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Hello all,

For your viewing pleasure(or displeasure I guess) I have decided for both Alastergrimm's sake and for the community to see to start a thread showing my progress on a commission I have under gone for said Alaster. He was so impressed with the Land Raider he had purchased from me that he decided to use my services to continue painting some of the armor for his armies. This go around he wanted me to do a vindicator for Blood Angels, but also show it being as part of a force temporarily allied with the Dark Angels. More on that will be discussed later as that part won't take place until the painting starts. For the start I have about 70% of the conversion of the internals of the tank. A vindicator sacrifices transport capacity for a large cannon and an ammo locker so I wanted to convert the internals to show that as best as I could. So now onto pictures with descriptions above them.

The first picture just shows that when unboxing a miniature I always wash the parts in warm water with some dish detergent. Normally dawn, but any good brand will do. Then next is all the parts air drying. Again most of these are just to show exactly what I do during a commission. The preparation, as most hard core modelers will tell you is what really makes the end result shine. I also don't dry them with a hair dryer as I like to avoid any possible warping even from low heat.



After the parts dry I clip off and clean all the major hull parts to test fit the assembly and make sure nothing needs to be fixed before starting on the internals of the vehicle.



As you can see here this will need to be taken care of because of minor warping, but as this part has no effect on the internals of the tank I will take care of it after the hull has been officially assembled.


Now time to start converting. As most of you can see and from experience building the vindicator the door to the driver compartment is on the same side as the cannon would be. As that's no good seeing as that's also where the ammo locker will be I had to cut that panel in half and reposition it on the right side of the tank.




Ahh... much better.


With the door tacked in place I started using card stock to measure the size of the ammo locker.


Since I'm not use to photographing my projects I got ahead of myself and completed most of the locker assembly and the access door for loading the shells done before I remembered to take more pics. With some fairly thin but sturdy plastic card, some L channel, old rhino hatch handle and some pins I made a pretty neat ammo locker and door that just needs a little touching up. I wanted to make the locker door look pretty reinforced so I gave it six big rivets and a big ol handle to make it look beefy as an ammo locker serves not only as a storage box, but as a protective shield from explosives that could otherwise det the ammo inside. I'll probably also add some wires going down the sides or something similar just to break up the flat surface down the inside wall of the locker.





Now I'm no dumby either and made sure the assembly can still come apart for easy paintwork.


That's as far as I got being I realized it was a little after 1am and I have to travel to hel... I mean the DMV at like 8am and take care of our registration as I need to use the same vehicle to take my better half to work in the morning. With all that said and done I should make some pretty good progress over the month I asked Alaster to give me to complete this thing. I also have another project going and need to make sure I get both done without them interfering with each other. More to come!!!

Hey, this looks pretty cool!

I've always wanted to do this, but could never be bothered to find the time!!

Be interested to see this progress.

NIIICEEEE!

Awesomw! I'll be paying this thread another visit

Looks awesome,!

It's very interesting just one thing. Why would the door lead to the outside of the vehicle. I mean if they wanted to move within the tank they would have to stop drop ramp and then go along on their mission. Just one of those odd things that came to mind.

It's very interesting just one thing. Why would the door lead to the outside of the vehicle. I mean if they wanted to move within the tank they would have to stop drop ramp and then go along on their mission. Just one of those odd things that came to mind.

I thought of that too. Then I noticed the crane holding the shell on the rear of the tank and thought to myself, hell why not. I figured they'd use the crane between missions with the rear ramp down only then to help reload the locker, remove the spent casings and for simple maintenance. Also who doesn't like internals? lol. That being said it was part of the commission deal. I told Alaster I'd convert the interior to match the fluff of a vindicator best I could. Another thing I noticed too was there isn't really any point modeled on the tank that really points out as a maintenance hatch for things like reloading so I figured the way I portrayed it wasn't to bad. All the normal doors and hatches on the basic rhino hull get covered up by all the add-on parts to make the vindicator kit. As the tank isn't really to the scale of the marines who drive them I didn't think the cramped walkway was really an issue either.

Definitely appreciate any comments though guys. Anything helps to encourage or make me a better modeler.

Solid explanation... I think I have been playing this game wayyyyy to long(12 years of warhammer 17 total of wargamming) because that actually made way to much sense.

Solid explanation... I think I have been playing this game wayyyyy to long(12 years of warhammer 17 total of wargamming) because that actually made way to much sense.

Hehe. I'm starting to think the same for me. I've been only gaming for about 8 years or so, but the longer it goes on the weirder I get with making sense of things on the models. Mainly with the armor more than the actual soldiers themselves. All in all I guess it's kind of a good thing as it will only make my conversion skills better as I plan on tackling the task of scratch building a Lucius Pattern Reaver Titan sometime next year so I have some heavy hitting power against all the other war machines popping up in our community. On another note some more pictures will be available by no later than tomorrow morning as I have a 3 day outing starting tomorrow afternoon. I also have another project to finish so updates could be a couple days apart till that's all said and done. Pictures will be of the finished conversion of the interior before painting begins as that is my next step after returning home this Friday.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Update 1. Internal conversions done!!!!)

As the note says I think I will consider the internals of the tank finished. I just used some half round and a little more L channel plastic strip to just break up some smooth surfaces and to cover up more empty spaces and gaps. I also added a sheet of card to fill the hole where the top hatches normally sit so the locker and access door are flush with the ceiling. To further add to the function of viewing the internals I used 8 1/16x1/32 neodymium magnets on the rear ramp to hold it in place so I could file down the edges of the door so friction isn't needed to keep it shut and therefore removing an area of wear and tear on the paint job. I might primer the parts up tonight to have them ready for painting this weekend after my family outing. Also if anyone is interested in some of the materials I use I primarily stick to using Testors liquid brush on plastic cement for all plastic bonds and Bob Smith Industries superglue for support and gap filling during projects like these. My plastic card is almost always Evergreen Scale Models stuff as that's what my LHS carries and they still give me a sweet discount even though I don't work for them anymore so it all evens out . So without boring you guys on too many words here's the pics as promised.

Finished ammo locker with the door being dry fit to make sure all works ok.


Magnet location and application on rear ramp




The side wall with re-used control panel and some added detail to cover up my rough hack and slash of the bench removal.


The cover up of the hole where the hatches normally go creating a flush ceiling and the dry fit of the top panel to make sure all is well and looks good.




And this pic shows just how much room was reduced to represent the amount of reduced space for ammo storage and cannon placement.

looking great Ninja! =D

Awwwwwww

I really thought you were going to model the breach and cannon, firing mechanisms, basically a full interior. Guess i must have misunderstood.

Btw, it looks great, not taking anything away from the work you've done!

it would be amazing if he did that, but that would be a bit more then I would expect from him.

looking good, keep it up

I really thought you were going to model the breach and cannon, firing mechanisms, basically a full interior. Guess i must have misunderstood.

I've thought about it on my own forces. I just told Alaster for this project I'd stick with making the interior just less like a bland ol rhino compartment. I also haven't gone that far even with my personal stuff yet. I do have a continuing project on a MK1 land raider that will get full internals no matter the cost or time. And hopefully that is my next personal project next month after I finish my Khorne dudes. I just got back from my trip too so this Sunday I will be on full burn doing the painting of the interior and finishing up my Khorne project.

This is looking really nice. Evergreen scale models also do a nice line of other components as they cater to architectural modelmakers. Rectangular bars, square bars, C-channels, T-bars, I-bars, round bars, half rounds, as well as plastic card of various thicknesses and patterns.

Ah, ok then.

Sounds good though. If you ever get round to doing a full interior could you post it here please?!

Keep up the good work!!

Looks pretty damn good so far.

Again thank you for all the comments guys. I should have some more pics up possibly later tonight as I want to start using my airbrush more and that greatly speeds up the first couple coats of paint.

If you ever get round to doing a full interior could you post it here please?!

I think if I do that it will be on a new post cause it would probably be a project for my own army. I am starting to notice how easy it could be with a vindicator and if I decide not to do my old RT land raider next month I may pic up a vindicator and do just that.

Very nice

(Update 2)

I finished up the painting of the interior of the vehicle. The one problem with contact through message that I have is some things get misconstrued and thankfully I straitened them out. I am actually to paint this tank to match the land raider in the pic below with some small adjustments that will be featured later. The interior was painted the same colors of a basic Dark Angels marine. Dark Angels green with a highlight of progressively more snot green.


On that note I painted the interior in much the same way. I painted the land raider over 2 years ago so I had to be creative in matching the colors as I never wrote down what was used. Thankfully matching the scheme wasn't too hard. The only thing I didn't use that was used on the land raider was a light sand weathering stick from Tamiya and the only thing extra was a little bit of sponge chipping using a little black. I opted just to do a very light dry brush dusting on the lower parts of bleached bone which is essentially the exact same color as the weathering stick, but was much less time consuming and looked a little better in the end. If I had some weathering pigments I would have used those for more realism, but alas I have yet to procure any. So here are the pics and sorry if they aren't as clean as others. The dark angels green was so dark I had to set my camera to adjust which makes things a bit fuzzy and the first set before I assembled the hull were just obnoxiously dark and that wasn't something I could really fix thanks to the brown background from my paint station.

Gorgeous free handing. Those vines are particularly tantalizing.

agreed, this project should come out great, i will be watching

Very nice!

Looking amazing!

Very nice, I was going to say why not make the door part of the ramp.

I know its too late now.

I was going to say why not make the door part of the ramp.

That was also something I thought about. Kinda like the rear of a Bradley Assault Vehicle. In the end I figured that it was a little better and easier this way.

Also glad you like the outcome so far Alaster. The hull is now together and I'll be working on the siege shield a little today. Hopefully next week the whole thing will be assembled and ready to paint. I still have an extra armor kit to work out which shouldn't be too hard since I will be making templates. Oh and yes you guys will be free to use any template I make. I will make scanned copies and hopefully save them as a PDF file for my own future use as well. Till then thanks for all the comments guys and of course C&C is always welcome.

Utmost atention to detail. I like that - can't quite seem to manage it myself, but its always good to watch a pro at work

That looks great! I'll be keeping an eye on what else comes from your hands.

Are you the same person on Ebay that does the LR commissions?

check out http://www.ursasden.com/

[EDIT]
Love the vines on the land raider. Excellent work.