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 Brother Payne wrote:
I don't even know what to say man. This is one hell of a hobby project! I commend your efforts and hope you get it ready in time for next year's (almost this year's!) comp. the fact that it makes a reaver look like a dread this how the 40k universe is meant to be displayed. (If not bigger). Just think how big a complete hive city would be!

Thanks Brother Payne, but if I'm honest, the rate at which I can work on the piece is nowhere near enough to get it ready for this years Armies on Parade - I've never built, let alone painted, terrain before, plus I still need to think about adding lighting before I "finish" it! And then there's the small issue of painting up the damn army....!

Size wise - never again will I ever do anything on this scale. EVER. Unless you count the inevitable Forge World Warlord Titan (hint hint FW!!)

Phutarf wrote:

 Brother Payne wrote:
I don't even know what to say man. This is one hell of a hobby project! I commend your efforts and hope you get it ready in time for next year's (almost this year's!) comp. the fact that it makes a reaver look like a dread this how the 40k universe is meant to be displayed. (If not bigger). Just think how big a complete hive city would be!

Thanks Brother Payne, but if I'm honest, the rate at which I can work on the piece is nowhere near enough to get it ready for this years Armies on Parade - I've never built, let alone painted, terrain before, plus I still need to think about adding lighting before I "finish" it! And then there's the small issue of painting up the damn army....!

Size wise - never again will I ever do anything on this scale. EVER. Unless you count the inevitable Forge World Warlord Titan (hint hint FW!!)

Don't forget painting up the damn building! 2015 maybe

Ha! I fully expect to start painting the building probably in 2nd/3rd quarter 2014 if progress continues at this rate...

Still following along. The chandelier is another OTT detail I would not ever had considered.

I sincerely hope your creation does not consume you, Dr. Frankenstein.

He should be good as long as he doesn't recoil in horror from his newly born bouncing monster-baby. That's all the monster wanted... love.

Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:Still following along. The chandelier is another OTT detail I would not ever had considered.

I sincerely hope your creation does not consume you, Dr. Frankenstein.

GrimDork wrote:He should be good as long as he doesn't recoil in horror from his newly born bouncing monster-baby. That's all the monster wanted... love.

Haha thanks guys - unfortunately I've not made any progress on the monster since the last update as I've rediscovered the joy (and frustration) of painting (check out my other blog for details...) At least it's meant I've not come up with any more bright ideas to make things even more complicated for myself!

Doh how did I not know you had a blog? Guess my phone doesn't show sigs. Gotta go check that.

 GrimDork wrote:
Doh how did I not know you had a blog? Guess my phone doesn't show sigs. Gotta go check that.

I wouldn't get that excited GrimDork - it's pretty dull!

Meh I like p&m blogs and I'm sure if you can come up with the doom cathedral anything else will be interesting at least

WOW, this is some crazy terrain project! I would love to fight on a board like this, it would make an excellent kill team board. Looking forward to more

Young Logan

Ok, so first weekend in a while I've been able dedicate some time to the Cathedral - sorry it's taken so long for anyone following its progress..

Anyway, today I have mostly been focussing on additions to the ruined section, namely the roof. But before I show you the updates, realised there was one side I'd not really shown before, namely the rear:


Right, to business: the ruined roof corner. First needed to create the slanting roof front - this is a cut down piece of one of the Shrine lower walls. Of course, by the time I realised I was supposed to be documenting this I'd got part way, but here's an early-ish stage pic:


This needed some addition work to make it look as if it was an intentional shape rather than a bodge, so added a reinforcement strip to the outer edge (thank you once again movement tray edges!) and then carefully cut off rivets were re-glued on accordingly:



Next were the damaged roof panels that will sit along side it - Note that the skull in the centre of the lower panel had to be realigned - grrr...


And then glued to the previous piece, and then both glued to the supporting ruined corner section:


Note the twisted remains of the guttering on this - good old movement trays again!!

And here it is in situ:



So there you go. Usual proviso on so much more to complete - stay tuned for further updates!!

Awesome as always. I enjoy watching this evolve

Yep, definitely fun to see this thing grow.

Good addition. Nice work.

I am always an advocate for modifying the parts of any model, especially when it comes to terrain and the GW kits. I like what you've done with the front facing piece for the roof. Again, just my terraining OCD, but maybe fill in or continue the bullet hole on the support? And maybe place an additional rivet over where the vertical support would supposedly pass underneath the angled piece? The sort of odd "misplacement" of extra rivets I'm suggesting is actually quite common in industrial construction, especially where there needs to be additional support such as where there are joins or two part overlap. Looking great so far! Keep it up!

Every time I see this it just gets better and better, I imagine it'll take a while to paint though .

Thanks for the comments guys - glad people are still sticking with me even if it is taking forever and a day!

hk1x1 wrote:Every time I see this it just gets better and better, I imagine it'll take a while to paint though .

Indeed it will, indeed it will.. Although I promise I will start painting at least bits of it this year. Yes, definitely this year.. Probably...

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:I am always an advocate for modifying the parts of any model, especially when it comes to terrain and the GW kits. I like what you've done with the front facing piece for the roof. Again, just my terraining OCD, but maybe fill in or continue the bullet hole on the support? And maybe place an additional rivet over where the vertical support would supposedly pass underneath the angled piece? The sort of odd "misplacement" of extra rivets I'm suggesting is actually quite common in industrial construction, especially where there needs to be additional support such as where there are joins or two part overlap. Looking great so far! Keep it up!

Well spotted Waaazag - I'd completely missed that I'd half covered that hole. Gave now gone back and excavated it accordingly. However, I'm not so sure about the extra rivet, even though in the 'real world' it would make sense - here it would just infuriate me every thine I look at it out of lovely alignment! I'll give it some more thought tho...

Anyway, after a lie in today (if you count 8am a lie in...), a 2 1/2 hour gym session (I will be thin again!) ironing and other domestic delights, only had an hour or so to do some tidying up today - here's what that consisted of:

Completion of upper deck plate for the ruined section:

because the wall sections below are missing their lintels, had to fashion some new ones to fill the gaps between the two floor panels . The gap is intentional because it sits neatly over the supporting 'peg' on the wall section below:

Which in turn has a supporting rod to keep the upper bit in place:

(If you look closely Waaazag you can see the holes in the roof frontspiece! )

Also had to do some remedial work to the lower two floor sections here to get them to fit neatly - again, fiddly and time consuming work that no one but me will see... Sigh....

Also thought I'd 'treat' you to some additional shots of the Cathedral's 'power plant' which I did ages ago (well, mostly - as ever still bits to finish) - I figure that this side also doubles as a shrine to the Omnissiah so will end up having a tech marine in here and some tech priests/servitors:

The 'chimney' I think works quite well, but of course exhaust gasses need to go somewhere, right? Well, here's my solution:

Took me ages to gouge the poor eagles eyes out (they are REALLY fiddly to get out!!) - admittedly it'd look better if the 'nose' was easier to model but I figured 'hey, why make life even MORE difficult for yourself!'

I'm also thinking that this effectively empty box could double as a place to hide a battery/Gubbins if I ever get round to putting lighting into the model, although access could get tricky. Thought I'd put a Bastion access hatch into the door space to give it that techy feel either way:


Ok, that was all a bit long winded, so I'll shut up. Yay - another week of work looms - such fun...

Blimey two weeks since the last post... Where does the time go?

Ok, recently have been working on the roof and connection to the two towers. Joining these is going to be... Interesting...

First things first - in order to fit symmetrically between the two towers, needed to add a length of plasticard along the side of the main roof (note also the smaller spacer strips added between tiles to allow for differences in space between individual and 'strips' of unseparated tiles):


This will rest upon the girder installed earlier. Other amendments needed included filing down part of the tiles that rest on the back of the front tower:


So that the wall above it would sit flush (ok, still need to add some thin strips to fill the gaps):


Of course nothing is ever that simple - the tower wall top also needed small pieces filing out of the girders so that the roof would fit:


The main bit that's taken time though is the front piece of the rear tower and how to link to the roof. Given I now have a door on the rear of the front tower, I wanted to do a door to the rear tower, but that's currently a window. Joy. Have to instal one... This has taken an inordinate amount of time, cutting, filing and frustration to achieve, but I'm pretty pleased with the result...

First: a regular Shrine eagle with window:


Now, after a LOT of work, with the window cut out:


This, it has to be said, is a hell of a lot easier to show than to do! The piece is awkward to cut, and filing things down a right bugger. If you look very closely you might be able to see that the window frame is now aprox half of its original width, in order to fit a door from one of the Basillica doorways:

It's not quite a flush fit at the top, but even I'm not going to quibble too much - otherwise nothing will get finished!

The gap at the bottom of the door is deliberate, as it needs to be there to accommodate the roof, given the window/door arch sticks out:


Still need to work on filling the gaps but it's a promising start! And joyfully the floors in the towers and the main roof pretty much line up too:


That's where the beast is at ATM. Two other things though - I've been giving colour schemes a bit of thought and stumbled across this image while doing some surfing which I think would work nicely:

Anyone got an opinion?

And lastly, inspired by brain555's cathedral blog, here's my interpretation of a 40k Tardis using a few left over panels:

(Although it may well end up being an outhouse - affectionally named the Turdis )

Right, I'm done. Thanks for sticking with me, more at some point....

Bwahaha I like the Turdis. And everything. This building ate a hearty breakfast of epic flakes. The color scheme is interesting... but if that's white I think you're mad to attempt to paint the whole thing white

Really nice work. Looking good.
It's worth the effort to make it all fit together so well.

The paint scheme will definitely make it all the more impressive and the light colour will help you make small details stand out on such a large model.

lol 40k tardis.

More excellent work

This project never ceases to amaze! I think the colour scheme would work, I like the idea of a giant off-white building w brown recesses and gold detailing. I think it would work well.

And the Turdis. Well what else is there to say?

Just placing another suggestion to the color scheme. This is a local church where I live.

Paint! Well... Sort of..

Thanks for the comments all, and for the suggestion deadmeat85 - that's a nice looking church and I love the knot work on the cross. Not religious myself, but religious architecture is generally glorious to behold...

Anyway - a quick update with a taster panel I whipped up this evening to try out some colours:


Pretty pleased with the way the white/cream came out (and thankfully is dead easy to do too!) but still some work to do on the metallics - think I'm going to have to find a decent copper from somewhere - any suggestions? The Old GW paints I've got just don't seem to work how I want...

Overall I think it will work well as a backdrop for my darker coloured minis (a la my Chaplain dread and commander) - plus it also gives mean excuse to start a pre-heresy Death Guard force...

Nice test piece. Like the dirt streaks.

Al i have to say is.....

I have a question for you, Phutarf. How do you cut out panels? Do you clip away the bits you intend to remove and then file everything down or is there another method you are using? Also, regarding the paint scheme, I really like the white and stark gold from your original reference photo, but I also really appreciate the look of the cream paint job on your test panel. The weathering looks great!

I use craft acrylics for all my metallics. They go on dull but dry with a nice shine. I use paints from a company called "My Studio" which is sold at most craft stores and usually runs me about .59 cents USD a bottle (which ends up being about 5 times the size of a GW pot).

Still looking great. Keep it up. And yes, I pressed my face against my computer screen and saw the work you did on the bullet hole. Nice.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
I have a question for you, Phutarf. How do you cut out panels? Do you clip away the bits you intend to remove and then file everything down or is there another method you are using?

It all depends what panel, what part I'm cutting and how difficult it is to get at. I have a pretty basic set up tools wise, most of which have been with me for decades now and have served me well:


If I don't care about the resulting mess then the saw is deployed; if I want a cleaner cut then a lot of laborious work is done with the old Exacto blades (I hate to think how many of these I've been through over the years) - and then to clean up its a case of scrapping with a blade or filing with an appropriate size file. Sometimes the sprue cutters are used to mangle bits...

Also, regarding the paint scheme, I really like the white and stark gold from your original reference photo, but I also really appreciate the look of the cream paint job on your test panel. The weathering looks great!

White would be fantastic but like GrimDork said, it would be madness to try and do the whole thing really white. And if I'm honest, in the grim and gritty future, I doubt a white building would stay that white anyway Assuming I go with the test panel then the overall result will be a pretty decent light coloured building, which will be good enough for me. Probably. Lol. Just need to work out how to do the metals to go it justice.

Still looking great. Keep it up. And yes, I pressed my face against my computer screen and saw the work you did on the bullet hole. Nice.

Haha - sorry - next time I'll take a better pic for you

As far as painting goes, can I suggest a marble look for the floor?

There's a quick tutorial here but there are other tutorials around.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1710/356350.page

Looks good.