Quick Apology Post

Wanted to stop in and apologize for the lack of posts.  I’m actually up against the wall with this deadline.  The new book’s due next week and I’m trying to get a last polish draft in after a series of brutal rewrites.

(To be honest, my publisher graciously let things slide for an extra month and I’m still against that wall.  See that as a sign of my determination for a great book or my incompetence—your call)

And I tried to work on the Knight’s legs in my rare breaks, but they’re very complex. Just not the sort of thing I can do for fifteen or twenty minutes away from the computer.  It’s probably going to take me two whole posts just to cover putting them together.  One for the feet and one for the legs. 

Which I will get to as soon as this draft is turned in.  This Knight will have legs before the San Diego Comic-Con.  Really.

A Brief Interlude... for War

I’ve gotten very little done the past two weekends, and probably won’t for the next three or four, either.  As I mentioned last time, I’ve had folks in town, book signings, and a birthday.  Plus I went down to San Diego for our annual Carnage Asada/ Memorial Day cookout game.  If you’ve ever wondered what a 20,000 point Apocalypse game looks like (lots of Tyranids versus Imperial Guard with Space Wolf allies and a Warhound Titan), well...it looks something like this.

This was also the first time I got to take my modified Hive Tyrant out on the field.  I’d originally called him Gigan, but as I was writing up my Carnage Asada list I realized, wait a minute, he’s the Tyrant—the king—so from here on he’ll be referred to as Ghidra.

Alas, the game was so huge and sprawling, Ghidra barely had a chance to do anything.  It was epic and fun, but with the socializing and drinking, we just made it into turn three before we decided to call it done.  There’s a lot more details and pictures over at the Atomic Warlords page, if you want to check them out.

As I mentioned above, it might be a week or three before I get to do anything more on the Imperial Knight.  I’m now in the last four weeks before the new book is due, so that needs to be the focus of my attention for now.  The good news is, once it’s done I should be ready for a burst of geekery and model work.

So please bear with me—legs and weapons coming soon.

Imperial Knights, Part V—The Quickie

I’m kind of bombarded with things right now.  Friends in from out of town, lurking at my friend Craig’s book signing this weekend (check out Suffer The Children—it’s amazing), trying to get caught up on my own book.  Long and short of it is, I didn’t get as much done this week as I wanted.      

Well, I did get a lot done, but I didn’t get a lot finished.  So I could show you some random, unconnected sections.  Or I could focus on one piece I scratch built that’s kind of important.

As I mentioned last time, some template issues ended up giving me a slightly messy join on the Knight’s shoulder trim.  I deliberately attached the shoulders so one of the bad joins would end up on the front-right.  I mentioned I had a plan—it’s a pretty simple plan.  The bad join will be hidden by the Knight’s heraldry shield.  The catch is that this template doesn’t have that piece—it’s a new detail they’ve added on the Games Workshop model.

 

So, how to build a heraldry shield...

I measured out two rectangles of card measuring 1” wide by 1 1/4” long.  I’m doing two because I want to have them overlap for a nice thickness.  If you don’t mind the shield being a little thin, you can just do one.

Helpful Hint—Make sure the measurements and cuts for this are as exact as possible.  I want this to look clean when it overlaps.

Once I had both rectangles.  I marked the 1/2” point on the bottom (the center) and made two 45 degree cuts—again, being as exact as possible.  This gave me a basic shield shape.  If I just wanted to keep things simple, I could stop here and it would still bring the model that much closer to the GW one.  But if you’re up for a little more detail on this...

If I’ve done everything right so far, the the top section above the 45 degree angle should be 3/4” high.  I marked it off in 1/4” sections on both shields.  Then I lined up my 1/4” hole punch to give me a semicircle.  This took a bit of work to get it lined up just right.

Helpful Hint—If the semi-circles end up a little off and don’t line up when the shields stack, nominate one as the bottom and just trim that one to hide the overlaps.

I used a thin coat of glue and pressed them together.  I clamped it with five clothespins to make every edge as tight and clean as possible.  I let the whole thing sit for about ten minutes and then I used my hobby knife to just nip off the bottom tip of the shield--I wanted to look a little more rounded and not quite so pointy.  And then I mounted it on the edge of the shoulder so it hid that bad piece of trim.   It’ll probably get a few rivets, too, when I hit that stage.