And here we are. The project I’ve been working for so long is finally finished. I even managed to get it into the competition this past weekend! Check out my final WIP report on the kit and a large gallery of WIP and showcase pictures after the jump.
After one of the messiest gold applications in miniature hobby history I managed to clean up every bit with the base black colors and started assembly of finished pieces. I’m quite fond of doing dry fits, and I couldn’t resist trying out the neck with the body.
I wanted to assemble as many loose pieces as possible, so I moved on to the hind legs and the wing arms to assemble their armor plates and wings. With a quick lick of Leadbelcher, generous application of Nuln Oil and a drybrush of Necron Compound, I got what I wanted: slightly worn but still razor-sharp talons. I recommend at this point that dry fits help to determine which areas will be covered and will be extremely difficult to see, so you can be a little bit lazy.
This left me with the absolute minimum of pieces to put together before the final assembly. I corrected the mistakes on the chassis, repainted the claws bright and added a kind of glow effect to the vents underneath the body. I also wanted to finish off the head, so I worked a little on the Baleflamer, the tongue and the eyes. It is almost impossible to show the eyes with a camera phone like I did… sorry no pictures. The flamer and the tongue I wanted to copy a little from the box art. Needless to say, my performance for the flame effect is so poor that I’m ashamed of myself!
I assembled the wing arms afterwards. The instruction booklet lets the modeller attach the claw before assembling the large wings and armor pieces. Do NOT follow this! Instead attach the lower plate to the arm, then attach the large wing on the upper plate. Then, apply glue to the second wing joint and the armor fitting on the arm and bring the plate and arm together. Just before completely gluing the winged armor, stick in the smaller wing and pose as you will. Afterwards, you’re free to pose the claw as you wish. This was the part that scared me the most, since the arms are VERY heavy compared to the rest of the body. Considering that I still had a bit of primer left on the connection points I went a berserk on the glue. And rightly so it seems, I had to hold the arms in place for a good minute each so that they stuck snugly.
That left me with the base. Of course, preparing it was not an issue of just one night, as the white glue dries very slowly and the pieces I used would have fallen off completely if I tried it in one sitting. I attached the hideous clear glass stand first and cut out a few pieces of cork to work as large rocks. Then in the recesses I poured in modeling rocks and fine sand to fill everything up nicely. Left everything to cure for a good 12 hours, then applied a new layer of sand on top of all. The finished result was a nice, uneven surface that was very grainy due to the sand texture. I did want to recreate a rocky base, but this worked a bit better, like volcanic ash, disturbed by the beast’s flight.
And that’s it! The model is finished. I checked one last time for any paint scratches and left out areas and to my relief there were none. Check out some more shots of the finished model:
Here’s a multiple point shot that you can browse easily:
By the time this post is up the model has traveled all over Istanbul to the parade grounds and came back. I’ll talk about my experience at the scale model competition in my next post, so stay tuned!
P.S. Special thanks to my wife for all the lovely pictures she took, and for her patience throughout the building process!
Filed under: Black Legion, Chaos Space Marines, Heldrake, Showcase, WIP Tagged: assembly, basing, black legion, chaos, chaos space marines, flyer, gold, heldrake, miniature hobby, painting, showcase, solo figure, vallejo liquid metal, warhammer40k, WIP
