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EDIT; This has now grown into an army blog, so if a mod could please move the thread to that forum I'd really appreciate it.

So, I've been busy with uni, and hurt my wrists, so I've not done any mini painting literally all year, but now my exams are over and my wrists are a bit better, so I thought I'd give myself a challenge; paint a new 40k army before I hopefully leave for Japan at the end of the summer. I started on GW stuff with "Angels of Death" back in the mid-90's, and usually play Dark Angels, but I've got an old Blood Angels army in need of renovating, so I thought I'd resurrect them with the new codex. Then I read about Furioso Dreadnought Librarians, and decided they'd be a great piece to model... this is the result.








For what it's worth, this is my first real attempt at NMM and object-source lighting. I flirted with both for my GD entry last year, but totally sucked at them both. This is still a WIP, but I'm much happier with it so far. My main problem is that the sword looks too... "busy" now. Don't really want to repaint it, though.

I'd say 'busy' is the exact word for the sword, and I honestly can't stand the hand but the paint job is quite nice.

The more I look at the sword, the more I want to repaint it, honestly. And I figured the hand wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but it fit my original idea nicely, and was in my bits box, so it went on the model. Thanks for the honesty!

I would try a change on the hand using the dreadnaught power fist that comes with the venerable dreadnaught with a few simple cuts to make the fingers do what you want. You can do a bitz search on ebay if you need one. They're like $0.99. As for the sword, I've always found that simple is better when it comes to power weapons. A cracked magma look is probably as far as you want to take it with complexity, and honestly the good ole' blue with white highlights always looks nice.

Honestly, I don't like the Ven Dread's fist much (that's the kit this is based on), which is what got me thinking about using one of my open Gundam hands for a "casting" pose. As for the sword, I've had luck with the "space hulk" style look, I might try that when I redo it.

Loving the SHINING! FINGAAAA!

i would shorten the sword (it's a bit much) but i definitely like the pose. very samurai-esque!

i like the hand. but id change out the sword.

Nice, that's a Gundam hand IIRC. Forget what series it was, but one of the gundams had these flaming hands and its main rival had purple flaming hands or something that effect.

Anyway, nice work. It looks pretty cool. Not too keen on the sword either to be honest.

:edit: 1337 posts! : )

Thanks a lot guys. Yeah, it's the hand from the 1/100 Master Grade God Gundam (AKA Burning Gundam in the US), I have a few of them lying around and thought that one of my Gundam "grabbing" hands would be cool for a Casting pose. My first choice was actually one of the ones from one of the Strike Freedom kits, as it's a bit more angular, but it's missing a finger, which sucks.
And yeah, the sword will get painted again later today, I think. ?Might go for a red or purple variant on the "Space Hulk" style force weapons... Maybe a dark purple blade, then orange and yellow crackles.

EDIT: What Isn't immediately obvious from the photos is that I've added 4 points of articulation to each shoulder! The arms move up and down, back and forward, and rotate at 2 places...

I agree on the sword being a little "busy" for my tastes and never was a massive fan of the dreadnought hand. But I really like the paintwork on the main body though. The purple repaint on the sword would be interesting to see.

Excellent painting on the model, the only thing I'm not fond of is the paint pattern on the sword, its just a little too wierd for my liking. Other than that, superb painting and hightlighting

Good news and bad news... Good news is, I managed to strip the sword back to the blue layer... Bad news is, I think I overdid the OSL and now I'm unhappy with it...



Might give up on him for now and concentrate on trying some NMM on my Sanguinary Guard...

I like the idea of the hand but I think it could be more '40k' ish, just my opinion

Is that hand from a gundam? The old Shining Gundam had a hand just like that!

I like the paintwork, but the sword is a bit plain. Tart it up more with curves, holes, saw teeth, grooves, etc.

Honestly, just find something online that looks nasty, and then steal it and make your own.

http://db.mmo-champion.com/static/img/screenshots/21.jpg

Whatever.

Master Llyons - My original plan for the hand was a much more boxy and angular one, but unfortunately it was broken. :(

Samus - Yeah,like I said earlier, it's a God Gundam hand.

Phryxis - Thanks. To be honest, I tried to keep it kinda plain and simple... I wanted to just go for a fairly plain blade I could try and detail up with paint. I've had fun with more "wicked" looking blades before.. My scratch-sculpted Slaaneshi Daemon Prince(ess) has quite a good one still. I'd post a pic if I knew if you could get away with boobs here or not...

THIS HAND OF MINE BURNS WITH AN AWESOME POWER!

Honestly, if it wasn't too "Tau" or "eldar" looking, I'd be tempted to be all 俺のこの右手釜かに燃える！ on the chest or banners or something. Maybe I should try and put it in latin...

thats madd

Thanks man.

Having looked at it again in the light of day, I'm waiting for a bit of feedback elsewhere before I proceed with this guy, I think.

Is that a Gundam hand. Funny, I did the same for some Blood Talons.

For the third time or so, yup, God Gundam hand. And yeah, I was thinking of using the Master Gundam hands for Blood Talons on another Furioso if this worked out well.

The sword looks better but I have to agree that the hand looks a bit odd.

COOL! I love the force weapon. Nice job.

Thanks guys.

Okay, so I stripped back a little of the light, and took some photos from other angles so you can get a better look. I just need to sit down and work on the NMM, as well as the parts that aren't being glared upon by the hand.







However, more importantly, my fledgling Blood Angels had a great day for their first game; allied with some Guard against Imperial Fists and a friend's counts-as-Mechanicus Space Marines, and even better, my Furioso Libby basically destroyed 3 times his own points value. 1 Dread, 2 Venerable Dreads, and one Ironclad all fell before him, exploded by the God Finger. Unfortunately he was felled by Pedro Kantor while squishing him in return. At any rate, I realised that the only thing better than one cool model is two of them, so I took the spare parts from the Ven. Dread kit and began to assemble his brother!








Aside from the Ven Dread bits, he's made up from a Sanguinary Guard head, random Marine tank crew torso, a Rhino Cupola, misc bits from the Imperial Sector building pack, the H/K missile launcher from the Ironclad Dread, and lots of styrene sheet, tube, metal wire, and WAVE/Kotobukiya option parts. I'm surprised at how fast he's come along (I only started on Thursday night), but basically I only have to attach the power plant (the grey piece lying separate) and some spare arms I'll be modding, as well as some cables. Not sure about what to do with the arms yet, maybe this time paint him using a glowing sword or something. And might not use a Gundam hand this time...

That hand just doesn't look right..great work overall though!

Personally I think the hand is really cool, it looks like its glowing with psychic power. I don't mind the sword all that much either. Is the other dreadnought (which is amazing so far btw) going to be a librarian? If so might I suggest a dreadnought sized force staff?

Both of those dreadnought are looking awesome. I especially like the HK array on the Venerable dread. Looks much better under the torso than up on the shoulders.

It seems like I've neatly divided 40k fandom over the sword and hand, judging from the responses here and elsewhere. I have a bunch of alternative hands in slightly different poses, I might take some pics with those to see what people think, since the orange hand's removable still...
The second Dread is also a Librarian and will probably have two hands, one of which will be holding a force weapon, I'm just not sure what kind yet... A staff is definitely possible.

EDIT: Thanks Flinty. I was originally going to convert it into whatever kind of sensor the usual Dread has down there, but I quite like the idea of the HK missile now it's there. And it's small enough that I probably won't upset anyone with WYSIWYG.