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* Try's to find Mr. & Mrs. argos's house to talk him out of such heresy as destroying a fw titan for terrain *
Oh the humanity.

our club did the samething to an eldar titan for a 40k eldar runic board . came out real nice too .

Cool using a titan as as terrain, if your work so far is to is to be the jugde it will be awesome. keep these posts going im totally enthralled.

I have finally started my project btw but i wont post stuff on forums until the full project is finished. But as i have said to many times, I wouldnt have done it without the inspiration of this thread to keep me going.

Sacrilege.
Heresey.
I'm going to flatten London with an orbital bombardment to stop this heinous act.

*sniff* The shear fact that you can afford to buy a reaver and use it as terrain is making me cry...

But, It could be truly awesome if any of your other work is to judge by.

I'm going to use the way you did the coats for my IG inquisition. =) So thanks!

I think he might be joking about the reaver terrain thing.
At least, I hope so...

Perhaps he will cast the pieces first then use the reproductions as terrain?

Can you buy individual bits from FW? I never could figure out how you can do that.

You bought the Armageddon basilisk cover right? How do I buy one of those, I want that too!!

Wow, this is really inspiring work, and I know this because, along with the new codex, it is inspiring me to get back to work on my own Steel Legion army. Which brings me to a painting question.

BrotherArgos can you tell me how you were able to duplicate the color for the greatcoat on your painted model on page 2? I have the Codex: Armageddon, but Martin Footitt's little blurb about how he painted the GW Studio models is just no help to me, for some reason, and I've given up in frustration. I'd appreciate it if you would lay down for me the colors, layers, and mixes used to achieve that appearance, if you would be so kind. I am using both GW and Vallejo Game Color paints.

Its probably blazingly simple, but I've just never acheived that particular color, and thats the color I want :argh:

Thanks in advance, and keep up the amazing work.

Destroy it please! Best terrain on the planet... minus that BFG 40k wrecked ship I saw floating around. It was the size of a 6x4 board in itself.

Sorry for missing posting yesterday, but I was working at a clients all day and had no chance to get to the internet. So today is all about the weekends activities, when I got the chance to do something fascinating, my daughter Hannah (10yr old) wanted to spend some hobby time with Daddy!

Initially she started off building a really simple WWII kit of a V2 rocket in 1:48th scale, about 20 pieces, all fairly simple. She used the GW flush cutters to remove the model from the sprue and learnt how to keep the cutters close to the kit (I know its not the best way to do it, but I did not want her using my hobby knife/scalpel to tidy up). She then used my "Squadron" sanding sticks to tidy up and remaining marks of the sprue, and after about 45 minutes and some help with the instructions she had built a rocket. She learnt how to carefully apply glue (Revel Contacta Professional) to the model, and to not flood the area she was gluing and then to keep the parts pressed together till they stuck.

I was truly impressed that she took the time and effort to do things the way I suggested, normally getting things done quickly and with the least effort is her way to do work. She was also proud of her work at the end and wanted to paint it and add decals (she called them stickers). I mentioned that could be another days hobby time, and she agreed.

After finishing the rocket it was my turn to do some modelling, and I assumed she would drift away and go back to playing, however she didn't, she hung around asking what I was going to make and suggesting she could help me, by cutting things out and helping me glue. So "Team Argos" decided on making one of the new Planetstrike Imperial Bastions as a project, Hannah helped cutting out the pieces and tidying them up, and then gluing them together. For one of my models, it might have slightly more glue visible than normal, but I have a certain emotional attachment to this piece of scenery now.

Some observations about the model, its relatively straightforward and GW did a reasonable job making the kit with lots of detail and options (I think they are also selling some of the kit as as the Bastion Upgrade Pack in the scenery section of their website). One suggestion I have is that the centre point of the flooring is unsupported so use some sprue to reinforce it underneath: -



The other thing I noticed was the poor look of the joints at the corners of the building: -



In addition as you can see in the picture above, due to the thickness of the walls the joints in the wall can be highly visible, this troubled me as well. So I set about trying to find a way to cover the joints on the corners, and to hide the joins where the walls met. Plasticard was my immediate solution and rummaging around in my plasticard box I found some Evergreen stripstyrene 2.0mm "Angle" (Code 292) although the 2.5mm "Angle" (Code 293) would work just as well.

Suppliers in the UK and USA have 292 in stock, if anyone knows a central European supplier of Evergreen please post, so I can include that in future as well.

This would cover the wall joint and was the same width as the reinforced banding found on the lower section of the building, so would feel to scale. I would need to apply rivets to the Angle strip to keep it in character with the rest of the building, which was going to be a boring task, but I did get to use the Micro Hole Punch that had arrived with the Photo Etching kit. The hole punch made the process fairly easy, and to keep the rivets to scale I used the 0.5mm punch.

In addition I added cover plates to the corner joints to conceal them, and used rivets to make a plausible looking riveted joint. The plates were made from 0.25mm thick plasticard, which I cut into 11mm sections, once I had four of them, I then cut out a 5mm square from one corner. This resulting L shape made the lower plate, while I then cut a 2.5mm square from one corner of the 5mm square I had left, this made the top corner joint cover. These corner joints were then glued to the corners and with a little pressure deformed to fit the slight angle of the corner. In the following picture I have used badab black wash to highlight the rivets, as almost no matter how I took the picture the "white on white" nature of the rivets and angle strip hid the rivets completely. I am sorry if the wash makes the work look slightly messy, but it was the only way to highlight the rivets and once the model is sprayed it won't be visible: -



As you can see the wall joint is concealed and the corner joints are hidden and rationalised away. I used the same spacing for my rivets as those found on the lower section of the model itself which was approximately 6.5mm. The black wash sadly makes the rivets appear larger and slightly uneven, but they are all accurately sized and spaced appropriately as will be revealed when an grey or black primer coat is added. Placing the rivets was helped significantly by a new arrival to the glue section, not easily available in the UK I had to order this via ebay from a hongkong reseller, the Tamiya Extra Thin cement. The beauty of this cement is the ultra fine applicator brush as shown in this picture: -



As you can see in comparison to my thumb in the corner of the picture, the brush is tiny, fine and comes to a point, allowing incredibly fine glue work. Having used it to place 100+ rivets at the weekend I must say it performed excellently and I will be getting a spare bottle.

With the addition of bucket loads of rivets and being situated in the Ash waste of Armageddon, this model cries out for some rust using the MiG powders and with light grey concrete-ish feel, lots of rust streaks running down the surface from the rivets when the acidic rains hit the wastelands.

With Hannah's help it turned out to be a fun piece of scenery to make and hopefully she will continue her interest in modeling.

You could just fix it with greenstuff
Nice job btw

Kudos on Hannah being interested in Daddy's hobbies! I think you'll keep that rocket forever.

Working up in London today, no updates from me, however I think SCC has been working on the 609th fighter wing on Battle for Armageddon.

Because of work and the clients needs I won't have the chance to do any modelling till Thursday evening as it currently stands, which means next update will be Friday sometime.

Do you remember how I discussed being a perfectionist can help when working on something and sometimes it can hinder you?

Well this last three days it has driven me crazy, I have been working on the Bastion that Hannah and I made, and I wanted to get a nice concrete style finish to it. I have tried washes, powders and stippled painting, I could not find anything that worked for me.

So before I throw this model out of the window, does anyone have a good technique for painting/creating a concrete effect? Link to an article ? ... description of how YOU did it ?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The more I think about the problem I realise the issue is that concrete has small holes in it as can be seen here ...



The problem I have is that all "textures" applied are protrusive, and don't match what my mind wants, which would be "intrusive"

Have you tried grey pastels?
Scrape off some powder and apply it

The following links might be useful:

http://model-trains-video.com/page.php?14

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/417

Have you considered applying some kind of filler/pumice to the surface in a thin layer or two to give it the texture?

Cheers,

Dante

Hey, Dante, that was my idea.

Humph.

sA

Then you should have said it quicker mate .

I think a thin layer of filler, stippled with an old stiff brush ought to do the trick.

Cheers,

Dante

Oh, it has to be thick enough so that you get a cohesive texture and surface. Spread it out a couple of times. Perhaps use a paint scraper (one of the nasty ones for ripping stuff off walls) to smooth, or try it out on a test piece first?

sA

I'm liking how the bastion is coming so far.

For concrete: I use a really cheap walmart paint that bubbles up a lot when shaken. Applied in one thick coat, it leaves little bubbles in the finish that pop and dry that way (think of the underside of a pancake).

I don't know if it would work on such a large surface, and the other suggestions sound safer.

Do what my brother and I do for our fortress. Use drywall putty and put it on surface scraping it extra thin then once it dries go at it with sand paper.

Hi Argos

I understand your issue with intrusive rather than extrusive.

Could call for some experimentation...

You were looking at brass etching, so that could be an option for creating a pitted surface (clad it in brass that has been partially pitted by the etching solution over a small period of time. Not really practical for the bastion however (or much else!)

Alternatively, maybe using the same sort of idea on plastic -

1. Flick specks of peanut butter or similar in a random pattern against the plastic;

2. Spray with an enamel spray paint;

3. Wash the pieces, exposing plastic under the specks of peanut butter; and finally

4. Expose the plastic surface to some paint stripper for a short period of time.

In this case, the paint stripper should react slightly with plastic, and cause some pitting in the surface. Where the enamel paint covered, the stripper should be barred from the surface and so will continue to be smooth like a formed up piece on concrete.

As another alternative, perhaps a dremmel with a point bit could be used to selectively pit the surface.

Cheers

Just a couple of thoughts.

Thinned dark paint flicked onto the surface from an old toothbrush or stiff-bristled paintbrush would probably work best to give you hundreds of tiny, unevenly spaced hole approximations. Flicking straight down onto the surface with a nearly dry brush should prevent any strange splash or gravity lines.

I'm not very well versed with using salt as a mask, but I've seen the results before and if you used popcorn salt (very fine grains) instead of regular table salt, you might be able to get slightly 3D holes... agian, this is purely theoretical.

Another thing that might do it is tapping the surface repeatedly with a wire brush to create small holes (pre-softening the plastic with cement might be necessary). You could then scrape the little crater rims that this creates with a hobby knife.

Best of luck and I can't wait to see what you come up with.

You could perhaps use plastic glue to melt largeish holes and then for the smaller ones just flick paint on as GitSmack said; but I dont really know as i dont do much terrain so good luck with whatever you choose!

The other option would be to use liquid latex mask (vallejo).

Apply some using blister foam or by flicking with a brush, paint and then remove. The build up of paint around the mask will provide a small recessed effect.

Cheers,

Dante

Hi there,
Ive been following your post very closely since its beginning, its great the work you've been doing, particularly the casting.

As for the concrete effects- is this of any use?
http://www.miniaturescenery.com/PaintingVillageSeries.asp
http://www.miniaturescenery.com/PaintingChurch.asp



Apparently this guy uses Deluxe Sandswept, which should be easy enough to track down at B&Q. I'd say the effect looks fairly good too- although it doesn't quite give the holed effect you wanted.

I'm not sure that the holed effect is necessary for a model to look like concrete, though. Not all concrete has that effect, to be honest I would imagine stronger concrete such as used in the bastion would be far more dense and without the air bubbles to ensure it is very strong.... Of course, it all comes down to what effect you are trying to create.

Jon

haha i cant wait to see wat you have instore for the reaver
keep up the good work

Sorry for the extended absence, for the last week and a half I have been bed ridden with an ear/throat virus. At the worst point I was sleeping around 18 hrs a day and remaining in bed even when awake.

Finally I returned to work yesterday and trying to catch up with my backlog after all that time away. So I will be busy for a couple more days catching up.

However as is always the case when you cannot do what you want to do, I have a whole load of ideas to work on. I think first up with be adapting the new Demolisher/Punisher/Executioner to work with the modified Ryza pattern turrets I bought from Forgeworld (I love the look of the new plasma weapon). In addition all the parts for my next steel legion trooper are complete and sitting at home in Silicon rubber as we speak.

I am looking forward to getting back to my Steel Legion after an enforced absence.