How To Paint a Chaos Warhound titan: Part 3

Its a new year folks. 2012 was a big one, I moved in with the other half, bought my own house, learnt how to plaster, spent time building wardrobes instead of ceramite, the list goes on. Unfortunately, due to this 'growing up' i seem to have done in 2012, my hobby time and blogging has suffered. I think part of my year's goals should be to try and increase my hobbying time backup to proper levels. So lets make a start with that already, merely a few hours in to the new year. Now we've woken up a bit and am shaking the hangover, I'll get some progress up here.

Last time I left you with this. The warhound has had it's base started. The legs are built and stuck, and the torso is pinned, weapons ready to get pinned next. Remember?   

Next up was to get the torso built properly. I spent a good afternoon cleaning up all the details, hatches, spines, vents, void shield generators, the lot and got gluing. The biggest parts I stuck with 2 part epoxy resin, the smaller details, just regular super glue.

As with a lot of forgeworld's stuff, there was quite the gap filling to be done. This shot shows about half way through that process. The spines I decided to put a brass rod 90% of the way through, as they were as flimsy as I thought. This is where working with resin beats plastic or metal, in that I was able to drill those pins all the way with a steady hand and my dremel. Should that have been plastic, it would have melted, or metal would have caused all sorts of snapped drill bits and mess.

Worth noting, I didn't glue in the central bulkhead, so I can still access the interior detail with my paintbrushes later on. Once the torso had entirely dried, I drilled a 2.6mm brass rod pin through the joint between torso and legs, in order the test the machine's balance... 

 

And happy days, we have one walking titan.

Next up, a bitch of a job. Those power cables that run between the head and the neck come in the straight lengths about 6'' long. Taking heat gun in hand, I begun the process of softening the resin the bend it into place. The job is a bitch, because its very hard to make the cables sit naturally. I takes quite the tweaking and playing around with hot resin.

There's two sides to be done, and as my titan is twisting it's head to the side, one cable had to look tight, and the other loose. The the tight one is one the right in this next picture.

 

And we're done. One growly happy warhound.

 

When I've built large models before, I find it wise to construct them in 'modules' to be painted. So with a titan, we have the legs, the torso, including the head, and the 2 arm weapons(more on these in the nest post).
We also have the base, which I've spent some more time on, cutting out the paving slabs once more. They'll get neatened up once the PVA glue have dried properly. I built the pile of rubble from a big blob of milliput, some of the resin offcuts from the titan itself, some good old sprue rubble, some basing sand, and finally, some 40k gubbins to make it look the part. Mix thoroughly and plaster on to the affected area.

I'm going to leave it there for the minute and go and crack on with the job at hand. Feel free to email or tweet questions or advice. 

Till next time

Gonders

How To Paint a Chaos Warhound Titan: Part two, The base.

Well, I've finally managed to get over a serious bout of crippled computer syndrome(well, enough to write a blog anyhow) and I'm back with an update on my Chaos Warhound titan. Due to the computer being down for a few weeks, I've got plenty of hobbying material to write about in the first few weeks of the new year. Keep you're eyes peeled.

So last time on the titan project, I'd cracked open the box and started pinning leg joints together like there was no tomorrow and got the the point of getting the machine stood up, and his base had been roughly cut out of MDF. 

After this, I started to neaten up the base, and begun the thankless task of cutting out paving slabs from plasticard. I used the base of an imperial guard sensor array to make a grid, just like I did with the reaver a year ago, in order to keep the theme running. I also added to cities of death lamp posts(thanks to meganutz from warseer), to help add a sense of scale.

I've tried to keep the stonework varied, as the model has such a large base, it breaks it up on the eye a bit.

You can see in this shot how right hand side of the base the base will eventually will end up. The tiles here will be painted in a black and white checkerboard scheme, and the large plasticard filler pieces will be cut up into smaller paving slabs. 

A quick shot showing how the foot will cover up the damage its caused.

Once I'd got the base to this stage and dry, I got the dremel out and started cleaning up and pinning again. The space on this shot between the foot and the street level with be filled with battlefield debris.

Another good afternoon on my Christmas break well spent and we're starting to fit the machine together some more. You may notice(hopefully) these last to shots are a little clearer, due to getting a new HD camera for Christmas, so hopefully I can get a little more practiced with it and bring you all some better pictures.

Until the next time, more updated are on the way!

Gonders

Ravenwing Attack Squadron.

Well, this has taken awhile, but I've finally finished a Ravenwing Attack Squadron of 6 bikers for my dark angels.

These guys, and indeed every type of biker I always find a trial to paint. each one is somewhere between painting a tiny vehicle, and painting a marine. As there is 6 of them, they always take my a long time to slog through.

So, the first half of the squadron is the bikers from the Dark Vengeance boxed set. The starter models Games Workshop make have com a long way now. You can barely tell the difference between the normal box versions and these guys. Another scary fact about the bikers, is that these models are only about 4 or 5 pieces for each one, and they will hold themselves together without any glue.

 

 The second half of the squadron is made up of regular marine bikers kits with Ravenwing upgrades. These upgrade sprues do wonders for the now pretty damned older bike models. I did a Minor conversion with the flame trooper. He got a tactical Sergent's head and his flamer stretched out at and angle, and his bike angled to look like he's making a sweeping turn. This brings the 2 halves of the squadron together as he looks more in line with the dark vengeance guys.  

 

As well as the slog to get through these guys being bikers, I also knew I'd be hard pressed, as I fall into that category of painter that finds paint black a challenge. or at least I did, until I found this article on From The Warp.

 

I'll let you read that article yourself, but the trick I took was that if you paint everything around the black well enough, it will all come together as you finish your model and your flat black plates with suddenly fit right in.

It works well if you have a steady hand for the your line highlights, but if not, you can always got back over the thicker lines and sharpen them up with some pure black.

I think the finishing touch for these guys was the weathering powder from forge world, which I'm starting to fall in love with, now I'm finally getting the hang of using it after so many attempts. If you're going to try using it, I would say get plenty of practice first, and keep it subtle!

The dry mud I used on these bikes adds that extra layer, giving your eyes something other than flat black to look at.

And the full squadron take my army up to 750 points finished and done. Hopefully there wont be such a big break between this and the next 250!

Till then. 

Gonders 

Dark Vengeance, Dark Angels first 500.

Right now, I am in the rarest of hobby situations. Normally If I'm painting an army, I only have the drive to paint that force. So if I'm doing a an Imperial guard army, for example, I'll pour over the codex, be googling and searching other peoples models and generally getting a bit obsessed with them. This is how I can comfortably finish a project without wandering down some other path and ending up with half painted armies everywhere. Normally the obsession will last long enough to get the whole army painted.

Weirdly though, right now I actually have enough drive to get on with two projects, being my Dark Angels army and the Chaos Warhound Titan I have looming over everything in the background. If you've noticed, my blogging has been about both of these over the last month or so.

So what do I have to show and tell today? I have finally finished my first 500 points of Dark Angels. Shaky group shot...

This is all you get in a 500 point marine army nowadays. I'm quite happy with how they look as a group.  

So the new additions are this half tactical squad, fresh from the Dark Vengeance box. The models are nice enough to paint, but I can't help but think the insignia and symbols moulded on the shoulders are a little bit large and comedic for my tastes. I know they're only cheap starter models but I think they could have made them a little smaller. 

After painting all that green, it was time to mix things up just a little, and I cracked on with the leader for the army, the Librarian from Dark Vengeance. This guy is nice to paint, he doesn't quite have the cheaper feel some of the starter set stuff does. It was a good chance to practise my blue, which I've not painted in a while.

Quick shot of his back too, just to show off his wizard's cloak. All I have to do to finish him is to paint in his runes on his force sword.  

That's it for now.

Gonders.

  

Dark Angels Razorback.

So despite the fact I've started a new project, I'm still cracking on with the Dark Angels I started a couple of weeks ago. I picked up a pair of the fancier than normal forgeworld razorback kits, one with twin heavy bolters and one with twin lascannons for them, so they can travel about in luxury.

This is an in progress picture of the first, which I also bought a fancy 'dozerblade for. I added a couple of minor bits, the shield on the front is front a Warhammer Empire swordsman, and I replaced the head lights with baneblade vision port to give it that gothic arch look that suits the Dark Angels so well. I put a leman russ vent on the front plate and added plastic GW Dark Angels symbols to finish the conversion work.

These shots are the same tank finished off. To weather the tank, firstly I applied a layer of dark umber acrylic using a sponge around the bottom few millimeters of the whole tank. After this with on older brush I applied forgeworlds 'Dry mud' weathering powder to a level just a bit higher than the umber. I think the 'dozerblade lends itself to the weathering powder well. You can see the umber and the powder blending well together on the metalic end strut of the blade.  

I sealed the powder on with two heavy coats of turps, making sure the first was entirely dry before adding the second.
 

With that, The job was done, ready to hunt some tanks!

Thanks for reading,

Gonders 

How To Paint a Chaos Warhound Titan. Part one.

I appear to be going through one of those 'can't stick at anything' phases. I've painted 10 dark angels and started something new. Unfortunately, I've now got quite a back log of models I could do to paint, and not enough time to do it. but hey-ho, such is life.

So i started re-reading Dan Abnett's Titanicus at the weekend. Find me one person who starts reading that book, and doesn't rush to build that titan they've had waiting for a couple of weeks. Well it isn't me.

So here I go with another big old project. I've been here before, and as is tradition, I find myself starting with this shot.

This is all the parts to the Warhound's body, laid out on a 4'x4' gaming board. Doesn't seem like that long ago I did the same with the Reaver last year now. 

So after an evening with a dremel and a handful of steel pins, I got the legs to this stage. None of this has any glue on it yet, and all the pins are placed so the legs are posable as they can be. I've built a warhound before, and I know they are a bitch to get a good pose for. you need a degree in engineering, and a few extra hands at the very least. 

The first thing I did after this was to cut the base. Once again, being of a joinery disposition helped that. The base is made from 12mm MDF, and is going to be modelled(to match his big brother), like he's smashing through an imperial city. Here, the curve on the second layer will be a set of steps leading down into a fountain/square area. The bottom half will have black and white checks like marble tiles. And the top part will be street level. More on this at a later date.   

These four pictures show how I progressed posing the titan this evening. If i hadn't done this before, I'd be panicking the legs are to out stretched, which they do appear to be. However, its never clear quite how big the hull for the machine is when you've only built the legs Once the top is on, it'll even the proportions somewhat. 

This is where we stand now. I've hung the armour plates on their pins here to show how it'll look more bulked out later on. 

This carefully balanced shot shows how the stride will look better later on. I have just noticed I've been photobombed by my own Reaver here, which I've had kept at the back for reference while I was building. Oh, he's a cheeky monkey!

Well hopefully more comin' soon

Gonders

Dark Angels Tactical Squad.

As mentioned in my last post, I'm starting a Dark Angels army, just like the rest of the world and his dog.
I've now finished my first squad. Half of these guys were from the last post, but I've since applied a bit a ware and tear to the Armour, notable some light dry brushing of boltgun metal and some dry mud weathering powder from forge world .

I'm pretty happy with how they've turned out. The only thing I'm not sure on, is that I've not found a decent way of making sure the weathering powder sticks. I've power a layer of white spirit of the powder on the these models, but even after this has dried, you can still rub the powder off if you really try. I'm going to have to try some different methods. 

I've also started work on the first transport for the army, this here forge world razorback. hopefully I'll have it done for my next post!