Black Reach- a Project Log

[CreganTur]

I've had the AoBR set since this past July and haven't done anything with it. Finishing my recent gretchin project made me want to do more 40k, so I'm finally going to crack open the box and get to work! My goal is to have the Space Marine army finished within 3 months so I can start playing some small skirmishes at my local game store.

I'm staring with the Dreadnought because there's a local competition coming up and I have a great idea for him.

I'm going to add a big banner onto him that I'm scratchbuiding- might be some pics of that later today. I'm still trying to nail down a concept for the base, though.

 

[mickc22]

SNAP! :smile-big:

I've just started putting these together too, I started with the army commanders first, the Ork has some paint on him, and the Marine is just undercoated at the mo
:glasses-cool:

 

[CreganTur]

I used plasticard to form the outline of the banner the Dread will proudly bear into battle, and sculpted the details out of green stuff.

I made a silicon negative mold and, while it was curing, got to work on the banner pole. The main sections are brass rod- I cut the first section using my jewler's saw... and after 2 minutes of cutting and snapping a blade, a remembered my Dremel, which made the whole process much easier!

The support structure is plasticard tube that I covered with a bit of Epoxy Sculpt to hide the joints.

After the mold was done, I pressed a flattened and powdered sheet of green stuff into it to form the banner. The detail's don't show up well due to reflection.

 

[cheelfy]

I really like this banner.

 

[freakinacage]

i'd be tempted to go over the purity seals again to keep them looking 3d

 

[Desmosn]

imho the holes you drilled into that melter are too small

 

[Prophecy07]

Clever. Would this work with greenstuff casting too?

 

[CreganTur]

imho the holes you drilled into that melter are too small

Yep, they are- I actually widened them yesterday.

Would this work with greenstuff casting too?

I don't know- I wouldn't try it because I've got silicone... but there's no reason why it wouldn't work- you would just have to make sure you have everything well lubricated, otherwise the GS will stick to itself and ruin everything.

 

[CreganTur]

Works been coming along nicely on the banner for the Dread. I finished off the back of the banner to look like very distressed and singed old cloth. It involved a lot of sponging and was a lot of fun.

I'm about halfway done with the front of the banner too. I'm trying to make the Ultra symbol look like it's been stitched with a long stitch- the kind they use in heraldry. As you can see, I've still got some cleaning up to do. The top and bottom banner sections are going t get the same treatment next. The top will look like gold thread, and the bottom with be somewhere around bleached bone for the highlights.

I bought some water-transfer paper so I can make my own decals, which I will use to put actual text onto the front and back of the banner. It'll be my first attempt at using the Testor setting and solvent solutions- should be a lot of fun.

I also sold off my collector's edition copy of Tales of Vesperia for a nice chunk of change, so I went out and bought an Aztek airbrush. I'm currently using canned propellant- didn't have enough for an air compressor too. I'll be using that to paint my Dread- I'm going to try the salt trick for weathering. Since I'm doing this piece for a competition, I'm going to try and pull out all the stops.

 

[Desmosn]

if u try to do an old and singed banner it could need some holes shot through it like in the dawn of war intro (dont know if u have seen it, if not you can find it on youtube i think)

 

[CreganTur]

This is just a mini update showing a swatch I made out of plasticard using the salt masking technique for weathering. It's a simple basecoat of Tamiya Gunmetal and the top layer is a mixture of Tamiya Medium Blue and Ultramarines Blue. On the actual miniature I'll be doing all of the highlighting with the salt masking in place.

I used the water based technique instead of hairspray. It worked pretty good, but some of the salt flew off while I was spraying, but that ended up being a "happy accident", as my mother would say. It resulted in some areas having a darker blue than others- it looks almost like water spots because the darkness of the basecoat is coming through a bit.

Masking all of these parts is going to take a while, but I want that done before I begin spraying it down.

 

[cheelfy]

Really nice. Your dread will be really good for sure if it is like this.

 

[CreganTur]

I've finished salt masking and airbrushing the Dreadnaught. This was a big learning experience. I couldn't use the water method of salt maskng because I couldn't get an even coating of water on the surface of the mini, so I ended up having to use the hairspray method, which was much easier.

I did over mask the mini, though, as you can see from the pics. I also oversprayed my highlight colors, which toned down the whole mini. So, I'm going back with a brush and using the same airbrush mixed paints to cover up the over-weathering and correct the tone issues. Once that's done, I'll be doing the final highlight and extreme highlights with a brush (which was always my plan).

Mixing too much paint was a big problem I ran into with this project... but I can use my base color of blue (which you see in the pics holding up the dread) on all of the other marines in my AoBR box... so it's not too big of an issue.

 

[delta 408]

It does look a bit overdone in a few places but it looks good to me.

 

[cheelfy]

I agree with delta as it really looks like a old and destroyed dread but it's good.

 

[Tagamoga]

Isnt it easier to paint the rust fisrt. Cover ist with salt and then basecolour it? when you pull that salt down these hard edges look rather like broken paint, because... it is broken paint? *smile*

Greetings, Taggi

 

[SkelettetS]

hehe now thats a dread thats been to hell and back! a littlebit too much i say, the masking worked indeed out well! if you put some more effort in it, using weathering, you can achieve a really cool dread. thumbs up!

 

[CreganTur]

Well, now I've done it- I only have 2 weeks to get this Dread completed for a local miniature/model competition, so I've got a lot of incentive to do a great job in a short amount of time. It would be better if I didn't have to split my time between him and my commissions, but them's the breaks.

I've almost finished the asphalt base:

The problem is that I cannot decide between these two line patterns. The yellow creates great contrast against the textured base, but the white parking lines are more complex and interesting looking. This is where you guys come in- which one of my Paint mockups do you like best?

I've been working on toning down the weathering, but I've got a lot of shadows and highlights to paint back onto the armor. I'm starting to wish I hadn't based him in a metallic because it's so shiny that it can throw off the effect. Oh well, too late to change that!

The golden emblem is almost complete- I just have to do one more pass on the extreme and extreme extreme highlights. The weathering on the flamer... or whatever it's called, is just about done and I've got a lot more shading to do on the storage tanks. My plan is to finish this arm first, then move onto the powerfist arm, then do the torso followed by the undercarriage (which isn't that dark- bad lighting).

I think I can do this in two weeks!

 

[cheelfy]

That's nice but some highlights at the back need to be more blended.

 

[CreganTur]

I finished the Flamer arm... well everything except the text on the purity seal and a little extra text I might add on as well- they'll be handled by custom water transfers I'll be making in the next few days. Please give your honest comments- I want this to be one of my best pieces to date.