WIP: Stormblade with interior

[Chrome]

When GW released their Baneblade I immediately bought one and started filing, cutting and in other various ways desecrating and slowly decimating it for it to become something far greater than it already was...

That\'s a long time ago now and a few things have happened even if it hasn\'t been even close to as much as I would\'ve wanted it to.
But I decided that I\'d try to change that and what way would be better than posting it for people to see and share their thoughts and ideas on it? Besides, this is my first real post in the forums and what would be more suitable than a nice and clean WIP?

Ah, less rambling, more action! As said, I bought the model. quite soon(almost the same second I opened the box actually) I realized that half the model was mostly useless in my plan.
The \"roof\" and tower were actively ignored when i started to assemble this behemoth. After some drooling and other obscene activities regarding large things and the overall Apocalypse feel I decided to get myself some reference material on this project...

Hmm, where to get pictures of Stormblades and interiors of tanks of that design? (\'Nuff said, i downloaded the pics. No copyright violation intended.)

And then I started building!

Lovely bow-tie isn\'t it?

At some point I got the crazy idea of putting diodes and other fluffy stuff in there as well, lets see how well that fares...

I do have more old pics to post but I\'ll post them in an hour or so, need to be all \"Adult\" now and go grocery shopping before the store closes. hope you enjoy these pics meanwhile, there\'s a lot more done on the model to date but feel free to comment and give me tips anyway, might be something i could change or do better even in this stage of it all. lol

 

[sg2009]

cant see the pics mate

sam

 

[Chrome]

Thats no good. Others having the same problem? If so I\'ll have to change my uploading client...

 

[stubert]

Yer I cant se eather.....stu.....

 

[Chrome]

Ok, host changed, any success?

 

[sg2009]

yeh i can see them now

sam

 

[DaN]

I can see ... <counts>

... 4 pictures

 

[Chrome]

Alright! I\'m back and the pictures are showing the way they should. That means I can continue with the story and get to the more fun part.

As soon as I started building on the Plasma blastgun I realised that that was going to be the most fun part to build so naturally that\'s the part I\'ve come the furthest on, sadly I didn\'t take any pictures on the framework inside it but it\'s just a square frame made out of pieces of sprue.

And, no. The cheese slicer wasn\'t used in the modelling process

The muzzles are a butchered old felt pen, no more, no less.

After som sandpapering and filing it was still rough but alot more pleasant to look at.

Here\'s how it looks today, as i write and in this very moment:

I fill the creases and cuts along the way as I add more details. So, how does the weapon look this far? Any crazy ideas?

 

[mud duck]

looking good!
I\'d check Forge World for the pictures (if that was what your looking for).
comment: Have you considered making a volcano cannon and making the guns just be swapable? From the looks of the pics that I\'ve seen the hulls are the same thing just with different main guns. Just a thought.
Also is the base, IE the pivot strong enough to support the weight of the cannon. I\'d hate to see you put any this work into it, and have your tank suffer from Limpis Cannonaise. You don\'t want all the other tanks to be sinkering behind it\'s back.
\"Ooo. Look at the big, bad stormblade. To bad he can\'t keep it up.\"


Sorry, just had to say it.....

 

[Chrome]

Those are the pictures I am using as reference actually(Forge World).
I\'m not really planning on making the turret pivotable since im pretty much following the original design with tweaks more than alterations... The plan is to make the turret more like a second floor with control panels and other various equipment inside.

But making a Volcano Cannon and being able to swap them sounds like a really cool idea actually, I\'m almost bummed at the thought that I didn\'t think of that earlier.
That is definitely something to start sketching on...

 

[Chrome]

Onwards with the larger part of the model! Since I wanted lights and other shiny stuff in it I first needed somewhere to put all the ugly parts of the wiring. A box for the battery and a nice way to turn it all on and off, e.g. a switch that wouldn\'t be too obvious. So, I came up with this:

The switch was hid in one of the hatches on top of the box.

A pretty nice solution but after I was finished I realized I had built a solid box... There was no way to get the battery out of there nor any chance of maintenance work! So after some serious thinking, I bought myself a Land Raider to get my hands on the rear of that one. and after a while of cutting, gluing and the usual injuries I had a hatch to open and close at will! (Hooray!)

Later I added the Land Raider floor as interior flooring on the model, wasn\'t \'till then I realised just how big the Baneblade model actually is...

 

[mud duck]

Are you planing to go whole hog and add a drivers position, sponson gunners stations and what not?

 

[Chrome]

That is the goal of this little project, I am thinking somewhere along the same design as FW:s Stormsword model. I have no doubt that it will differ quite alot in the end but its a frame to work with.

 

[Shawn R. L.]

@Chrome - How much did you pay for that blue LED and where did you get it? I\'m starting to fool around with putting LED\'s in my stuff and blue and white are a bit pricey.

 

[Manus]

looking very cool. Can you tell us in short how its is possible to hook up LEDs to a battery (must admit I\'m useless at elektronics) and it could be fun to try

 

[COG]

sweet muzzle. that looks spot on
and the leds are easy (well kind of)
you just have to find out what the led takes voltage wise and make sure you get a resistor that drop the volts down to that level.
or you just add hearing aid batteries till they light up like jamsession does lol
its a bit more complicated than that but you get the idea i hope

 

[Chrome]

The LED part is easy, if you look at the picture where i show the inside of the model with the cables pointing out you can also see the resistors sitting on the wall beside the engine. one resistor per LED. As stated, just make sure they have the right resistance or the LED never lights up or goes *POP*(depending on where you did wrong) and the room you\'re in smells really bad for an hour or so(but it sure looks cool when they pop. ) If I should convert the price I payed into euro it would be about 1€ per five LEDs so they aren\'t really expensive even if its alot of money for that small amount of LEDs. The resistors costs almost nothing for a bundle with varying resistance and its quite easy to get a hold of it all. You almost always get a small note with the resistor pack that tells you how to make sure you\'ve got the right resistance if you\'re feeling uncertain. Very, very easy maths.

 

[Manus]

Thanks.
Just orderet a couple - now I guess I just have to experiment, as talk of resistance doesn\'t make much sence to me

Edit: how about making a tutorial for the article section?

 

[alextheartist]

cant wait to see the finished product! lookin pretty sweet so far, also i second the volcano cannon idea...

Alex

 

[Chrome]

Making a tutorial on how to install a proper LED-circuit in a model and basic electronics? They go hand in hand so it just might be a nice little way to freshen up my rusty electronics skills and doing a good deed at the same time...
I am already writing tutorials in the local magazine about modelling so its not impossible at all. I\'ll bear that in mind and save it for later when I\'ve got a bit more spare time on my hands.