used on my Hammerhead build, which is going to be mounted on a giant 120mm round base, the same type used by Colossals in Warmachine.
The next project, which basically just means the last model I currently have primed, is my Shadowsun stand-in. She's been reworked since I last took pics of the build, so that's why she isn't pictured in the log so far.
After this last model is painted, I am going to have to bite the bullet and start paint work on the crisis suits.
audiorape wrote: Finally subbed to share my appreciation of this. Wanted to do the same with the lights, but never had the motivation... or skill!
Also I can't wait to see a dubsteptauREX.
You don't need motivation or skill to do the LED thing. All you need is balls. Just be willing to blunder mindlessly forth on the project and stab, cut, burn and solder yourself, and you'll eventually figure it out like I did (stabbed myself in the junk at one point while working on it, true story).
Thanks for the subscriptions and words of encouragement on this project. It's been slow going at times between work, school, and the fact that I'm trying to do it in the middle of the desert, but it's coming together nicely. I have several more models still in their boxes, and more coming as the result of a christmas gift from my homie out here. Future efforts will include loads of female nudity, time lords, excessive wubwub, possibly a sushi restaurant, and who knows what else. I have a few different ideas for actual army lists, one of which includes ten (yes, TEN) piranhas. So at this point I have no clue where precisely the project will "end." The point of it has been to fill my off hours and keep me from being bored to tears out here in Hofuf, letting me feel like there's something I've done with my time (aside from all those asian girls).
Oh, fun things coming next month. I bought some gundam/armored core models from HLJ's black friday sale. They're all backordered, though, so they won't get here til maybe the end of january. When they do, I'll be building at least a riptide out of the whole mess, and (depending on scale issues) probably adding wings to the Leviathan. I'm not saying that there are two Strike Freedom Gundams in that order, I'm just...actually, that's exactly what I'm saying. And if the scale is all wrong, then I'll just enjoy myself building some gundam models. They were like 5 bucks each. Yay.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Since I mentioned Shadowsun, I'd like to go ahead and put up a quick WIP to show the current state of her:
Shadowsun, aka Commander Silvertongue (note that the name does not refer to her ability with words, but with the tongue itself). There was a lot of cutting to re-pose the legs, and there has been a ton of fiddling with the various bits to get them to work in each spot. My original build had two crisis-sized fusion blasters on the sides of her jetpack, but I replaced those with the "wings" you see here and the meltagun off a dreadnaught (fusion repeater, an amalgamation of Imperial and Tau technologies, still in prototype phase). The wings are actually a stealth field projector array, granting her whole unit those juicy cover bonuses. I need to add a feather onto the model somewhere to represent her membership in the Order of the Plume.
My hats off to your sculpting abilities!
Even if I were to conceive such fantastic conversions, I probably wouldn't have the guts to chop up those expensive bits in such ways, for fear of producing work inferior to the original designs.
Your backwards Piranha has a silhouette in common with the Barracuda and other Tau fliers. Genius.
And shaving the optics off of the Firewarrior helmet?! How have I not thought of that?! If I use Piranhas, I'm going to do that to the 2 pilots...
I like how you've sculpted your own 'counts-as' models/weapons. I've done similar work on my Tau, though to a far lesser degree.
Rain (yes name just changed) wrote: Finally subbed to share my appreciation of this. Wanted to do the same with the lights, but never had the motivation... or skill!
Also I can't wait to see a dubsteptauREX.
You don't need motivation or skill to do the LED thing. All you need is balls. Just be willing to blunder mindlessly forth on the project and stab, cut, burn and solder yourself, and you'll eventually figure it out like I did
Just take the damn compliment. I don't actually know where any of my Tau have gone anyway, barring one single Piranha. I had most of my old kit in my parents' storage unit (in a field) that got robbed. Twice. In a week. Haven't had the heart to go dig through it myself and see what things from my teenage years and later are missing. Probably one hell of a lot of metal...
I could probably write a list out, but then I'd want to buy it all again. Then again, that's what ebay is for, right?
Really great conversions boss. Youve definitely got the creative mind for it! I wish i had such modelling skill as Im trying to think of ways to convert the tau suits to fit my all kroot army (tau counts as), or not use them at all, and proxy the krootox with some plasticard work and other krootish species to take the place of the suits. Maybe youll offer me some good ideas when the time comes!! Cheers
Not sure i like the half and half color choice youve got going on. Your design is very cool, and can be pulled off to great effect, but your execution of it is a bit too loose. I would clean up the lines. straighten them out, maybe less thick but still vibrantly opposing the purple.
If you decide to do the half and half id maybe highlight the purple with a dash of white to the mix so it looks like its purple on purpouse. As it stands it looks more like step one of the other side.
Just my thoughts. its a good idea, but challenging
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, the purple side is still in "rough draft" mode. Also, I'm using one of the stupid dry paints to do the highlighting because it seemed convenient at the time. I'll probly end up redoing it with a mix of xereus purple and space wolf grey as the highlight.
Are you saying I should try to mirror the blue line design?
try thinning your paints with quite a bit of water. Depending on the task i add varying amount fo water, but i always add it no matter what. Itll help you keep steady and if you mess up its super easy to cover up with no effect to your mini. And you could mirror it i guess. I just meant that, since its purple, and totally different from the rest of your army, perhaps make it more like glowing lines of xenotech or what have you...because the blue is really a stylistic edge highlight right?
Thanks for the advice. I do thin my paints with water every time, but I also tend to work with them at a slightly thicker consistency than what the experts use (I just hate doing a million coats when one will suffice). Using the drybrush paint for an edge highlight was...frankly, it was a dumb mistake. I've since painted that half black in preparation for reapplying the purple, but then when I looked at it, having that side black was an interesting effect.
The problem I've been having with the current setup is that the more purple side (as you pointed out) looked like an unfinished version of the lined side. So, naturally it felt off. I'm now thinking about using the black side of the face to tie together the model's overall scheme, since the wings are staying black and white, and giving the model an overall darker look, what with her being stealth and all.
I went back in on the lined side with a highlight to the purple bits, using a mix of maybe 60/30 Xereus and Space Wolf, creating a midtone that I applied to areas where the purple felt too dark. It wasn't anything precise or premeditated, just a touch up where my eyeball told me to put it. So far I'm liking the result, actually seems to make the purple pop more, almost providing a texture to the purple areas. Still going to add the white on a few spots.
With all that said, I'm now wondering what to do about the black area on the other side. There were going to be some red spots in vents and other such bits like the rest of my army, splashes of hot colors to break it up. I'm thinking perhaps a less extreme freehand design in red with yellow accent. I might give it a look in MS Paint and see if it comes together.
I think if you're going for a stealth effect then having the lines you have over pure black would work, with the standard paint scheme on the other. Maybe offset the split on to a diagonal so it's not a half and half split, but a part stealthed-with-blue-glowy and part normal. Gloss varnish on the black side.
Hell, cast half in clear resin and paint uv reactive blue on it where you currently do. Embed a led deep in the resin. Turn the lights out. Wub wub.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I may have been drinking.
Yeah, it happens. Drunk posting is like the best kind ever. I'm not actually going for a stealth effect like active camo, but more of an overall darker feel to this one. Hence the half and half idea. I don't know if mirroring the blue to the other side is a good idea anymore. I've been playing around in MS paint and trying different things, and it looks like that one big panel will be enough of that particular craziness. I'm going to try some orange glow effects on the black side tonight and see how that turns out.
As much as I love the way the crazy lines turned out, they may just be wrong for the model and I might have to paint over them. Sad panda.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, here's how Shadowsun is shaping up.
It is really freaking hard to get my phone to focus on the model well enough to get all the details.
As soon as I started doing the orange glow lines I fell in love with them, and now I'm starting to wonder if I need to just suck it up and call the blue lined half of the faceplate a poor choice, and paint it black to match. But then, it also looks pretty badass with the half and half like this. I'm like five flavors of unsure at this point.
It's kind of crawling forward very slowly at the moment. I've painted the corresponding shoulder pad black and I'm going to do it with the same orange lines. Aside from that I've been painting purple along certain details and armor plates on the legs and backpack and highlighting them as I go. Once I decide that the piece looks right in that color, I clean it up and move on to the next. It's a very different experience for me as a long time painter to have literally no idea how I feel about each bit until it's painted and highlighted. I'm not doing blue edge highlights on all the purple plates this time, as it was looking off as I continued.
On the building front, I've been fiddling with another couple of squad members for the Diplomats and Pimps, since it's not a great idea to run FW's at minimum size due to morale issues. The Pimps are getting two female squad members, while the Diplomats are getting a female standard bearer and a male squad member modeled with his suit halfway on. I need to model an open briefcase with all the other parts coming up out of it, Iron Man style. For the standard bearer, I have yet to decide whether I am going to do a normal 40k plastic icon/standard with a hand painted design, or try for a mini digital photo frame. Of course, with the latter I will need to wait for the photo frame(s) to arrive from Amazon before I can even try, so she'll go back on the shelf for a while.
What hat? The one on Shagnasty? Empire something or other unit from Warhammer Fantasy. Archers, I think. There are a couple of spare hat bits in the kit, and I can't recall if that's the feather that comes attached or if I added a different feather to make it extra jaunty and foppish. Probably the latter. Pimps rule.
Oh and since this is a sci fi setting, it counts as a laser hat.
I think this is the most WIP pics I've ever posted of a model's paint job.
I just changed camera apps on my phone, which is giving me a little more focus on the small details. Seeing this view actually helps me spot the little places where I need to touch up the paint in the following few steps. One of the things I'm doing with these WIP pics is plotting out my next steps in MS Paint. I suppose I could use photoshop, but this isn't anything technical. Trying out color schemes ahead of time saves me from having to cake layer after layer of paint onto my poor model as I try and fail with different ideas.
But seriously, thanks for the kind words. I'm all about making with the awesome sauce at every possible opportunity and I hope not to disappoint with my future efforts on this project.
I mean, just look at that thing. I don't know why it wound up on eBay, I know just how much sentimental value a megabuild like that tends to have, and if nothing else I intend to drive the price up so that the builder gets a decent payday for it. Frankly, I want to be the new owner and give it a bit of a makeover, wubwub style. Now, this is one of those things that weighs on my conscience a bit. On the one hand, this is someone else's work of art. I can't claim any laurels for the build itself, and it will feel a bit sacrilegious messing with someone else's uber build. But on the other hand, look at it. If you ignore the genius and scale of the build, you notice a few little things, most notably the paint job. It's not bad, not bad at all. But I think I can do better given the chance, and I can't very well have it sticking out like a sore thumb. The same goes for the base, and the tyranids. My tau (it hasn't really come up yet in my builds so far) are fighting Ultramarines as their primary nemesis, in an urban environment. So I can't have this monster smashing bugs in the jungle. Okay, deep breaths. I have to win the thing first before I go crazy on the conversion plans.
I got a lot of the rest of the suit's orange lining done tonight. All that's left is cleanup and the base, for the most part. And I guess I need to start doing a few little details as well. Almost forgot to add that feather, probably just tack it on the back somewhere so it doesn't clutter it up too much.
I have always used the original Tau Fluff to make Tau as still mostly reptilian slowly evolving to mammal as they have hair as dinosaurs have been found to have had based on fossil mud surrounding the bones has been seen by paleontologists to have had. That being said, the Tau would not show genitalia as it would still be stored inside the cloaca as present day reptiles have. It also meant that they normally would not have mammary glands as yet, so the only way to tell was the "Y" shaped nasal opening, versus the "I" shaped one of the male Tau.
@Anvildude: Yes she has wings but part of my tau cadre's fluff involves a subgroup that wears red feathers as proof that they've achieved a specific conquest. It's Shagnasty's "Order of the Plume."
@shasolenzabi: I respect your realistic view of the biological facts, but I personally enjoy a nice set of alien space boobs, and I take every possible excuse to show more of them.
Actually, on a similar note, I need to order some of the arms for the new Witch Elves. They'll go much better with my various female torso bits than anything I currently have.
Is okay, each person has to live with their army and how they model/paint them. But knowing my Tau are coed makes me think how progressive they are compared to the Imperium
One of the things I've learned doing these effects on various models is that they gain a LOT when you get tot he very last couple of steps and just clean up the lines. So right now, a lot of it looks smudgy as hell, but it will get nice and crisp later.
All three crisis suits are prepped for priming (tack over all of the battery leads and LEDs so the primer doesn't screw them up). As soon as some newly added base details on the support suit are dry, they'll suddenly be very, very purple.
@shasolenzabi: I respect your realistic view of the biological facts, but I personally enjoy a nice set of alien space boobs, and I take every possible excuse to show more of them.
well is suppose no one can argue that logic
i like how he ended up. Glad you ditched the purple...for...flame? For some reason it reminds me of matchbox racer cars. Good job on him. My only gripe is that youve kinda pulled away from your current army theme and lost a bit of cohesiveness (perhaps i missed some pics and im talking out my bum) between troops and HQ. Its a small issue if any at all and individually the model looks nice. WEll done
Dude, I hate Tau. I find the crisis suits boring and boxy, and the fire warrior shoulder pads and heads look ridiculous. You, however, have made these models look GORGEOUS! Nice job man. Truly well done.
^ This. I hate their aesthetic, their fluff, their playstyle... but you've got a Tau army I'd be happy to watch bombing my Orks off of the table before they can do anything
Double points for Shas'Vre Snowflake and the etheral with the cigar
I usually don't care for tau both painted and not. The only Tau fluff I really care anything for is a certain Farsight, and their playstyle goes against mine (CC) leading to me not really caring for them.....
But you? You have made dubstep Tau which is truly truly outrageous. Have an exalt for a smile on my face and a glorious thing to see.
Wonderful. I almost have to blink away the tears. It's like Hardcore Uprising, Heavy Metal and Pacific Rim had a baby that headbutted his way into existence. I will follow this blog closely.
Got to ask though: How did you build REX up there in the first post?
Awesome, awesome plog so far! The only thing I don't like so far is the mostly white firewarriors. Everything else, brilliant! Especially the "in your face" dub step theme you've got driving all this modeling creativity
XV30 Undertow Battlesuit, Shas'El Silvertongue, Member of the Order of the Plume:
I experimented with different lighting and a new camera app for my phone. I know, I know. Light box, $400 camera, specially constructed photo studio in a storage shed outside my home. Unfortunately I can't do much with the conditions I have at the moment, so my phone and the blank wall are the best options I have.
Anyway, this is about a 95% done shot. As always, I notice new problems when I take the final photos, so those will get a bit of love later on when I do my retouching on various models. For now, bask in the glory of her 2+ cover save.
Crisis teams are primed and they came out much better than the last couple things I did with a spray can. Protip, don't prime in the dark. I also started on the Samurai who leads my Diplomats. I'd clock him in at maybe 20% done already.
Hey, it's getting a bit flat in here. Would someone mind dropping the bass?
@Anvildude: It's a templar basing kit from Scibor. Though now there may have to be a transmutation circle somewhere. Can you make a philosopher's stone out of tau?
It looks as though my pod nano came in the mail today, which means that once it gets here from Riyadh on wednesday, I can look into moving forward on the hammerhead.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And here's a little group shot of what's currently on the agenda:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
And that's what the double fusion suit looks like at my stopping point for the night.
These models look utterly fantastic, in the first post you meantioned remote controls. Was that an exaggeration or a promise? I'd love to see these masterpieces in motion (one model could even have a speaker that plays the Wagner dub step, possibly somewhere on metal gear Rex)
Rory1432 wrote: These models look utterly fantastic, in the first post you meantioned remote controls. Was that an exaggeration or a promise? I'd love to see these masterpieces in motion (one model could even have a speaker that plays the Wagner dub step, possibly somewhere on metal gear Rex)
There are a few different ambitious projects in the works, and I wasn't exaggerating any of it. The remote control actually goes to the Hammerhead's Dubstep Cannon. Inside the HH, I've installed speakers in the side hatches and will also be putting in an older ipod nano. I've got a remote control that works with the nano (hence why I didn't just use a cheaper player), so that whenever I fire the tank, I can hit a button on my remote control and it will blast random dubstep bass drops. The Rex model is having a mini bluetooth speaker fitted into the base. This will let me use it as my bedroom's default music player with my phone to manage playlists and such. I don't currently have any plans to do an RC/motorized build with my tau. If I did that it would be with a land raider or baneblade down the line.
The 95% done shot on the XV30 looks much better than I thought the WIPs did! I like it quite a bit now. But your fast work on the fusion suit is just amazing
With escalation apparently being a thing now, I have to wonder if there needs to be some tiger shark action in here eventually. I don't even know what I would use for a super heavy killer. Most of the time, they're not AV14, so that's helpful. Still, as much power as tau gained in this dex, they lost a lot of their ability to crack land raiders and the like. The whole Longstrike rail head is nice, but it's one shot per turn and probably dead after the first turn. So...yeah. Hmmm...
I made some bright colors and shiny things happen on the Riot suit.
I'd say this is about 80% complete, and mostly just needs cleanup and touch ups, some highlights on the base, and I guess that'll be about it. Oh, and I have to attach the clear lens pieces that go over the gun barrels. The LEDs are mounted right at the tips, so they're kind of blinding right now. I'll sand the clear plastic lenses with rough sandpaper so that they diffuse the light and it isn't so blinding.
I mentioned it on the Warseer version of this log, but the reason so many of these models feature an Imperial honor token like a crux or a seal is because in my fluff they're part of a joint task force fighting alongside my imperial forces. It's all very complicated and kind of kicks the canon in the gonads. Like, really hard. There are little elements of that fluff at work all over the place, and it will become more apparent once I start actually working on the IG, who normally fill an Allied detachment for my armies. Have to wait for my TGG Kickstarter stuff to start coming before that happens.
Thanks! I've actually got a long (LONG) tutorial I've been writing up that goes into how to make the shinies happen. It goes through all the various steps in the Crisis suits' chest, head, guns, etc. Even some more experimental stuff like glowing fuel rods, and totally basic stuff like how to use a soldering iron in a totally idiot-proof (because I'm slowed) manner. It needs finishing up and it needs to have tons of additional picture links added in, but it's getting there. Mostly I just need to feel like finishing it.
That actually brings up another sentiment I want to share. I hate forum mods. I really do. They tend to be jerks and demand a level of self-censorship that you would never EVER need in real life unless you were talking to someone's great grandmother or toddler. Yeah, I know, that's kind of outta left field, but it's germane to the history of my LED tutorial article. Long story.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rory1432 wrote: Could you tell us so of this controversial fluff?
Let's see, just off the top of my head. The Emperor is being held prisoner in a flesh cage like God in the movie Dogma, while the Inquisition, his jailers, divert worship (god fuel) away from him by subtly altering the text of prayers over the course of millennia. So Emprah sends out a few proxies into the warp with small fractions of different aspects of his power (strength, luck, intellect, etc) and empowers various individuals to lead a crusade to Terra and euthanize Him on Earth right away, before enough worship is diverted away to cause him to flicker and die completely. The effect of the avatars' success would be an immediate rebirth of the old Emperor with full access to the combined worship of all humanity, more than enough raw power to force the four major gods of Chaos to function in harmony as part of a healthy, unified whole. And then there would be cake. That covers the main justification of the story, and the rest mostly relates to individual characters both OC and canon and how they fit into this "big picture." For example, Abaddon is a hoax designed to do nothing but distract the Imperium as a whole, while Cypher is the true favored of the gods and his random pattern of movement is really in pursuit of the various avatars of the Emprah. And Marneus Calgar is a jackass in a yellow neckerchief. So you know, that much is canon at least.
Jehan-reznor wrote: Metal gear solid is not amused! What happened to the Hot tub?
Nice job!
Nothing happened to the hot tub. It's crawling along like everything else. Actually I just plugged some holes in it that were left after I took apart the mini speaker for which it was originally part of the case. I've also magnetized two different weapon mounts and I'm slowly working on a few others. Mostly I just can't make any big forward progress on it until I get that iPod to add the sonic wub wub action.
XV8-XL Riot Battlesuit, Double Fusion:
You can barely see the cloudy lenses I put over the ends of the guns in these pics, and that's fine. You can also barely tell the difference in light output in photographs, but trust me in person it takes the edge off nicely. The last ten minutes of painting this thing were an exercise in frustration and crisis management, as smudgy paint fingerprints magically appeared all over the place. There's very little that I'm not happy about with this piece, and overall I think it might be one of the more successful builds and paint jobs of this whole project. Down the line there's going to be one more of these added to the mix for running a Farsight Bomb (though we can be sure that the bomb will get nerfed hard next codex). Up next in the painting queue is the Support Suit, mostly because I want to paint the squished Ultramarine I put on its base.
ultimentra wrote: Dude your stuff is amazing! Have you thought about entering into painting competitions? Either online or locally? I would vote for you no contest.
Ehhhhh. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but the sad truth is that, while very eye catching, my paint work uses only minimal technique. No wet blending or any of the other stuff that they demand in contests. I've taken second and third at the local level a couple times, but against any serious painters I just can't cut it.
I loved the quad Mech
Quad mech? Do you mean the Metal Gear? Because I actually was brainstorming how to build a quadruped battlesuit, but I'm gonna need some more jetpacks to pull it off. I'm thinking a double plasma suit is going to have four crisis jetpacks as "legs" on kind of a spider-like lower body, reminiscent of a classic Armored Core concept. Or maybe I could use some Necron pieces. I'd have to look around for the right ones...maybe I could do both. One could be a new Riptide scale build. I wish Armored Core models weren't so expensive. There are just so many good pieces... *drools over Noblesse Oblige* Dat laser array.
Only some minor painting progress today. I did the black portions of the plasma and support suits and basecoated the bases. No WIP pics for something so minor.
Hold up. Pause. If I take the legs from a Broadside kit and the legs from this Sentinel frame that's been laying around in my box, I think there's the potential for a quad-legged broadside. The BS legs are heavier looking and rather static, so I'd shift them to the back, "bracing." Then figure out a good way to add the Sentinel legs up front, basically just combining the two hip joints, and then putting a big spacer of some kind over the middle so that the torso sits in the center...yeaaahhh....this could work.
Hey does anyone have an assault marine with a jump pack just laying around that they'd be willing to donate? As in one whole marine. Or really just the jump pack, I think I have everything else I need. I'm not so sure I have all the bits I need for one truly absurd build coming up. Picture this in your noggins. Assault marine posed in midair, supported by a plume of rocket exhaust on the base. Crisis suit with all sorts of "bird of prey" modifications swooping down and catching said marine in its talons, or just ninja-kicking it in midair.
Or the next double fusion suit shoulder-tackling through a brick wall, chunks of masonry flying in every direction.
Also, I have a Tardis. I just need to figure out how to perch a crisis suit on top of it. See? This is the kind of crap I get up to when I'm not allowed to have a girlfriend. Although, the Xmas party is coming up soon and there will be *gasp* women there. And booze. It's almost like being normal again. All I have to do is outshine a bunch of old fat guys and I may actually wind up with significantly less free time for modelling. I approve.
IHateNids wrote: I believe this entire thread can be summed up in one word.
WAT
Seriously though, love it, and I would like to see Rex fully painted
EDIT: as to a Quadruped Battlesuit, I read that and pictured Ravage. Im pretty sure you could pull that off.
Ravage is more akin to the attack dog Dreadnaught I built for my Crimson Fists. Google Armored Core Quad Legs and you'll get a feel for what I mean. Quad legs with a torso on top and arm/shoulder weapons. There are two ideas I have for this, and I guess one would be light and one would be heavy, which means I can try multiple concepts out. Oooh...if I manage to pull this off on a smaller model, what if I did it to a Riptide?
Automatically Appended Next Post: And some progress pics since I'm feelin' froggy tonight.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm not totally happy with the support suit. Of the three crisis builds, actually of everything I've built so far for this army, this is the one that didn't really come together all the way. The whole process was just one failure after another and things kept breaking, wires got snapped after the whole thing was put together and the parts got damaged when I tried to fix it. Eventually I said screw it and just slapped it together so that it could be done and I could work on something that wasn't pissing me off.
Also I think it has a really wide ass. Seriously bro, go on a diet.
Yeah, it's probably the suckiest thing about working in the middle east. You have to abide by every slowed law they have regarding your personal life. People in the civilized world always whine about how the government is trying to control their every move. If they could get out into the rest of the world and actually experience the iron fist of actual, real tyranny, then they would stop freaking out about little things that don't matter.
But yeah, if I get caught with a woman here I lose my job and get deported, and she goes to prison and gets lashes, and *then* gets deported. My company gets me out of the whole lashes in town square thing, but they'd still have to fire me. You can get a girl, though, you just have to keep it discreet and you obviously can't go out anywhere on "dates". Closest thing to a date is going to her compound or having her come to yours. It's slowed here.
Omegus wrote: That would be more glitch than dub step, and without a drop it is worthless!
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a connoisseur among us! The models are dubstep in the same way that a model is metal or rock. I aimed to capture the excess and absurdity in the form of builds and paint job. The actual, physical manifestation of dubstep in the form of models with audio is still a work in progress, but the prototypes should be getting put together as soon as a package gets here from Riyadh. Dammit, Willie, go on a mail run already! #HofufProblems If this is not sufficiently wubby for you, that's your decision to make and I respect that, but remember, haterade has been known to cause cancer in large amounts. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
I need to refresh the dub wub in this thread. Have some Skrillex.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Here's something I'm working on:
Totally random looking, right? This is the beginning of the torso for the quad crisis suit. The sloping piece is leftover from the Rex kit, and it just sort of fit the shape I was going for. The pieces on the sides are Riptide shoulders, or half of them anyway. Just a bunch of scrap and leftovers, in other words. There's going to be a LOT of gap filling and sculpting angles that work between the different bits.
I've got a couple different versions of the legs I'm working on, and mostly I'm trying to figure out the best version that will let me fit the thing on its base. I may have to scale up to a 60mm, or something. I might instead lay a long slab of ruin out to one side so it can stand on it for support. For armament I'm thinking double plasma, since I know I'm going to need more of those anyway, but after test-fitting it a shoulder mounted SMS looked great, so it'll get that too. Just because. I might actually use the plasma cannons that come on the Stormraven turret, because they're just chilling in my bits box begging for something like that to happen.They may be absurdly big, I'll just have to see.
Omegus wrote: That would be more glitch than dub step, and without a drop it is worthless!
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a connoisseur among us! The models are dubstep in the same way that a model is metal or rock. I aimed to capture the excess and absurdity in the form of builds and paint job. The actual, physical manifestation of dubstep in the form of models with audio is still a work in progress, but the prototypes should be getting put together as soon as a package gets here from Riyadh. Dammit, Willie, go on a mail run already! #HofufProblems If this is not sufficiently wubby for you, that's your decision to make and I respect that, but remember, haterade has been known to cause cancer in large amounts. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
I need to refresh the dub wub in this thread. Have some Skrillex.
I'll see your Skrillex, and raise you Knife Party!
Oh, they'd send me back to the USA. Technically I don't even live here, I'm sort of a prisoner. In a lot of these arab countries you are essentially held within the borders until they decide to grant you an exit visa. I suppose it's technically not much different than in the 'free' world, except that in most civilized countries, an exit visa is incredibly easy and quick to get. Here, they have a tendency to deny exit visas to people they think are trying to escape the culture, or slave labor trying to get out and get home, or women trying to get out so they can have a real life, that sort of thing. So if a saudi's underage foreign national sex slave escapes her locked basement room and flees to the border, they just send her right back.
Also I believe that Lord Captain Herpaderp of the voidship Fantabulous would totally party with your Tau. He's got a warrant of trade and a spectacular hat, he can do as he pleases.
bossfearless wrote: Oh, they'd send me back to the USA. Technically I don't even live here, I'm sort of a prisoner. In a lot of these arab countries you are essentially held within the borders until they decide to grant you an exit visa. I suppose it's technically not much different than in the 'free' world, except that in most civilized countries, an exit visa is incredibly easy and quick to get. Here, they have a tendency to deny exit visas to people they think are trying to escape the culture, or slave labor trying to get out and get home, or women trying to get out so they can have a real life, that sort of thing. So if a saudi's underage foreign national sex slave escapes her locked basement room and flees to the border, they just send her right back.
They... What..... Im sorry, did i just read that correctly?
bossfearless wrote: Oh, they'd send me back to the USA. Technically I don't even live here, I'm sort of a prisoner. In a lot of these arab countries you are essentially held within the borders until they decide to grant you an exit visa. I suppose it's technically not much different than in the 'free' world, except that in most civilized countries, an exit visa is incredibly easy and quick to get. Here, they have a tendency to deny exit visas to people they think are trying to escape the culture, or slave labor trying to get out and get home, or women trying to get out so they can have a real life, that sort of thing. So if a saudi's underage foreign national sex slave escapes her locked basement room and flees to the border, they just send her right back.
They... What..... Im sorry, did i just read that correctly?
yeah, pretty sure you did. Such things are known of.
It's part of why it confuses me, when these people come to the UK / US / EU, and just want to seal themselves off and make everything like their home country, when they came to the new place, specifically because it was different to their homeland.
Also I believe that Lord Captain Herpaderp of the voidship Fantabulous would totally party with your Tau. He's got a warrant of trade and a spectacular hat, he can do as he pleases.
Spoiler:
That...is one hell of a hat. That's the counts-as Columbus model, right? Damn, that is a jaunty cap. He can come party with my Tau, but he may find himself at odds with Shagnasty if those feathers are painted red. You can't wear a red feather in your pimp hat in this Cadre unless you join the Order of the Plume.
Also, Ovion, you are completely correct about how saudis act when they come to other countries. EDIT: I just typed out an explanation of how saudis act, but I'm pretty sure a mod would think that I was just being racist or something and give me a warning or some nonsense, so I deleted it. But yeah, yeah these people are pretty messed up.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, so I've done a bit more work on both the crisis suits. The blue lining is done on the Support suit, and I'm on to cleanup step. The Plasma suit is still in the process of getting all those blue lines painted on.
@Omegus: dat bass, yo. That was quite the drop.
@Everyone: Feel free to collaborate on the insanity. I'm still looking for more tracks to add to the army's playlist, so feel free to post your favorite audio badassery and keep the thread jumpin'.
A couple quick pics to update my Support suit. I'm not sure I like how the Dubstep Sonar Projector (DSP) is coming out. It's the tip, I think. I wanted it to look like a speaker, and it sort of does, but I might go back and pop that bit off and see about finding a vox grille from an IG model instead. Still a lot more cleanup and detailing to do.
I might have had too much fun modelling the crushed Ultrasmurf under all the rubble.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, I've posted my tutorial on how to do LEDs in your crisis suits and other models. It's in the P&M Tutorials section, or you can follow the link in my sig.
bossfearless wrote: Yeah, it's probably the suckiest thing about working in the middle east. You have to abide by every slowed law they have regarding your personal life.
I went out to Dubai for work for a week last year. The people from my office were convinced that I'd get arrested as soon as I arrived at the airport. I'd been to a music festival a few weeks before, so I made sure I had a new bag and washbag, (definitely made sure I didn't put the mirror that had been in my old bag into it). New shoes just in case. Paranoid much?
...then I went and got very, very drunk most nights I was there and ate a bacon sandwich at the airport on the way home as a celebration of surviving.
@Gutsnagga: I've done a lot more cleanup work and getting the lines a bit thinner is always an important part of that.
@Ovion: Thanks for the heads up. I changed the link in the sig so it won't jump ahead.
So! Here it is at the usual 95% done:
And...let there be LIGHT
It's back to the shelf with the rest of the painted army for this guy. Yes, there are a few things I could do to spruce it up more, and I'll get to those eventually. I plan to go through my army at a later point and do little touch ups, additions and adjustments. But for the sake of my sanity, that is going to wait until I'm not so burned out on painting tiny lines!
Up next is the plasma Disorder suit, and I suppose I'll make some progress on the Envoy as well. Baby steps on that guy, for some reason I just can't sit down and paint the hell out of it. Maybe it's infantry burnout?
Automatically Appended Next Post: I also just noticed I've completely forgotten to go back and add white highlights to those lines. Whoops!
As much as this build was a conglomeration of compromise and screw-ups, the off-balance thing is one of the few intentional elements. When I started this version (a rebuild after my previous attempt literally shattered), I became inspired by the Hollander battlemech. If you're not familiar with it, take a giant artillery gun with no business being on a super light chassis, then actually build the robot around the gun. It looks ridiculous, but that's part of its charm. So I kind of pieced together this giant soundcannon arm, and then did my best to pose the model like it's trying to compensate for all this weight by foregoing any other armament or accoutrements.
This guy counts as the support suit with MS3, PEN, C&C, Neuroweb Jammer, all that jazz. But if I'm not running the Farsight Bomb, the dubstep gun can count as an ion blaster or a frag launcher, or something else useful.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As much as this build was a conglomeration of compromise and screw-ups, the off-balance thing is one of the few intentional elements. When I started this version (a rebuild after my previous attempt literally shattered), I became inspired by the Hollander battlemech. If you're not familiar with it, take a giant artillery gun with no business being on a super light chassis, then actually build the robot around the gun. It looks ridiculous, but that's part of its charm. So I kind of pieced together this giant soundcannon arm, and then did my best to pose the model like it's trying to compensate for all this weight by foregoing any other armament or accoutrements.
This guy counts as the support suit with MS3, PEN, C&C, Neuroweb Jammer, all that jazz. But if I'm not running the Farsight Bomb, the dubstep gun can count as an ion blaster or a frag launcher, or something else useful.
Support suits looks nice!
One thing I've noticed throughout this thread though is that your edge highlighting looks a bit thick(?)
Might be just me but figured it would improve the already amazing painting standard
@Brother Payne: I've noticed the same thing, and it's on my to-do list for when I go back through the army for touch up work. Whenever I get right about done with a model, I'm usually sick of working on it and the last few steps are kind of haphazard. So to avoid that, I'm setting the models aside at the almost-done point. I will eventually go back through and do cleanup on all the models that need it, tighten up the lines, all that jazz. This also lets me revisit earlier models with evolutions of the color scheme as they come into being on later pieces.
Okay, so, I finally got a bunch done on the samurai/envoy. The blue edges looked horrendous until I cleaned them up. It was bad. Currently having a hard time figuring out how to paint his big cleaver sword scepter thing. I may try to do some kind of a shiny obsidian look.
bossfearless wrote: Okay, so, I finally got a bunch done on the samurai/envoy. The blue edges looked horrendous until I cleaned them up. It was bad. Currently having a hard time figuring out how to paint his big cleaver sword scepter thing. I may try to do some kind of a shiny obsidian look.
Yeah, but I don't think I'm going to be able to achieve that neat rippled effect. I'll probably just do really thin edge highlights in light gray over the black base coat, with some white glints at the tips. It's an interestingly detailed piece already, so i just have to accent that.
What if you tried roughing up the blade a little (texturing it with a razor or special paintwork?) then using watered down black and white inks so that they ripple naturally?
That's an interesting technique with the black and white inks. However the bit in question is one of the cleavers from the Necron Lychguard, so I think that would be ill-suited to this specific project. However, I'm going to have to keep it in mind for the future.
You could try something like thinned Magnetic Nail Varnish and swiping groups of magnets over it?
Would create an interesting gloss black/silver ripple effect.
This model is really hard to photograph because of all the drapery and the hat. I need to highlight the black portions, some of the purple, the stone, the hair, all that. And more cleanup, of course. It sounds like a lot, but each portion is just a few brush strokes. This guy will be the very last of the finished infantry models left to paint, which is a pretty big deal for the project right now. After this guy and the Plasma suit, I think I am going to put the paint on hold for a little bit. There's only Shas'O Darkblade left once this bit is done, so right now I need to focus on the various builds.
Speaking of builds, my iPod hasn't shown up yet, which is annoying because I wasreally looking forward to rigging up the sound on the Hammerhead. I ordered a keychain digital photo frame, so when that eventually arrives I'm going to get to play around with disassembling it and mounting it on a model somehow.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, here's some win for anyone who's interested. Today, the PS4 was released here in KSA. The local Jarir (roughly equivalent to a Best Buy), got 20 in stock. 20, with no preorders available.
The only option was to fight.
I don't think I've mentioned this in this thread yet, so let me just say that I am a very large man. Not the normal way that a gamer is large, as in morbidly obese, more akin to an NFL lineman. Very, very, very large. Big, even. Grande sized.
Today I got to be a siege engine.
The security squad made for Jarir today and all three of my coworkers lined up behind me and used me as a bulldozer to get through the crowd. You see, Saudis don't have a concept of getting in line or waiting their turn. In their culture, God has decreed that it's their turn and that the world revolves around them, so you see ridiculous diplays of mayhem that would make the Walmart rush on Black Friday look positively civilized. Once the guys and I had shoved our way right to the fore, I wedged myself against the door and made myself as big as I could to keep the Saudis, Filipinos and Bengalis at bay. Dude, when the Jarir guys unlocked the door, the press of people launched me through like a cannon. I hit the turnstile, or rather it hit me square in the nads, and damn near trampled this dude who had forgotten to hike up his man-dress and tripped. Sucks to be him, but I managed to be only second or third to the, I kid you not, *phalanx* of store employees guarding the consoles.
I really mean that. About ten Filipino employees had locked their arms together and formed a human wall across one aisle and were pushing back against the crowd, while the manager behind them handed one console at a time over them to the mob. Josh, who was doing this whole thing with a cast on his arm, was right behind me so I passed the first system back to him. Unfortunately, it seemed like the manager decided I had gotten mine and he wasn't planning to hand me another.
Screw that.
I literally reached over the phalanx and one-handed snatched one of the PS4 consoles. I took advantage of the fact that I was a foot taller than everyone else, and raised the console high above my head so that nobody could try to wrestle it out of my hands, though a couple tried to jump for it and wound up getting checked for it. It didn't stop there, though. One of the store employees actually tried to steal my console when I was in the checkout line. Maybe some saudi had offered him money to take it from me, no idea. He tried to take it, saying that he needed it "to look up the barcode." Bullcrap. I put it on the counter, leaned my weight down on it and told him it was staying right there with me.
But at the end of the day, we got 10% of their stock, and my mates made sure I felt appreciated for my role as a siege engine:
There are some days that I actually enjoy Saudi Arabia.
@Ensis Ferrae: It's made by Kotobukiya, and I bought it on hlj.com for only $60. There's a much larger and more badass version for like $500, but that was too rich for my blood.
So, here's some win for anyone who's interested. Today, the PS4 was released here in KSA. The local Jarir (roughly equivalent to a Best Buy), got 20 in stock. 20, with no preorders available.
The only option was to fight.
I don't think I've mentioned this in this thread yet, so let me just say that I am a very large man. Not the normal way that a gamer is large, as in morbidly obese, more akin to an NFL lineman. Very, very, very large. Big, even. Grande sized.
Today I got to be a siege engine.
The security squad made for Jarir today and all three of my coworkers lined up behind me and used me as a bulldozer to get through the crowd. You see, Saudis don't have a concept of getting in line or waiting their turn. In their culture, God has decreed that it's their turn and that the world revolves around them, so you see ridiculous diplays of mayhem that would make the Walmart rush on Black Friday look positively civilized. Once the guys and I had shoved our way right to the fore, I wedged myself against the door and made myself as big as I could to keep the Saudis, Filipinos and Bengalis at bay. Dude, when the Jarir guys unlocked the door, the press of people launched me through like a cannon. I hit the turnstile, or rather it hit me square in the nads, and damn near trampled this dude who had forgotten to hike up his man-dress and tripped. Sucks to be him, but I managed to be only second or third to the, I kid you not, *phalanx* of store employees guarding the consoles.
I really mean that. About ten Filipino employees had locked their arms together and formed a human wall across one aisle and were pushing back against the crowd, while the manager behind them handed one console at a time over them to the mob. Josh, who was doing this whole thing with a cast on his arm, was right behind me so I passed the first system back to him. Unfortunately, it seemed like the manager decided I had gotten mine and he wasn't planning to hand me another.
Screw that.
I literally reached over the phalanx and one-handed snatched one of the PS4 consoles. I took advantage of the fact that I was a foot taller than everyone else, and raised the console high above my head so that nobody could try to wrestle it out of my hands, though a couple tried to jump for it and wound up getting checked for it. It didn't stop there, though. One of the store employees actually tried to steal my console when I was in the checkout line. Maybe some saudi had offered him money to take it from me, no idea. He tried to take it, saying that he needed it "to look up the barcode." Bullcrap. I put it on the counter, leaned my weight down on it and told him it was staying right there with me.
But at the end of the day, we got 10% of their stock, and my mates made sure I felt appreciated for my role as a siege engine:
There are some days that I actually enjoy Saudi Arabia.
I'd say, while you're doing those finishing touches, to paint the handle a different color and add some detailing to the pommel. Most swords don't have handles made of the same stuff as the blades.
Here we are, perhaps somewhere between 90-95% done. I may go back through and do something different with the handle now that you mention it.
Kind of stuck on weekend duty, working all by my lonesome and so unable to skive off for a few minutes here and there to go do any painting. I did, however, grab a couple brushes, two pots of paint and the plasma suit. I've been whiling away the hours with the Unremembered Empire audio book playing and painting when I feel like it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Goddamn, the camera flash just mutilates the paint job,
Little experiment I'm running using clear 2-part epoxy to simulate a water effect because it's way more convenient than trying to find one of the Vallejo ones. This was to check opacity and such, and also to see if it would take any paint off. It looks alright but needs a little blue wash mixed in. This is an attempt at solving some of the problems of the hot tub.
In case you're wondering, the banner says "I am not short." It was for one of my space marine characters, whose backstory included a slight shortage of growth hormone during his Astartes transformation, leading to a massive short guy complex.
I know the interweb thrives on pics, so here's a shot of my Plasma suit after last night.
Hopefully you can see a much thinner version of the blue edge highlight, as I focused on that last night. I didn't go any further on it because, frankly, I had only brought the blue and the purple paint pots. So once I was comfortable with those, I was out of things to do. Anyway that's the most time consuming part of the scheme, so hooray for that being done. I still need to decide what I'm doing with those guns. Yes there are still some problems with the blue lines, but much of that is down in crevices and I usually fix that with Leviathan purple wash, which I didn't have at the time.
And since it's come up, I wanted to snap a quick pic of the assembled painted force all lit up.
That's not the whole thing, obviously. There's Darkblade and the Remora already built, the heavy metal marine, and a swarm of half assembled prototype gun drones that need a bit of adjusting. And Rex. Can't forget Rex.
Got word that my holiday order from GW arrived in Riyadh. I should have just enough time to get the plasma suit finished and painted before all that plastic crack gets here and I go a bit crazy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, here's some win for anyone who's interested. Today, the PS4 was released here in KSA. The local Jarir (roughly equivalent to a Best Buy), got 20 in stock. 20, with no preorders available.
The only option was to fight.
I don't think I've mentioned this in this thread yet, so let me just say that I am a very large man. Not the normal way that a gamer is large, as in morbidly obese, more akin to an NFL lineman. Very, very, very large. Big, even. Grande sized.
Today I got to be a siege engine.
The security squad made for Jarir today and all three of my coworkers lined up behind me and used me as a bulldozer to get through the crowd. You see, Saudis don't have a concept of getting in line or waiting their turn. In their culture, God has decreed that it's their turn and that the world revolves around them, so you see ridiculous diplays of mayhem that would make the Walmart rush on Black Friday look positively civilized. Once the guys and I had shoved our way right to the fore, I wedged myself against the door and made myself as big as I could to keep the Saudis, Filipinos and Bengalis at bay. Dude, when the Jarir guys unlocked the door, the press of people launched me through like a cannon. I hit the turnstile, or rather it hit me square in the nads, and damn near trampled this dude who had forgotten to hike up his man-dress and tripped. Sucks to be him, but I managed to be only second or third to the, I kid you not, *phalanx* of store employees guarding the consoles.
I really mean that. About ten Filipino employees had locked their arms together and formed a human wall across one aisle and were pushing back against the crowd, while the manager behind them handed one console at a time over them to the mob. Josh, who was doing this whole thing with a cast on his arm, was right behind me so I passed the first system back to him. Unfortunately, it seemed like the manager decided I had gotten mine and he wasn't planning to hand me another.
Screw that.
I literally reached over the phalanx and one-handed snatched one of the PS4 consoles. I took advantage of the fact that I was a foot taller than everyone else, and raised the console high above my head so that nobody could try to wrestle it out of my hands, though a couple tried to jump for it and wound up getting checked for it. It didn't stop there, though. One of the store employees actually tried to steal my console when I was in the checkout line. Maybe some saudi had offered him money to take it from me, no idea. He tried to take it, saying that he needed it "to look up the barcode." Bullcrap. I put it on the counter, leaned my weight down on it and told him it was staying right there with me.
But at the end of the day, we got 10% of their stock, and my mates made sure I felt appreciated for my role as a siege engine:
There are some days that I actually enjoy Saudi Arabia.
Have an exalt for that tale
Also, im liking the Envoy. Especially the Ronin Samuri look.
bossfearless wrote: I know the interweb thrives on pics, so here's a shot of my Plasma suit after last night.
Hopefully you can see a much thinner version of the blue edge highlight, as I focused on that last night. I didn't go any further on it because, frankly, I had only brought the blue and the purple paint pots. So once I was comfortable with those, I was out of things to do. Anyway that's the most time consuming part of the scheme, so hooray for that being done. I still need to decide what I'm doing with those guns. Yes there are still some problems with the blue lines, but much of that is down in crevices and I usually fix that with Leviathan purple wash, which I didn't have at the time.
Not bad for the Arabian desert, eh? Hokay, so...progress of a sort. I've done some more on the Plasma Suit but I don't have any pics right this moment. I might be able to finish it over the course of the night depending on how much I sneak out of work. The big news for me came in the form of my shipment arriving from Riyadh at last.
Direct 40k-related stuff:
Piranha
Stealth Suit box
Riptide battlesuit
A pot of red paint t turns out I didn't need
And then I also got my iPod Nano. I was all like, hell yeah! Game on! And I opened the box and...well..."nano" seems to have been a relative term. Not nearly as nano as advertised. I really doubt that it will fit inside the Hammerhead, even if I were to pull out all the gubbins already inside and slot it in diagonally. I might have to try, obviously, just so all my effort to date isn't a total wash. If this doesn't fit, I might have to completely rethink my idea for this build. Again. Stay tuned for updates consisting of mostly frowny faces on this subject.
bossfearless wrote: And then I also got my iPod Nano. I was all like, hell yeah! Game on! And I opened the box and...well..."nano" seems to have been a relative term. Not nearly as nano as advertised. I really doubt that it will fit inside the Hammerhead, even if I were to pull out all the gubbins already inside and slot it in diagonally. I might have to try, obviously, just so all my effort to date isn't a total wash. If this doesn't fit, I might have to completely rethink my idea for this build. Again. Stay tuned for updates consisting of mostly frowny faces on this subject.
You could always build a flight base to encase it, instead of mounting it inside the vehicle.
@Ovion: Then there's the significant problem of the speakers being vehicle-mounted. And by significant, I mean a very obvious, ugly cord running down into the very obvious ipod shaped bulge in the base. And then it also ruins the effect I was going to do on the base. SImilarly I can't just mount it underneath the chassis easily because, well, just look at the size of it:
See? This is like a minimum of Rhino sized. In order to use it, I also have to attach the RF sensor to the bottom so that the remote control can operate it. This is just bananas. No freaking way to fit this thing in there effectively, and I'm just about ready to smash the ipod with a hammer to vent my frustration over this project. But no, I think what's going to happen here is that the ipod and the remote control for it are going to go in a little box somewhere and get set aside for when I have a nice big Land Raider or Storm Raven to work on. The only other option that will work with the hardware I currently have is to buy one of the newer, very expensive ipod nanos that are only like a 1 inch square. But that's more than I want to spend on an already expensive project.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Minor brainstorming. I might be able to...no. No, nevermind. That would be dumb and ruin the model.
Automatically Appended Next Post: God dammit. And then there's the fact that I've basically ruined the hull of the hammerhead in the process of fitting those speakers into it, which will also be ruined if I take them out. So no matter what way this plays out, I'll be wasting a bunch of money on stupid mistakes.
A nice scenic base, which isn't going to be any bigger than the chasis, then for the speakers it plugs in using the base as the connector.
I'll sketch up exaclty what I mean - check back here in about 5 minutes.
So here's the idea:
Spoiler:
Creating a tray in the base, and having the plug (plus some rods for support to ensure it doesn't break) make the flight stand. You could possibly even use an Oval base if you really wanted, being Base size doesn't count for a lot / anything with Skimmers.
Add rubble and sand like the rest of your bases, and it'll look pretty damn good. Sort of like your Pirahna base, just a little higher.
I guess I can see that working in some ways. But I have no idea how I could make a sliding tray in a scenic base. There are other problems but maybe there are ways to work around them I guess. I had planned on using the 120mm circular Colossal base from Warmachine for the hammerhead, but there's really no way to do the effect I was going for with any kind of big tray in the middle of it. I'll have to rework the idea with the tray being part of it somehow. I do have a Rhino carcass that might be serviceable for this. It'll save me having to build a tray (which I would fail at, fyi). I'll just have to shop out most of the internal structure to make everything fit right. And then there's still that freaking cord. But I guess it's still the best I'm going to be able to do. Thanks for the suggestion Ovion.
I am just so freaking frustrated right now. I'm not going to do anything even remotely ambitious for the rest of the night, because everything I have done today has failed spectacularly. Every creative thing I have tried to do has come out ugly and wrong, every attempt at working with delicate parts has resulted in irreparable breakage. I couldn't even get takeout without failing somehow. Today is just not my day.
There was a similar day chronicled in this log when it was on Warseer. To save you the long drawn out details, I burned off my fingertips and shaved off all my hair before the night was over. Total retardation. I am, however, learning from that previous day and simply stopping for the night. I'm not driving, not handling any sharp or hot objects, and I'm sure as hell not going to try anything important. I might work on the alpha build of my novel because that's mostly just mindless typing with very little chance of permanent screwups.
...How much of that Nano is the casing and screen and control gubbins, compared to the IR receiver, the memory and the play bits? Because you don't need the screen or controls to have it play music.
I thought you were gonna go with a Shuffle, honestly- the ones that don't bother with screens or controls. If you're just gonna play a random hard drop, instead of something specific for different instances, you don't really need any more control than "On/Off" and "Next Song".
Nah, it's not a classic. It's a 1st generation Nano. And I know what a shuffle is. No, a shuffle won't work because it's not compatible with the remote control I got. No, I can't just forgo the remote control because then I'd have to unhook the back of the tank, reach inside the tank, pull out the player, press the play button, wait for the sound to play, press the stop button, put the player back in, and reattach the back of the tank. Every single time I want to play a sound.
Okay, since everyone is basically saying the same thing (i.e., "Why don't you use a different mp3 player"), can someone tell me if they know of a (cheap) mp3 player that either has bluetooth functionality or a remote control? That would really help.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @Brother Payne: The one I have is 3rd from the left. It's the 1st generation.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Actually, no, finding a different mp3 player won't help at all because I've already got this one. Which is a stupid, overlarge player to try to work with but it's what I have and it's compatible with the other things I have, and I can't undo all of what I've done on this project because doing so would ruin the model beyond repair. So screw it. I'll just build a freaking base for the stupid ipod. This whole project is suddenly very frustrating.
Anvildude might be on to soething with his suggestion....if you take the gubbins out of the case and remove the screen you may b able to fit the bits inside. Not sure on how the screen's wired up though, so may not be viable to remove it and keep it functional. Any one out there taken one apart before?
edit: Actually, looks like the board does take up about the same footprint as the case. Bummer.
Still.... The case is gonna be a couple millimeters on either side that you'd be able to shave off- the screen and control, and front and back, increase the depth of the board. Taking it out of the casing could give you enough room to jam it in there diagonally.
Or, if you're comfortable enough with circuitry to recognize and understand the bits that are important to the function of playing sound, you could possibly chop off bits that you don't need- aka the bits pertaining to the circle controls and the screen.
All you really need is the main memory component, the bit where the programming is stored, and the various jacks and inputs/outputs.
At this point I started working on the junked Rhino carcass, and after I chopped out the entire inner hull I was able to fit the ipod in there along with the little IR receiver attachment that goes with the remote. I still haven't been able to test it out yet because it didn't come with the stupid "I'm an Apple product and I'm too cool for USB" cord. I'm still uneasy about this approach as I'm not sure how well it will work having the ipod in such an inaccessible location when it comes time to plug in and remove the speaker each time I want to play with it. And of course then there has to be a pretty big hole in the top (bottom, it's upside down) of the Rhino big enough for the cord to go in through, making it even more obvious. Oh, and I haven't mentioned yet that the cord is bright freaking yellow. I can paint it, sure, but this whole thing is just getting more and more fail by the minute.
@Anvildude: Nope, not gonna happen. Especially not with how things are going tonight. I can vaguely recognize that bit is some kind of memory, that one there is the processor, that's a resistor but I have no idea what the hell a resistor really does, that sort of thing. And that tiny amount of extra room wouldn't be enough to fix the problem I'm having.
Okay, so the whole ipod in a Rhino on the base thing won't cut it. I got the Rhino set up on the base, but then I held up the Hammerhead next to it to get a size comparison, and this is just ridiculous.
There's a lot more to the hammerhead that isn't currently attached, but seriously. It's just absurd to have that gigantic thing on the base. I can't figure out a way to make this not look like utter fail, and it's driving me nuts.
On the bright side, I finished the double plasma suit.
There are more pics, but my phone ran out of minutes. Okay scratch that, it didn't run out of minutes. As soon as I turned on mobile data usage to allow me to upload the pics, my balance shot down from 100 minutes to 0.06 minutes in a freaking heartbeat. Have I mentioned that tonight is full of spectacular, jaw dropping failure?
Automatically Appended Next Post: When I eventually go back through the army, I'm going to add a bit of depth to the purple. It's very flat in between the edge highlights. Also, need to add a little more detail to the guns, but frankly I was tired of working on this suit.
I think the only way here is to either bite the bullet and attempt the tray system, or do some more extreme conversion work on the Hammerhead. I imagine you could Dubstep it up a litttle more- play up the juxtaposition between Boxy and Smoooothe that the Tau (and Dubstep) play with.
Ovion wrote: Make the base (including the sliding tray) out of Plasticard.
If you want, I can do up a sketch on how to go about that.
Maybe even a full net if you can give me the dimensions of the ipod and wireless thingy.
It's not that I don't know how I would physically make a sliding tray, quite the opposite. Building a tray is very easy, it's just a box with a couple pieces that aren't glued in place. It's the other aspects of the build. The fact that I don't have any plasticard and it will take a month to get here, for example. But that's only a problem with the physical building of the box itself. The real problem is putting it on a base. The nature of a sliding tray is that it has to be able to slide, and to do so freely. In order to do that, I'd need to build a flat base with this big hump in the middle, and then a totally smooth area where the tray would slide out, which would break up the scenery and spoil the illusion even more than that yellow speaker cable.
But, I think I've come to a bit of a solution. Hokay, bear with me. A box-like structure, more or less centered on a large oval base (which itself is barely big enough to fit the stupid ipod), possibly made out of the leftovers of the Rhino sawed down like Rain suggested (in this case, probably chopped since I don't own a saw). Instead of a sliding tray, I plan to magnetize a big piece of fallen debris that will act like a lid to the box, over on one side.. It will, hopefully, look like a big tangled mess but still be only one piece glued together separately. This should allow me to get at the ipod inside for charging, adjustments and disconnecting the speaker when I need to separate the pieces, for transport and the like. And of course I'll have to just deal with the cable running between the base and the model. I make a really big deal about that cable because to me it's like a glowing sign proclaiming my failure to solve this problem.
It's times like this I wonder why I couldn't just build a marine army with big boxy vehicles and lots of hollow spaces inside.
@Master of Ordinance: I have a complete tutorial from start to finish linked in my sig
Just turn the ipod itself into the base, none of this hiding stuff. Flip it over, coat the bottom, dremmel out a little area to glue a skimmer base into(Ie. rough it up to give the glue more area to grip, not cut a hole) then base the back of the ipod and the base. Run the wires from the bottom of the ipod through some techno wreckage, like blown up rhino or generator pieces. and run the wire up into the speakers. BAM, detachable base, made out of the ipod.
Automatically Appended Next Post: You could even make the bottom debris reach up to the bottom of the hammerhead, to hide the wire, like it's just clearing a recently destroyed enemy vehicle.
Alternatively, you could wire just speakers into the hammerhead and leave the jack exposed. At that point, though, you have to carry the ipod and plug it in, but it's a lot simpler of a project.
Bobaram wrote: Just turn the ipod itself into the base, none of this hiding stuff. Flip it over, coat the bottom, dremmel out a little area to glue a skimmer base into(Ie. rough it up to give the glue more area to grip, not cut a hole) then base the back of the ipod and the base. Run the wires from the bottom of the ipod through some techno wreckage, like blown up rhino or generator pieces. and run the wire up into the speakers. BAM, detachable base, made out of the ipod.
Automatically Appended Next Post: You could even make the bottom debris reach up to the bottom of the hammerhead, to hide the wire, like it's just clearing a recently destroyed enemy vehicle.
Bobaram wrote: Just turn the ipod itself into the base, none of this hiding stuff. Flip it over, coat the bottom, dremmel out a little area to glue a skimmer base into(Ie. rough it up to give the glue more area to grip, not cut a hole) then base the back of the ipod and the base. Run the wires from the bottom of the ipod through some techno wreckage, like blown up rhino or generator pieces. and run the wire up into the speakers. BAM, detachable base, made out of the ipod.
Automatically Appended Next Post: You could even make the bottom debris reach up to the bottom of the hammerhead, to hide the wire, like it's just clearing a recently destroyed enemy vehicle.
You could also get ahold of the Imperial Battlefield terrain piece, and either hide the ipod into terrain, rather than the vehicle, or you could cut the terrain to be a scenic base for the vehicle.
Alright, I went a little bit crazy with my clippers and vented a bit of my frustration on the Rhino chassis:
As you can see, I may have some anger issues. But hey, I feel much better. And now I can actually think straight about how some of this is going together. And on the bright side, the ipod fits snugly and flush inside it.
There's a slight notch in one side allowing me to feed the speaker cable in through the tracks into the hull when I go to set it up. I also went and drilled out the bottom hull of the hammerhead and fed the hideous yellow cable through it so that it will run parallel to the flight stand. Speaking of flight stand, I might end up using this articulated posing stand that came with my Rex model, assuming it didn't accidentally get tossed. Now comes a lot of the really tricky part, creating a base that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
@Bobaram: Given that the ipod is, for all its girth, still a Nano, it isn't quite big enough to function as a scenic base on its own. Plus it's got the receiver attachment that needs to not get gunked up with paint. I still have to test it and see just how exposed it needs to be in order to function. Once the ipod finishes updating and restoring itself (gods how I hate iTunes), I'll load a sample track (DMX) and give it a test later tonight.
The method I'm going to use is the hollowed out Rhino hull, upside down with dirt and debris mounded around it to hide gaps and such, with what will likely be a detachable cover on one side to let me get at the ipod when I need to. I'm also playing with the idea of completely enclosing the wreck, and then cutting a hatch into the bottom of the base itself. I would then add a magnetic flap to the bottom that would be much, much easier to hide than trying a whole camouflage chunk of scenery.
Lastly, here's the other pics I snapped of the Disorder suit that my phone didn't upload:
Automatically Appended Next Post: Okay! I did my first test with my ipod and speaker system and as of now, the Hammerhead puts out surprisingly loud, moderate quality sound. It's just loud enough to be audible across the table over the dull roar of a 40k tournament. The remote control also works splendidly. Furthermore, I am pleased to report that it doesn't seem to matter what's in the way of the sensor. So long as the remote is pointed at the tank, the controls work and allow me to change songs, play/pause, and adjust the volume. Maximum volume translates to "let me turn this down so it doesn't bug my roommate in the next room over."
Okay, so that actually relieves a lot of the suspense and stress of the build. There was this lingering "will it even work" question and I'm happy to be rid of it. O frabjous day, calloo callay, I chortled in my joy. Knowing that all of this works, and more to the point how well it works, allows me to forge ahead on the build and probably finish putting the sonic aspects of it together by the end of tonight's shift. After that it's just LEDs, water effects, magnetic turrets, and probably a Time Lord somewhere. Bitches love the sonic screwdriver.
Okay. Here's how this went down. I chopped cut, clipped and physically bent pieces of plastic into place, then attached the whole tank to the base with a hot glue gun. After that, I started littering what was left of the empty base portions with debris generated from the Rhino carcass as I chopped it down, a little bit of recycling on my part. In doing this, I piled it up in front of gaps and over big glaring holes, and I'll be glopping on some texture paste to fill in the gaps and make it look like it's been buried for a while.
See that beat up Rhino hatch over on the right hand side? Notice how it's bent at an angle and kind of hangs down over that side? That's my detachable hatch for accessing the iPod and the receiver.
Once the glue dries for the magnets I'll start playing with adding more debris around the bottom of the piece so that it looks like a whole pile of fallen junk and completely obscures the opening. At this point, I think I'm just going to leave the ipod unsecured inside the thing. I mean, it can't go anywhere once the hatch is closed, and I may need to take it out to fiddle with it at some point.
While I was working on this, I also fixed the LEDs in place inside all 4 engines and glued those together. I'm waiting on one wing to set in place before I add the other. Pics of that should be up tomorrow when I've reached a good milestone on the project.
Big thanks to everyone who's chimed in on this part of the build. Without all the input I don't think I'd have brought it to a successful conclusion.
@zootednbooted: If you mean the flying battlesuit, then that would be FW's model for Shas'O Ralai used as the basis, then a lot of bits from broadsides, Riptides and Dreadknights to put it over the top.
I have enjoyed this thread so much thus far! Even the frustration with the ipod was interesting to see, particularly the solution (I think it will work well!). Awesome project
I made the mistake today of soldering with no pants on. I shall not make that same mistake again. In other news, I did bad things with a Hammerhead chassis.
Now that the whole thing is assembled, I'm suddenly not sure about the hot tub turret, at least not the current piece. It seems...I don't know. When the build is done completely, I'll take video of it so that you can hear the speakers and see the flickering effect of the engine lights. Now comes another challenge that I'm working through, how to effectively mount this thing on a flight stand. It is WAY too heavy for the standard little clear peg that came with it, that much is absolutely certain. So now we come to a number of problems with the other common options. The big flier stand is perhaps too big at the base to fit on the rhino in the direction I want, and perhaps too long for the cord to reach the base. Both of those problems are things I could correct and measure, if I had one of those stands. Which I don't. Option 2 is brass rods. This is the least obtrusive method, since they have a very limited profile. However, here we get into structural problems. The rhino hull is too thin to drill partway into, and I can't sink the rods all the way through to the base because of the iPod.
Now, my option as I see it is to find some big chunk of wreckage to pile on top of the rhino where I want to anchor the flight stand. Then I would need to drill a pair of holes in that wreckage, sink a pair of brass rods (so it doesn't spin) in with some GS to give it some really good hold, and cut them to roughly the desired height. From here, I have to get a bit creative with the Hammerhead's hull. Again, too thin to just drill slots in, unless I want to impale the tank all the way through, which is actually an option. The other option is similar to the base, but instead of wreckage use a big boxy technical looking bit as a place to sink my rod. Giggity.
I'm happy you finally solved your problem. Can 't wait to see the finished model, because the speakers in place of the round hatches on the side of the tank are pure genius already.
...How do you envision antigrav hovertanks to be held up? Jet exhaust channeled downwards? Magnetic waves?
Because you could probably do some sort of half-opaque (or full opaque and well painted) 'effect stand' for it. Make a plasticine mold with the right shape over it, and fill it with tinted 'Water effect' stuff (or clear epoxy resin, whatever) and then use that as the stand/base.
Would be over-the-top, for sure. Also, could even be washing down over the Rhino, precluding the need for some of the extra junk you would otherwise need.
bossfearless wrote:Now that the whole thing is assembled, I'm suddenly not sure about the hot tub turret, at least not the current piece. It seems...I don't know. When the build is done completely, I'll take video of it so that you can hear the speakers and see the flickering effect of the engine lights.
I agree about the hot tub- it looks out of place, imo. Maybe make a lower profile turret, at least so you'll have the option to swap it out if you want to?
Can't wait for a video to hear the speakers in action
I'm running into the problem of knowing that I really want a hot tub full of naked women in this army, but not knowing where I ought to put them. First world gamer problems, lol. At this point, with the profile of the tank all messed up by the hot tub on top, I'm reconsidering it.
The only other place I can think of where I could put the hot tub right now is on the base of the Abyss battlesuit that I already have built. The base is bare, there's enough room, but then I worry it spoils the scariness of that particular build. I still have two other Riptide builds on the bench, though. One of them is being held in reserve to see if I want to make it into a quad-legged build (I'll figure that out later after the smaller prototypes), but the other one is just kind of insane and kitbashed. I might build up the kitbash one with a really elaborate base and see if I can create a ruined pool deck with the suit standing on a big chunk of debris off to one side.
@Anvildude: I envision 40k skimmers being held aloft by waves of pure, undiluted energy drawn from the bottomless plot holes of Matt Ward's 40k lore. An effect flight stand would be pretty sweet, and I have some clear resin effects that would be great for it but...I really wish I had a time machine to go back to before a bunch of fragile stuff got soldered and glued into place. I would have loved to do light-up thruster effects coming down off the hull. It would obfuscate the flight stand and speaker cord, but it would also be a nightmare for storage and transport. Unless I magnetized the various effects. I might give it a bit of thought as I work on it tonight. For now I'm going to focus on getting the thing upright and balanced. Because of the two speakers and all the guts inside it, this thing is much heavier than the average 40k vehicle.
Hmm...I just had a thought. Not really related to modeling itself, but to actually playing the game. I'm going to Japan and the US next year, and the plan had been to inter the army in a storage unit when I went back to the states. But now I'm considering hanging onto it out here for when I eventually go to Europe and Australia, and maybe actually have a game or three on vacation.
Eh. I don't actually plan to have a dedicated Ethereal model for the army. I've never been a fan of using them, to be honest. They're great for pulse weapon heavy armies, but mine is mostly missiles and plasma and such and so no benefit to their super pulse weapon boosting ability. When I decided to do the hot tub idea, I wanted it to be attached to a model that would always see the tabletop. So not an Ethereal or a second hammerhead, which I might not use, but something like a Riptide that's an auto-include in most lists. When I get a chance to really sit down at my work table I'm gonna take a long look at different bases and such, see where some of my builds could accommodate it.
The other option is to deck out one of the crisis suits as a giant robot pimp with hoes fawning all over him, on some kind of a harem base. There would need to be a *very* jaunty robot pimp hat involved, and I might upsize the base in order to fit more naked girl flesh. This has the added bonus of not having to muck about with water effects that I don't know how to use. Do they make pimp canes in Crisis suit size?
I found appropriate pieces to use as anchor points on both the tank hull and the hammerhead. Once the glue for those is totally dried, I'll go in and drill out the first couple holes.
Couldn't you do your hot tub on top of that potential quad legged Riptide? The top could be a sort of pool deck with guns. Unless you already have a plan for that Riptide.
Hmm...pool deck with guns, you say? Well, the Riptide torso is pretty flat on top...and maybe I could bulk it out a bit with plasticard and make it sit level on the legs. Hmm...I will have to keep that in mind for the future.
Okay, so, I'm going to Bahrain for the weekend after tonight's shift. I need to drown my sorrows in booze, hookers and chicken wings. I'm going to excuse myself later on, ostensibly to pack my bag, and see if I can't get that hammerhead flying.
No, more like...damn, this is going to be a stretch. If anyone ever played Xenogears, there were these enemies that were giant robots, but the body of the robot was almost like a boat with a flat upper deck, and arms and legs were bolted to that. Keep in mind that this is, if the concept pans out, a four legged "crawler" type of a robot. It wouldn't have arms, I don't think. More like there would be some kind of artillery setup at the rear of the torso that fired over the pool area. Still technically a heat sink.
Automatically Appended Next Post: WIP of the flight stand:
Nothing fancy, as you can see. Just nice and functional, two points so the model won't spin around, and the holes on each side go deep enough to keep it secure-ish. It might come off its base a bit during a game, but I can burn that bridge when I come to it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: This is extremely annoying. After all the hassle of building this thing, I am stopped from uploading video of the WIP build because Youube and Saudi interwebs don't play nicely together. Screw it, I'll take my laptop or phone or whatever with me and upload it from the hotel in Bahrain while I'm enjoying a nice piece of Thai takeout. Or maybe Russian or Moroccan takeout this time. Whatever. The guy should be here in like 4 hours to pick me up for the border run. Get this, the driver who always takes me to Bahrain is named Knife Turkey. Not the correct spelling (because in Arab culture there is no standardized spelling of anything, names or otherwise, fyi), but phonetically correct.
First time we drove out to Bahrain together, we're trying to make small talk through the language barrier, which is a bit thick. Anyway, we get to the subject of movies and we kind of pantomime our way through various genres and I try to see if he likes Fantasy movies. He can't understand a damn thing I'm saying, so I try listing a few titles, trying to mime the general concepts, and we can't connect. Finally, I just put my fingers up in a little circle and say "One Ring to Rule Them All."
Dude spoke zero English, but he understood that perfectly. Knife Turkey is freaking awesome like that. Last time, he comes to pick me up at the hotel at like 8 in the morning so we can drive back. I look for him in the lobby, the restaurant, outside, reception, everywhere. Finally, I locate the dude at the bar, pounding back shots of whiskey at 8 in the freaking morning, minutes before he had to drive. Saudis, man. Saudis have their own brand of logic.
Moroccan or Russian this time. I had enough Thai while I was in Thailand.
As for a Crisis pimp cane... could try a banner or similar stick, maybe pop a skull on top to finish it. Open power fist fingers work nicely as an extended crisis hand.
Actually, it's the reverse. There's no party in KSA. Women, alcohol, music, and absolutely anything fun is illegal. There are a few things like music and non-religious television that are only technically illegal and not really enforced, but they still get shut down from time to time. The point is, when you get a Saudi outside of their repressive mess of a country, they suddenly can't control themselves and they start power-drinking like there's no tomorrow and banging every hooker and/or camel (not a racist exaggeration, Saudis are quite infamous for their camel buggery throughout the region) within a ten mile radius. It's a backlash that's proportional to the degree with which they're repressed at home. Of course, none of it counts as a sin against their Islamic faith because, as the Saudis themselves put it, "God can only see you if you are in the Kingdom (KSA)." I'll let you mull that statement over for a while.
But hey, this has turned into a crazy saudi story thread all of a sudden, so let's get back to brass rivets. Let's talk pimp hats. So, the attire of the pimp is part of the iconic imagery. So if I were doing a Crisis suit pimp, how would that be represented? The hat is normally depicted as wide brimmed and floppy, which is hard to do with a metal robot aesthetic. Maybe start with one of the smaller flying bases and go from there? Either that, or say screw it and actually just try to sculpt a big floppy pimp hat. Or forget the hat altogether and go with a particularly jaunty feather on th side where an antenna would normally go. The pimp cane would be pretty simple as liquidjoshi suggested, either just a brass rod or perhaps some kind of staff bit with a plasma gun nozzle at the end to keep it wysiwyg compliant. Then add a couple of girls in the crook of each arm, or perhaps use a couple of the sitting models I have to have the girls actually perched up on his outstretched arms?
The cloak might end up being the really hard part. I would need to either adorn the suit with some kind of dangly bits, not unlike the necron tabards that I've been adding to them already, or perhaps go through the whole process of sculpting a giant fur coat for a crisis suit. That...that would be an epic undertaking. If I went that route, I would have to mostly remove the jetpack just to keep the thing looking right. Maybe just have an exhaust port sticking out at the shoulders or something. Hmm...yeah, this has potential.
Oh. Right. Now I see. It turns out that the reason I was havng trouble uploading the video to Photobucket (aside from crappy saudi internet) was because the file recorded at a crazy high resolution. 200MB for 1:30 of video. Yup, let me change those settings and try that again. Here's a pic of the thing mounted on the flight stand while I try to sort this out.
EDIT: Nope, not gonna work just now. I'll get the video sorted out when I get back from Bahrain on sunday.
Looks much better without the hot tub on top. I may do the main gun nose-mounted, mostly because this thing needs to have some weight shifted forward. it wants to tip back right now, and I can't have that. Might even weight the nose with some of these worthless local coins.
Underslung nose gun would be cool- never really see those on Hammerheads. Could possibly let you put a really sleek smooth profile on the top as well, if you're not using the hot tub.
You going to mount a Railgun or a... PPC. (can't think of the actual name).
I've actually made some unfortunate mistakes but also gone and become a bit inspired in the course of working on the main weapons. I won't be mounting the PPC (Ion Cannon), rather I'm opting for the FW double fusion cannons. A little low in range, but there's so much stuff that tries to close in against Tau that I feel they're worth it. I'm actually modelling them out of the Broadside seeker missiles and slotting them into the front drone mounts with magnets. Of course, that means I need to figure out a good looking attachment for the Ion cannon as well, in case I want to run that. Missile pods are also now mounted under the wings, partly because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and also to represent the double missile pod option or the SMS, or seekers, or what the hell ever. Missiles for everyone.
bossfearless wrote:No, more like...damn, this is going to be a stretch. If anyone ever played Xenogears, there were these enemies that were giant robots, but the body of the robot was almost like a boat with a flat upper deck, and arms and legs were bolted to that. Keep in mind that this is, if the concept pans out, a four legged "crawler" type of a robot. It wouldn't have arms, I don't think. More like there would be some kind of artillery setup at the rear of the torso that fired over the pool area. Still technically a heat sink.
That actually sounds amazing. Totally insane, but amazing. I can see it before me. A four-legged giant robot bathtub and the water is heated by the destruction they rain down upon their enemies.
Wouldn't the water be radioactive then though?
bossfearless wrote:Let's talk pimp hats.
I don't know if this helps, but there's an anime called Saber Rider and the Star Sherrifs (at least that's what it was called in Germany) and they had a giant cowboy robot with a metal hat. It could work.
Spoiler:
The coat sounds like a great idea as well. But I would actually leave holes in the backside for the jetpack to go through.
Perhaps instead of the hottub sticking out and ruining the profile of the vehicle, you can sink it into the top? If I were an artist I could do something artist-y and show you, but I'm not.
Lordhat wrote: Perhaps instead of the hottub sticking out and ruining the profile of the vehicle, you can sink it into the top? If I were an artist I could do something artist-y and show you, but I'm not.
Believe me, this was the first thing I wanted to do. But with the amount of guts inside that tank from all the various electronics, there's just no room to sink anything in.
Now, I did go ahead and attache the little tank commander cupola thing. Not the whole turret mount, but the little spot where your Longstrike or whoever would sit. As for what I'm doing with that, and the open cockpit, well, anyone ever see a convertible full of over-stimulated drunk chicks? There tends to be a lot of flashing going on in these situations, and not the kind that you'd scratch with a hobby knife. Unless you swing that way, at which point I guess you're a sadist but if she's into it then who am I to judge. The point is, nipples. Or spotty fish breasts, in this case. Actually, no, there's gonna be a few girls on this thing showing off the goods, so probably at least one human. So yeah. Nipples.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So there are still gonna be plenty of boobs here.
I never said there would be no pimp. I already started on the pimp cane arm.
Edit: Oh, also (and this is priceless) my driver, Knife Turkey, has demanded that I use the less restricted internet in Bahrain to find him some mother-daughter lesbian porn. But he only likes fat girls. So yeah. That's been a thing since I got here lol.
Lordhat wrote: Perhaps instead of the hottub sticking out and ruining the profile of the vehicle, you can sink it into the top? If I were an artist I could do something artist-y and show you, but I'm not.
Believe me, this was the first thing I wanted to do. But with the amount of guts inside that tank from all the various electronics, there's just no room to sink anything in.
just don't build an actual tub, place a some plastic card over where the turret goes and paint it with really watered down paint and/or water effects. I say watered down coz I recon it'd look cool to have some of the LED light from inside the hull showing through
Also for the pimp suit, I recon sculpt the fur coat if you think you're up for the challenge but leave the jet pack sticking out the back (sort of like the way SM commanders wear their cloaks under their packs)
Also can you stick a pilot dude in the rectangle cut out of the hull and the make a plastic card view port coz that'd look sick!
Maybe one of the guys from the piranha kit?
Actually Brother Payne, when I get back to Saudi and start working on the pilots, the rectangular area is going to be more of a drop top cockpit with a couple girls flashing their goods to passersby. And maybe the Doctor if I can find a way to work with these incredibly unposeable minis from Heresy. I might be able to just chop his arms off and find replacements down the line. Honestly, who sculpts a miniature with both hands in his pockets?
bossfearless wrote: Actually Brother Payne, when I get back to Saudi and start working on the pilots, the rectangular area is going to be more of a drop top cockpit with a couple girls flashing their goods to passersby. And maybe the Doctor if I can find a way to work with these incredibly unposeable minis from Heresy. I might be able to just chop his arms off and find replacements down the line. Honestly, who sculpts a miniature with both hands in his pockets?
Merry Christmas to everyone, and also Happy Everything Else that happens to fall on the same part of the year. I'm back from bahrain and I got to start working on the pilots for the Hammerhead.
Not much character to them just yet, but I need to go through and do some sculpting, adding a little to one and a lot to the other. The second one doesn't look like much right now because she's missing the props that make her make sense. That arm up in front is going to be holding her shirt front, which is going to be a bit of a sculpting experiment for me so that I can pose her with her shirt flipped up, panties dangling at mid thigh, and a bottle of vodka in her free hand. A lot of the details in both of these builds are going to be painted on, in much the same way as all the muscular definition on Shas'Vre Snowflake.
This is an all too common scene within this tau cadre. In normal tau culture, alcohol consumption was never a thing and so tau physiology is about as susceptible to it as a human toddler. The Water caste have some rudimentary familiarity with amasec and its like, since so many human dignitaries insist on negotiating over a glass of cold poison. But when the Fire caste get their first taste of the stuff? Pure madness. The males tend to devolve into alternating fits of violent bravado and sobbing brotherly love, and the females tend to resort to anything that will garner them attention.
While it is generally frowned upon, members of the Rynnish 41st PDF and even some of the more mischievously inclined of the Crimson Fists 4th have been known to slip alcohol to the Fire caste contingents simply to break up the boredom of long void journeys or to help the normally stoic xenos "unwind" after a battle. Unfortunately, this has led to an alarming lack of battlefield discipline, but a strangely heightened level of coordination among the chronic imbibers. Between the rampant alcohol abuse and the so-called "party drugs" supplied by the eldar corsairs, the Dubstep Cadre has become increasingly erratic since joining with the expeditionary force.
bossfearless wrote: While it is generally frowned upon, members of the Rynnish 41st PDF and even some of the more mischievously inclined of the Crimson Fists 4th have been known to slip alcohol to the Fire caste contingents simply to break up the boredom of long void journeys or to help the normally stoic xenos "unwind" after a battle. Unfortunately, this has led to an alarming lack of battlefield discipline, but a strangely heightened level of coordination among the chronic imbibers. Between the rampant alcohol abuse and the so-called "party drugs" supplied by the eldar corsairs, the Dubstep Cadre has become increasingly erratic since joining with the expeditionary force.
Ahahahahaha! This is brilliant. Love chicks too!
It hadn't clicked that you were going to Bahrain now (thought you were going for new year).... So I thought you'd died or something! Good hear from you. Keep the updates coming
Oh, in case anyone is wondering, the female body I'm using on the second pic is from some random game that I can't recall, but if you went on Hoard o Bits and searched for Amazons there's a whole kit. It's not from Mantic...I honestly forget and don't care enough to go find it. The female torso in the first pic is the Basicks Amazon torso, similar to the one used on Snowflake.
My digital photo frame arrived today. It has its ups and down, though. For example, it's clearly going to be too large to function as a normal infantry standard. Now, that does not preclude it from winding up on an infantry model somehow, but the base would likely need to be upsized, and it would be worked into the scenery, rather than the model itself. If I were rolling with more than one Hammerhead, I might see about putting it there, but it's more likely at this point that it will wind up on one of the future Riptides. Some other goodies were in the box, mostly just little option parts from Gundam kits like I keep buying. I swear, I'm like a crack addict when it comes to bits.
Let's see, as far as actual progress I'vesculpted the dangling panties and vodka bottle on the second tank crew member, and I'm working on modeling a third member of the crew up on the rim of the top hatch. I dipped into the parts from the Tetra kit, which provided some seated fire warrior legs. I did some alteration to the mini I have for the 10th Doctor, and there's still some potential there.
The quad-legged crisis suit is not working out so far. The legs are looking more equine than arachnid, which isn't the look I was going for. I have a few ideas still to try and work around this using the bits I already mangled for the job, and I'm looking into the D-style armored core models to see if I can find a quad variant that will hopefully scale to a crisis suit.
Edit: After browsing a lot of pics of Armored Core quad mechs, I figured out what I was doing wrong with the quad Crisis. I basically skipped a joint in the legs, and that extra segment is crucial to the aesthetic I was looking for. I almost certainly need to upsize the base for this suit, but I'll leave that until I at least have a prototype mocked up.
I've been stuck at work with VIP types coming and going all week, which is why I haven't been posting more progress on my models. That, and I discovered the amazing time waster that is Civilization 5, and spent several hours dropping nukes on the Mayans. Stupid Mayans, never mess with Zulus who have split the atom. And of course it being Xmas and all, the Saudis have all thrown a giant collective temper tantrum and kept me extremely busy. Freaking saudis, man.
I thought of a really cool idea today. How about an allied contingent of Slaanesh marines?
Bit weird I know but just think... Noise marines that make noise!?
Brother Payne wrote: I thought of a really cool idea today. How about an allied contingent of Slaanesh marines?
Bit weird I know but just think... Noise marines that make noise!?
I may do something to that effect down the line, but I don't have any big aspirations to do a CSM army at this very moment. ALthough, it's always a great source of conversion projects. Maybe in a year or two when this and all my existing stuff is completely done with.
So, I'm a bit pissed off tonight. I spent like 4 hours trying to set up the digital photo frame that I bought. Unfortunately it's defective, and it spent so long in transit that the return policy is now expired. So, that's a bust. I did take the time to gut it, however, just to see how it looked inside. On the plus side, I think that I could work the circuit board into something roughly Rhino sized with little problem, but I doubt it will work for an infantry standard. On the downside, my flush cutters broke when I was cutting the thing open and it took a chunk of my thump with it. Yup. It's that kind of a night. Needless to say, I'm not feeling the kind of precise manual dexterity that accompanies sculpting tonight. Grrr.....
Brother Payne wrote: I thought of a really cool idea today. How about an allied contingent of Slaanesh marines?
Bit weird I know but just think... Noise marines that make noise!?
I may do something to that effect down the line, but I don't have any big aspirations to do a CSM army at this very moment. ALthough, it's always a great source of conversion projects. Maybe in a year or two when this and all my existing stuff is completely done with.
Brother Payne wrote: I thought of a really cool idea today. How about an allied contingent of Slaanesh marines?
Bit weird I know but just think... Noise marines that make noise!?
I may do something to that effect down the line, but I don't have any big aspirations to do a CSM army at this very moment. ALthough, it's always a great source of conversion projects. Maybe in a year or two when this and all my existing stuff is completely done with.
So, I'm a bit pissed off tonight. I spent like 4 hours trying to set up the digital photo frame that I bought. Unfortunately it's defective, and it spent so long in transit that the return policy is now expired. So, that's a bust. I did take the time to gut it, however, just to see how it looked inside. On the plus side, I think that I could work the circuit board into something roughly Rhino sized with little problem, but I doubt it will work for an infantry standard. On the downside, my flush cutters broke when I was cutting the thing open and it took a chunk of my thump with it. Yup. It's that kind of a night. Needless to say, I'm not feeling the kind of precise manual dexterity that accompanies sculpting tonight. Grrr.....
Man that sucks. Go nuke some Frenchmen. Civ V is one of my favorite games. It's great to just pop in an audio book, and let the workers build.
Hooray for new internet provider! My modem from Mobily finally crapped out on me, and I switched to STC, which so far has been significantly faster and less prone to dropping my connection. The practical result is that I can now do simple things like uploading my videos to Youtube without spending five hours cursing at my screen. So! Before I get ahead of myself, here is the much promised but rarely seen video of my Hammerhead build in action.
Apparently DMX runs a delivery service of unparalleled quality and expedience.
Ah man, now I'm just gonna keep wondering if it would have been possible for you to fit Hydraulics (or whatever a gravitationally hovering vehicle would use) on that, so it'd drop when it drops.
Anvildude wrote: Ah man, now I'm just gonna keep wondering if it would have been possible for you to fit Hydraulics (or whatever a gravitationally hovering vehicle would use) on that, so it'd drop when it drops.
Let me help you: No. With the lack of space in this chassis, it would be impossible to add hydraulics. Now, if I were making a Baneblade or any of its variants (see my idea for a hedgehog-bearing war altar in P&M general a while back), then I could go a little crazier. With a large ground tank chassis, it would be a fairly simple matter to find an appropriately sized RC car with a hydraulics function and put those guts inside the tank. There probably will be an insane Baneblade at some point in my future, but for now that's just a project I don't need to start. My thumb is healed up now, so I'm going to try to tear myself away from Civ 5 long enough to actually do some sculpting tomorrow.
I just realized that there is something that absolutely needs to be in the playlist for the dubstep cannon. Something I can't believe I haven't thought of until now.
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
THE HILLS ARE ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MUUUUUUUSIIIIIIIIC!!!!
I'm going to burn in hell for that. But can you imagine it? After all the bass drops, laser cannons, et cetera, you get some straight up Disney nonsense. Winning!
So, I mentioned before that I got a new internet provider. The brand? STC. I'll let you guys snicker at that for a moment.
Go on.
Anyway, it lets me negotiate Youtube and Photobucket much easier, so it looks like I won't get stalled out by that problem for at least a little while. Speaking of Photobucket, here's a little of what I sculpted a minute ago. It's very rough at the moment, so don't judge it too harshly.
And the oft mentioned Time Lord:
As soon as I realized there were Doctor Who minis out there, I knew this army needed some Gallifreyan auxiliaries. Those arm stumps are just there to give me something to build on, so don't pay much attention to them. I really had to mangle the figure to get his hands out of his damned pockets. There is one more tank crew member I plan to build, and the Doctor's left arm is going to be around her waist (hopefully). These sculpts are incredibly ambitious for me. I'm better than the average novice, but I can't hold a candle to some of the sculptors on Dakka. So just like the LEDs and such, the point of all sculpting projects in this army is to force me to try something new and untested, to force myself to get better. As I mentioned before, these are all very rough WIPs. There will be more layers of GS, along with some attempts at smoothing out all the little wrinkles and divots with a pot of liquid GS technical paint that I've had laying around for a while. I should learn to use it eventually, right?
I had a bunch of green stuff left over, so I went and did a little preliminary work on some other figs, added hair extensions to this one model (don't ask) and then took the remaining wad and went to work on the ass of the quad Crisis, trying to repair the damage I did to it with my initial attempt. On the plus side, I think this is going to work very well. I've got these ball and socket joint kits from Kotobukiya (seriously, any and all serious modellers should be haunting www.HLJ.com and browsing the Kotobukiya option parts section like an addiction).
In between bouts of modelling and fighting ninjas, I made some chicken jalfreezi curry with mango chutney and coconut milk, served over seasoned onion couscous. Totally unrelated to the project log, but I just wanted to make everyone's mouths water. Trolololol!
Looking good! I'm a little confused about the second tau chicks arms though...
Are they getting trimmed down or did I miss an explanation earlier in the thread?
Actually the other one's arms are going to get bulked up a bit to match. I'm going for kind of Samus Aran look with them, very arm and shoulder heavy. The idea is not that they're buck ass naked, but that they're pulling off a couple bits of their combat armor while leaving most of it on. Such are the hazards of binge-drinking while in an active combat zone. That, and acute pancreatitis, but that's a whole 'nother story. The end result *should* look good, unless I'm just going full plebeian with the whole concept.
Edit: I just realized that my Crisis pimp must be named Shas'Vre Upgrayedd, with two D's for his double dose of plasma pleasure. Just a friendly reminder that the other builds have not been entirely forgotten.
Here's a wip of my first spider leg prototype for my quad Crisis suit:
A couple pieces are held on with tack so I can change them around for the final product and oh my gawd I just realized as I was typing this sentence that I have the legs from an old metal tomb spyder in my bits box somewhere and I could have used those just as easily. Oh well, these are awesome.
Did a test fit of a few of the various components for the quad suit. I'm having second thoughts about the torso. It's one of those things that looked like a great idea on its own, but when you put it together with all the other parts, it doesn't seem to come together. Or it might be the shoulder guns I was working on. Regardless, something's a bit off and I'll have to work on that. The GS cured completely for the parts of the tank crew that I've done so far, so I can take it a step further tomorrow. One of the hardest parts about doing any kind of extensive sculpting is having the willpower to actually put it down and walk away for a whole day to let the project set up for the next step.
I don't know if I've ever told the story on Dakka of the Land Raider party barge. A couple years ago, my Crimson Fists army was supposed to have a giant centerpiece unit in the same vein as the Hammerhead I'm building now. I got pretty far along on the build, but it was overly ambitious and it stalled out because I didn't have the skills required to finish various parts. The thing was an open-topped land raider variant with a party deck built onto the roof. In the troop compartment I had built a bar with serving wenches, and one of the doors functioned as a drive-thru window. The other windows were supposed to be lit up with red LEDs and screened off with clear plastic (deck protector sleeves), turning them into window brothels like you see in Amsterdam. That was where the project died, because I had no idea how to do LEds at the time and I couldn't go much further because that all had to be done before the tank was fully built. But there were structurally-integrated space marine bouncers, a barbecue grill with an epecially violent chef, a pimp throne for my commander. And then there was the stuff that was supposed to be added on later, like the tech priest working a set of turn tables and an apothecary tending a patch of magic mushrooms. It was to be epic in every way.
Now, that tank is still in my collection back home, and it's one of several unfinished pieces that I'll have my friend ship out to me when he goes home on leave in March. So I'll get these unfinished projects around late April or early May, after I get back from Japan. Oooh, you know, I hadn't thought about this but I want to get a Gundam model kit in Japan as a souvenir. I know you can order them online but it would be cool to have the one I physically bought in Japan. Anyway, train of thought derailed there for a second. Back on topic.
Wait, no. I think I was done rambling for now. Was there something else? Lemme check. Nope.
Edit: I just realized that I need to change the articulation of the first joint on those spider legs.
*waves arms frantically all over the place growling like an agitated badger*
I have drunk SO MUCH COFFEE. I think I can see the future. Okay. Try to focus on alien space boobs. Right, I got this.
So I did a bit more sculpting earlier today, adding little bits of detail to the girls and making some really big strides on the shape of the quad's torso. I think I'll keep that one under wraps until it's ready for the big reveal. But here, have a drunken party tau:
Her 'soft armor' is really coming together. It's still VERY rough, lots of nicks and divots in the surface that I'll have to clean up towards the end. If you've watched my other projects come together, it's following the same trend of looking terrible right up to the cleanup step, and then coming together. The same thing was true of the quad torso, in the last post.
I gave this girl a boob job. The torso I was using for her wasn't very well endowed, and after some of the comments I got on Shas'vre Snowflake, I realized that I needed to make my girls' boobs bigger, lest they be called 'the shirtless tau dude.' Still not quite sure how I'm going to model/paint tau vagina. The third girl s coming together with much less sculpting involved and (gasp) all her clothes still on! Though I am using one of the Zenith torsos that has a bare midriff.
There are at least two more Desert Pimps that need to be modeled at some point, characters from (seriously) a 40k romantic comedy that I've been writing. Shas'saal Krom and Shas'la Psycho. Both are going to have a lot of sculpting required, so I'll save them for later when I don't have so much on my plate already.
Hopefully, complete with Tau Quad walker cameos...
No quad in the story just yet, but the titan does make an appearance at the start. It's mostly about the Desert Pimps and Shas'la Psycho. I wrote a new chapter in it tonight, as well as a new chapter in my novel, and some great revisions to existing work. And then I sculpted, built, and rebuilt some models. Tonight was one of those nights where inspiration met with execution, and then the two of them bumped uglies and spawned some awesomeness.
Here are the two party girls with their giant Samus shoulders attached:
Yes, I sculpted the one girl with genitalia. Yes, I plan to paint it fun alien colors. Because that's just how I roll sometimes. They are most of the way done at this point, I think just a little bit more work on the arms of the one on the right to get them appropriately covered, and then these will be ready to install in the tank, though I might paint them separately to get more detail on them. Yeah, that's the best way to do it now that I think of it. EDIT: I think I'm going to go back on the one on the left and change her face up so she's doing a WAZAAAAAAAAAAAP with her tongue hanging out.
So with that out of the way, I fiddled with some more stuff, I built the first joints of a second quad crisis leg and got the basic idea of the pose for all four, finished bulking out the hips, drilled a hole in the bottom for the eventual wire, but that's all boring stuff. This, on the other hand, is what I put together for the torso so far. Don't be too quick to judge it harshly, it still needs to have arms attached to really sell it:
The first thing is obvious: There's no head. At least, not in the normal sense. In building this, I was inspired by the Mad Cat battlemech, and there will be arms that come down to the side with PPCs just like the original. Of course, this one will have spider legs. Probably. I say probably because I might just test-fit it onto the next reverse-joint legs I make and see if I want to go full Mad Cat. Anyway, the 'face' is meant to be reminiscent of the titan, a two part "beak" that scissors open and shut, acting as a cockpit and shielded sensor array. Now, for the gun arms, I'm thinking that they need to be some kind of energy projector, but larger and beefier than a plasma rifle. The model will almost always be run as a double plasma crisis, but because this model is getting bulked out so much with the quad legs and everything, I want to arm it with weapons that will allow me to plausibly proxy it as a Broadside with rails and missiles if I should choose to run one. Sometimes I fiddle with the list and end up putting in a single railside as kind of a wildcard unit, so that's this guy when I feel the need. Unfortunately, with the quad legs, the rail rifles from the broadside kit are too big to fit. Current candidates are the Plasma Cannons from the Storm Raven with some extra add ons, but feel free to suggest a different gun if you can think of one.
Hokay, that's all for right now. I should really have gone to sleep like an hour ago, but you know how it is when you get inspired. It keeps you awake and distracted better than coke and hookers.
... Not really related, but have you ever played Blacklight: Retribution? I ask, because there's some Dubstep themeing going on in that game- most specifically, Augmented Reality visors are a big thing, so many of the taunts have these sort of see-through lit-up plexiglass/HUD faces and stuff that appear in front of the face- and I think that's something that would be awesome for this guy or others in your army. Lessee...
Darn. Can't find it. Well, it's the "Roar" taunt- the digital version, that I'm thinking of specifically. You should be able to see what I mean about the holographic projections, and the Roar makes your head look like a Mouser from TMNT. That. Could probably do it with proper usage of LEDs and thin clear plastic card.
Just a thought, maybe you should put an NSFW warning in the thread title? Just because, you know, someone might look at it at a bad time otherwise, and I don't want to imagine the ensuing conversation...
Gutsnagga wrote: Just a thought, maybe you should put an NSFW warning in the thread title? Just because, you know, someone might look at it at a bad time otherwise, and I don't want to imagine the ensuing conversation...
The crisis looks great so far btw!
Ugh...that's how it starts. The moment you put "NSFW" on something, you attract all the prudes who can't wait to complain to the mods. And then come the lecturing PMs from those mods about how boobies are evil and nobody has ever drunk alcohol before and that I'm corrupting all those innocent little minds on the interwebs. But still, I probably should, since...you know. Alien vadge. Heh. Reminds me of a short story I wrote for this science fiction contest. It was intended to be a satire of the young male coming of age experience in a futuristic setting, and all the awkwardness of sexual awakening in the age of the internet. But it turned into a kind of hilarious story about moon-puritans and this kid fapping relentlessly to alien porn. Something like "A whole universe of exotic genitalia, ovipositors, gill slits and erotic cilia served up in high definition smellovision." From the comments I got, the reactions to that bit alternated between spraying soda on the monitor out of laughter, or throwing up in their mouth a little bit. Very little in-between.
Gutsnagga wrote: Just a thought, maybe you should put an NSFW warning in the thread title? Just because, you know, someone might look at it at a bad time otherwise, and I don't want to imagine the ensuing conversation...
The crisis looks great so far btw!
Ugh...that's how it starts. The moment you put "NSFW" on something, you attract all the prudes who can't wait to complain to the mods. And then come the lecturing PMs from those mods about how boobies are evil and nobody has ever drunk alcohol before and that I'm corrupting all those innocent little minds on the interwebs. But still, I probably should, since...you know. Alien vadge. Heh. Reminds me of a short story I wrote for this science fiction contest. It was intended to be a satire of the young male coming of age experience in a futuristic setting, and all the awkwardness of sexual awakening in the age of the internet. But it turned into a kind of hilarious story about moon-puritans and this kid fapping relentlessly to alien porn. Something like "A whole universe of exotic genitalia, ovipositors, gill slits and erotic cilia served up in high definition smellovision." From the comments I got, the reactions to that bit alternated between spraying soda on the monitor out of laughter, or throwing up in their mouth a little bit. Very little in-between.
This is Doomthumbs main thread Which interestingly holds its place in the top 20 exalted trheads of all time, even 2 and a bit years after he was banned and his threads locked.
So, slight hiccup with kind of a mixed blessing attached. My schedule is all messed up and I'm getting called in to work all weekend. So that means about 20 or so days straight without a day off. Lame. It also means I can't do as much work on my models right now because I'm stuck at the duty desk and...yeah. I might see if I can pack up all the pieces of my quad legs and see about putting the whole assembly together and building the other two. When I was thinking about the various gun options, I realized that I really couldn't go with the plasma cannons because they're too similar to the plasma rifles, which are already an option for the Broadside. And as I looked through the parts on Paulson's website, it looked like some of them would be neat but I don't know that it would be easy to light the railguns. As of right now, without the plasma guns, this suit doesn't have any LEDs in it and I just can't allow that to be a thing. So, the guns really need to light up for me to be happy with this build. I'll look at some of the other suggestions, like the Triarch stalker guns, but those might be hard to get a hold of.
On the plus side, I've been hitting a real stride with the novel I'm writing and having two days with no coworker turning the volume all the way up on really stupid reality shows to distract me will be a nice bonus for that. And maybe I can also put together another chapter of that rom-com I posted in the fiction section.
Oh! I thought of a great scenery concept that I have to put in when I do some kind of terrain piece or display board. Ever see that episode of Archer where they go after the arms dealer on his mega yacht, and they end up in a freaky chocolate covered threesome with the guy? Chocolate boob prints all over the wall and all kinds of crazy crap. So, I was thinking of emulating that slightly, but with more of a rave theme since I have the whole Dubstep thing going on. I might do a female tau passed out against a wall with a silly grin on her face, covered in brighly colored paint and with glowy and and boob prints on the wall behind her. Just more weird ideas.
Also, holy crap. After reading through that whole thread, I really do feel like Doomthumbs' second coming. Right down to the posting of Dubstep songs and the sonic model. I kind of wish I had thought of having a model hold up a giant boombox. Though I really don't know what in the Tau range could do that besides a Riptide, and even then it's not a great idea. But still. Doomthumbs, yo.
Just a quick post from work. I got the joints for all four legs built and attached to the quad crisis:
I didn't get the chance to go through and chop up another jetpack to use for the rear legs yet. I'm going to wait and attach them all once I get all four of them ready along with the base.
Bottom view, so you can see the "anus" through which the wires will run to the battery base:
At least it wasn't Tau Goatsie.
Automatically Appended Next Post: In case anyone is wondering how I did these joints, the main portion of them are the mounts for the missile drones that come with the Broadside kit. The part that attaches to the hip joint is this random ball and socket bit from one of my kotobukia option sprues. You could honestly use all kinds of things for this part, though. The nub on the end is a similarly random nub bit, and there are plenty of ways to get a little ball joint on the end, so feel free to improvise.
Still on the lookout for more gun options. All the guns on the Paulson site seem pretty skinny, so it would be very hard to put an LED in them, and the same goes for the gauss guns that were suggested. The particle guns from the Spyder are a possibility, though I'm still not sure. I'll probably have to wait til the whole thing is up and built before I can start looking at fitting things on there. I might still go with the plasma cannons, assuming that I then go a little crazy and bulk them out some more.
Edit: End of my weekend stuck behind a desk. I didn't get to do much work on my Tau, but my novel is topping 32,000 words so far and the first several chapters have me very happy. No work on the Tau rom-com, but honestly it was at the bottom of my to-do list this weekend. On a side note, I really need to get back in the gym. One of the things that has been stopping me is that I lose some creativity after working out, and it makes my hands way too shaky for fine detail work. But I really need to stop letting that dissuade me from hitting the stacks.
This thread made for a very enjoyable evening's reading, thank you. I love what you've done with the vehicles and suits, the conversions are gorgeous.
Can't say I don't have mixed opinions of the naked aliens thing, but hey, David Tennant with some alien bitches couldn't be funnier, and I can't wait to see how you pull it off.
WAAAAGGHH-god wrote: This thread made for a very enjoyable evening's reading, thank you. I love what you've done with the vehicles and suits, the conversions are gorgeous.
Can't say I don't have mixed opinions of the naked aliens thing, but hey, David Tennant with some alien bitches couldn't be funnier, and I can't wait to see how you pull it off.
Love the work, and keep it up! Exalted!
Hey, thanks for the praise and for keeping an open, if conflicted, mind about the naked aliens. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend it's everybody's thing, because it wouldn't even be everybody's thing if the naked girls were all human. Frankly, I'm wondering if, on the whole, I will be looked at as being more or less mature for applying the gratuitous nudity to aliens rather than humans. I of course like to think that it implies a greater deal of creativity, but there are plenty who will say that this move makes me some kind of maladjusted manchild. Which I am, if I'm being honest.
Hokay! So, I went and did a little more work on the robo-butt after shift last night. I prepped the rest of the crisis jetpacks for their new roles as legs, re-glued a couple pieces that broke after I dropped the thing (tried to hold it up by a leg held on by tack, DERP!!!), and sanded the GS down to a smoother surface so it doesn't look so amateurish. Though I suppose since I'm not being paid for any of this, I am still an amateur. So...poop. My plan to increase stability is to add pins to the equation,keep the legs nice and sturdy, so I'll sneak off for a bit tonight and see about getting that done and getting pics up. I also did some test fits and I realized that I am going to run into a lot of spacing problems with any kind of guns I try to mount on the arms. The spider legs are kind of crowding it, in case you're wondering. My solution to this problem is to switch the style of the arms from the Mad Cat to the Mad Cat Mk2, where the arms come straight out to the sides instead of drooping down. Of course, any resemblance to the Cat is lost when I add spider legs, so...yeah. I might go with guns just mounted on the sides of the shoulders instead, more of an Armored Core look but without a head. Then again, AC heads had some pretty broad styles to them, so I could rig something up I suppose. I find myself wishing that Armored Core model kits were the right scale for anything smaller than a Riptide, and also that they would release an AC kit with quad legs.
Now that I chopped the jetpacks off another torso, that actually gives me the appropriate pieces to start on the Pimp Suit. Trying right now to decide between fur and feathers for the collar of his pimp coat. Personally, I'm leaning towards fur just because that's the pimp stereotype. I think I should have enough GS left to build this thing, but I'm running relatively low until the APO gets my order from Spikey Bits to me. It's a real shame, I broke my clippers right after ordering that lot and I can't bring myself to order just that.
I think I might have spent too long reading Doomthumbs' old tyranid log, because I just had a thought for the pimp suit. I plan on using Power Fists for hands so that he can be holding the cane and maybe one of the girls. But now I'm thinking about the possibility of a full-on hentai scene involving a precarious balancing act by one of the girls on one of the big fingers of the power fist. It probably won't go quite that far, but I'll let you use your imagination on that for a moment.
I recon make a massive high collar out of huge feathers like the ones off any of the important characters (looking at the plastic Karl Franz on DC in particular). That would be sick.
Not too sure about the hentai idea though. Might be a bit far...
Yeah, probably not gonna do the hentai thing. It was more of a silly thought that won't really materialize. Okay, so, there was a thing that happened tonight. That means that I'm basically stuck at the desk all night long handling the situation and coordinating between all the different departments. So, no work on the tau til after shift. Pout-face, engage.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hey check dis out:
I got dese crabs, yo.
All four legs attached to the body. I'm at a little bit of an impasse regarding the feet, though. I have two ideas, one is to use the dreadnaught blood talons for feet, as seen in an earlier post, and the other is to use some of the toes from Tau crisis feet, as you can kinda sorta see in this one. The talons are more spidery, but the crisis toes are more Tau-ish. But then, nothing quad-legged is all that tau-ish, so there's that lol.
I have not yet gotten to test-fit these legs with the torso attached and feet on it. The GS and glue were still curing and I didn't want to risk the weight on it just yet. Maybe in a couple hours when I get off.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Look what I can do!
I ended up splitting the difference on the feet, and using the fingers from an Ironclad Dread, since those seemed to be the only things I could find four of, right at that moment. It totally worked, though. I think I need to add a little extra spacer at the waist to make it taller, and it still needs arms, but it's coming along nicely.
I found guns for the suit as well:
These are the power plant from a Dreadnaught of some kind chopped in half and converted a bit. This is just the start for some rather large weapons.
Parts: Broadside head (one piece, flat) Devilfish pilot hatch High Elf infantry feather (no clue which kit) Kotobukiya "Round Mold" for the top
There's more to do still, and some cleanup/bling to be done, but I managed to capture the pimp hat rather splendidly. Work has also begun on the cane and the body, but I'm not to a good point yet for WIP pics. I've decided on a fur trim for the coat, powerfists for the hands, and I'm trying to find a way to add in some naughty tentacles from the tail of an old metal Necron wraith.
Also, attached and sculpted one arm on the Doctor, still need to finish his sonic screwdriver. Did some cleanup on the tank girls with liquid green stuff. Will likely end up going a little crazy on these projects come the weekend.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: The only thing that could make a Pimp Robot cooler, is if you could somehow model it as a giant, Pimp Claptrap (from Borderlands)
Great. Just great. Now I have to build a Claptrap to count as a drone or something. This must happen.
Automatically Appended Next Post: LEDs wired, Pimp Suit in the Engineering Bay:
Only the classiest of accoutrements:
The pipe will have a backstory of its own.
Psychedelic rainbow pimp stave, WIP:
Originally, yes, it was supposed to be a cane. But this just sort of came together instead and so far it is fabulous. Not sure how I'm going to top the staff. It needs some kind of ornate something or other to really sell the pimp-stick element. Times like this, I wonder at the fact that there are no big ornate gem bits in 40k. You'd think there would be.
And a big breasted tau ho:
She's based on a Hasslefree model, but then I cut her nose and feet off and gave her hooves. Goddamn, that sounds like something a serial killer would say. That is some Leatherface-caliber wrongness.
Last but not least, my resident Time Lord is coming along nicely:
I've had that pic and been wanting to do something like it for a while now. Although, of course, my ideal version is a little sillier and involves a Broadside, a cockpit full of empty beer cans, a very drunk pilot with her pants around her ankles, and a blue ass mooning the enemy.
Work progresses on the rainbow pimp stave. I took the barrel from a stealth suit's burst cannon and hollowed it out, and situated it over the wires that protruded up from the color-changing LED. I cut a little notch in one side so that the wires could run out the back.
Now, you might be wondering, why the flight stand? I know I hate the things. But, just like the necron green rods, the clear acrylic can be sanded across the surface to diffuse light. Or maybe I hadn't gone over that in this thread. Anyway, I'm using this flight stand like a big fluorescent tube. I'll get a video up later on with the finished stave glowing and changing colors.
So that's happening.
Another thing that happened today was a package came from my buddy in Riyadh. He saw the work I was doing with LEDs and decided two things. First, he would replicate the effects using CSM Daemon Engines. Second, he would ignore every piece of advice I gave him and all my tutorials on LEDs. He didn't even solder a damn thing, just glued LEDs all on the insides of the model, where you could never ever get to them with wires and a soldering iron. Anyway, I'm going to give them the kind of absurd treatment my suits are getting and then put them on eBay for any interested parties. I may or may not end up "pro-painting" them just because I feel like it. Should be pretty cool when they're done.
Damn that's a cool idea for the pimp cane (or are we calling it a stave now?).
Shame about the disregard for advice with the daemon engines. Any chance of photos?
@Brotherpayne: I'm kind of flip flopping between cane and stave. It seems too long to be a cane. Cane sounds better. Anyway, the daemon engines are in a bunch of pieces. I'll get pics when I get to them, which may be a while.
Next stage completed on the pimp. Decided to give him a bit of a swagger pose. I have to get him mounted on the base before attaching the cane, because I want the base of the cane to rest on the ground.
Once the pose is finalized and the base is complete I can start sculpting the coat. It's going to be long sleeve, so ignore the details of the extended arm for now, as they'll be covered.
Who is this? What's it called?
I'm surprised, I'll be brutally honest and say I'm not usually fan of dubstep but I liked this Also nice work on the pimp suit, it's coming along well
Who is this? What's it called?
I'm surprised, I'll be brutally honest and say I'm not usually fan of dubstep but I liked this Also nice work on the pimp suit, it's coming along well
To snark or not to snark? Not to snark. It's called "Midnight" by Bar9. The pimp suit is coming along so painfully slow. The reason for this is that every tiny little step forward has to be allowed to set up and cure for hours so that I don't break it with the next step. Heavy sculpting is SO annoying but so worth it.
Who is this? What's it called?
I'm surprised, I'll be brutally honest and say I'm not usually fan of dubstep but I liked this Also nice work on the pimp suit, it's coming along well
To snark or not to snark? Not to snark. It's called "Midnight" by Bar9. The pimp suit is coming along so painfully slow. The reason for this is that every tiny little step forward has to be allowed to set up and cure for hours so that I don't break it with the next step. Heavy sculpting is SO annoying but so worth it.
More baby steps on the pimp suit, but I've just about got it to the point where I can attach it to the base and then it will move a whole lot faster. I also started on a Broadside that ended up doing the Captain Morgan pose and being awesome. Trying right now to decide on a melee weapon for the suit's free hand (I made some modifications). I'm thinking a Broadside would look cool with a big punching spike like you see in the Ogre Kingdoms line, but I also have these big nasty flails from Warmachine that would look sweet. Anyways, this one is also just about ready to attach to the base, even if it's just disembodied legs right now, and I've been working on several major mods to the suit and the usual LED nonsense.
I was going back and forth with a couple posters on the Dakka Fiction forum and I realized that I really need to collect up all the random bits of fluff I've written in this thread for the various characters and wargear and the Cadre in general, and it needs to go in the first page or maybe even its own thread somewhere.
No, those are just regular, if slightly happy, missile pods. The ecstasy all comes from the various Eldar pirates that tag along with the fleet. They supply all the best party drugs to the Tau Dubstep Cadre, the TGG Rynnish 41st and the Crimson Fists who run the show. Lemme tell ya, it takes some serious narcotics to get a Fist stoned out of his mind. The Eldar haemonculi took it as a sort of personal challenge, and developed a synthetic hierophant tranquilizer that would placate even the most hardened Noise Marine. They tried to translate it from the eldar name, but the Gothic tongue was simply insufficient to carry all the nuanced profanity, and so it was renamed to simply "happy juice," and regularly mixed into the frosting on Lord Akira's chocolate cake. That dude loves cake.
Also, small progress update. The pimp suit now has all its limbs attached and the armature for the coat is mostly built. Once the current GS cures, I have to go in and add a few bits of wire running cross-ways to give the coat its last bit of structure before I can go in and start filling it out with GS. Sooooooooo many baby steps for a sculpting process like this. As the suit evolved, I considered a number of different accessories, accoutrements, and various naked females as escorts. This might be the silliest that I have ever gotten with any one individual model. The pilot's name is now Fio'vre Who'dat. I have a lot of family in NOLA. Don't judge. Also, who dat?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh hey, did I mention that his pimp cane housed a color changing LED?
No, those are just regular, if slightly happy, missile pods. The ecstasy all comes from the various Eldar pirates that tag along with the fleet. They supply all the best party drugs to the Tau Dubstep Cadre, the TGG Rynnish 41st and the Crimson Fists who run the show. Lemme tell ya, it takes some serious narcotics to get a Fist stoned out of his mind. The Eldar haemonculi took it as a sort of personal challenge, and developed a synthetic hierophant tranquilizer that would placate even the most hardened Noise Marine. They tried to translate it from the eldar name, but the Gothic tongue was simply insufficient to carry all the nuanced profanity, and so it was renamed to simply "happy juice," and regularly mixed into the frosting on Lord Akira's chocolate cake. That dude loves cake.
Does this mean you're doing Eldar too?!!!
Also nice pimp cane (/stave)
@Brother Payne: Maybe eventually. For now, the Eldar only occupy a place in the army's fluff, same as the mindshackled Cyrpteks and de-limited Mechanicum magi. Also, I guess firing the baneblade's gun repeatedly could cause motion sickness.
@liquidjoshi: Thanks, and i haven't even attached the naked chicks yet.
@Ferret: Rad is pretty much what I'm going for here
Oh, as to the mob boss Fireblade, I don't think I'm going to build that one. I really don't want to add too many more fire warriors, and the Fireblade just doesn't seem worth it to me. I'm going to fill out the Diplomats and the Pimps, and then any other troops choices will either be Farsight crisis teams, water caste counts-as Kroot, of Rynnish PDF.
bossfearless wrote: @Brother Payne: Maybe eventually. For now, the Eldar only occupy a place in the army's fluff, same as the mindshackled Cyrpteks and de-limited Mechanicum magi. Also, I guess firing the baneblade's gun repeatedly could cause motion sickness.
@liquidjoshi: Thanks, and i haven't even attached the naked chicks yet.
@Ferret: Rad is pretty much what I'm going for here
Oh, as to the mob boss Fireblade, I don't think I'm going to build that one. I really don't want to add too many more fire warriors, and the Fireblade just doesn't seem worth it to me. I'm going to fill out the Diplomats and the Pimps, and then any other troops choices will either be Farsight crisis teams, water caste counts-as Kroot, of Rynnish PDF.
From your comment on motion sickness I'm guessing you missed the bear bottle...
Regarding the mob boss Fireblade, if your want to go with diplomats and such why not an "enforcer" or something along those lines. I'm sure the Tau negotiators need a little "help" from time to time
Expounding on the exact role of the pimp suit in the cadre, it's important to think about where these tau are in the galaxy. They're carving a path along the galactic south, heading towards Holy Terra and a confrontation with the Emprah himself.
They will not be resupplied by the Tau Empire, not now, not ever.
In joining the crusade of Magos Fortinbras, the Cadre committed itself to the longest military deployment ever undertaken by any Tau besides perhaps Farsight himself. The humans measure their campaigns in decades and centuries, a concept utterly foreign to the Tau way of fighting. Fio'El Upgrayedd, with two D's for his double dose of pimping plasma, is the chief matchmaker of the Dubstep Cadre. It falls to him and his team to oversee reproductive operations and keep the Cadre at fighting strength despite battlefield casualties and eventual old age. It is a position of honor, though one that has never been necessary until now.
Upgrayedd matches potential mates based on their mutual genetic suitability, and also based upon the physical preferences of either partner. This process is not the most polite, nor the most private and intimacy certainly suffers, but partners are not bound to one another in any long term fashion, free to pursue their own desired mate should they choose. As a matter of necessity, the majority of the offspring conceived in this matter are engineered to be female, giving the Dubstep Cadre its reputation for excessive numbers of female troopers.
While it is generally seen as an unproductive way to spend one's non-combat hours, fighting for so long alongside so many alien species has led to a surprising amount of cross-species involvement. Occasionally, Imperial personnel of their prudish religious caste are known to refer to these unions as the wretched spawn of loathsome abomination. But nobody likes them, and they are left to rant and rave in solitude on the lower decks of the Recompense, tasked with cleaning the kroot latrines. Due to the myriad complications that can be involved in cross-species fornication, Fio'El Upgrayedd provides a number of functions ranging from education to the treatment of exotic venerial diseases (because you really don't want Khaine's Burning Brand spreading through the ranks), as well as the provision of adapters designed to allow various species to interface their bits with one another.
Having begun his career as a battlesuit technician and later a test pilot, Fio'El Upgrayedd is no stranger to the operation of a Crisis suit, and was well within his rights to request a place in Darkblade's command cluster. The decision to include him in combat protocols has yielded unexpected fruit, as his keen eye for a warrior's attributes has led to the identification of ideal mated pairs based on intra-unit chemistry.
When all is said and done, Upgrayedd fills a vital role within the Cadre, but he has clearly let his position go to his head and now takes far too much pleasure in his role as the Cadre Pimp.
...
...
I may have put too much thought into this. Also, I like writing. Novel is almost halfway done, I think. It's the longest I've ever written on any one project, and that has me rather excited to see it finished. Aside from the benefits, the great pay, all the vacation, everything like that, the one thing I love most about my job is the amount of free time I have. Most of the guys out here, they lament it. They whine about how boring it is and how there's nothing to do, but I never see them doing anything with this enormous resource we've been given. Think about it. Time is the one thing there's never enough of, that you can never get back once it's been wasted. To have a job that gives you seemingly endless amounts of free time is a blessing that very few people seem to be able to recognize.
Brother Payne wrote: I had not previously appreciated how much of a brothel your cadre is...
Also what's your job? I must've messed that a while back
I'm a security contractor in Saudi Arabia. We're sort of like mercenaries, but deployed as a defensive force. My company is involved with the Saudi national guard, training them to use newer and more modern equipment. Of course, Saudi is as safe as you're gonna get in this region, so my security squad ends up being little more than high-end rental cops. We patrol our residential compound and generally just sit at desks monitoring cameras and tracking personnel. Not glorious in the slightest. The boredom of it is palpable. It's like Groundhog Day out here, every single day exactly the same, and that drives some people crazy. But if you're the creative type, you can use it to your advantage. For me, it's a mix every day of writing, building, sculpting and pumping iron.
That's the weird thing for me. I was a total civilian when I got the job last year. They wouldn't have even looked at me if I didn't have a friend on the inside begging the boss on my behalf. Took him to Thailand a few months back, all expenses paid to say 'thank you.'
We're not part of the military, because the Saudis have declared that there are no American military personnel in the Kingdom. And when those yahoos 'declare' something, everyone has to give in to it or else face the wrath of a Saudi tantrum on a geopolitical scale. You would not believe how bad their tantrums get, it's just insane.
I switched careers from "broke and just out of college doing crap jobs with no future" to "get paid $70k a year tax free to play video games all day". Best career switch ever.
I switched careers from "broke and just out of college doing crap jobs with no future" to "get paid $70k a year tax free to play video games all day". Best career switch ever.
made you look 
