It is time for Dreadtober again!!!
This time I thought I would finally get my Thanatar siege-automata done. I have had this model for a long long time. It was ordered on my birthday in 2015 so it has been collecting dust for a little over 7 years now. It was one of those models that I instantly knew I wanted when I say it. But once I had it, it sort of became a holy relic that I did not want to touch until I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. So time when by and I never really got the right idea. Then a coupple of weeks ago when I was browsing the internet for inspiration I came across a model that really got my attention. I do not remember if it was a Thanatar or a Domitar, but it was standing in a ruin and it was grabbing one of the walls with one arm while the other was held up, firing forward. And I thought to my self "That looks cool, I should do something similar". Well I had already been playing around with some basing ideas for my Warbringer titan, Surtr, with a very much similar idea, i.e. the titan standing in a ruin. Well this would be the perfect time to test this out on a smaller scale.
So I rummaged through the to do bin and found the model, still on the "sprues" in the plastic forge world bag. Of to the washing-up bath it went. After a day or so in hot water and two encounters with a toothbrush it was laid out to dry. The next day I started to cut the parts from the casting vents and cleaned up the most critical casting lines. Then I dry fitted the model with blue tack and tried to find a pose I liked. It was not easy as the model consists of a lot of small parts that make up the legs, arms and torso. Once I figured out what I could to with the model pose wise I started to look through the bits boxes to see if I could find something to build the base from.
I found parts of an old scenery set from which I could build a ruined corner as well as some tiles to make up a floor that fit snuggly onto the base of the model. I did however not like the look of the ruin just sitting directly on the base as it almost looked like to bases on top of each other as the sizes where so similar. So I decided to att some distance between the two and make it into sort of plint. I cut up some plastic sprues and glued the pieces to the base in two layers, matching the outline of the ruin. Then I cut up even more sprue into small parts that I glued down to cover the distance between the base and the ruin and act as rubble. I also added a few plasticard pipes to resemble plumbing. Finally I used some filler to fill out the gaps.
Once I go this done I once again dry fitted the model onto the base and marked the feet positions. Then I drilled a hole in the bottom of each foot and added a thin metal rod. Similar holes where then added to the base where the feet should go so that I can position the model correctly later on when it is all painted.
One other major thing to tackel was (and might still be) the ammo feed for the main gun. This is normally intended to go from the back of the model onto the arm when the arm is in a down ward position. I, however wanted it to be pointing forward, i.e. a 90 deg change. One can reshape the resin using heat, but changing something this much is tricky. I first I tried using a hair dryer, this is normally enough to straighten smaller warps etc, but it turned out that I could not get the resin flexible enough to get the arm into position. So I when to the big guns, boiling water. Now this is sort of dangerous as this will bring the resin above its plasticity point and it becomes very malleable, but it is also easy to break tings this way as it will not move in a controlled way. To make things easier I clued the two ammo belts together and added them to the arm so I could fix the arm in the arm socket and then run the slinky belt upp to the back. Since they were a bit to soft They had a tendency to hang in towards the boy while cooling. This cause some problems with the legs, so I might have to go back to this and see if I can fine adjust them with the hairdryer before starting to paint.
Well that is as far as I got in the first week end of the challenge.