So one of the projects I have finished during this time of contemplation is an Ultra Marine Redemptor Dreadnought. The original model is sort of an eye sore, something is just wrong with it. This of course made it a challenge for me, not that I especially needed one for my collection, but just that challenge, to try to rectify what was wrong, was enough for me to buy one.
So what is wrong with it? All in all it is a really nice model with a lot of posing options and all that which we as collectors and modelers like with a model. But in this case I think it is down to some really subtle design decisions that has taken it over the edge of the chasm of doom.
The first and most obvious error is the beer keg or the pregnancy belly. I do not know what the designers though when they when down this road. For this there is luckily an easy fix, just don't attach the lower hatch and seal the bottom in some other way that doesn't make it to front heavy. There are several versions of this to be found on the internet.
The second is the toddler stance. for some reason the legs are just spaced to far apart, compared to their length, making the stance somewhat awkward. It is not just the distance between the legs that is wrong, also the width of the stance compared to the upper body is wrong. The shoulders of the dread needs to be wider than the hips! And, as i happened to notice by accident, the legs are to uniformly thick in their original assembly, like tubes. My solution to this is to carve of the inner rings for the legs so that I could mount the legs closer together, and to mount the thigh armor the wrong way around (giving the legs some shape).
The third and probably not really a fault is the sarcophagus. I could probably live it as it is, but as most of the 30k dreads has a "helmet" sensor cluster, I think the dread lacks a point of focus that helps keep the eye away from fault one and two. I found some pics on the internet where people had put the upper torso of a marine in place of the to of the sarcophagus giving it a much need focal point.
Once I had sorted one to three I also decided that, as this was probably the only one of these models I would build, I would like to paint both weapon options since I thought that the were excellent sculpts. Sine most of my models end up on display I really do not go for swapable weapons, instead I cram them all on to the model. In this case I believe that it is actually in line with the primaris way of things. So I put the Gatling on a shoulder mount and the plasma thing on the arm.
This was also a great opportunity to try my way of painting metallic colors on a larger model. So far I have only tried it on some primaris marines and Guilliman.
The end result of my endeavors is something I am rather pleased with. I think the modeling changes I made to the original model makes it look better (in my opinion). However, the addition of the Marine to the dread makes it look more like a piloted walker rather than a walking casket (I think this is due to its size compared to a Marine). The paint job is a bit of a stretch for such a large model, and I think, that if I would do this on a tank I would have to come up with something else. As it is there is not enough contrast on the model between the plane areas and the edges. But for smaller models it works fine.
So there you have it. I have been gone for a while but not out of the businesses. I will be back with some more updates on other things that has been done during my hiatus. The Varangian is coming along, and there are some Mechanicum reinforcements as well as custodes and sisters of silence and some Death guard. Well, that will be for another blogg post.
