(lol).
I know what aesthetic I want for my Titan army (you can find out more about that and my taste in visual art here). Now is the time to build the models (my least favourite part of the entire hobby) before I can get on and paint (my favourite part of the hobby.) (Actually my favourite part of the hobby is dragging my mates to Hooters in Nottingham while we attend tournaments at WHW). I’m going to start with the knights because I don’t know if they’ll make th efinal list so if I fuck them up I won’t cry. I won’t be very happy but I won’t cry.
Before I get too far into this there are a couple of things to bear in mind:
- I want to build these in sub assemblies to make painting easier. Now, that’s not as straight forward as it sounds as you’ll see later (actually it is straightforward to do, it just isn’t very satisfying).
- With big stompy titans all over the place, I do want some dynamism in my knight poses just so I don’t have an army that looks like a bunch of Coldstream Guards on sentry duty.
Right, onto the kit. I just used my standard building tools (clippers, hobby knife, small file, tweezers (I didn’t need the tweezers actually) and Tamiya thin plastic glue). I won’t go through the building process step by step, the instructions are fairly easy for these models (I understand from the internet that the Warlords are more complex) and the bits I built went together pretty well. I have a few knights in 28mm scale and I actually didn’t find them to be so straightforward (they’re in the image above) so I was nervous about these little guys but they were fine. Now what do I mean the bits I built? Well…
The sub assemblies.
Here’s the thing. The chassis of the models will be TMM steel with an oil wash. Using oils complicates the process slightly because for acrylics to go over the top I’ll need to apply varnish (not that hard but an extra step and oils take a relatively long time to dry. So, the ideal position would be to have anything that’s getting an oil wash built in one sub assembly with nothing that isn’t getting an oil wash on the same sub assembly. Following? Cool. That’s not possible with the knights. Here is my main assembly:
There are a few moulded sections (the chest plate, the cricket box, the thigh armour, the knee pads and the feet) that can’t be separated from the assembly. Because of how the rest of the assembly will be painted (by airbrush) these pieces will end up painted TMM and oil washed and I’ll have to go over them with my armour plate colour subsequently. No biggie, especially not for pieces this size, but it may effect the final colour / finish compared to the parts I’ve left off (which, for completeness, are the canopy, the head, the shoulder gun (I’ll run three with heavy stubbers and three with melta guns I suspect), the shoulder shield and the shin pads. (Just a tip here, I removed a canopy from the sprue and dry fitted it to each of the assemblies when I glued the weapon arms on to make sure they won’t foul each other when I come to glue the canopy on – I have some arms in dynamic poses)).
I’m slightly stressed about the dick flag thing – It’s moulded plastic (obviously) with no dynamism at all – I want all of the flags on these models to look really dynamic. A friend has used cut up coke cans to model purity seals and I think it would work with banners and flags so I’m going to have a look at that.
Knight fever, Knight fever.
Posing the knights was fun. I wanted a sense of weight in the poses – even though these are, approximately, terminator sized in 28mm scale they are still huge machines so I don’t want them to look like they are ballet dancers. However, I do want them to look dynamic and posed as if they’re moving. Here they are all together:
I have two units of three. I’ve left them off of their bases (I did have the bases handy to make sure they stood up without any issues etc) because I haven’t decided what I’m doing with the bases yet and want to be really flexible.
What’s next for these guys?
Well, they don’t need any gap filling that I can see. I still have to work out what I’m doing with the banners that hang from their undies and I’d like to add some battle damage to the canopy and shin armour (using a Dremel and green stuff). Once all that is done I’m ready to get all the separate bits primed then painted but I don’t have any painting stuff with me at the moment so that’s likely to be a while off yet – next cab off the rank is building the two Warlords.
Comments always welcome!