Hey everyone, still no painted models this week, alas, but rather a small project that had me sidetracked. Small in every sense of the word, actually. So what is this about?
The recently released 2018 version of Adeptus Titanicus has left me weirdly indifferent so far — surprising, really, as I always thought I would be right at the front of the queue if it ever made a return. But the focus on the biggest Titans somehow makes it less interesting to me (even though I’ll readily acknowledge that being able to own multiple Warlords without having to sell a kidney is probably one of the main draws of the game).
That being said, when the AT-scaled Questoris Knights were released, I knew I had to pick up some of them. And at 25 Euros for three, they seemed reasonably priced, so I made the plunge:
What really surprised me was how the detail on these is truly off the charts: It’s almost uncanny how GW has managed to make them resemble the bigger version down to some of the smallest detail. And I found myself regularly having déjà -vu moments while building the first model — it’s that close to it’s bigger kin. And seeing how I was already having those déjà -vues, I started feeling the urge to build a smaller version of my Renegade Knight, Gilgamesh — in fact, some of you might still remember my previous attempt at building a “Chibi-Knight”, roughly at the Adeptus Titanicus scale – from all kinds of odds and ends:
Building that smaller version – dubbed “Chibi-Knight” by me – was a fun project back then, and I think the model still holds up fairly well, all things considered, even if it’s maybe a bit too clunky. But having a base model that was already a fairly perfect representation of an Imperial Knight from the get-go this time around really made me want to one-up my previous effort.
So I got to work, trying to make one of those small Adeptus Titanicus Knights resemble this guy as closely as possible:
And after a bit of messing around, my first WIP looked like this:
Pretty good already, wouldn’t you agree? Here’s a comparison of my first WIP next to the previous, kitbashed Chibi-Knight:
I actually like how the previous versions’s slightly weird proportions make it resemble the visual clunkiness and retro charm of the old Epic 40k models. By the same token – and due to the more delicate sculpt of the AT Knight – coming up with a way to mirror those chaotic decorations was slightly tricky, and had to drop some of the detail that was simply too small to reproduce – or would look weirdly clunky (such as using a Bloodletter face on the gun barrel, for instance). I also got the impression that most 28mm GW bitz are just a tad too big to use on those delicate AT Questoris Knights, so this did take some doing.
In the end, I went for the visual essence of the model, trying to hit enough design cues to make it work, dropping some that were just too much trouble to get right, and figuring out which bitz to use for either.
So here’s the basically finished build for Chibi-Gilgamesh version 2.0 that I have come up with:
All things considered, I think I have managed to come up with a pretty good reproduction of my 28mm Gilgamesh at the smaller scale. But that wasn’t even the end of the project, because during the conversion process, I found myself staring at the Knight’s hollow interior again and again…
…and wondering if maybe….just maybe…
…it would be possible to add a fully realised interior as well — just as I had done on 28mm Gilgamesh.
Sure, the mere concept is a bit ridiculous, but once I had gotten the idea into my head, I realised that there would be no way to weasel out of this challenge: Chibi-Gilgamesh 2.0 needed a cockpit!
Coming up with a pilot was the most challenging part of that, obviously: I thought I was already out of the woods when I remembered some 40+ years-ish old plastic Army Men style soldiers my uncle used to play with as a child, and wanted to use one of those, but they turned out to still be a tad too big. As was a pilot from one of my uncle’s old model planes:
My next idea was to use a Z-scale model train figure — and indeed, those come in all shapes and sizes, even in a sitting position. And they are also readily available online. In batches of one hundred, no less!
In the end, that would have included purchasing them in China, however, and it just didn’t seem sustainable to pick up something so cheap and minuscule from halfway across the planet. So I was already planning a visit to the local model train shop when another idea struck me: I remembered one of the old plastic Bretonnian Knights from an old WFB starter box having a stylised little person as their heraldic helmet crest — maybe at just the right scale?
When I dug out the bit from my cupboard of shame, I realised the figure was pretty much the right scale indeed — but alas, it was a Lady of the Lake style sculpt:
Space Marine helmet included for scale.
Very fitting for Bretonnians, no doubt, but not a particularly good match to recreate my Baron Harrowthorne model at a smaller scale. But maybe there was still something there that I could use? So I shaved off most of the detail from the helmet crest, until I was left with only the bare outline of the model, then tried to carve it into a rough incarnation of Gilgamesh’s pilot:
If nothing else, I was able to leave the suggestion of facial features in place. And I realised I had the beginnings of a pilot.
The cockpit, on the other hand, was almost trivially easy to build: I used some tech-y leftover bitz (from a Heldrake foot, IIRC) for the reactor section…
…and if you take a closer look, you’ll see that I even included a small control panel for the pilot:
So here’s another comparison shot for you: The 28mm version of the cockpit and pilot:
And my WIP version at the Adeptus Titanicus scale:
Of course I realised that the pilot was still looking slightly too primitive, so I added some tweaks to him, greenstuffing in the tiniest shoulder pads and placing some teeny tiny plastic nubs on the model to suggest both the medals on the bigger version’s chest as well as the cranial augmetic implants:
The rest of the detail will be suggested by the paintjob — at least that’s what I hope! Now in all fairness, the pilot is probably still a tad too big, but there’s just no way I can come up with an even smaller version, so I’ll call this conversion a success!
This has been such a fun little project — and given the size of the model, I hope it’ll be easy enough to paint up as well. Maybe this could even be the model to get me out of my recent painting slump? Keep your fingers crossed for me! 
In any case, that’s it for today’s update. It should go without saying that I am looking forward to any feedback you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!
