Previously on Kaiju country... I spoke about the Titan Owner's Club Walk 2019. It's shaping up to be an absolutely incredible event and in preparation, I've been working on the two Warhounds for my the Titan Maniple that I'll be taking to the event.
With little over a week and a half left before the event, I've been steaming through the project and believe it or not, am actually on schedule to have everything ready in time!
So, how are they looking? Here's how!
Fulgar Manus (The Lightning Hand)
My first Warhound has taken a substantial amount of time, but is almost complete! Between the complex pose and base, a considerable amount of time went into the build phase of this titan. I don't regret it for a second, but it's taken almost as long as my Reaver titan to complete!
Colour Scheme
Working out the colour scheme for my Warhounds was tricky as I wanted to tie them in with Ferrum Dominus, but didn't want them to end up looking like Legio Ignatum whose modern incarnation now confusingly looks more like the original Epic Legio Metalica designs.
With the Adeptus Mechanicus originating from Metalica adopting white as one of their primary colours, I decided to try and shift the focus away from yellow, with my spot colours being predominantly black and white.
That said, I still love yellow and also wanted to tie in with my Knights Raven who feature yellow (How confusing!!)…
So, here are a couple of the initial rough designs I came up with...
Fulgar Manus actually ended up being pretty close to the design on the left as you can see from the following pictures...
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| The direction of the white chevrons was changed and the cog design was simplified in the final design. The engine covers, shoulders and arms are not yet complete, but aren't far off at the time of writing! |
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| Here is a WIP shot of the carapace in progress. It looks pretty rough at this stage, but it gives you a good idea of how everything is laid out |
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| I'm super pleased with how he's looking; in particular, the base is coming together well. It will need some light flocking but the destroyed knight is complete |
WIP Images of the legs and base:
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| You can just see the Waist magnet which is invaluable for transport |
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| Freehanding the Malinax symbol on the tilt shield was fun :) |
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| Anyone for Chess? |
Excidium Rex (King of Desolation)
By comparison, I thundered through the build stage of Excidium Rex, taking just over a week including his base! He's now base sprayed silver and is in the paint phase, although I don't currently have anything outside of WIP build images to show you.
Unlike his hound brother, I actually built the base first, with a pose in mind then constructed the Warhound to fit. This was also a far quicker build because there was far less pinning to do - both of Rex's feet would be taking the weight of the body instead of just one!
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| I wanted the City base of Ferrum Dominus and the more rugged base of Fulgar Manus to be tied together with this guy, so he's posed with one foot on a defence wall which separates the city side of the base from the outdoorsy side |
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| I deliberately posed the hips at a slight angle to imply that the foot on the wall is actually clinging on with the toes rather than just standing bolt upright |
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| Aside from a pin going up from the base, through the feet and into the ankle ball, the only other part which I decided to pin was the hips given that they would take a fair amount of stress with this pose |
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| Again, I magnetised the waist to aid transportation |
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| With the toes and pistons in place, the build is far more convincing |
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| As with my first Warhound, I had to hide the hip pins with a cap on each side. I simply used some spare Imperial Knight components on Rex. |
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| As well as the toes gripping the wall, you can also see that I have added a crotch banner in this image; again take from an Imperial Knight kit |
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| I wanted to make my hounds noticeably different, so carefully shaved off the existing details... |
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| ...and added some new ones! |
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| Sub assemblies held in place to gauge how the final build will look |
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| When adding the waist magnet to the body, I found it necessary to drill all the way through. In order to hide the hole and add a nice little detail, I made an attendant servo skull attached to a magnet topped with matching kick-plate |
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| This servo skull was actually taken from the Tech-priest Dominus kit with a piece of extra cable and an arm from one of the skulls which came with the Warhound kit. I chose this one as it's large enough to still be seen within the cramped interior! |
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| SERVO-SKULL GETS TO DRIVE... |
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| ...and reminds me a lot of Ed-209 after his head pops! |
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| And finally, here's a quick sketch up of how I want Rex's colour scheme to look. It will probably all hinge on how well the Legio symbol translates into a stencil! |
Princeps costume
Previously I showed you some images of the Princeps Cuirass which I made - well, I didn't stop there. To really get the most out of the armoured Cuirass, you'd need to have a greatcoat underneath. Despite searching high and low, I couldn't find a suitable garment which would work right out of the box so had to resort to a good old needle and thread.
To begin with, I managed to find an old burgundy coat at a charity shop for just £3 - bargain! Once I had put it through the washing machine (as it stank of old ladies and cabbage), I started by removing the belt which was made from the same material as the jacket. I kept this for use later on.
I think removed the buttons, sewed up the pockets and repaired a couple of seams on the basic jacket. Now that I could test the fit, I found that the jacket was a bit short in the arm, so extending the cuffs was the first order of the day!
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| Here's the jacket mocked up with the collar, cuffs and some other bits including buttons |
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| In this picture, you can see that I have added a black leather Aquila shape on the chest along with edging in black and white leatherette for the buttons. You can also see the black leather cuffs which now extend the jacket perfectly to fit me! |
As I wanted the jacket to look like an actual officer's dress uniform, I decided early on that it would need both frogging on the chest and some pretty fancy epaulettes. Note that the Aquila shape in the above picture was added as a base for the gold frogging in the final incarnation.
The cloth belt which I had originally removed was perfect for making epaulettes. I cut both ends off, made a spatula shape from thin EVA (which would fit inside to give it some stiffness) and cut out some black leatherette to act as a cover.
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| The basic components of an epaulette |
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| I started by sewing the leatherette over the round spatula end |
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| Then I added the belt end sock thing with the straight leather section on the outside |
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| After folding in the edges, I pinned and then sewed the leatherette in place |
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| Next I sewed the end of the edging securely underneath the round end of the epaulette. Note the taped end was snipped away once it was secure |
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| I then sewed the edging all the way round and fastened it in place under the circle on the other side |
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| I then pinned on the gold frill... |
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| ...and carefully sewed it in place |
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| And the finished product with a button added |
In my next post, I should have some more pictures of the jacket along with the Cuirass and some other little accessories that I've been working on!
And finally...
If you're still reading, then you probably came for some hot Troggoth action as hinted in the title of this post. Well, your reward is this heavily converted Aleguzzler Gargant which is being added to my Troggherd! Enjoy! :)
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| So many shrooms... |
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| Hi pet dragon was clearly loved |
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| His interests include nights out clubbing |
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| Toe crack spores. Yum. |
