Showing posts with label Tantalus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tantalus. Show all posts

Monday 30 November 2020

Armies on Parade and a Monstrous Engine of Pain

The Court on Parade


After a couple of years painting them and a few weeks creating their display board, the Court of the Fisher King were finally ready to be submitted for the 2020 Armies on Parade online competition!

Shock Manta prepares to enter the drop zone while Trench Runner leaps from his own platform

The court stalking down the shoreline to enter the icy depths

I created the staggered board so that all of my knights can be seen at once

The most challenging part of the whole build was getting the platforms to line up correctly with the base cut-outs; particularly as the water levels were also different for each of the knights!

Deep Dive and Barracuda Squall perch on a rocky outcrop where they can be easily seen above the knights on the shoreline

There's a real feeling of intent now that all of the knights are moving toward the ocean as a united force

Trench Runner is jumping into the depths from a vertical aqua deployment ramp (a knight sized diving board...)

From a more elevated position, you can better see the transition from sandy cliffs to shoreline platforms to the ocean itself 

I love this image so much! The smaller knights picking their way forward while the lancers easily traverse the cliffs up above!

It was important to me that the Fisher King took the prime spot, higher even than Reef Thresher; fitting as the most senior member of the Court, he can be seen towering above them all

Reef Thresher marches with the King on the top tier

The diminutive Mudskipper working his way down the flank

Quake Hydra towers over Mudskipper!

Sacristan Nautolex watches his mechanical charges deploying for battle 
Conga Blue leads the Court, striding out confidently into the bay

Shock Manta appears to be taking one last look at the horizon before his drop

I even managed to find a place for Snapper who is found near a cliff face entry hatch

Building the display board

In my last post, I showed a few images of the poly sculpting I was doing to get the basic structure for my display.  Here are some more images covering off the rest of the process!

The rather naked looking polystyrene shapes!
The next part of the build was to add all of the platform cut-outs and other plastic details which I made while poly sculpting.  I hot glued these in place then began the process of coating the display with external filler (on the cliffs) and plaster on the water areas

This stage was extremely messy and it was difficult not to get filler and plaster on the plastic elements!
I waited until the plaster was starting to cure before creating the wave patterns with gloved hands


After the whole display had dried (this took about 24 hours), I then went back and added additional sand and gravel before priming everything with a mix of pva and paint.  Note that I was using this mixture rather than biscuit spread which the jar suggests!

The base coat of glue and paint took a whole day to dry fully, but it was necessary to seal everything, strengthening the plaster and foam

It was then just a case of painting the rocks, sand and sea to match the army!

Once I'd finished the basic painting, I tested the knights on the display and made small colour alterations to better match them up, then blacked out all of the edges with a mix of thick black acrylic paint and pva.  Again, this took 24 hours to dry, but it levelled and protected the edges nicely for handling


A torture engine like no other!

I realised a couple of weeks ago that with all of the knights and titans on my blog, I have completely neglected to produce anything even vaguely resembling a giant monster for some time and that I needed to remedy this by finishing some of my kaiju backlog!
 
As a result, I finally completed my Drukhari Wrack Knight with a lick of paint!  I'm so pleased with how this monster turned out; he's so unique while fitting perfectly into the coven.

My Wrack Knight in all his gory glory!

Not as bulky as a regular Wraithknight, he is still an imposing presence!

The bladed sails jutting from his back project a shadow field over this mighty monstrosity

Just like his smaller kin, this Haemonculous' creation is studded with dark technology

Double jointed legs give this construct a much more alien feel

As with all servant of the Haemonculi, the creature's face is hidden behind a Wrack mask
The huge trophy rack on this beast's spine displays victims from a wide variety of species...

A twin disintegrator cannon makes for a devastating secondary weapons array

While disintegration is scary, the thought of being killed by a titanic husk glaive is terrifying! 

What Wrack is complete without an exposed spine and hunch back?

Like regular Wracks, the Knight wears his torturer's apron with pride.  The hooks at his back are used to hang trophies during battle

Where the Hex are the rest of them?

As I've not shown them on the blog recently, I thought I'd also take a few group shots of the Coven so far - enjoy!

The Hex in all their dark majesty








Last but not least...

I decided it was time to dust off the Tantalus and start painting...



Thursday 17 May 2018

Tantalus Two - The Tantalator

Since my last post, I've managed to get quite a lot of the remaining Tantalus build work done.  I'll go through my progress one stage at a time just in case anyone wants to follow the project in its entirety!

The Hull

I'm not going to lie to you - the hull has been really hard work!  I think having the blog to update spurred me on as this was a really tough stage of the build.  Having the Hobby beaver looking over my shoulder helped motivate me too...











To begin with, I cheated.  When I say cheated, I mean that I measured the height of the tallest ribbing and went on t'internet to order styrene strips of the correct height and width.

This saved me a huge amount of time and effort - having scratch built things from nothing but sheet styrene in the past, I know the toll it would have taken on my fingers!

A good example of this are some 1/6 scale phone boxes I built from scratch some time ago.  Every single strip was measured and cut from a single Styrene sheet.  I struggled to hold a mug for the following week while my fingers recovered!


Components from the two Phone booths with assembled back plates
Finished assembly
One of the booths in situ on a miniature street.  Convincing huh?

Anyway, once the styrene lengths arrived, I measured the blank areas on the underside of the hull then cut a ridiculous number of individual lengths to the correct size and painstakingly glued them in place taking care to space them equally for the ribbing.

I did noticed a small amount of spacing variance once I'd completed this stage, but as it was on the underside of the hull, I decided not to re-set all of the ribs as it took me a couple of hours to do it the first time!

Top tip:  Styrene and ABS are not like the standard GW grey plastic when it comes to creating a bond with polystyrene cement / liquid poly.  It tends to form a glossy surface bond rather than having a substantially deeper chemical reaction.  Keep this in mind as if you are gluing styrene, you will always need to use plenty of twisting motions to encourage the surfaces to adhere and achieve a solid bond.  Keying the surfaces prior to gluing also helps.  If you don't do this, you risk the parts separating neatly and destroying your hard work!

Once I'd got the ribbing in place and given it a little while to dry, I used a Sharpie to accurately mark out the areas where I would need to work on the styrene bars to bring them in line with the existing Raider contours.


The tools I used to sand down the contours were pretty straightforward, but I'll list them anyway!

  • Convex file
  • Emery board
  • Medium gauge sandpaper in little squares
  • Some round plastic tube cut to a convenient length

This final tool was actually the most important part as I specifically chose a piece which would help me achieve the correct curvature evenly across the hull.

Tools. Exciting.

I wrapped the sandpaper around the tube and used some tape to keep it in place.


Carefully sanding down the hull ribbing while watching Taskmaster on the telly.


You can see the contours slowly taking shape!
At this point, I'll refer you back to the aforementioned top tip.  It's so important.  I had several ribs detach during sanding and it was a complete ball ache to get them stuck back in place while covered in a thin layer of dusty plastic particulates.

Meanwhile on the topside, I used the tube and paper to sand down the outer plating which I had filled in a couple of days before with putty.  I used the file tip at this point to redefine the plate divides as they wore down a little during sanding.  The result is a nice smooth join between the plastic and putty.


Extended hull being sanded down and sharpened up
 
I like to use a putty mix for hard surfaces like these - it's 80% Milliput silver/grey and 20% greenstuff.  The Milliput in the mix gives a very strong surface for sanding once cured, while the green stuff removes some of the crumbly, tackiness from the Milliput while you're handling it.
 
I use silicon based hand cream on the surface of this mix while it's still curing to smooth it out.
 
I always tend to do bulk areas with cheap tough Milliput and green stuff then add surface details with Procreate putty.  Procreate is my favourite putty for many reasons, but it's more than twice the price of anything else, so I use it sparingly!
 
The eagle eyed among you will notice that the cannons at the front have been removed.  This was not intentional.  The bloody things snapped off several times until I decided to leave them off.  Once I'd finished all of the rough work on the hull, I drilled and pinned them in place.  Nothing short of a natural disaster will snap the little bastards off now!
 

Rudders

Whilst I had the rudders prepped and ready for some time, I held off attaching them until I had worked out the base.  The reason for this was the relative fragility of the rudder assemblies.  After my experience with the nose cannons, I decided to hold off until the elevated stand was ready.  Putting the hull on a flat surface would snap the rudders off straight away and I didn't really want to have a rage fit in front of the kids!

First rudder in place, pinned to the hull.
Why take one rudder into battle when you can take three?!

The Sail


Given that the sail is quite large, I decided early on to make it from a single relatively thin styrene sheet and add the ribs as surface detail using semi-circular styrene dowel. This was actually more straightforward than I had anticipate as I carefully measured, cut and pre-curved the ribs before gluing them in place.

The connectors and point caps were more difficult to attach and did require a lot of pinning and patience as the main connector frame would be taking the weight of the whole sail at a fairly severe angle!  Taking my time on this section definitely paid off!

Final sail assembly complete!
The sail is attached to the mast with a small metal pin which goes down into the mast past the first knuckle joint.  For added strength, I also drilled up through the bottom of the hull and put another 2cm metal pin up through into the mast.

The sail finally in place!
Believe it or not, the sail is only resting on the pin in these pictures (it's not glued in place yet).  I see this as testament to planning the structure and strengthening the correct areas during the build!

The Flight stand

I'd been puzzling over the stand for days and eventually decided that the weight of the model and height required to make it look impressive (and avoid snapping bits off!) required more than just a standard flying stem.  A normal Games Workshop flight stand was also out of the question as the fulcrum would actually be right in the void between the double hull!

I settled on creating a tripartite stand using ball ended flight stems.  I angled two regular stems using the existing Raider hull sockets so that they met over the area where the balancing fulcrum should exist.  I then positioned a third longer stem and tested the balance.  Thankfully it worked perfectly to support the weight of the model!  I created a socket for the third stem under the hull where the mast connected, using some pure Procreate putty.  As this area had already been pinned, it was a no brainer for placing the third support!


Stupid fulcrum void...
I carefully drilled and pinned the three flight stems together then glued them to a length of plastic dowel.  I then 'wrapped' the whole connecting area with some Milliput to add extra strength.  I cut a hole through a large oval base and glued the dowel in place.  I then used some heavy slate rocks and more Milliput to add considerable weight to the base and strengthen the connection further.  This would also counter-balance the weight of the model to prevent it from tipping over!

Behold the ugliest flight stand at the ball!!

Tripartite stand holding the model. Thanks goodness for that!

 

Almost there! 

I'm now on the final stretch!

Structurally everything works and personally, I think it's looking amazing!  Surface detailing and adding the crew are next on the agenda.

I'll be adding the following finishing touches over the coming days...

  • Little spikes and chains on the hull plating
  • Haemonculus Coven Wrack crew including control panels
  • Rigging (which you'll notice I've already added the hooks for if you look carefully...)
  • Large-ish blade vanes under the hull
Following that, it'll be on to painting!

Final thoughts

Although I really love the Forge World kit, the reason I started this project was to make an original looking Tantalus which fitted nicely with my Coven.  This was partly driven by the fact that I wanted more decking for my models to be placed on as it'll mainly be carting my grotesques around and they have pretty large bases!

I've put some comparison pictures below - I'd love to hear what you think! :)

The lovely Forge World original
My Tantalus