July 31, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
Just discovered a small dilema when starting to clad the various bits of the Dreadnought. Due to the angles on the shoulder on the arm, using the textured plasti-card isn’t going to work. Basically the front slope is a greater angle (thus longer) than around the side, resulting in the texture not wrapping correctly. Going to have to think about a solution as it would have been good to have clad the arms – bah!
July 31, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
Pictures to follow, but I made some progress on cladding the torso with plasti-card last night. It could be a pain to fill the edges, but once done will make the Dreadnought look quite beefy. The initial fill went quite well and I filed down some of that, though ran out of time to do a second fill, which is a bit of a pain. I need to get the leg assembly finished by the end of the weekend to stand a chance of hitting my deadline.
Running Totals: Time – ~ 16 Hrs; Cost – £36.47
July 29, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
The first of a couple of pictures. This one shows my progress on converting the lascanon arm of the plastic Dreadnought into a heavy bolter arm. My concept is to mimic the close combat arm with its flap pivot and elbow.
It still needs a fair bit of work and significant filling. The elbow joint may also be fun and games as plastic disc’s aren’t a common thing to have lying around.
Next up is a quick round up of my initial rough fill. The putty is a mix of green stuff and standard milliput, however in this case I didn’t quite have enough green sutff in the mix and it didn’t adhear quite as well as normal. The picture is deceptive, its not as smooth in some areas as it looks. The basic concept is that I make sure that all deep gaps and large areas are filled in. Tomorrow, once this is rock solid, I can trim the excess off and file areas flat. At least one more fill will be required as areas won’t be filled enough, or I’ll over file. Later on, some gaps will be filled with pure green stuff, but these large areas need to end up as if they were actually part of the model itself.
Running Totals: Time – ~ 13 Hrs; Cost – £36.47
July 29, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
Very impressivly the bits that I ordered on Sunday arrived yesterday. That was a sheet of textured plasti-card and some plastic strips from Fred Aldous, and the pair of heavy bolters with drum magazines from Bits and Kits. The turn around for these was fantastic and I really wasn’t expecting them until today at the earliest.
July 28, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
One thing has just occurred to me – and that is I need to make a decision on if I wish to add any banners or pendants to my Dreadnought. I’m personally not a fan of banners, I think that they’re highly unrealistic in many aspects – in real life they’d add another 4 ~ 6 ft of height onto a person and likely hinder somebody walking if they were strapped onto their back. Now I know that in the 40th millennium the rules are a little different, but back banners strike me as just being the equivalent of holding a fishing rod in a lightening storm. “Nobody move” flutter, flutter… Boom…
That said, a miniature with a back banner can look bloody impressive in a cabinet. Those extra 3″ or so can look fantastic if painted well and make it stand out from the crowd, miniatures with some freehand on them also tend to get noticed more than those without. Thinking back, there was a thread on the CoolMiniOrNot forum a while back where somebody sculpted and cast up a banner for a large scale Forge World marine. Casting it up meant that it was wafer thin and could easily be cut and hacked around to make it battle worn. Plus the texturing meant it could be painted in the same way as a miniature.
July 27, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
A few shots of the components that have been worked on so far. Top image is the torso. I’ve sliced out the sarcophagus and lopped off both spindles for the arm mounts. I have cut two pieces of tubing to allow the arms to be fitted and positioned as wanted.
I’ve now cut off the pelvis joint struts, in preparation for the custom ones. I have a piece of plastic rod that is perfect for the larger ones and will likely use wire (for strength) for the central strut.
Finally the calf pistons, carefully cut off the leg – yes it was vary fiddly if you compare it to the uncut leg…
Running Totals: Time – ~ 11 Hrs; Cost – £36.47
July 27, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
I’ve just taken a high quality scan of the reference image I’ve got of the Aesir Dreadnought from the Horus Hersey CCG. This captures the whole essence of what I’m after. Of note is the Thousand Son with holes in him under the Dread’s foot and the ‘shark tooth’ grin on the face guard for want of a better description. I may or may not choose to have mine thumping another Traitor Marine.
The basic concept is that the Space Marine chapters are still using a significant portion of the equipment that was created before the great betrayal. The capacity for manufacture is very low, so the chapters will treat every piece of equipment as slightly sacred/revered/etc. However in the ten thousand years of use equipment will have been repaired and replaced so many times that its original form will likely have been lost. Occasionally the tech adepts will discover the plans for a new piece of equipment, or a discovery will be made (put demolisher cannon onto rhino = vindicator) and slowly over a few centuries this will become more wide-spread.
As such the Dreadnought I’m building will be an upgraded version of the Dreadnought used during the Horus Heresy – although with a different entombed Marine and all elements of the Dreadnought having been replaced.
July 27, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
Ok, perhaps not the best topic line :s
I’ve just tacked the leg components together and in fact they’ve gone together better than I’d hoped. Less slope is going to be needed than I anticipated, which is good. However my gut feeling prooved corect and the left leg needs repositioning slightly, just to make sure that it looks right. One positive thing of doing that, is that it means I can modify the pelvis joins and use plastic rod rather than trying to work with the blob of plastic that it has, creating a much more realistic and dynamic effect.
July 27, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
After around about 8 hours of cutting, filing and some gluing over the weekend, what I’m aiming for looks like it is possible. The right leg has been cut up into separate components and should give enough play to allow it to be hinged at the knee and hip so that it’s pressing down on a Chaos Marine’s chest. Facilitating a slope into the base and pushing the Marine into the ground should allow it to not look like it’s drunk.
Running Totals: Time – ~ 8 Hrs; Cost – £36.47
July 25, 2009 in Golden Demon 2009
When I collected my ticket I also purchased myself a regular plastic Space Marine Dreadnought. I’m a Space Wolves collector and have wanted to put together a dread for ages, but held off because I had a gut feeling that they’d be releasing a new plastic one at the same time as the new Codex. Now that this years Golden Demon has become a possibility, I felt that it was time to fulfil this yearning and put together one of these behemoth’s.
My intention is to hack, gouge and kit bash it into something that portrays the whole ethos behind the Space Wolves. For those that don’t know, Space Wolves are a Space Marine chapter within Warhammer 40k that have a distinct Norse/Celtic feel. Google them and you’ll find lots of reference.
I want to also pay homage to the original Space Marine Dreadnought from yester-year, which were more along the lines of a walking robot, in comparison to the walking ‘box’ that is currently the style. I’ve not got enough time to completely scratch build one of these and in fact I’ve not really got any inclination to as the old walking robot doesn’t fit into the modern style of 40k. The image I’ve included in this post is one of ‘Aesir’, that was created for the Horus Heresy Collectible Card Game and appears in various art books that the Black Library have released and it is this that I am going to use as a starting point for my entry.
In summary the Dreadnought will be positioned so as to have one foot on the chest of a Chaos Space Marine. I’ll angle the whole base so that it’s stood on a slope. The joint that connects the legs to the torso will be lengthened slightly (couple of mm), to give it a little more height. Instead of a sarcophagus, I’ll have a chest piece with a head. The torso armour and leg armour will have ‘ribbing’ on it – basically to break it up and make it different to any other Dreadnought I’ve seem. Both arms will be repositioned so as to give a bit more dynamism. Finally the heavy bolter arm will be done like the picture of Aesir, so actually on an arm joint rather than the bloody stupid way they’re currently done.