Anyway... here’s some more details for the lower section. At the bottom of the template you’ll see sixteen 1/2” circles with some vaguely chaos-ey images on them. These are detail pieces for the joints on each leg and the front arms. Cut them out and glue one to each side. I’ll be honest--I searched local craft and hobby stores for a 1/2” hole punch but couldn’t find anything. It’s apparently a no-man’s land size between 1/4” and 5/8”. Ah, well...
You can cut out most of them with a good pair of scissors. Take your time and use a hobby knife to trim off any sharp edges or points--you want these as close to perfect as possible. When you’re done you may want to press them between the pages of a book to get rid of any curls or bends the scissors may have put in them.
Once those circles were in place, I used discs from a standard 1/4” hole punch to add more detail to the leg joints. On the Khorne model I went one further with a 1/8” disc on top of that. On the Nurgle one I drove myself slightly mad by putting a trio of rivets from the 1/16” punch in the middle of each 1/4” disc. A dozen or so tiny Nurgle icons, all over the model. If you add on the extra-extra bits first (start small and work down, in other words), it might save a few shreds of your sanity. And your eyesight.
Helpful Hint - If you’ve got (or can get) the bits, you could also use round Fantasy shields for these joint-details. There are the older, generic ones that were used by Skaven, Goblins, and Dwarves which are perfect. Skeleton shields would be cool for a Khorne Defiler--bone-rimmed circles with a skull motif in the center.
Don’t forget you need to use superglue when you attach plastic to paper.
Next, cut out the talons. Again, because lustandtorment made such a great template, you can actually do all of this with a good pair of scissors. I cut out all the talons for one model in about an hour. Glue them together as the template shows. Take your time and make sure everything lines up
Helpful Hint - These talons are going to end up supporting the whole model, so you want them to be solid. Use your finger to paint the tips in glue. You want it to soak into the card and harden.
Mark the point where the legs make contact with the tabletop and draw a line straight up. This is your guide to placing the talons. Once you’ve done that, flip the chassis on its back so the legs are up in the air. Attach the talons, double-checking to make sure they’re straight and placed correctly. You don’t want to go through all this and have one talon going off crooked. I also added a little detail piece made with the hole punches. Put one on each side of the “ankle.”
This is Important - Unless you cut out extras all on your own, the big circles from the template do not go on the ends of the legs or the arms (the ankles and wrists). There aren’t enough of them. That’s why I threw together these using the hole punches.
Once all that’s placed, leave the chassis on its back to dry.
For the record, yes, this is also where I realized I’d posed the legs really high on both of these models. They're going to loom over the battlefield.
I also used this time to make the D armor plates for the legs. You can print out an extra template and put “Chaos trim” on these plates the same way I did it with the Hellblade. 
I decided to try something different and just used a couple long, thin strips of card about 1/8” wide (depending on your taste, you can go anywhere between 1/8” and 1/4”). I cut these to fit on the plates before gluing them in place. I also cut small triangles off these strips and fit them on the trim to give it those spiky edges.
On the Nurgle model, you can leave big gaps in the trim and it’ll just look battered and old. I also used my different-sized hole punches to put a few overlapping holes in these plates. Then I made them a bit more uneven with my hobby knife. When I paint the model, I’ll make these look rusted and corroded.
The front arms go together just like the legs, but here they connect A to B to C. Use those flaps again, too. The curved ends of B should butt up against the tabs in A and C. This means you can glue the arms in two different directions (along the plane of the joint and the plane of the tab) so these pieces will dry rock solid. Add the wooden beads at the end of each arm. You can also put on more of the circle-pieces for detail like I did up above.
Those arms are going to take a bit of careful placement. I decided I wanted one arm raised high on the Khorne Defiler to add to its aggressive pose. Like the GW model, though, I’d still need to put one arm down in the front for balance. On the Nurgle model, I decided to put both arms low, keeping with the squatting, solid posture I’d been shooting for. I might even give it kind of a Biovore pose, as if it’s resting on its knuckles. But this meant I had to wait for all the talons to dry so I could figure the right positions for the claws.
So, next up, all this stuff gets put together.
No comments:
Post a Comment