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Spent some time this evening playing with paint formulae ... still not happy, however here are a couple of pictures showing current progress. The bottom coat is all that's been completed, everything else is at various stages of completion.





I tried two or three different schemes but nothing works the way I want it to.

Generally an unhappy evening, and I am even considering an alternate colour scheme.

I think if you started with a white undercoat instead of the black you might have better luck getting a look closer to the painting, you showed earlier. I see bothe the helmet anc the coat starting light colored and with the darker colors blended in in thin layers.

Ok, well the answer appears to be don't judge your own work in the middle of the night when your very tired and you haven't finished it. The black undercoat on the the other items was getting annoying and clashing with the coat too much for me. In addition I think one more shade in each direction (lighter & darker) will help too.

This morning while getting my daughters ready for school I grabbed 2 minutes and painted the boots in scorched brown, and very roughly shaded one of them. Its a long way from complete by the change from the unrelenting black to something more sympathetic with the coat helped a lot.



Anyway time to leave for work, today I am in South London, Balham to be exact at my own office for once. Hopefully a more relaxed day, although I already have two reports to write for clients.

Looking forward to getting home tonight and adding some more colours!

I detect a stain is needed. Nothing drastic. Just a lightly applied black stain to the coat, maybe? It just looks like it could do with one. The colour looks damn near perfect -- a great Homage.

Hmm, I'll be interested in your progress tonight.

Peace.

sA

Well coming into work was definitely the right idea, knowing I was here today I had directed some recent purchases to arrive here and they were sitting on my desk waiting for me

First off, the Forgeworld Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar I had purchased off of ebay, delivered quickly (so positive feedback for him) and in much better condition than the FW delivery I had!

Please forgive the quality of the pictures, from my iPhone instead of my tripod mounted Casio P505.



I plan to use the mortar section itself with some adjustment to the fixings in the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon I am building, according to the Imperial Armour books, the Krieg Heavy Mortar is actually just a Griffon Mortar in a wheeled carriage, so is an appropriate model for the task, however being fussy, I checked the images of the Forgeworld Griffon Mortar and it is indeed the same weapon.

As if to complement its arrival, the lovely people at http://www.e-magnetsuk.com delivered my order of magnets I require for the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon.



I got four sizes of magnets for my project: -

1. 1mm Dia x 1mm deep : Perfect for small discrete fixings, like stopping doors opening etc. 0.1kg pull
2. 2mm Dia x 1mm deep : Good for larger doors and items, including wrists etc with replaceable weapons. 0.12kg pull
3. 3mm Dia x 2mm deep : There larger magnets work well for things like sponsons or other heavy potentially removable items. 0.4kg pull
4. 3mm Dia x 4mm deep : Now this is the odd magnet for me, I have never bought one before, but as with most magnets its increased depth makes it much stronger. The aim is to use them in the gun mount on the basilisk, the mount has a depth of 8mm, which is plenty enough to hold them securely. Each one of these magnets has a 1kg pull, so a pair on either side of the gun should give substantial hold, and still enable me to switch out the gun when I want. If they are two strong, the 3mm x 2mm are the fallback plan!

With the arrival of these items, I merely need to "reproduce" the basilisk gun I modified and I will have all the items for assembly, but I promised myself I would finish the test painting on the Legionnaire first!

There is the possible arrival of another parcel from Forgeworld, containing my small brass etch eagles, if it turned up it would of course be a sign that the Emperor wants me to work on the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon

wow do FW thigns usually come so screwed?
I was thinking of buying a few things.. but i dont know now..

They occasionally turn up screwed up, however in this case I think I have had more than my fair share of bad luck.

Some are easy to fix with hot water or hair dryers, some cannot be fixed and need to be replaced.

One the subject of BasiMeduGrifs (trademark of Argos Industries), I checked the size of the Griffon Mortar and its 2mm thinner than the Basilisk/Medusa gun size at the mount point. I will therefore be adding a couple of mm using plasticard so it can sit in the same gunmount.

Being stuck at work is making me nervous about the magnet solution, I want to try them and make sure everything is going to work the way I envisioned. The 3mm x 4mm deep hole will need to be drilled into the mount .. and then the magnet with superglue slid in and left very slightly proud of the surface. The same will need to be done for the Gun itself, once complete I have to hope the two gun mounts will hold the various weapons and keep them straight. The combined pull of the magnets is 2kg, sufficient to support the weight, and given the alignment of the magnets will slide into and out of place.

Here is an image showing the proposed location of the magnets: -



(image copyright tulkasulmar @ Bootcamp, used without permission)

Given the lack of pull "along" the length of the magnet and the fact it should all slide "across" the magnet and into place. Combined with the depth (4mm) embedded into the mount, I am hoping the magnets will remain in place and not pull out.

Lets hope it all hangs together!

Oh excellent news from Mrs Argos, the (almost) final part of my Forgeworld order is sitting at home!!

This should be the Exterminator & Annihilator Leman Russ Turrets, A Manticore on a gun platform (swappable with the Hydra), my Brass etched aquila, and finally a Death Korps of Krieg Mole Launcher team (always loved that).

Definitely looking forward to getting home now

BrotherArgos wrote:

I got four sizes of magnets for my project: -

1. 1mm Dia x 1mm deep : Perfect for small discrete fixings, like stopping doors opening etc. 0.1kg pull
2. 2mm Dia x 1mm deep : Good for larger doors and items, including wrists etc with replaceable weapons. 0.12kg pull
3. 3mm Dia x 2mm deep : There larger magnets work well for things like sponsons or other heavy potentially removable items. 0.4kg pull
4. 3mm Dia x 4mm deep : Now this is the odd magnet for me, I have never bought one before, but as with most magnets its increased depth makes it much stronger. The aim is to use them in the gun mount on the basilisk, the mount has a depth of 8mm, which is plenty enough to hold them securely. Each one of these magnets has a 1kg pull, so a pair on either side of the gun should give substantial hold, and still enable me to switch out the gun when I want. If they are two strong, the 3mm x 2mm are the fallback plan!

I get my magnets from here http://www.neotexx.com/

You can get 3x3x0.5mm square jobs that surface mount really easily. While they are a german site (and so shipping is a bit more), they don't have any ordering limits which can be handy.

Here are the pictures of the Forgeworld that was waiting for me at home tonight

First off the Exterminator & Annihilator Leman Russ Turrets: -


Next is the Manticore and the gun platform, the Manticore and Hydra turrets are interchangable letting me get double duty from them



Finally the Mole Launcher (I want to have at least one team of them for my Steel Legion), and the Brass etch Eagles.


I am going to test the magnets tonight for the BasiMeduGrif, to make sure that theory will work. Followed by a little more painting

Thanks for mentioning the German magnet site !

Do you plan on doing any conversion work on that mole mortar team to make them more steel legion or just leave them as DKok?

I will only be using the hands and the equipment... not the figures. So yes they will be Steel Legion

Tonight the air was filled with magnetism!

Gentlemen I present to you the fully magnetised BasiMeduGrif ... oh and a Heavy Mortar on a carriage.

First up ... The guns and mortars themselves: -



Please note the 3mm magnets on the side of each weapon, ready to slide into place!

Here are the guns in situ ... first the Griffon Mortar & Heavy Mortar on Carriage: -







Secondly the Medusa: -





Continued in the next post ... the Basilisk!

And now the Basilisk: -





As you can see all the guns have been magnetised as have the gun mounts in the Compartment and the Gun Carriage.

I finished the Eagle and bolts on the Earthshaker cannon, and spent some time building up the body of the Griffon Mortar to fit the gun posts.

All the magnets are tightly fitting and glued with superglue, so far no glue failures, but its still early days.

It was a good night, with very pleasing results however as its 1:15am and I am travelling up country to Milton Keynes tomorrow I am going to get to bed now!

Steel Legion are generally a mechanized army, have you planned anything special for your Chimeras?

Outstanding work, Argos! Can you shoot a photo to show us where you placed the magnets on the armored compartment?

Brilliant stuff wow you work fast.

Sorry, going to go off topic here for a moment as its been a good day for me

If you own Dawn of War II .. and have the 1.3.1 patch you will be able to see the following



Its right at the end of the credits, however it wasn't there when the game was released.

Some time age Dominic Chan (Mad Scuzzy), noticed a significant similarity between the buttons on the Army Painter in Dawn of War II, and our own Space Marine painter.

Here is a copy of their button, and our artwork.



It looked quite suspiciously like out Marine Painter image had been used to generate the buttons in DoW II, and we had not been credited or mentioned.

Well after a few months of emails and discussion THQ/Relic did the right thing and admitted they had used the images, although it had been a mistake

They apologised, added our name to the Credits (see above) and a bag of goodies is in the post

Nice to see the everyone get the credit they deserve!

Ok sorry for that, just was really happy ... back to the steel legion!

erhm... gief goodies NAO

Looks similar, but doesn't look like a copy.

...its a copy. I don't see a single detail that isn't the same.

aka_mythos wrote:...its a copy. I don't see a single detail that isn't the same.

I'm glad I went back and brought it all into photoshop for a closer look. Now I have to conclude that they are in fact definitely not the same. They probably just added that stuff to make them feel better. Easier than generating negative feedback for something so trivial.

The first thing I did was scale them to be equal. Given that there is a great deal of pixelation from the smaller in-game image, I added some filters, tweaked the lighting and eventually removed the color.



Many of these details you cannot see on the screen, you miss much of the detail not being able to zoom in, but in Photoshop it becomes very apparent the differences.
1) The heads have all sorts of stuff that doesn't really match up.
2) The space between the arms and the body is larger on the painter version.
3) The knee pits have ribbing on the game version, the painter doesn't.

I was worried that some might claim the differences are only due to the resolution of the game version. So I decided to line them up in an attempt to de-res the painter version to match the game version. Turns out they really don't match up at all. The proportions are all off everywhere. I've attempted to show this by layering different tranparancies on top of each other. I don't know if it will come across, but when you're sliding the transparency slider and can see it appear in real time on top of each other-there is no doubt, they're not the same.



You can click on the above one and zoom in via the Dakka viewer.

<laughs> The image was resized, but not proportionally, so that it would fit the button. Just untick "constrain proportions" in Photoshop.

That plus an email from THQ admitting it had been used, and had been scheduled to be replaced with their own artwork , but due to time constraints it had been overlooked.

But hey, you might be right, the world is a weird place, funny for a company in this day and age of legal battles to admit fault though.

Last night was a quiet night for me, however I did some work on the last piece for a unified Artillery approach.

With the magnets in place and a common system for attaching the guns, the remaining piece to work on was the Earthshaker gun platform: -



This uses the plastic part from the Basilisk, which I modified last night to handle the gun posts from the BasiMeduGrif, this will allow me to use the Earthshaker gun platform for my Basilisk barrel or Medusa barrel. The modification puts the gun mounts into the exact same height and position as the plastic ones were, adds detail above and beyond the plastic one and allows me to use magnets.



There is a section of "filling" that needs to be done, and detail like nuts and bolts etc. need to be added but that won't take long.

With this complete I will have the ability to swap all the various gun barrels between multiple mobile or static platforms depending on my requirements (Apocalypse or 40k for instance). Obviously the same gun platform can also be used for the Hydra or Manticore systems too, giving me many artillery options as required.

Wow, that is quite a few options. I feel bad whenever I don't build something like a Whirlwind with the ability to be a standard rhino.

I have a question for you, I am in the process of working out what time I have at the weekend to work on this project. The project currently has three streams of activity: -

1. Sculpting - Arms, Legs, heads, etc.
2. Painting - Working on the paint scheme for test figure.
3. Modelling - Working on Vehicles, currently the Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon.

As I have no idea how many people are following this log (if any), I have the following question for those that are: -

This weekend which should I focus on for the log: -

1. Sculpting
2. Painting
3. Modelling

Please post below (if anyone is reading this) which you think I should focus on!

It would be really nice to know how many people are interested and what they are interested in

Painting.

You have shown us abjectly little of what you can do with a brush, but judging by how masterful the rest of your project is, I'm sure we'll be impressed. Sort out a few of your troopers, fix the colour scheme etc.

Peace.

sA

These are looking great ! i love the idea for a magnetised basalisk/griffon/medusa tanks may have to steel that idea for my krieg, will save me a couple of bob.

I've been following quietly from the sidelines and have been most interested in the sculpting and vehicle assembly (but mostly the sculpting).

Great work on everything. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.