Making a Space Crusade Dreadnought (II)

This is taking longer than I thought at first, and there are things I still need to figure out:

-The canopy gap

-The rear section: Engine, exhausts and cabling

-How to make the upper hull removable for easy painting

-Secondary weapons cabling and power feed

And after that, fixing minor stuff, mold lines, detailing, basing, etc. But I wanted, and needed to see how the model would look (roughly at least) with the weapons, and I was pushed forwards to that by Malika666 from Bolter & Chainsword.

So I took one of the intended weapons and made a first, raw mock up.

First thing I did was to remove the joint, because I’m going to cut that in half, and that little hole is going to hold a magnet for easy weapon swap.

Here is the bug with the weapon added:

The pose is a bit awkward because it have a lot of blue-tac, but that’s ok as I just wanted to see how it feels. Here’s with his little brother:

Now the question is, should add those little forward facing arms to the weapon mounts?

Cheers!

Making a Space Crusade Dreadnought

My plans for this shiny new edition are to have a small warband of a new chaos (old, actually) warband. Inspired by the Rogue Trader old chaos renegades and the game that hooked me up into the 40k setting: Space Crusade.

I want biomechanical, gigeresque chaos space marines band and a rescaled version of the first batch of the Space Crusade dreadnought (I own 2, but they are too small to be used as forgefiends!). A big problem is that all of the marines now look like manlets compared to the new DG/Primarines, so if I took the hard way, everyone will need to be artscale.

Concept art for the Brotherhood of Abomination:

Chaos Space Marine

Mk VII Dreadnought Malefactor class

I thought that I’ll never will have a re-scaled dread to be used as Forgefiend/Chaos Deredeo, because even if I have a couple of the originals, they’re too small for that. Even looked prices of 3D scanners to make the files and rescale him up, but all of that was too expensive. That is, until I found that filthy xenotech in my bitz box (which I planned to use to make an Akira style, Steppenwolf chaos bike:

Concept

For it to be made, sacrifices had to be done (to the Chaos Gods). The unfortunate victims are listed below.

Leviathan Siege Dread

Imperial Sentinel

Chaos Defiler

Plastic Contemptor Dread

Among other minor stuff.

First, I started with the legs, using the Leviathan ones and the Sentinel’s, to make it to look as close as possible to the original.

That was kite a bit of work to be honest, really more difficult than I thought. Here’s the first mock-up:

He’s got the look, or pretty close. But I wasn’t happy with the first chassis so I decided to start again. This is going to be serious business and not an easy walk.

Building the chassis

Once discarded the first one, it took me a couple of hours to figure out how continue with it, and to add the main guns mounts. The answer was in the form of the Contemptor’s body, which would give him the main gun mounts without looking out of place. Also used the Leviathan’s exhausts and a little piece of the main body (internal canopy?).

And a fit test is in order.

I’m really happy with the results so far! Let’s see how the beast looks together ^_^

Looking good? :D

Now I need to work on the rear engine and how to close that fucking gap in the upper hull! Lots of work to do yet.

Thunder Warrior Update

A rough mock up of the mini, testing the head (I’ll a bit for the head, as I’m waiting for an order and would like to have more options). This is gonna be my count as Haar for a Chymeriae army :)

In other news…

The making of a Thunder Warrior

Leg day

A little update on the Mortis/Rex. Today is leg day -you don’t miss leg day!- so I started with some leg work. It took me almost three hours and about three different leg variations (standard Sentinel legs, defiler legs, and the last one here, until I realized it was 01:00 AM and decided to stop because I need to feed myself and rest a bit.

Here you can see the leg concept, the upper part is a modified defiler leg, the middle section is the Sentines upper leg and the bottom part/shin is made of 2 rhino exhausts (I used a dremel here, saves a lot of time) connected by  the two things that holds the havoc missile launcher, cutted and glued (but very lightly, so I can still work on the separated leg parts).

Rough mock up to get a general feeling. There’s still work to do; filling, sanding, glueing and add some armor plates and detail; but I think I’m in the good direction :)

Something new: A Walker

Still too hot to do any painting, and I don’t have a lot of time lately due modern day slavery, but today I managed to continue something started a couple of months ago, a custom/scrap walker, meant to ‘count as’ a contemptor mortis.

The excuse here is that the Blackshields are low on resources and have to scavenge/salvage anything to survive (besides that I don’t love very much contemptors, they are ok but I don’t picture them for space pirates, not so much at least, and I love to convert stuff), so here is the start of my Morty.

This is just a mock-up test and nothing is glued yet, just to see if everything fits.

A side view from the cockpit, just to be sure that the pilot (and his missing head) will fit well in the enclosed canopy.

My mind was going crazy here, with intentions to put radars and monitors in the ceiling enclosed cockpit abobe, then I realized I was out of space: It was the screens or the head. Alternatively I thought about pushing the screens forward on the ceiling, but was too unrealistic for the marine to reach the control panels, so I decided to give the bug a more primitive/orky feel, and cut a window (freehand, no measurements, no nothing, just my hobby knife and my instinct; fortunately for me, it turned ok-ish, because if not, a whole hour of planning and cutting would be wasted) in a SdkFz style.

 

Front view of the cockpit and the driver.

And the right panel finally glued!

Here’s a mock-up with a dreadnought bit which would work as a weapon mounting so you can picture where I’m going. The goal is to give the walker a Metal Gear-esque feeling and it would have shielded chicken legs, cables, dual Kheres Assault Cannon, Havoc Launcher, smoke launchers, searchlight and extra bits like tools, tow cable and whatever I can cram into it, if I can find enough space!

Would love to read any criticism, cheers!

 

WIP Blackshields Seeker Sqd

Terminator Sgt. Dhraav & Praetor-Captain Marut

 

Cataphractii Terminator

The Nemean Reaver

My take on the Nemean Reaver. Still very WIP.