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Well, I ordered my chaos reaver titan, and it's arrived!

.....But it's missing its lower legs and knee pads! So the project's been delayed.

Which I feel is a blessing in disguise, as I haven't yet finished all the rhinos for my mechanized army, nor my baneblade, and a defiler needs finishing touches. As such, this blog begins with.... get that stuff painted and out of the way!

I have....

8 or 9 Rhinos. 5 are painted to acceptable "finished" standards but need just a little touchup. The rest need painting. The baneblade needs detail work and a finishing touch on its rear. The defiler was painted in a rush before a tournament and while "done", has a lot of bleed over spots that need taking care of.

These I want to get out of the way before I really get cracking on the reaver. Thus begins my Armoured Assault blog! Pictures will be forthcoming, but if you go to my gallery from my recent apocalypse game here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-4298-5906_6k%20Apocalypse%20Ba%20Vs%20Ec.html , you'll see the baneblade on display [briefly] as well as all of the rhinos in question - from the 5 painted to the ones black primered and/or grey. A rhino a week shouldn't be TOO hard....right?


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An update already: Just to get the ball rolling, I worked on those 5 painted rhinos tonight. Some finishing details like dabbing boltgun on the rivets, adding yellow to the headlights, and a highlight on the red tassle on one of the CSM gunners. Very minor little touchups! These are all they're really missing though. I could go highlight the metals, or edge highlight all the black on the rhinos, but honestly, these aren't here to win Golden Daemons, they're here to look painted on the tabletop, and they're pretty much done.

Well here's update number one!


I started working on the reaver, and found the knee joint pieces to have a rather large line where the mold shifted. It goes right across the gear, so I emailed FW for replacements - kind of a stickler thing, but I paid a lot for this!

2 weeks of no reply [which isn't bad, I know they get a lot] and I decide that since I'm not really painting this for a contest or anything, just for tabletop use, might as well start.





Got a lot of work done last night! The upper leg pieces are pinned through each large piston, so they're pretty solid. The lower leg guard mounts I'm worried about though, as they're a bit small to pin unless I want the pin to go right through the hole in the center - in which case I worry about it just tearing through, should they take some kind of shock that would have just snapped them off. They gave me some trouble trying to get them fitted on right, and the leg armour is touching in the front as a result - oh well! They'll work alright. The leg piston guards are built, but I'm at the point where I really need to start painting things before I start assembling them. This, I shall attempt tonight!

As for the Armoured Assault part of this blog, I managed to get my rhinos ALMOST all finished. They're table-ready, just need some details and then some cleanup with some black paint to cover mistakes. The Baneblade, too, got a bit more attention with some more detail work done on the Noisemarine "sponsons" and got a boltgun drybrush along its treads. It too is table ready, but still needs a lot of work.


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Just to add: THIS MORNING I get an email from FW saying they'll send me the replacement knee joints. GRRR!

Small update: Got several pieces primed tonight, and filed down the pistons for the legs. I found I'm missing a hip piston [counted a 17th toe piston as a hip piston instead when I did inventory!] so that'll slow down the hip construction a bit. I tried a dry fit tonight, and the more I look at it the more I'm probably going to settle on a very non-dynamic, both feet on the ground pose. I really wanted it starting to pick up its right foot, like the unpainted chaos reaver on the FW website, but it looks like it's going to be a LOT of extra work and fiddling with pistons and positioning than it's worth. Any opinions on whether it should be standing/stepped flat or walking/stepping?

At the end of the day, i would make it my own, put it in a postion thats different, no matter how hard or long it will take to do it. Its not a race

Yeah, I think I'm going to go for it taking a step. It'll be more work to get the positioning of the foot right, but actually it looks like it'll be easier on the actual leg piston fittings.

I got several pieces primed last night. Tonight starts the painting! I'll get some pics up probably tomorrow. Called Forgeworld, and they've got another Hip Piston on its way to me. Let's hope it's the right one! Since there's hip pistons, leg pistons, toe pistons and torso pistons, it's easy to get it confused.


Edit: Started the painting. I like how FW did their titan, because it seems really simple. It looks like a lot of washes over base colors. While I lack the expertise to get the weathered effect they have, the basic plan is to paint a solid Warlock Purple over the recessed fields of the plating, followed by a purple wash [probably watered down]. This will then be glossed to give it a nice shine. The trim will be bronze washed black for antiquing and then highlighted gold, while the rest [the vast majority of anything not armour plate or trim] will be metal or bronze/gold with washes, just to make things simple. I want this done in a reasonable amount of time, and I keep telling myself "not for golden daemon, not for golden daemon" to hopefully enable myself to find simple solutions that look good on the table but are easy to achieve.

Without further ado, here's the first paint-to-model shot! Two coats of watered down Warlock Purple has gotten a fairly solid color.

OMG, how can only one person have replied!?!?! But enough over-reacting, that looks great. You are gonna get plenty of looks, both good and bad, with a pink reaver.

Got a lot done yesterday!



Not shown is the rest of the leg pieces, all primed and ready to paint except for the pistons for the hip and toes, and the cables that go beneath the crotch.

Painting this thing really isn't that hard, though that's probably because I've chosen to make SO MUCH of it metal, either the dwarf bronze or boltgun. Multiple coats is the name of the game, though. With no airbrush, I have to use multiple thin coats to avoid brush strokes. It looks like it's working!

Other problem is that there's a vicious cycle with this thing involving pins. I can't put it together before I paint it, else I can't get to certain parts. I need to pin the joints for strength and stability, but I don't really know how some of them will fit together until the thing really starts to take shape (I can't really just suspend 8 different parts together to see the interaction, I'll have to adjust as I glue things in). Thus I basically have to get everything painted, THEN I'll be messing with pins, which I worry will mess up the paint job in places. I foresee touchup.

Primer's sticking well to it, better than I thought. Only one piece has repelled primer, and I just scratched up the troublesome spot and tried it again by hand, and it stuck fine. I'm definitely going through a lot of primer on this baby though!

Since I'm waiting for the hip piston to come in the mail and can't finish the legs until it does, I've started turning my attention to other areas. I cleaned up one of the turbolasers last night, and will wash the mold release off it tonight so I can start painting.

No pictures tonight, but after a busy weekend, I got some more work done.

I've begun washing several of the larger areas, and experimenting.

Lesson 1: Washing and painting broad areas is different from small! It's a little blotchy in places, but that was sort of the idea. On the metal it's not bad (I dip my brush in water and then use it to spread out the wash a bit to help with that) and on the areas that will be purple, the intended effect is somewhat blotchy (see FW reaver's red coloration)

Lesson 2: Gloss varnish leaves streaks a bit too. Not much I can do about that, but it's hardly noticable far away.

So I've gotten several pieces washed, and I've experimented on one of the leg piston guards to see how the gloss varnish over my Warlock Purple-washed-purple will look, and I'm pleased with the results. Hopefully in the next couple days I can have some assembled legs! I'll definitely take more pics.

Left foot WIP. The toes aren't glued on, but everything else was fastened into place tonight. I figure since there's 9 glued joins in this section that it could go without pins - I'm sure I'll be proven wrong. The knee joint will get pinned, and I'd like to pin it up at the hip as well, but we'll see.

Building the foot was easier than expected. As it turns out, Reaver titans can't lean forward or backward and bend their ankles too well. The front and rear piston guards barely fit, with the pistons entirely inserted into them. One could cut one shorter so that they could achieve the desired effect I suppose, but I personally am very much enjoying the simplicity of building it "stock". This same concept, though, is what makes the rear foot start to lift when you position it right. For me, the inner piston guard was the same way, meaning the only adjustable guard I had to mess with on this foot was the outside one. I've discovered too late a little snafu I made on the placement of the shin armour plates, so when it comes time to fasten them I may just resort to lots of glue and a prayer, if they don't fit into their grooves properly.

Another snag is varnishing. As I've given a gloss varnish over the purple layers, I'm afraid a Matte varnish over the whole model when it's done will kill it. I suppose I could go over those areas by hand again, but man that defeats the purpose of having painted them first!

Interesting choice of colourscheme. Valkyrie has a Reaver in progress- you two should get together for a game when you're done!

Finally! After weeks of painting pieces, the thing is starting to gain some height!






The left knee joint is pinned, the right upper leg is just kind of being held up by gravity. Today I should be finishing the hip pistons, back of the knee pistons, and the kneepads so that I'll finally be finished with the legs! Well, they'd still need the underhanging cables, but those can really come at any time.

I was getting a bit discouraged from not being able to SEE any progress with it, despite what's amounted to over 30 hours of painting. Now that the pieces are starting to come together, though, it's definitely looking mighty impressive. Plus, I feel like the hard part will be over once the legs are free-standing. The upper body lacks all the pistons and small pieces that are in the legs other than a set of 6 or so torso pistons, so the rest of this project should come fairly quickly. I may be finished by the end of May!

Note: As those who are actually following the blog may have noticed, I abandoned the idea to have it stepping. It will be mounted on a scenic base at some point that I plan on screwing it down onto, so I went with making both feet flat on the ground].

I looks really nice. I just wanna ask how big is it because I am planning to make a scratch build reaver.

What a project! Seems like one of those times an airbrush would be very, very handy.

I was iffy on the purple at the start but its looking nice and dirty or corrupty now, Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

chunky monkey wrote:I looks really nice. I just wanna ask how big is it because I am planning to make a scratch build reaver.

It CURRENTLY stands 9" tall, to the top of its thigh. It should be getting another 8" or so of height to the top of its Missle Launcher, if my guesses are correct.

Got the legs together!




The left, decorated knee


And the right-side, plain knee that I decorated slightly. Couldn't keep my hands still so it blurred, but the Slaanesh symbol was actually painted gold, then highlighted mythril silver to make it stand out amidst the black-washed Dwarf Bronze that covers the rest of the model.

Astute Reaver fans will notice I'm missing the cables that hang beneath it, but those will be coming later. Right now, I want to get going on the body! I'm more than halfway there. The legs have 103 pieces, the body has only 45! Even including weapons, it comes to only 73 more pieces not counting chaos fluffy bits.

Not as pinned as I'm sure some would recommend. It's got pins in each knee, pins connecting the round ball joint of each leg to its thigh, and a pin running through the center of its hips.

Also, a hint for anyone building one of these: Don't sweat the hip pistons! This thing was impossible when I was trying to cut them all to a perfect fit, all the way around. It was a nightmare! Tip: Don't worry about making them touch the inside of the hip joint well, just cut them so they're short enough to fit inside that area, then just glue them down on the hip piece. So long as they continue on to oblivion inside the machine's leg part, they'll look fine!

I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and I think the color scheme is appropriate to my army while also doing the model justice.

I dont understand why this thread gets so few replies. For one, the Chaos Reaver is an awesome looking beast of a machine and your scheme is quite the eye-catcher. Sure, its bold, but it works well for Slaanesh.

Looking forward to more.

Colour reminds me of perfume or something, very appropriate and cool, keep up the good work!

May i say Valk has finished his reaver, its coming to get you...

EagleArk.

EPiK, really this has to be the most spectacular model to behold fully painted, the detail seems better than the imperial one.

That looks really epic.

ubbeknubbe wrote:That looks really epic.

No, it's 28mm scale

Very nice paint job, If your thinking about converting it to be more slaaneshy, be sure you know what your doing.

Mmm it is a slanesh tita right so try making it look like a giant deaonette? Just a brainwave.

EagleArk.

Oi, unfortunately after having a look over the kit once I got it, most conversion ideas went out the window. Beyond the legs, every piece is very large, and doesn't lend well to modifications. I have more of those Slaanesh symbols to stick here and there, and I've been thinking about sculpting eyes [like, actual eyes not robot lenses] where the eyes go to show its possession, but for the most part there's really just not much I can do with it feasibly.

I'm somewhat toying around with the idea of riders, though. Daemonettes standing on top, or perhaps a dance led by the Masque of Slaanesh, if I can maybe convert the Masque into a different pose, and then have all the daemonettes adopting the same pose as if the dance was synchronized [which might not be very "chaosy", but it would show that they were dancing, as opposed to just daemonettes-on-reaver].

I've also considered having some doomsiren-like additions to the top carapace. I think it'll be a lot easier to sculpt/stick attachments onto the outside of the body than try to mess with the construction of the machine itself.

Thanks for the replies guys! And let Valk's reaver come! I'm sure the powers of chaos can handle it!

I like the dancing idea, i am all for it!

EagleArk.

awesome reaver! keep up the good work

I love the paint job its been given

Great work

Thanks for the measurement. Its looking good.

I like the idea the the dancing demonettes you could even go as far as a a noise marine rock band.

Awesome the Daemonettes sound a great idea.

Brilliant work, keep it up