The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Chipped metal and bloody saws!

As I mentioned, I'm still not quite done painting this thing. I wanted to do a bit more to the metals, but the whole thing obviously still looked a bit too pristine.

With that in mind, I only had a little bit of free time today, so I had at it by chipping the paint around some of the edges. They're probably hard to make out, but it's not like I'm looking for much of an excuse to post more photos. Some of them might be harder to see, I suppose.

 

I also worked on adding a bit of gore and bloody spray to the close combat arms. It gets a bit lost against the red of the dreadnought, but it seemed like it would be a nice touch.

I found a remarkably easy method to doing this. It's five very easy steps:

1) Get a red gore color (darker red) and drybrush it on around the area you intend to have bloodied up.
2) Mix a brighter red color with a touch of orange, and water it down a lot. I don't know how precise you need to be, but I did something like 2:1 water to paint.
3) Get a big brush and load the tip up with a big drop of the watered down red liquid.
4) Get a paper towel and wrap the areas you do not want the blood on. For example, on the buzzsaw arm, I wrapped doubled-up paper towel around the entire arm and left just the buzzsaw exposed.
5) Hold the brush up about 3-4 inches from the part to be bloodied, and blow hard on the bristles from a few inches away.

The spray from the paint blowing off the brush creates a convincing bloody mess on the part you have exposed. Just let it dry - don't overdo it. You can control the size of the blood spray droplets on the model by holding the brush closer or farther from the model - the closer you get, the bigger the drops that are sprayed. It's super-easy, and if you get it right I think it creates a convincing appearance. I'm not certain it worked out all that well on the chainaxe, but that's mostly because the thing was red to begin with. I'm not sure if leaving the red overspray on the yellow glyphs like I have it now helps sell the effect a bit more or not.

Anyway, there you go. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this model now, though the metals need some more work to make them pop. Maybe I'll drybrush them with a bit of a brighter silver in places.

How long could this possibly take?

The model's not yet done, but it's coming along. I spent two hours watching a movie and very irritatingly trying to highlight all of the hard edges on the dreadnought with thin lines of vallejo's blazing orange, and I think I like the way it looks, though it doesn't quite match the aesthetic of my other orky vehicles. Still, it's looted, so I suppose that's fine.

I fiddled with my camera's color and exposure settings, so I think these are a bit more true-to-life than my previous photos in varying light. I tried to take them up close, though obviously you'll see all the nitty gritty details of the painting as I still haven't quite figured out how to do some smooth blending of colors.

 

It's still a little glossy - I should probably hit it with some dullcote later on, but for now you get the idea. It needs some more weathering and attention - it's far too pristine to be properly orky yet. The metal bits all need some serious work, as well.

I'm trying to figure out what and where I can put a blood angel icon on it, but I can't make up my mind. I think the best spot would either be on the front of the arm with the sawblades, or the side of that arm underneath the armor plate. I should probably have left half the chest bare, as it seems that that's where the major identifying icons go on dreads, but oh well. I'll probably freehand whatever it is like I tried to do with the checks, simply because I am far too lazy to learn how to properly decal things!

Here's one last little closeup:

Only the details remain!

So I got a bit more of a reasonable lighting setup. I still maintain that the model looks better in person, though I have no doubt I wouldn't be the first. In my defense, I have yet to dullcote any of the dreadnought yet, so it's still quite glossy. The only reason I haven't hit it with any Dullcote is because I don't know how easily I'll be able to paint over it afterwards, honestly - I want to make sure I don't make it harder for myself.

Anyway, here's a bit more. I painted the back engine which was a relatively quick and easy job, but I suppose I can't complain about that. This is basically the entire dreadnought put together, though it needs a lot of extra work still - I need to do some weathering and chipping around the edges, add the checks and stripes I keep talking about, the blood angels icons, and I need to pick out a lot of the rivets on the model. There's a lot of small detail areas that could use some work, too.

 

Also, I'm going to work on making another base that will blend in with the rest of my army's theme better, but in the mean time I figured I'd pose the dread on something else just for fun. I have this display base leftover from an action figure I had some years ago that has since broken; I held onto it with the expectation that it might be fun to photograph orks on.

It won't be till at least Sunday that I get to painting the mini more, since I've regimented my work habits into converting while I am at home and painting while I am at school. Since I am presently at home, well, you get the idea.

Now even the choppa goes fasta!

Aaaaand a little more before I go to sleep. Base coated and worked on the choppa-wielding arm a little bit and touched up a couple spots - I still have to add the checkmarks to places in random bands on the body, the blood angels icon on one of the shoulders maybe, and some weathering and the likes.

Not much progress but I'm getting there.

Almost armed

Here's a bit more, I guess.

 

My lighting is terrible, but you get the idea. I'm just base coating it between classes for the most part - I'm going to add bands of checkers across the broad red surfaces similar to what I did on my old battlewagon. It's hard to get a nice, even coat of red on the thing while keeping the recesses inked, too. The red is pretty bright in the photos, but I think it's just about right in person - the gloss is changing the hue a little bit.

The metal parts are pretty dark - I'm going to drybrush them a bit brighter silver before I move on to anything serious with them.

Painting da looted dread

I finally stopped dicking around and started painting this mini. It's taken me a fair bit of time, mostly because there's so many damned nooks and crannies on the model that need attention. I've basically been basecoating the thing, and I gave the body a pretty decent black ink wash to try and bring the details back out because I am fairly heavy-handed with a brush.

 

The model's a little glossy from the wash as I mixed it with that Future Acrylic Floor Wax. I actually think the gloss makes it a bit harder to paint the brighter reds on (the color 'pulls' with the brush as I paint, instead of staying where I try to put it), so I'm not certain if I should hit it with dullcote now before continuing. The arms are also being base coated right now. I've basically been using that 'Mechrite Red' foundation color on it, which is nice for a base. I'm working now on highlighting it a bit better with some brighter reds, because this is supposed to be a looted furioso, after all. Painting that little grot in the cockpit is a pain, let me tell you! I'm hoping with a finer brush and a bit of a steadier hand I might be able to pick the details out a bit better tomorrow.

I'm actually not certain it's going to be staying on this base - I've been working on a more desert-ish theme with my latest bases, and I think this might get a different one to match so I'm not painting it just yet.

Anyway, it's progressing.

Still stomping

I bounced back to this project with the intention of finishing it off while I wait for extra parts for my Zagstruk to come in the mail. I was hoping to finish it off in the span of a single day, but my law school applications took up literally nine hours of yesterday, so I wasn't as productive as I might have liked. Still, I tweaked a couple things, and I'd love some comments on it.

 

I slightly repositioned that stock marine shinguard and added some orky decoration to it. I also decided that I really didn't like the shield that was on it - the shape was good and the bit itself helped convey the motion of walking with the dangly bits that swing underneath, but I just didn't like the idea of wood on this model. I found an ork glyph that I believe comes from one of the warbikes, maybe? Either way, it fit fairly nicely.

I also spent a bit of time working on adding some form of details to the buzzsaw arm. A tiny little glyph was added to one of the shoulder plates, and I dremeled a quick little 'impact' hole where the dreadnought took some battle damage which was hastily plated up. Built something of a small exhaust pipe on the back to replace the normal worky marine bits. I also added a little length of cabling to try and balance the model out - the other arm has a lot of cables! I'll probably add one or two more before this is through.

I'm open to suggestions as to what might 'complete' this model. I know the 'replacement leg' on the model looks fairly open and unarmored, but I haven't really figured out a way of adequately armoring it without looking like said armor interferes with the working mechanisms. I could just add auxiliary pistons to either side of the main one...

I'm seriously deliberating putting a red LED inside the body to backlight the grot just because I can, rather than out of any particular need. I don't know if it's worth all the trouble, though.

I was actually thinking I might make an alternate back piece for this model, as well. The Apocalypse 'Dred Mob' rules let you nominate one model of the mob to carry a force field projector. You can actually put the projector on a Stompa, which is what I imagine I'd most want to do, but in games where I either can't fit or for some reason don't want to include my gargant I should probably make an effort to indicate this dread as carrying the projector.

Anyway, more than open to ideas or comments.

Pimp my dakka

had a bit of an idea that I thought was worth pursuing.

See, I tend to like flexibility in my models, so I was gazing at the guns on this thing and thought I might try a bit of a flamer upgrade that I could add or remove as needed. My original line of thinking was that I could chop the barrel off and magnetize it, but the ammo clip would need the same treatment and it'd just end up being a pain to assemble whenever I wanted to use it. Instead, I decided with a bit less of an obtrusive upgrade, and banged out a prototype to see how I liked it...

 

It's a bit of an obvious cop-out, particularly with the ammo clip still there... but is it passable, you think? I imagine a big shoota setup would be standard, but against particular horde armies I could probably see this being of use.

Leadership plus one (4th ed joke!)

I felt this was necessary.

 

Going to add a bit more detail and rivets to it later if I can find room and figure out what, exactly. It's a good candidate for a checker pattern. The guns forced me to make it a bit smaller than originally planned but I think it still works.

Nothing like a pair of buzzsaws

Gettin' there!

 

I need to integrate them a little better, but I don't think it looks all that bad. Had to hack a lot of it down to make it all fit together smoothly, and I could probably use a bit of putty on the seams just to close the gap up. I actually hacked the two square vented parts off the back of the saws as I thought they looked a bit too long and awkward. This sets the saws a bit closer to the wrist, which I think helps keep the general aesthetic of the thing a bit cleaner. As clean as orks get, anyway.

Used a file to flatten down the insides of these, then pinned them together, and then pinned the back of the engine onto the wrist. I cut the wrist down a bit, too, with a jeweller's saw to get a flat surface for mounting the weapon on.

I'd like to beef that 'replacement' leg up a bit - making it look more compressed by shortening it a bit is one way of possibly doing that, but it's really such a pain in the ass to do something along those lines that I'm probably going to avoid it. I really want to come up with another way of reinforcing it a tiny bit, but at the same time I like the 'wow, that could give at any moment' look of it, so I need to find a comfortable middle ground.