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Here was my weekend project, a Land Raider Crusader. I had to hoof it a little, as I wanted to play it for a game night on Monday (Labour Day), so there are a small number of very tiny shortcuts, mostly during prep

Pictures first!!



Some things done a little differently than usual...

I fully detailed the interior of the Land Raider. To get better lighting for photography, it was photographed as a subassembly.

This was airbrushed using Citadel Air. The gun barrels for both the multimelta and both autocannons are achieved using airbrush. The blackened metal is black through an Iwata Hi-Line BH unthinned (0.20 needle, neat). It was very smooth, though, like any low-pressure airbrushing through a small needle, you need to take great care -- there are only a few millimeters between the tip of the autocanon and the first black band, so the gradient had to be very tight, but still smoothly diffused.

Some of the jewels were done with an airbrush, too (with the sharp accents paintbrushed in after), but mostly just to test the Citadel Air. The paints work great, but it takes longer to make a round mask than it does to just to just wet blend a jewel.

The color match on Mephiston Red is perfect -- on the zoomed up right sponson, can you see to the left of the skull an overzealous wash that was covered up with a paintbrush? It isn't visible to the naked eye, and isn't visible on the photography except on the original 24 megapixel image zoomed up. It's a good match.

Also, the weapons were all drilled using a new Proxxon drill press; you'll notice on the sponsons that I drilled across the sides of the storm bolters, too. On the multimelta, I drilled a 0.9mm pilot, and then used a larger bit (I think 1.5mm). The Proxxon is extremely accurate and gave me perfect cuts every time -- keep in mind that on this model there are 36 barrels to drill out for the storm bolters (1 front plus 2 sides for 12 bolters), 12 for the autocannons, and 2 for the multimeltas!

A lot of fun, though in retrospect, I shouldn't have tried to cram it all into one weekend, LOL.

Really beautiful model as always, Talys! The inside is pretty nuts.

I'm so jealous that you did that in a weekend!

Very nice. I like the interior too! I only did the interior on one vehicle (a Rhino), and as it was my first tank model the interior is not too well done. Still, at least I can say I've done one and at least there is someone out there who can do it much better than me!

Awesome stuff. Can't believe you did this over a weekend, that just seems nuts to me!

Great work!

D

Thanks

@ZergSmasher - I usually do *something* for the interior, but I did a little more than usual this time. I think it was just to appease myself to feel like I wasn't totally rushing, hahaha.

@evildrchese, vyxen - To be fair, it was a long weekend (labour day), and I had Friday off All together, it was still a lot of hours. In retrospect, though, it was a terrible idea, as it was just too rushed. I should have just used my old Land Raider to proxy for a Crusader, instead.

Very nice mate.

Thanks, James!

Oh, I should mention: I gave the "GW Airbrush Paint Way" a shot, pouring paint from the pot into the airbrush, and then the unused paint back.

I guess it's marginally worth mentioning that pouring back into a dropper bottle is *practically* impossible with Vallejo paints. I mean, yes, you can do it, but (a) those tops don't really come off THAT easily and (b) pouring super runny airbrush paint into the tiny Vallejo neck is a disaster waiting to happen. It's very easy to pour paint back into the Citadel pot, because the neck is so wide (like, an inch, almost).

So, on Mephiston Red (which basecoats 95% of the model), no problem -- it actually went better than I thought. When basecoating Abbadon Black, it was also okay, because I had quite a few pieces.

But every other time I used an airbrush paint like this, I wanted to spit:

- Even if it worked perfectly, you're going to waste a bunch of paint as it runs up and down your cup.

- In an Iwata BH or AH with the small (or no) cup, it is very hard to pour paint into the airbrush.

- There are so many times I just want 1-3 drops of paint, and it's a bazillion times easier to do this with a dropper, and just spray out whatever is left in the airbrush.

I think that for my basecoat colors, I could stand to pour paint back and forth, but not for any detail painting. It would just drive me batty.

So...in my opinion, the best solution would be if there were caps you could get for citadel pots that had droppers, for the airbrush!