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What a great year in review post!

 dsteingass wrote:
What a great year in review post!

Truely. I'm thinking 2017 will be even better.

@brushcommando: Thank you! Heh, Titan is on the bench now (and I even did some painting in the head's interior!), so you guys will DEFINITELY be seeing things happen with him this year! Goal is to have him done for Adepticon, so I have a little less than 3 months to make the magic happen!

@WM: I've already resigned to the fact that my numbers will crash cause of this thing
Maybe this year should be on a points system... Id be at, what... 3k after the Titan?

@RiTides: The bacon was a fun project... Glad that you ended up loving them!

@dstein: Thanks, Dave!!

@SL: Good or bad, this year is gonna be Titanic


===============

So I'm waiting on a few minor supplies for the Titan (in particular, some square pins for the arm-swaps), so I took to a bit of painting and assembly.

First painted mini of the year is a Guildball figure- Second Season captain of the Brewer's guild, Esters!






I also got the standing Princeps painted up. This poor guy has really seen some bad times. Scarred up nasty face, one arm... (Hope he was left handed!) I tried to paint the "clipboard" he has as some sort of iPad-esque Dataslate with some vague graphics. Wonder how he deals with the touchscreen...

The base is a bit from the Adepticon swag bag some years ago. Laser cut cardboard, I think it was. Wouldn't be able to tell you the company, though! It's an interesting product... I much prefer resin basing for my scenic stuff, but this was handy as a quick and dirty solution.







On the building side of things, I've been messing with some Infinity and Hordes minis for future projects.





Lots to do, lots to do!!

2017 off with a bang, she is my type of girl, brilliant work, Love the auditor.

Happy new year sir.

You have been a busy boy.... Happy New Year Ramos! Can't wait to see what wonderments you provide for us in the next 12 months!

 Ramos Asura wrote:
@brushcommando: Thank you! Heh, Titan is on the bench now (and I even did some painting in the head's interior!), so you guys will DEFINITELY be seeing things happen with him this year! Goal is to have him done for Adepticon, so I have a little less than 3 months to make the magic happen!

@WM: I've already resigned to the fact that my numbers will crash cause of this thing
Maybe this year should be on a points system... Id be at, what... 3k after the Titan?

No ... by weight.. your sure to beat your last year total in the first month!

I've got 2 old metal dreadnoughts, that might be as much as the Warlord.

Weight is a good metric for this year


Still working on the next update (I keep getting distracted by actually BUILDING the damned thing, haha), but Im pleased to report that I got some brass in from dsteingrass (again, thanks a MILLION), and the arms are pinned, sanded, and all working beautifully!


In the mean time, and I know im killing some of you guys by teasing Titan with no pics , but I've another mini to show!
This is Rayna from Red Panda Miniatures. Fun little line started by a friend of mine.






Technically this should be part of last year's progress, as she was done before Christmas hit- I just wanted to make sure that my Secret Santa recipient got her in the mail before revealing it... Ah well, Gotta pad this year's numbers somehow!

Ill try to have some Titan footage for next time!

Warlord Part 12: [Insert Shoulder-based Pun Here]

With the primary weapons complete, it's time to move to the secondaries. For this particular warlord, we are looking at Carapace Laser Blasters!

The main body is a simple affair, and is constructed similar to the Volcano Cannon. After initial cleaning of the chunks of sprue, I chose to put a big pin in the middle of the parts for that extra bit of structure.



The guns have three barrels each, and assembly is simple as they are all the same part, simply rotated. I had to bend a couple of my barrels just a bit, as they warped during casting/shipping. Just a simple dip in hot water.
I found that even though the barrels are the same, they ended up fitting into the main housing -just- a tiny bit differently. Just depending how the sprue was cut from it, how the tab was cast, how you sanded it, the tiny imperfections in bending warped barrels... All these add to make the fit just a smidgen different for each one. Additionally, I tended to drill just slightly off-center for pins, so each barrel only really fit perfectly in one spot. To this end, I labeled each barrel and its corresponding hole.



Be sure that the barrels are parallel with each other and that they are all the same length, and dont forget the little triangular spacer at the very end of the assembly. This fits into several tabs on the gun barrels.



Once cured, you'll want to pin it to the shoulder mount. When gluing this particular part, I propped the gun barrels in a slightly elevated position to give the model a bit of movement. You can make this as extreme or as sedate as you wish- the joint will pretty much tell you how far you can go with it.



Next step is to dress up the gun with details. The more that you angled the guns, the more you'll need to bend the side tubing. Since they're so thin, a quick dip in hot water will make them nice and flexible. The piston is even simpler than that, as it's just another case of cutting it to fit!



The last thing we want to do is make these swappable. Just a little bit of future proofing, plus, what's cooler than being able to aim at where you're shooting!?
Making these weapons swappable is easy, as it's just a case of putting a pair of 1/4 inch magnets in the gun mount as well as the shoulder. This'll make it sit tightly to the rest of the warlord, but still be able to rotate a little.


Next time- Its all starting to come together now... Let's build a head!

Some might fine lookin Reaver guns she's got going on there.

One day when Whaley gets his 2nd Titan, imma gonna pain' it!

The scale of this thing just warps my brain. Great walkthru.

 nerdfest09 wrote:
One day when Whaley gets his 2nd Titan, imma gonna pain' it!

This is my second titan.

These actually are better modeled than the Reaver's las-blaster. A lot more detail. I'll have to compare them to mine to see how the size fares. Be interesting if someone used these to out fit their Reaver.

Nerd.. you can paint my next one! Don't you have one already in the QUE?

Good update Big guy! Only little more than 2 months to go!

Good lord...

 whalemusic360 wrote:

 nerdfest09 wrote:
One day when Whaley gets his 2nd Titan, imma gonna pain' it!

This is my second titan.

second WARLORD! I should have been more specific sorry dude!

What a teaser pic, you can see it fully standing and everything! I want a "full titan" shot

Looking awesome Ramos!

Good review of 2016, you really kicked out a load of great stuff.

EDC

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Good lord...

Indeed!


and what Ritides said... ' I want ...'

It wouldn't have it's armor plates on yet. I'm thinking Ramos is going to leave those off to paint separate.

Hehehe, yes, yes... it really is further along than the project logs indicate- All assembly is in fact done!

The limiting factor of the project logs is really my own laziness- I want to have them long and informative, but that takes time... Time that I could do assembling!

That said, I'll try to pick up the pace on updates. Planning overall primer today, so larger paint WIP pics are coming!


WM is correct about the armor plates, though- Those will all get painted up separate for ease of painting.

I'm just catching up with this again, and your work is impressive! I'm particulary excited to see the titan going together. Very nice work!

I understand how time-consuming it is to document these things. I just listed an army on eBay, and that took two hours start to finish. I can't imagine how long this is taking you!

I love this! All of the guns for this beast are so cool-looking! Like everyone else, I'm eagerly awaiting some full shots of the model (maybe with you or someone else standing next to it for scale), plus the painting of course!

Warlord Part 13: A Head of the Game

Predictable head joke is predictable, haha...

Anyways!

This particular head variant- the Mars-Beta Pattern- I believe was from a Warhammer World Open Day. Of the three heads I recall seeing for the kit, I think this is my favorite. It's not the big ugly furnace head, nor is it the stock up-scaled Knight head.

I always imagined that the Warlord kit would have a much more spacious and impressive bridge area. And with more staff, too! Instead we have a control room not much bigger than the Warhound's, and with the same number of staff. It's a bit weird how similar they are... I'd almost swear that the Princeps model is the same as well!




Assembly is pretty straight-forward, however like many other parts of this build it was time consuming. I plan on painting the full interior (because I'm a glutton for punishment!), so I ended up building three main subassemblies- the lower faceplate, the sides/neck, and the top plate of the head. The latter will be magnetized so that you can look inside. A carapace armor plate sits above the head, preventing the "top" of the head from being easily removed, so I'll be magnetizing the head to the body as well.

I started by gluing the two halves of the faceplate together, then used the interior floor to align the plates. Rubber band them tightly together and let it cure. Just be sure that your glue doesn't ooze out and glue the floor as well!




The back of the head is a bit more complex, as it's 4 pieces which make up part of a box. Again, we are going to use the rest of the assembly to align the parts. Everything more or less locates to each other with tabs, making our job even easier. I found it helpful to stuff a bit of wadded up tissue paper into the head to act as positive pressure, pressing the walls of the head outward against the rubber band. This ensures that the walls don't squish inwards and dry incorrectly.

After the walls were glued to the floor (remember, NOT the face!), I put the top of the head on in order to align the walls vertically. Strap all this together and let cure.




Once that's set, glue on the cables. You may need to bend these a bit, but in my case, I didn't find it necessary. I inserted a small pin into where the cable connected vertically to the rest of the head. The "cheeks," on the other hand, had a tab that seemed to locate pretty well on its own. Glue it, Clamp it, Band it, and let cure.



==================================

At this point you should be left with the three sub assemblies. Take this time to paint up the interior, then once that's set and done, move on to the next phase of the project




========================================



So bit of an extra for you guys... Its a quick pic, and mind that Im a bit freakishly tall, but here is a scale shot with me next to the big guy's skeleton.




(OoooOOoooOOooohh.... Its black now... wonder what that means )

Pretty sure which of the two of you has the more frightening visage.

So the armor has begun!!

Completely new way to paint white, mostly custom mixes of white and some P3 colors. The Privateer colors really do airbrush wonderfully. Never have had a problem thinning them and getting smooth blends.

A little difficult to see on the photos (white is a bear to photograph!), but it fades to a pale gray-blue. Really exciting to see paint finally going on this

That is a ton of white. I know there are several large pieces that aren't in there too (that will be black).

Yes indeedy. In fact, a few of the largest pieces of white armor are getting black detailing on them, so there will be even less white than shown in that picture!


I'd guess we're looking at around a quarter to a third of the armor actually staying white. The rest is destined for black!



Not pictured- Several GIANT pieces of shin armor!



EDIT:

Suppose I can post up my color scheme thoughts...
I took the image from the front of the Warlord instruction manual, then threw it in photoshop to make it into a line drawing. Print out on red paper (because Im too lazy to change it in my printer), and scribble in with a white and black pencil.



Overall, I think we've settled on this, save for adding some extra black to the side gun armor. Currently Im doing all the complex masking necessary for spraying black over the white pieces... Lotsa stripes!

What are the plans for the tilt shields? Some decal action?

Cripes, I've no clue at the moment
Needs to be something suitably grand for the big guy, so Im definitely thinking some decal/freehand action. Its mostly a case of figuring out what exactly to put on it!