[Commission/Golden Demon] Warhound Titan Diorama 'Hunting Bigger Game'

[Winterdyne]

Just about ready to paint now. This has been brewing a while. There is a LOT of reinforcement in that titan (and yes, it is entirely supported by that back leg).
To clarify - I was commissioned to do this piece with a pretty open spec ('Guard, 'Nids, Big ol' honkin' titan), it's being entered under my name in GDUK. Not sure if diorama or open yet. :-)

[Gorb]

Oh dear. This is going to be something.

[Kalimac]

Holy shit.
The only constructive thing that came to mind would be perhaps to add a bit more swooschy-ness to all banners, or at least the crotch one. Or maybe make it weathered at the bottom to bring more life to it somehow. I'm pretty confident that this will look fantastic in the end in any case, but good luck!

[Winterdyne]

The banners here are temporary just to check the sizing; I'll reprint them before painting and curving them before the final fit.

[Inquisitor Lok]

that should be one hell of a scene when its done!

[ph03nIXx]

oh f**k. Damn, I want that ;-)

Any hints on the color sheme for the titan?

[Shoota Fodder]

The titan is magnificent! Love all the little details, like the wounded Guardsmen clutching the grenade with his dying grasp. It's little things like that that win competitions.

[Vaaish]

I think you might want to kiss your life goodbye for a bit while you paint this. I'm assuming there will be a good bit of airbrush going into the paint job since it would be pretty maddening to paint up by brush alone?

Looking at your photos though, I think you have the plasma blast gun arm swung out too far away from the torso for the pose. I'm guessing that you are trying to make him look like he just swung around to look at something but it looks off for the direction the legs are facing compared to the torso.

I hope you have better luck collecting once you've finished it than you did on the Dread a while back.

[Winterdyne]

The client for this one is a regular - same guy I did the SH termies for and the BA army. He gets a LOT of stuff commissioned, so no worries with payment. As for the PBG, it's mostly out wide as a counterbalance, with it straight out the torso kept lifting off the pins holding it to the hips. Can't be changed now. :-(

[Dies Irae]

Wow, this is impressive. Good luck, that's one big thing to paint.

And where did you get those old 3rd Ed ruins? They looked great, it's a shame they don't sell them anymore....

[Winterdyne]

I think these ones were off ebay. I have a stash. :-)

[0rph3u5]

(Sorry, Im late but) Awesome Work... those leaping homagaunt attack poses are esspeically well done

[Elerium]

Maybe have the flag heraldry half/quarter burnt with bullet holes? Combat damage in the 41st millennium is often something

Like others have said, this holds great potential.

[Winterdyne]

Groundwork painted. Small models just placed back on to help with where to put foliage, tufts, brass etch etc. The 'nid side' of the diorama will be significantly overgrown, jungle-esque, whereas the ruins will be in the process of being reclaimed by hyperactive plant growth.

[Exetus]

Every time I see something that Winterdyne does, I just take a look back at the other craziness he has accomplished and then think, how the hell was he able to top the LAST thing he did... AGAIN!?!?!

[Winterdyne]

These chaps are pretty much done apart from the decals. I intend to get the rest of the IG done this week or early next, putting the total working time on them at about 35 hours (less than 4 hours per mini, so pretty quick jobs). I reckon about 40-50 hours on the 'nids, then it's on to the titan proper, which will probably weigh in at around 150 hours. The total time for the diorama should be around about 250 hours.

[Vaaish]

I like the sgt and vox operator but the other two seem a good bit less refined in the khakis and shoulders in particular. I assume there will be somew kind of freehand on the pads themselves which will break up the area a good bit but the khaki just feels far more rough than in the other two.

[Winterdyne]

I'll be decalling the shoulder pads. I think it's just the photos with the khaki / definition, they're all very much the same in the flesh. I'm not going to put too much effort onto these as they're very much going to be overshadowed by the titan, and there is a hell of a lot of other work to do on the piece as a whole.

[Winterdyne]

More progress shots -seems to have been a backup on the forum here, sot these posts are collated over a couple of weeks:

Colour scheme for the 'nids. Extremely limited pallete to keep focus on the titan. Also the start of more dressing for the groundwork. The devil is in the details. Definite nod to Starship Troopers (the film, not the book!) with the impaling going on.


Grandfather clocks are 40k. As is miraculously intact furniture. And lets face it, if you're manning an outpost against a hive mentality that just wants to make a lunchtime snack of you, you may as well do it in comfort.


A favourite among my local group is this chap, the back of whom you can see in the previous shot. Eyes are locked with the 'nid that's about to skewer him. But will it be the knife or the grenade that end it? Either way this guy's kicking the bucket. Did I mention I like puns? The bucket has a number of different rust / earth pigments on it from both Forge World and Secret Weapon. They mix well.


Carnifex WIP. Still needs a day or two to finish him off, then another 6 gaunts. You can just see the ever-increasing amount of brass etch on the buildings. There will be more, as well as plants around. Flowers will be purple (partly because I *like* purple flowers, and partly to tie in with the 'nids colour scheme).


Paintwork on the carnifex pretty much done:

[Exetus]

I know that the focus is going to be the awesomeness of the Warhound but, in the past, it seems that the winning dioramas also tend to include those extra little details all over the place. So far, a lot of those details have been added in. That said, are there plans for ichor/blood on the dead nids? That 'fex looks great, but seems awfully unblemished after we've seen such rules as "shoot the big ones" in games, even if it's only light scoring from lasguns unable to penetrate. I also know you said you were throwing more foliage on, so maybe I'm being too picky too early. Either way, it's coming along great and I look for updates every day I can.

[Winterdyne]

Yeah, there'll be 'nid goop about the place, but that needs to be done after varnishing. As for the 'fex, I've been toying with the idea of a smoke-trail from the grenade launcher going toward it... very much stuff to do in the last couple of days of work on the piece as a whole.

[Winterdyne]

Just about to start the oil washing on the legs. The hyrdaulics are all painted too, but don't get attached till final assembly after all the weathering, pigments and varnishes are done.

[Winterdyne]

Finished off the techpriest while waiting for oils to dry enough to clean up.

[Winterdyne]

This week I shall mostly be hating painting gold. There's a lot of blends to do on all the gold on the legs... Glad I'm only using one Aquila plate.

[RGilbert26]

I guess it's a good thing a just do basic painting with gold, some shade washing and light silver highlights.

[Winterdyne]

Princeps got done while I was bored of gold.

[Cuddles]

This week I will be mostly following this thread! *Shuts shack door*

Simply stunning work, also loving the Fast Show reference. It is inspiring me to build and paint my Warhound, which I dare not touch due to the cost of the damn thing.

[Winterdyne]

Just do it; it's really not that hard to assemble, but you do need to pin everything (locking the hinges into position) in the legs. Toes and hydraulics you can get away with unless they're supporting weight. Milliput is best for resurfacing where you drill pins in; liquid GS shrinks too much.

[Blackadder]

Beautiful work Winterdyne and a truly unique pose. Love the base. I just review the thread and every individual piece was a work of art. I have really got to put my work on a base; do you have a base fabricating thread? I'm sure it would be the finest gold in information.

Thanks for the inspiration,

Blackadder

[Winterdyne]

There's really not that much to it;

This is based on a piece of 300x300x6mm mdf, with a square of 25mm thick polystryrene no-more-nailed to it.
I marked out where I wanted the buildings to be, where the titan's foot should be, and cut out recesses for the buildings and the hardwood wedge that the titan is mounted to.
Those were no-more nailed in. Then the fun started in plucking away the polystyrene to give a nice uneven terrain level.
The plasticard cladding for the base was then epoxied on. This was trimmed to height with the terrain with a sharp knife, then sanded down.
Polyfilla (not a branded type, but the powder filler) used to smooth off things, and fill gaps between the plasticard and polystyrene.
Then it was sand, chopped sprue and bits, more sand, cat litter etc to texture the groundwork.

My facebook page has a few WIP shots with just the polyfilla on so you can see that stage, and the first posts here are with the texturing on. It was all done in an afternoon*, so there wasn't really a lot of WIP updating to do.

*: Except the sprue chopping. That took ages. I need to get a youth trainee / one of my kids when being punished to do that for me.

[Galorn2]

as for Sprue chopping... you might want to look into picking up a decent 2nd hand canister blender to chop sprue up for ya. If its tough enough to blend cellphones....

[Winterdyne]

I kept eyeing up the food processor in the kitchen and my wife kept slapping me down... But yeah, was thinking about it, but needed a fairly consistent size of chunk. I think in future I'll probably just buy the clay 1/35 scale bricks you can get.

[Winterdyne]

Gold and the oil on the legs done. Still to do pigments and possibly some chipping, but I'm trying to keep the Titan more or less pristine. The chip on the striped leg IS an actual chip; no idea how that happened, so I'll have to do some weathering to blend that in.
Some tweaks and hopefully a better photo of the princeps. I've also done the first Moderatus, pics in a later update.

[Galorn2]

Alternatively just get some Permastone Mix up a batch pour into a shallow plastic container remove and hit with a hammer until fragments are the right size.

This is looking Really really good.

[Winterdyne]

This week I've been plodding away on the inside of the titan.

Some cleanup to do, particularly around the dials and controls, and there's a few marks that will be weathered in here and there. But it's getting there. Hopefully I'll finish the internals midway through next week, then I'm back to painting gold trim on the carapace for a bit...

[Blackadder]

Winterdyne beautiful paintwork meticulously executed but in viewing the stippled effect of the silver paint on the cockpit I was wondering if that was the look you were going for because if you want a more uniform covering there is powdered aluminum (and other metals copper being one) available at paint supply houses such as Sipersteins that is used to metallize picture frames etc. The metal powder is rubbed into the base coat and gives a smoother metal sheen instead of the glitter look.

Just FYI is all. Following this thread with great interest and appreciation.

[Winterdyne]

The stippled look is a result of the Tamiya paints I used. They seem to come out like that. It should be toned down when the varnish goes on I think. Too late to apply a different finish on it now, hopefully the secondary oils (once the titan's mostly assembled) and then pigments (after varnishing) will filter the effect in somewhat.

But no, I'm not overly fond of the effect. It's not so bad on the legs, but they've had a lot more oil on. The head's been wiped pretty clean by handling...

[Blackadder]

The beauty of the powder is it can be applied anytime. When I first did Lucie I used a graphite spray and I was heartsick at the result because unlike resin it would be impossible to remove from a soft styrene model. I sanded down what flat areas I could and used the aluminum and copper powders and was please with the result. The powder is so finely divided it adheres to any surface no matter how smooth and once rubbed in it stays put on spite of handling at least I haven't had to renew it on Lucie.

[Tinweasel]

The painting is excellent, but I can't help but think to myself that everything looks minty fresh for a battle machine that's likely been walking for thousands of years, possibly as far back as the Horus Heresy, and have potentially gone through a number of crew changes, the members themselves who might be several hundred years old - mostly the Princeps, but still.

I don't think you could go too far wrong in staining the metals of the cockpit with thinned oils - brush 'em on and wipe 'em off after a half hour or so. Just my opinion, though. If you left everything as-is, it'd still be a helluva paint and conversion job thus far.

[Winterdyne]

Reminds me of Trigger from Only Fools and Horses...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPJO99bFGQ8
Skip to 2:48.

[40k1Gamern]

This is beautiful work.

[Winterdyne]

More progress. Head exterior pretty much done pre-varnish for decals.

[Svartmetall]

Just wow. I'm loving this one =)

[Winterdyne]

More work on the internals. Very close to having to get back on with painting gold and starting to design decals.

[Blackadder]

I'm very impressed with the painting results you are achieving; my own being piteously basic. I especially like how the gold blends and melds with the green on the armour. Could you perhaps do a bit on this oil finishing or recommend a link for those who want to hone their skills?

[Winterdyne]

It honestly doesn't merit much explanation; basically you ACRYLIC (important, as the oil thinner won't attack it!) gloss the model, then thin down some oil and let it run along the recess. I used burnt umber here. Don't worry about it being messy or blotchy / runny. Let it dry for a couple of hours, then with a cotton bud or brush dampened VERY SLIGHTLY with the oil thinner, you blend the oil out from the edge toward the middle of the area. I basically let a very thin layer form over the entire green area to filter it slightly toward yellow/brown. The effect is helped here a bit by the green base; I started with a dark green (Tamiya X-70 - a bit like DA green) and then sprayed the middles of the area with a lighter green (X-5 -a bit like 50-50 snot green/DA green). If I were doing this again, I might have exaggerated the effect with some lighter greens to provide a little zenithal work early on. As is, I'll be putting filter coats on later which should provide this.

I use a low odour thinner (Daler Rowney) which doesn't dry greasy; the oils are pretty easy to paint straight over by the following day.

[Winterdyne]

Because I loves me some freehand... and cos I started doing this to cover up a rough surface on the Vulcan Bolter I'd failed to spot and got carried away and now have to do the whole damn thing to match...

The morning star is an outline decal painted in to keep it precise.

[AridMonk]

Going to be blunt here Winter... I dont like the cracks. Whereas before the green had some depth and a subtle inner glow, it now looks flat and a bit cheap. Its technically sound, but on a model of this scale it just doesn't work. Maybe the highlight lines are too thick, or not subtle enough, but I dunno, just doesn't look right to me anymore.

[Winterdyne]

Not very good photos; off an iPad, and at night. The last few stages should change the look quite significantly. It's unlikely I'll get much chance to stop for decent photos now, so this may be the last update until it's done...

[Cuddles]

Looks stunning. Really looking forward to seeing this in the flesh in a few weeks