Fellblade Rescue

This thing has been a royal pain in the ass but it is finally assembled and ready for paint. A while back my buddy Joe picked up a Fellblade from ebay (check out his blog to see his awesome commission painting). When it arrived it was clear to him that the glue bomb he had just received was a recast full of problems. He brought it to me to repair in exchange for some trade. 

I had to begin by disassembling it. There were major gaps, broken and missing pieces, warping, and nasty seam lines. Joe had picked up some 3rd party treads and forgeworld doors he wanted to use. In addition to the extra bits he wanted to add, we had to completely replace the bottom of the hull as well as the two interior side walls. While I didn't take any 'before' pictures I have detailed the steps I took below.

One of the many broken pieces was the .5mm lip around the sensors on the main turret. I trimmed of the broken portion and replaced it with styrene cut to shape and size.

These little brackets were missing from the model so I whipped some up out of styrene and apoxie sculpt. The rivets are from MENG. 

The turret itself had several chips and gaps in the edges. A bit of putty, a lot of sanding, and a coat of grey primer later and its as good as new. When working with putty it helps to apply a layer of primer after sanding to see the finished product. Followed up by subsequent sanding and primer seam lines an blemishes disappear.

Several of the steps were broken or chipped so I shaved off what was left of them and replaced them with styrene cut to shape and size.

The lascannons needed some serious straightening, nothing a dip in some hot water couldn't help. The sight rails also needed to be replaced. Don't ask me why unmanned weapons need sight rails but apparently in the 31st century they do.

One of the back tread covers was broken and a duplicate of the opposite side. It needed a great deal of putty work to rebuild.

The third party treads didn't fit at all and required modification of the undersides to fit. The forgeworld doors only required a gentle sanding to fit in place.

Considering where it started out I'm quite pleased with it and look forward to seeing what it looks like painted. Oh, and yes, that is a Sicarian Battle Tank in the background, but I'm saving that for another post.

IPMS Best of the West Results

This weekend I made the trip up to Las Vegas to enter some of my work in the International Plastic Modelers' Society (IPMS) Best of the West competition. My primary entry was the recently completed Imperial Knight Titan which I had built specifically for entry into this competition.

In addition to the Knight I brought a Space Wolf Drop Pod and a Space Wolf Rhino.

Upon arriving at the venue I saw first hand just how tough the competition was. There were many entries into the Sci-Fi category including a scratch built scale model of the time machine from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine". I am proud to say that my Titan took home 3rd place. The time machine took first, as well as fan favorite, and a highly detailed pod racer took 2nd place.

Imperial Knight Titan

In anticipation of the IPMS Best of the West model show I wanted to do something big so I picked up an Imperial Knight Titan. I figured that it would not only make a great contest entry, I could use it in my Imperial Army when playing 40k.

This model is a great one. It is incredibly detailed although it was lacking one major component, it didn't have a cockpit. I decided to create one from scratch and I detailed my process in an earlier post which can be found here.

I completed the cockpit in its entirety before beginning any of the paint work on the remainder of the model. The endoskeleton came first. I primed it black and dry brushed it in metallics working from dark to light. Brass details were painted accordingly and the exhausts received a heat treatment. Light metallics were added to the pistons, a few additional details were painted and the entire skeleton received a gloss coat, followed by a burnt umber oil wash followed by dullcote. After that I detailed the joints and pistons with some AK Interactive fuel stain to give that greasy look.

The heat effect was achieved by airbrushing progressive layers of Tamiya clear colors in blue, yellow, and red.

I debated for quite a while on the color pattern and house of the knight. I chose a deep yellow and blue with red accents. The yellow was achieved with army painter yellow and red. The blue was a mix of Games Workshop regal blue and white. Both colors were airbrushed over grey primer in progressively lighter coats. I learned that in the future it is best to mix far more of a color than you need. Trying to mix a color again after the fact is hard as hell. I had to strip and repaint a couple of pieces twice as I got the color right.

After all the painting was finished a gloss coat was applied and decals laid down. Micro Set and Micro Sol make a world of difference in the appearance of decals. After the decals I used the sponge technique to apply chipping effects to the painted areas. Another gloss coat was laid down and everything received a wash of burnt umber followed by black wash on the rivets and other details.

I added rings and chains to all the loops.

For the base I chose to make a small drainage culvert along with some battle debri. The corrugated pipe is cable wrap, the wheel is a resin cast of one from my Venator kit, the debri is a piece of a Leman Russ sponson and the Chaos Space Marine is from some bits I had and the Space Wolf Lord kit. To create the ditch I dremeled out the path and added some contours using white glue. I painted the rest of the base with a white glue and sand mixture, drybrushed it all in several tones of browns and greys, and added some various grasses and flocking. I made the guts from the marine out of green stuff. I painted the details and added a blue wash to the marine and debri. Rust weathering powders were then applied and the base was covered in dullcote.

Once all of that was completed three layers of Secret Weapon Miniatures 'Real Water' was added to the drainage ditch. After it had dried I trimmed the base in black and added two pins to post the knight in place.

Imperial Knight Titan Cockpit

I had been looking for a large model to complete for the upcoming IPMS Best of the West model contest. While I was eyeballing a Tau Riptide my gaze wandered over to the Imperial Knight Titan. Not only a beautiful large model, but it was something I could field in my Imperial Guard army should I want to.

As always I wanted to do something a little different with the model so I decided on building a cockpit. The standard model doesn't come with one so it was going to be scratch build. I used the cockpit built by John Stiening at his blog "40k Hobby Blog" as a reference. I noted that in his blog he appeared to have used the control console from a Space Marine Land Raider. I picked one up from Bullettbits55 on eBay. I then used some instantMold to make a press mold of the control console and monitors so that I could make some green stuff copies.

Additional details were added using the Green Stuff Industries tentacle maker, scratch styrene, and guitar string. Aside from the head, the pilot was sculpted out of procreate. I've done plenty of filing and detail sculpts but this was my first attempt at a sculpt of that size. The gears were from a pack I picked up at a craft store.

The cockpit was primed black and drybrushed with army painter gun metal mixed with black. A second dry brushing of pure gun metal was applied over that. I then drybrushed a coat of bronze over the consoles. The screens were all painted in blended shades of aqua and lagoon craft paints. The buttons were painted various bright colors and the entire cockpit received a gloss coat. I then applied a wash of brown, burnt sienna, and black oil paints to the 'metal' surfaces. After the oil paints had dried I applied dull coat to the cockpit and finished by applying gloss varnish to the screens.

The pilot chair received a similar treatment and the pilot's robes were painted in barn red, given a dark wash and highlighted with barn red with progressively more Army Painter red mixed in. Skin tones were completed using Army Painter Tan Flesh and a craft paint flesh color. A small amount of red was added to the flesh color around the points where the cables enter his skull.

With the cockpit completed it's on to the rest. Soon to come!

UPDATE:

Here's a couple more pictures of the cockpit now that the rest is done.