20071010:26
am
Let there by cliche!
So recently, thanks to a tutorial on the W.I.P. forums, I have been taught a way of lighting up the tiniest of miniatures. Due to my dire need to take modelling to ridiculous excesses, I thought it warranted further investigation. No! It doesn't involve the use of arcane fiber optics piped from a model's base, which was my original guess. (And a pain in the rear, to boot!)Rather, I have been introduced to a marvelous little piece of technology known as the SMT LED. What is an SMT LED? It's the most ridiculously tiny Surface Mounted Light Emitting Diode you've ever seen. About 1/5 the size of a normal 5mm LED, all told.Now, I solder like a monkey, but apparently even I have the motor skills to bang this together. From this little fella...
You get loads of light!
Don't believe me?
The applications for this sort of thing are limitless - just imagine an orky battlewagon all lit up, or the driver's compartment illuminated my different colored gauges! Even lit Kustom Force Field Generators! (Which I am currently planning!) And they fit in the tiniest of places...
And you can do it in a variety of colors! I was in a sudden mood to start lighting some of my Daemonhunter dreadnoughts, and after about 15 minutes with a dremel and soldering iron I was able to put this together:
Dremelling a forgeworld item is not for the faint of heart, but you could do this to any dreadnought, any power klaw, anything large enough to fit these super-tiny lights! I'm working up the nerve to light an ork's bionik bonce at the moment. I might do it to Ghazzie's head for the sake of it. This wire is the wire I recommend using with these things. It's super-tiny and can fit wherever the LED can, and it's pretty cheap. Don't expect retail radio shack outlets to carry this - I had to order my batch online. I also grab most of my SMT LEDs off ebay - they can get a bit pricy (I got 50 of the blue ones for around ) but they're worth it!
2007411:27
am
The Inquisition is watching
It seems like my motto is rapidly becoming, "Doing things to Forgeworld models any sane individual would avoid."
In the particular case of these dreadnoughts, that is going to be lights. Surface Mounted LEDS, to be precise.
I need to thread my sandpaper through there to smooth things out. The front picture is also really clear evidence of a need for the lensing on the eye. I think I'm going to put scotch tape on the inside of the eye, then pour water effects over it from the outside and let it set, and then pull the tape away and see if that doesn't work.
2007411:04
am
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.
2007411:00
am
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.
200741:50
am
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.
200741:48
am
Puts the ‘Vroom’ in ‘Vroomdakka’
So, I figured I should probably finish this looted dreadnought, now that I've received the buzzsaws I needed.
Totally cool, right? Notice the stuff on the back?
Now it has an engine! I had to kill some time while the buzzsaws soak to remove paint from them, so I got to banging together an engine. I still have some stuff to add, though. It's a separate piece, and like everything else, it's removable and attaches with pins and magnets.
What do you guys think?
2007211:42
am
Posting like it’s 1998
said I'd post these scans, and by god here they are. Hopefully this won't get me in any sort of trouble - the magazine is long out of print, and it's just such phenomenal material. If I get an e-mail from GW asking me to take it down, I shall do so gladly, but I don't honestly think this causes any harm - if anything, it should make you want to subscribe.
First, the battle report, Last Stand at Glazer's Creek. I love Adrian Wood so much. Who else would take the time to pose roaring at his opponents for a magazine?
Following that up, I also have the scans of the Adrian Wood's Dreadnoughts. I think a lot of these parts are since out-of-production, but they're still very interesting visually.
There was one last little thing I noticed while I was reading through these old magazines that I found highly entertaining. Check out the old, all-metal Thunderhawks they used to push!
I love these old magazines. 
They've got such a vintage feel to them, and they don't take themselves too seriously. Might have to look into grabbing a couple more from ebay! I'd certainly recommend people grab a subscription to WD, in any case. Just think - in ten years, you can be looking back fondly at all the current stuff!
200714:40
pm
Facing facts
Right!
To preface this, I'm going to apologize: both for not having worked on this model in quite some time, and for not really having much to contribute with this particular project other than a number of questions regarding sculpting.
Now that we've got that out of the way...
Every so often I get one of those projects that just comes back to life a little bit for me when I feel particularly bored, inspired, or just want to put off the work I should be doing. I've been gazing at this warboss for a while and come to a few conclusions, most of which I will save for later.
I feel kind've dodgy about reviving this simply to post a little flash animation, but it's more an attempt to solicit help than anything. I've never been particularly strong when it comes to sculpting, so you might be able to understand my hesitations.
I took some close up pictures of the bits I'm working with here. Ghazzie's head is there mostly to provide references of features - the two aren't exactly to scale to eachother because I simply scaled them down in two separate photographs after I took the pictures. Rather, Ghazzie's face is to illustrate normal ork proportions.
I've placed lines in roughly where I think features would dictate to try and make it appropriately orky. The coloring bits are just to try and give you a reference of what it might look like post-sculpting, as it's somewhat of a hard image to read with just the lines.
I've pretty much figured out that I need to cut the 'jowls' down a bit on either side with a dremel in order to get the proper jawline I want. Same thing with the jawbones by the eyes, really.
I've also pretty much ascertained that it's far easier to sculpt in steps, but this is where I get a bit confused. I'm not really sure where to even begin sculpting on this. It would seem to me that the first order of business post-dremelling is to extend the head up in a round shape and let it dry, and I get the impression the eyes should probably be done in their own, separate step so that I can sculpt the upper and lower eyelids over it without too much of an issue.
Really, I'm just not sure how to break this down into actual sculpting. Like, I'm not sure if I should try getting those jawbones sculpted out all in one go, or what.
My thoughts on this are if I botch it horribly, I can always give him a helmet with some horns. Hell, I might do that anyway.
Really, though, I've never done something like this, and the face is probably one of the most important features on this fella, so I wanted to solicit a bit of feedback about how I should go about sculpting this. I'm more than willing to just gung-ho try it and peel it off if it doesn't work, but I don't know if I'd be able to properly nail the orky facial proportions if I did that.
So, again. Sorry. I know it's sort of lame to revive a project like this, but I've been inspired by looking at a couple other warbosses as of late and this guy deserves a bit more of my attentions.
20072911:53
pm
More gold than Mr. T
So here's some more of the Nob. I'm not sure if I'm very happy with the way the whole launcher looks; the brassy bits feel a bit cheap to me, and I'd like to orkify the whole thing a touch more but I'm not exactly sure how - painting dings and scratches on it might be a decent start, but I'm not sure how to execute that sort of thing.
I also think I might want to have a go at brightening up the red on his visor a bit, and in these pictures I realize there was a bit of back cabling I missed that I have to go over.
Thoughts? Opinions? Criticism? Ideas? Haiku? Interpretive Dances? I think I need to put blast marks on the barrel ends.
20072911:48
pm
Aiming all the better!
My typical mantra for projects is 'model more so you freehand less' but I suppose there's exceptions for everything, right?
Anyway, I was kicking this idea around since this morning and I got to put a brush on the model only around midnight-ish tonight. I'm not and never will be all that great at painting stuff like this on - I usually prefer to model it on so I can just pick details out - but I think it's a decent way of tying the red and yellows of the model in. I'll do the targeting array on his head in boltgun and wash it in brown a bit like I did the engine on his back to properly cut the brightness of it down.
It actually looks pretty sharp from tabletop distance. Getting this close with a camera reveals all the little spots I screw up or didn't draw quite straight, but I'll get over it. 
Still need to highlight the rocket launcher on his back properly and pick some parts out in a brassy color, as well.
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