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If you believe this nonsense, I'm putting colors onto Space Marines. My buddy at http://squadpainter.blogspot.com/ finally convinced me to put paint on these guys. Previously I'd been too preoccupied by the idea that the models are never perfect or "done", so I just decided to get to business. I still need to do a lot of work on the ones I've started, but at least this one has all of its core colors.
 
So, I present you the work in progress of the first painted (by me, at least, a couple of guys have used them for Deathwatch) member of the Invectors Space Marines Chapter.
 

 
You can see a lot of my test-models for the colors in the background. Those silly little pewter midgets. He needs some more shading, decide on a lens color, and some touch-up, but I've been pleased with the way the color scheme came out. Working on a transfer sheet so I can get the Chapter logo on there. 
 

 
Then, finally, he'll need basing so he isn't perched on a piece of sprue anymore, lol.

But, but, but, what about the grey?!

Cool seeing some paint on your marines Srg

Good start with the painting. Keep at it!

EDC

Loving this thread, especially the detailed write ups. Thanks for the extra effort!

Best marines on the web NOW IN COLOUR!

AWESOME!

I think that's a little generous, lol. There are a lot of really talented people making Space Marines. I only take a small bit of pride in that my work occasionally inspires people to make better ones.

But I'm glad that you guys like it. I'm also more glad that they turned out well with paint on, and that the shin inserts aren't glaringly obvious. Been having lighting issues in my new place. First it was too dark, now it's too bright and the detail and shading is getting washed out, haha. The photo makes it look like there's no shading on the helmet at all. :/ Oh well. I'll play with it.

Hopefully I'll have some time to continue painting over the next week or so. My company is pretty heavily invested in the Mother's Day holiday so I've been busy at work, and the following weekend is my birthday, so nothing will get done, haha.

But I'm hoping this will get two things accomplished: Get Space Marines painted, and then move on to finishing the sculpting on my taller Orks and getting them painted too.

Nice!

Glad to see some colour going on to these guys

Looking great so far

In case anyone was curious about the color scheme:

Gray Primer

Base Color – Equal Parts Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and Vallejo Ultramarine.

Torso/Arms/Fingers – Black

Leather Parts – Rhinox Hide / Vallejo Burnt Umber

Bolter/Weapon Casings – P3 Ironhull Gray

Metals -Vallejo Gunmetal

Eagle – Vallejo USAF Light Gray

Army Painter Dark Tone Ink



I've got another few Marines on the painting table, but it's a peak time for my work, so I've been too busy/tired to get anything more than minor progress accomplished in the last week. I'm hoping to get all the "completed" Marines painted, which will then force me to go back and revisit all the ones which don't have shin spacers yet and bring them up to current standards.

Also want to start converting Counts-As stand-ins for Deathwatch: Overkill.

Sorry guys. Got distracted by life and X-Wing again, lol.


There are about ten Space Marine models in various stages of completeness painting-wise but I haven't been staying with it.


Otherwise I've been painting up my magnetized X-Wings because we've been playing a fair amount of Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, which is a cooperative campaign for X-Wing. If you are interested in checking it out, the link is right back there. I've been compiling the latest iteration into narrative battle reports. Not quite as silly as Dark Verngearnce!, but still entertaining, I think. You be the judge.




I'll get back on the Space Marines, I promise.

They are looking tremendous. Now do a B-wing with a gyroscopic cockpit
Downloiaded Aturi, it looks great but not sure how well my kids would take to it (6 and 8.5) - they've got the for heads round the game and love it (younger one faking out his big brother with Vader and Boba Fett still a moment) and I thought it might be a good way for us to play cooperatively, but I'm concerned the additional rules would confuse them. Any thoughts?

Those Necron conversions are looking great, and I love what you've done with weapons.

I also don't like how they've changed the Necrons background, and preferred it when they where mindless machines, controlled by the will of an ageless and mysterious entity (C'tan).

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Now do a B-wing with a gyroscopic cockpit

Haha, this had actually already crossed my mind. I just didn't order a small enough magnet to do it the first time. But I'm going to be placing a new order for magnets soon since my buddy now wants to do it to his ships too.

Downloiaded Aturi, it looks great but not sure how well my kids would take to it (6 and 8.5) - they've got the for heads round the game and love it (younger one faking out his big brother with Vader and Boba Fett still a moment) and I thought it might be a good way for us to play cooperatively, but I'm concerned the additional rules would confuse them. Any thoughts?

They should catch on, especially if they already understand how the basic game works. It will take some getting used to, and you might want to scale the difficulty down (the rulebook has suggesttions) since they are younger. At least for a few missions. But really, there aren't too many new rules other than keeping track of experience, and the scripts for the Imperial ships and how they interact with the scenery and other ships. You can run the TIE Fighters, since they work off of a script. Pick a couple of the missions that don't need any of the special templates, see if they enjoy it. That way it hasn't cost you anything if they don't get into it. You can print some of the stuff off on cheap paper if need be.

Nice work on the magnetised x wings, I trust you add your own sound fx when doing the movement?

EDC

Haha, Of course. We even listen to Star Wars music.

I did put up some narrative battle reports on my blog "detailing the adventures of Brown Squadron in the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, which is a cooperative campaign format for the game that uses this cool scripted AI for the Imperial ships.

Very cool. Makes me want to break out my X Wing! Luckily I think I'm playing on Thursday.

EDC

I'm having a I am your father session Sunday with my boys love your astromechs BTW.

really nice stuff.

almost tempting me with X-wing....almost

I won't lie, X-Wing has completely rekindled my love for Star Wars. I was obsessed with it as a kid. Had all those mediocre license fiction novels (and the handful of good ones), toys, played the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games, etc.

Then the prequels killed Star Wars for me. I hated them so much I couldn't even watch the originals anymore for a long time because it felt like the entire universe had been ruined.


I didn't really think The Force Awakens was very good, but at least the original trilogy and I have reconciled, haha. I'm tentatively excited for Rogue One because it looks like the Star Wars I loved as a kid.

The other good news about X-Wing is that my buddies and I will actually play it regularly, unlike 40K. The cooperative campaign format is cool too.

So I have most of my ships magnetized, because they look cooler that way.
 

 

 
 
 
But what to do about the B-Wing? Its cockpit is supposed to move with ship as it reorients. It would be unconscionable to just magnet the ship and then have its cockpit not orient correctly.
 
Enter 1/16th by 1/16th cylinder magnets. (could probably do 1/8 by 1/16 if you wanted more magnet surface area)
 

 
And the end result.
 

 
This was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be. The cockpit is actually held on by an internal peg, so cutting it off is a breeze and any imperfection on the internal peg can be filed flat.
 
After centering the hole on the body, I put a dab of paint on the end of the first magnet so it would mark where the front half needed to be drilled. 
 
Then you just drill until the magnets sit flush, and boom, done.
 
 
Next, figuring out how to de-goofy and magnetize a TIE Defender.
 

I'm impressed by the result if the B Wing and that you could be motivated to do it! Just don't lose the cockpit!

EDC

Those models look great, the magnets have let you pose them all very dynamically for the photos. Nice attention to detail on the B wing, but... I don't really understand the concept of the re-orienting cockpit since there isn't really an "up" in space? What exactly is it orienting to?

I agree with Soul Samurai, that's a great use of magnets on flyers. I assume the sphere is just a ball bearing? And I never thought about it before, but that aspect of the B-wing does seem suspect. Must be something George Lucas came up with himself.

Soul Samurai wrote:
I don't really understand the concept of the re-orienting cockpit since there isn't really an "up" in space? What exactly is it orienting to?

I don't makes the rules. I just modifies the models.

But yeah, Star Wars and science are rarely friends. One would guess that the pilot could manually choose an "up" and then the ship would orientate itself around that fixed position?



And yes, the sphere is just a nickel plated ball bearing. You can see the bag for them on the left of that prep photo. The magnets are N52 1/16th by 1/16th cylinders. And they're fairly strong. So as long as you store it properly, losing the cockpit should be difficult.

Cracking work! Glad to have been a trouble maker on the subject of B-wings

Hey man, I don't know if you remember, but i knicked your method ages ago on Heresy Online. (my name was torealis)

I've refined it to suit my own style, but I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. Over 200 upscaled marines later, and I'm still going!

I converted some friends to the upscaling ways. Our blog is here...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/694362.page

200? Jebus. I got to about 60ish and burned out. My hat's off to you. Especially since your version is even more labor intensive than mine with the green stuff and sculpting. The collection you and your friends have going is impressive though.

So I've never liked the TIE Defender all that much. It just seemed a bit too far off from the original TIE Concept. Like the creators of the TIE Fighter series ran out of ideas after the Avenger and were like "What if we make one with three wings?"

But I was definitely not a fan of the TIE Defender model for X-Wing. It always came down to the aesthetics of the wings and the tremendous gap between them making the Defender look too "big" or "round". The outward angle of the wings exacerbates this effect, while the inward angle of the Interceptors, Bombers and Advanced mitigate it.

The problem is, if you flip the wings to angle inward, then it becomes a TIE Burrito. So the best looking versions of the TIE Defender have been ones where the wings were tighter to the body.

So, when there was a recent sale on X-Wing minis, I decided to see what I could do to improve the aesthetics of the TIE Defender because $8 seemed acceptable for a ship I still might not even like when it was done.

My first attempt just chopped off the connector between the two "rings" on the support pylon, but it still didn't look right, so I decided to file down the outer ring to save about half a millimeter. Sounds like very little to worry about, but we're talking about a post that is only like 6mm long in total.

The final result:





It needs a little more finishing before I pin and glue the wings on "permanently", but here's the comparison. You can see how it really doesn't add up to all that much removed material, and I'm certain this project will be way too much effort for most people, but it really helped out the look of the ship for me.

Unfortunately, the rear magnet makes the modified one sit lower than the unmodified one, and the camera angle wasn't as "head on" as I had hoped, but you can see the changes.



How does it look on the battlespace? Well, I took some pictures of it yesterday during an Epic game.



Unfortunately the focal point for this shot wasn't on the Defender (I cropped it smaller), but you can see the new, tighter profile it presents.

Tighter is really nice; works very well. What do you make of the Punisher?

 inmygravenimage wrote:
What do you make of the Punisher?

Buy an XG-1 Gunboat model (from the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games) off of Shapeways, paint it up, and proxy it?

There's no saving the TIE Punisher. It's just awful, all the way around.