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So I put together my first drop pod, and atempted to paint it, it was a complete desaster, the amount of lead beltcher i needed, in the area, it ended up coming out just aweful, and the more and more i looked at it, the more and more i realized, i did not want to paint it because it seemed just aweful on the inside to paint.

So, do you all paint the internals of your vehicles, or do you just seal them up and drop your pineapple on the battle field, and say the doors are open and treat it as such?

Paint it a light colour that goes on easy (foundation paint) and then wash it in aggrax earthshade. You can leave it at that or pick out bits of detail. Very simple and for the inside it would be enough

The key to painting drop pods is to paint it as you build. Don't get me wrong, it's annoying, but for best results paint the bottom, doors, and interior separately before gluing. Next do the engine. Finally paint the 5 side pieces that hold it all together and assemble. It sucks. I spend about 6-8 hours painting one but in the end if it looks cool that's what I care about.

IandI wrote:
The key to painting drop pods is to paint it as you build. Don't get me wrong, it's annoying, but for best results paint the bottom, doors, and interior separately before gluing. Next do the engine. Finally paint the 5 side pieces that hold it all together and assemble. It sucks. I spend about 6-8 hours painting one but in the end if it looks cool that's what I care about.

^Yup. It is annoying, but when it's done the model looks fantastic. Even with a quick and dirty technique of prime white, wash brown and drybrush light tan, the interior looks great on the table. "Floppy door syndrome" is annoying as well, but it's still the way to get the most out of your pricey kit. Every time I see glued pod doors I feel sad.

You can also spray the metallic colour and then just wash - I see this all the time across the table

Do you mind posting a picture of what you have so far? It'd definitely help critique and give some insight on how you could work on it.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Do you mind posting a picture of what you have so far? It'd definitely help critique and give some insight on how you could work on it.

Its to late its already sealed lol.

It was a combination of a few things, there was dust in my primer, which caused the layer of led betcher on the hatches to look like gak, so i said screw it and sealed it up.

The drop pod is probably one of the most horrible models to assemble and paint. Sure, there are worse models to assemble, and probably worse models to paint, but I don't think any other can claim to be as terrible for both at once.

It's probably a time when an airbrush or good old rattle can really comes into it's own
But then I'd argue that's always the case for anything bigger than a standard figure

Yeaho OMG to break out ye ol airbrush for this one.

 master of asgard wrote:
The drop pod is probably one of the most horrible models to assemble and paint. Sure, there are worse models to assemble, and probably worse models to paint, but I don't think any other can claim to be as terrible for both at once.

I think the Necron Ghost Ark is the one at the same level in terms of hard to paint and assemble.Too many small bits, and some are easy to break.

If, like me, you consider your drop pods more as functional game pieces than display models:

Assemble fully, prime black, drybrush silver. There, now you have some depth to the interior of your pod. Anything you couldn't reach to drybrush is black already and is now hidden in shadow. Picking out details in other colors is optional.

Assembing before priming is important to get good plastic on plastic bonding. Otherwise you're scraping paint off awkwardly shaped parts before gluing. The pod is a big enough pain to assemble without that hassle, especially when you're doing multiple at once.

I went another step further and drybrushed the exterior Mechanicum Grey, and left black scorch marks on the underside. Now my friends and I have a utilitarian set of drop pods that work for any of our several marine forces.

I painted mine in parts. Made getting to the insides easier. Left the center console and harness out of one of them as well. Dreadnoughts can ride in these things after all.

All the metallics are painted black, with a silver drybrush. The color bits are my normal blue/bluewash technique I use across my army. I’m stopping at 3. While the gamer in me would like two more, from a practical POV, I have so much hate for building/painting those things it’s never going to happen.

They all open.

I have done three pods. I enjoyed the challenge of the first one, hated everything about doing the other two. These are the first 40K models that I painted in parts before assembly. It was the only way to get the detail that I wanted. Unfortunately, once you have one this nice, you really have a hard time skimping on the other two, so it was the long process over and over. The model itself is just so repetitive. You litterally have to paint the same thing five times over and over.

Model them with the doors half way open. Best of both worlds with no real modeling for advantage argument.

SJ