Hell Talon, Scenic bases, and Gandalf's Head!

Well quite a big post today. Firstly, I've made quite abit of progress on the hell talon:

The flames are not perfect by along way, but I think the effect is good. Very 90's chaos! All that is missing now is a black wash on some if the metals, and the guns need painting and adding on. The bottom of the hell talon isn't painted the same, but thats why it defeated me in the first place, so I'm going to leave it as it is. I've started making a flying base for it too. Infact:

Flying Base step by step guide, part one.

Firstly, cut a base out of MDF and mark a hole in the centre. This is so I didn't build scenery over the flyinging stick. I've decided to make it part of a bombed out imperial trench line defence type system. I've marked out where to quarter bomb crateres will go and a section on defence line too.

Next, using foam board, I built the basics of the craters. These will be covered with milliput, so I've not been to acurate. I also built up a 3D section of the defence line.

I've now covered the craters with milliput, building them up bit by bit. I wet it as I work to make it into a smooth clay like texture.

Next, I've added some 40k bits and bobs from my stash. I also cut up some bits of balsa wood as good old flak board. Made sure I put a skull in there somewhere. Wouldn't be 40k without a skull.

After this, I forgot to bring a hacksaw home from work, so my flying stick is a tad to long :-S

Never mind, drill a 9.5mm hole anyway and DONT glue the 10mm threaded rod in. Use the same drill bit to drill the resin, very carefully!

This marks the end of the first walk through. I'll put the next half up, probably as they say 'I do' on friday...

Mean while, marvel at this large wooden head of gandalf till i finish it off.

 Gonders

The Horde gathers...

By George he's done it. 50 guardsmen in less than a week, with my sanity still intact! well just about. They aren't my best work, but the core of the infantry are there now...

I've still got to make 2 more overseers, and 1 lord commissar overseer, then its 1000 points of just infantry. Then 500 points of flesh hound approx and its a good core of the army. I still have heavy weapon squads to get too, but they can wait till I've painted something not in a gas mask!

So with that its time to start the next job. This thing has defeated me once already, a few years back. I bought it on a whim at the time, and never finished the job, which is most unlike me.
After a while of gathering dust, I gave it to one of my mates for his chaos army, myself having no need for it at the time. He paint stripped it and began painting it himself. He also failed with the bloody thing, and got about as far as I did. Now with new of my new chaos horde gathering, he's returned it to me, and now I shall finish it once and for all!!

This is obviously PIP, the flames will be yellow-red, and the crew I'm going to try and do that 'cockpit glow', that seems to be all the rage nowdays. The canopy is painted but needs adding too. Then I need to make a base for it. Well I've got a few bank hoildays to go, so the progess should gather momentum this week coming...

Gonders

Watch me play with madness...

Well the apocalyptic painting is in full swing, I've painted a further 20 rebels last week, the total now standing at 55 done. Several developments have occurred, however, resulting in a change of plan.

Firstly, this arrived...

That's my apocalypse toy, straight out the bag. It's going to be a good summer's worth or work, right there. Scarily, that's a 4'x4' table its lay on. That's hundreds of bits!
This leads me to the following experiment. I hate having loads of unpainted miniatures left to paint, especially if its still boxed.  Mainly, because its a waste of cash. So as the titan arrived, I still had 6 boxes of catchans, waiting to be built/painted. So the plan was hatched, to literally paint all 50 remaining guys in one large batch...

I've seen this kind of thing done twice before, by a good friend of mine. It is do-able. If i don't go off the rails in the process. The problem is that I'm going to be running out of time. I've estimated the titan will be approx 8 weeks work. I'm going to need more than a titan and a hundred men. My head is full of ideas of units I want to add. In fact, off the top of my head, here's a list:

Tanks: at least 8 imperial guard tanks, of none standard design, is on the list.

Zombies: I've promised my mates a zombie outbreak to fight off over summer. 100 zombies.

Dark mechanicus: I have a Reaver, it needs supporting cast and crew.

Tanks: The warlord(see post: Status update), and a daemon prince body guard.

Fliers, I have a hell talon bomber incoming, I'd like some hell blades to escort it.

Now, that's just off the top of my head. Its apocalypse summer 2011, not 2014, I don't have too long. With this in mind, I'm going to try finish these 50 guardsmen by the end of the week.

Wish me luck!

The Chaos Overseer.

Not much special, but I've done a bit of a conversion for a commissar type for my traitors. Going for the 'Cruel Overseer' look you read about in black library novels so much.

Each platoon will have its own one of these guys. Hopefully I'll come up with a way to make them all a bit different. For some reason, He's the only model with any chaos signs on him so far. I think I'm going to go back and put some on the troops when I've finished 'em. The reason he's in red armour is that I want to use it as an army 'spot colour' as they say. So if a few parts of the army are in the same red, it should tie together nicely. I'm going to be putting red chaos stars plastered over the top of my tanks, for example.

Well, it was just a short one.

Gonders

More Rebel Imperial Guard.

So the Apocalypse project is grinding on through the mud and hell of the 40k battlefields.

The first platoon is finished, except for their commissar, who will be more of a chaos overseer type character.

There's 2 more of these platoons coming, to make up the first 100 odd guard that will form the core infantry of the apocalypse army. They will be a 1000 point stand alone army in their own right, as 3 platoons, then I'm going to power through 100 odd zombies, to bulk up the army, added to the 30 flesh hounds I've already done, and I'll have 250 infantryish sized models to feed to the imperial guns. After that, I plan some heavy weapons squads of my own, probably about 4 squads, at which point I'll be able to start on some vehicles.

Speaking of which, one of the boys is working a leman russ conversion kit, which will be in the style of forgeworld's malcador tanks. He says he'll cast a few up for me, so I can have some tanks that look abit different.

I finished off the first heavy weapons team, which I'm quite happy with...

The milliput base has turned out quite well with some of my super duper mud effect to finish it off.

I'm trying to keep as motivated as possible through 250 models, of which I've painted almost 70. Hanging on in there, because there might just be a rather large modelling treat for me at the end of it all...

Until the next platoon!

Gonders

Dirty Rebels

Ok, so I've not been inactive. I know my posts have become less regular, and to be honest, it will wax and wane.

But the reason its been a week or so is because I've got 100 guardsmen to paint, and there's no use just blogging everytime I just finish one. So the first 20 are done.

These are some examples of the look I'm going for. I quite like the purple hued skin, it adds the weirdness factor traitors should have. It why I chose the catchans, because as everyone knows, no-one actually has arms like that, but just maybe, with a bit of warp taint...

The mud is a mix of windor & newton's sand effect gel and burnt umber acrylic paint, heaped on after painting and allowed to dry. Its the same as my hounds from an earlier post.



I'm also aware I could do with some chaos stars and whatnot, but that will probably come later on.

Till next time...