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Hello all, I just thought I'd share some comments and photos on my entry from the DPC. Thanks again to everyone who voted for me!

First off, here is my entry:


I am not really into WHFB but have always admired the various undead armies, so this contest was a good excuse to try something new. I had not used LEDs inside a model before either, so thought that would be an interesting thing to try. The next step was just finding a model that would let me use an LED to good effect from the WHFB undead range. I settled on the banshee you see above as the pose was good and the mouth seemed like a very appropriate place for blinding, powerful, magic light to burst from.

The attached photos show the various stages in assembling this model. First off I had to cut the model in half, then cut down from the mouth to the back of the head with a small pin vice bit, and then up from the stomach to the back of the head through the model to give the light a channel to go through. Fortunately the model is metal so light reflects down the tunnel fairly well. Next, I had to make a large hole in the bottom half of the model to fit the LED in. I wrapped the legs of the LED in paper to stop them from shorting out on the metal of the model, then made a hole in the base for them to fit through.

I had to use a larger, circular base for the model as the default square base would not fit the battery that I used. The underside of the model (not pictured) is just a mess of blu-tac and fuse wire to wire the LED to the battery. I didnt bother using a resistor as it is not permanently lit - just for the photos. The battery sticks out very slightly from the bottom of the base but that is something I can fix easily by trimming down the underside of the base, I just ran out of time for this contest.

The model fit back together fairly cleanly (GW razor saw did a great job making a clean separation), but I needed to tidy up with a bit of greenstuff, so I added a small belt to the corset to mask my cut. It turned out fairly well and is hard to notice unless you are looking for it, so I am quite pleased with the results despite my woeful lack of greenstuff experience.

To add to the creepy atmosphere, I took a woodland scenics bare tree and cut off all the branches, then placed them around the base to make it look like dead undergrowth. After that I added some of the small slate chips from the GW hero basing kit. Next I undercoated the model (base vallejo black and model citadel codex grey). After some experiments with colour (including purple skin) I decided that the model looks horrible with any colour so went with the monochrome scheme that you see in the end. All went pretty much to plan with the exception of the jewelery, where I ran out of time and was forced to go with a boring silver scheme instead of something a bit more interesting.

And that is about it!

Very cool. Good stuff.

Nice.

Ive got to try adding LED Lights into some of my models!

I am inspired...I was actually in a Model Train store the other day, and they had an LED that cut in and out to simulate a welding torch, and now I am convinced to purchase said light, and set it under a dreadnaught arm for some serious Weapon Destroyed results....

Thanks...I think

nice. I did not realize that was yours.

Pretty neat, I think the eyes should have been done too for the full effect. But I bet that would have been quite a bit more work. Cool Idea, well done and good over all look Id say. Thanks for sharing the "how I did it", I might have to mess around with this one day.......great another cool thing on my never ending list of stuff I want to try to do.

Thanks for the kind comments everyone.

JediRaptor wrote:I am inspired...I was actually in a Model Train store the other day, and they had an LED that cut in and out to simulate a welding torch, and now I am convinced to purchase said light, and set it under a dreadnaught arm for some serious Weapon Destroyed results....

There are loads of cool LED models out there, check out this necron as one of the best: http://www.coolminiornot.com/123736

Captain Vyper wrote:Pretty neat, I think the eyes should have been done too for the full effect. But I bet that would have been quite a bit more work. Cool Idea, well done and good over all look Id say. Thanks for sharing the "how I did it", I might have to mess around with this one day.......great another cool thing on my never ending list of stuff I want to try to do.

I considered doing the eyes, but thought that it would take away from the effect in this case, as it would have made it a bit too much. I decided on making the eyes very dark (black in fact), to show a sort of soulless power culminating deep inside the banshee.

Thanks for the link.....very cool.

I'll get on it by the end of the week...and post when ready.

I voted for that! It shoud've won! Oh well, can't argue with the public.

yea that one was my fav by far. the others were cool but yours had LIGHTS! lol really nice job on that BTW

Ive done it to! look at this:


http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/214404.page#328825

Thanks to everyone who voted. Unfortunately my model does not really allow for much colour so I couldnt do much with the paintjob compared to some of the other amazing miniatures, and even if I could I cant paint that well anyway so I dont think I should have won compared to some of the other amazing entries.

Ah yes I forgot about those shogun, I loved the carnifex especially. Some great work there.

Hey I liked the idea of the led light! I thought that was pretty unique! good job on that!

LEDs in metal models are insane

Blended wrote:Hey I liked the idea of the led light! I thought that was pretty unique! good job on that!

woohoo praise from the champ

Darkness wrote:LEDs in metal models are insane

This I cant argue with. It took about 5 different drill bits, gradually increasing in size, and a continual risk of dremelling through my hand to bore through that lower model. The upper part just used the pin vice which was a little easier. I'm still finding chunks of metal around my painting area today.

I like the base.

That really was a nice peice man. I am still trying to get up the nerve to try an LED project myself, but I keep building armies. I suppose there are worse problems to have...

What size LED did you use? I always have a hard time guessing the sizes needed for that sort of thing.

Thanks all, I used a 3mm 3.3V high intensity white LED. You can get much smaller LEDs but they would have been a real pain to wire up, and there was space for a 3mm LED to fit in the midsection of the model so that was what I went for.

Well, just purchased two led's today....time to get to work

I take it there's a watch battery in the base or something?