Vanquisher - GDUK Gold - WIP pics

[rocketandroll]

Hi folks...


As a few people had asked about it, I thought I\'d do a quick \'posthumous\' WIP for my Macharius Vanquisher project to show some of the brass etch bits etc.

So, to start things off, here\'s the brass etch sheet showing some of the components before they were removed and applied to the tank. The components were made by me taking dimensions from the model (so they\'d fit right) and then laying them out in Adobe Illustrator, then sending the file off to PDD Ltd who made them up in about a week and a bit.

 

[rocketandroll]

Then... here\'s a pic of the tank\'s turret with some of the brass etch components applied to it.

And another here:

Note the stubber in the foreground with the turned brass barrel. Unfortunately this was never used on the model as it got completely in the way of the Tallarn comander once he was in place. So it\'s gone in my bits box

 

[rocketandroll]

Finally, here she is after the airbrush base coat was applied. You can barely tell on the finished model that she has cammo applied to her

The rest, as they say, is history... you can see the finished tank as she was when entered in GD Spain in Feb 08 here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/182708

And as she is now, after 20hrs of tweaking for GDUK:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/202618


The identification pennant was Adrian Bay\'s idea (cheers Adie) and Nigel (Talonicus), Rob (Orb) and Robin, Rich Chris and Jerome from Team Harrow also helped with ideas to add the accent colour in the form of the grey stripes that just lifted it from being a big yellow blob

I also did a few other tweaks adding more weathering powders to give it a more dirty look.

All in all I\'m 99% happy with the tank as it is now... but after so much work it has made me wonder whether I\'ll ever have the patience to do another model this big

Cheers all


Ben

 

[demonherald]

The brass etch stuff looks a lot better and more useful than the forgeworld stuff.. nice one...

As for Big Projects .. I know what you mean but something will no doubt grab ya one day.. I am just coming to the end of a Nurgle Baneblade... Man That\'s been tough.. Now I have a customer beating my door down to do a Nurglified reaver... I\'m tempted but scared...


anyways great to see the wip pics makes you renotice som e of the additions that are easy to miss.

great stuff

 

[Matt Cexwish]

Wow, nice Gear you have...... Etched Parts are the Shit...

How much do I have to spend for such a luxury...?...

I think we may share the machine... Useful as hell...

The File for anything you want to create you need is a simple CAD...?...

 

[rocketandroll]

Originally posted by Matt Cexwish
Wow, nice Gear you have...... Etched Parts are the Shit...

How much do I have to spend for such a luxury...?...

I think we may share the machine... Useful as hell...

The File for anything you want to create you need is a simple CAD...?...

Hey Matt!!!

IIRC I chatted with Ben (Kommets) at GD Spain about the brass etch company I use.... they\'re called PPD, you can find them here:

http://www.ppdltd.com/

It\'s nowhere near as expensive as you\'d think. This sheet, which was about 300mm by 150mm (big enough to get almost two full sets of the bits for the Vanquisher and some other random bits like the chaos icon and the sword blades you can see) was about £30, so about 45 Euro? That\'s inc delivery and they did it in less than two weeks.

I sent them the artwork as a .EPS file generated in Illustrator which is a vector-graphic illustration programme. Basically anything that can generate dimensionally accurate 2D vector files (any 2D CAD software, or an illustration package such as Illustrator or Coreldraw) with layers of colour will do fine.

I know Ben wanted some bits done, it\'s great for plaques and name badges if nothing else! If you guys wanna share a sheet then by all means let me know and we can split it.

It\'s more a matter of the time it takes to prepare the artwork than the cost... IIRC the parts for the Vanquisher took me three days to create the artwork, so 20hrs+

These are much finer (thinner) than the FW stuff, and you can choose the thickness and the material, they\'ll do brass, copper, steel.

The Vanquisher plaque was actually 0.25mm thick brass which was then nickel plated to make it bright silver... that wasn\'t cheap, but it was tagged on to a commercial job I was doing so I got it free, but plating a sheet will set you back up to £80+ :-(

Anyway, hope all that helps, e-mail me if you need any more details or want one of my .eps artwork files as a starting point.


Cheers!!


Ben

 

[rocketandroll]

Oh, just to add.... my dad has just acquired a spray-etching machine for making PCB\'s... we\'ve chatted about using it for etching brass or copper sheet and he\'s pretty confident it\'ll do it fairly accurately. Watch this space, we may be able to do brass-etch at cost (a few pounds).


Ben

 

[nick232]

so how does a CAD program work?
how do you design the sheet?

 

[freakinacage]

wow man, thats good stuff, thanks for the info

 

[rocketandroll]

@Nick

I think I mentioned, I lay it out in Adobe Illustrator.... but any 2D CAD system should work too. You basically need to create a 2D vector graphic file of the artwork, they can\'t work from a raster file (ie: one that is made up of pixels and can\'t be infinitely scaled).

If anyone\'s really interested, drop me an e-mail or a PM and I\'ll send you one of the pieces of artwork as an .eps file and you can take a look at how it works.

Looks like there\'s going to be a flood of brass-etch adorned minis


Ben

 

[Ritual]

I\'ve been using brass-etched stuff for a good while (mostly foliage), but the idea to have them custom made never ocurred to me. That opens up new possibilities, for sure!

 

[mickc22]

any chance of doing an article on how to set it out so it\'s suitable for etching
just something simple to give us the idea, don\'t want you spending 20+ hours on it tho

 

[rocketandroll]

Originally posted by mickc22
any chance of doing an article on how to set it out so it\'s suitable for etching
just something simple to give us the idea, don\'t want you spending 20+ hours on it tho

I\'ll do a little tutorial with pics next week... and I\'ll drop PPD an e-mail asking what my commission will be when their workload doubles ;-)


Ben

 

[tempestice]

Hello, I hope that you read this post and it is not too late...

I have many questions regarding your tank and how you painted it so well. All I can say is that if you want to sell it, I will gladly buy it form you haha.

my questions:
1. How did you get the subtle camo on your tank?
2. What is the tan color that you used on the model, and if it was used with an airbrush, did you mix colors.
3. How did you paint the white lines on the tank?
4. How did you do the shading by each bolt?
5. I really like the main base color(tan) wdid you have to mix it to achieve it?