Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 4

And here we are, with the penultimate post on the Mad Max Monster Trucks. Something I forgot to mention in the first construction post was the strangeness involved in creating Fury Road versions of monster trucks. 

With a regular car, there are plenty of things you can do to "Mad Max" it up. You can switch out the wheels, you can raise the suspension, you can add extra wheels, you can add weapons, you can add thundersticks, you can enhance the look of the engines with superchargers, etc etc etc.

When it comes to these monster trucks, it was much more difficult. Obviously the wheels are what they are. There's no raising the truck up any further. My client didn't need weapons or thundersticks. So the rams and the fighting platforms and armor plates became the real focus for conversion. 

Anyway, let's take a look at the second batch of six trucks : )

As this truck had a hearse/coroners wagon on top, I thought it would be fun to use running boards instead of a fighting platform in the back. Rather than go for a log handrail on both sides, I chose to smaller handles on each side, imagining four pallbearers hanging on to the monster truck coffin.

The final two reminded me of other vehicles in the Mad Max movie series, so a little conversion work, and some extra effort in the paint jobs (see next post) helped to have them serve as a broader homage to George Miller's grand vision.

Cheers
Dave

Solar Auxilia - A whirlwind of activity

With all the other Mad Max fun going on, I figured I should break it up with something 30K-related. I present to you all the third Solar Auxilia Dracosan Transport : )

I received all three as the Christmas gift from my family last year and although I painted the first two in about a month, it took me another nine months to finish the third.

Now it's on to the Stormlord. I hope to have the finished next week, fingers crossed.

Tomorrow I'll show off a few more Monster Trucks : )

Cheers
Dave

Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 3

In yesterday's post I presented the construction photos for the first batch of Monster Trucks that will be making an appearance at AdeptiCon next year. Now I'm ready to show off the finished goods : )

Note: I actually finished painting these last week, I'm not that fast.

When it came down to painting up the trucks in the Mad Max: Fury Road style, I had a fairly limited palette to work with. With the exception of a handful of vehicles, the cars and trucks of MM:FR are either silver (polished metal or chrome spray), black, or cultivated rust. This first body has the shape of a '70s muscle car, so I decided to go for the shiny (and chrome) look like the re-worked Interceptor (aka Razor Cola). This car is the one with perhaps the smallest fighting platform area, tucked away between the exhaust pipes.

When I was converting this armored truck, I decided to get some online inspiration and Googled "armored truck" images. One of the first to pop up was this armored police van which matches the truck VERY closely, so that supplied the color scheme (with additional scratches and rust streaks, of course).

When I first started on this project, someone asked if I could include a truck painted in a similar fashion to my Bullet Farm Truck. I couldn't resist, so the Grave Digger truck got the teal and rust treatment. The rust on the body is several layers of sponging, from a dark brown through to a bright orange.

The fighting platform in the back of this one is sloped and all kinds of rusted.

This truck got the "cultivated rust" look, much like the Elvis car from MM:FR. Rather than just sponge the top of the car, I took the sponges all over the body, and spent a little extra time afterwards shading some of the panels back with brown and black washes.

This truck initial reminded me a lot of the Bigfoot truck from the movies, for obvious reasons. So, I decided to paint it up in the shiny style, offsetting that with some rich, rusty orange patches.

And finally (for this batch at least) I went for one of the black vehicles. I added scratches and small rusted patches around the truck, as plain black would have been a bit boring. In the end, the highlighting and weathering really give the matte black some great depth.

I hope you like these paintjobs. Next up, the construction of the second six trucks : )

Cheers
Dave

Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 2

I teased you all with a few shots of some Monster Trucks earlier in the month. Well I now have all of the first batch of trucks finished, and I am working on a second batch. I figured that I'd roll them out over the course of a few posts, so you can see the build stage and the finished pieces.

"The Client" (as he likes to be called) will be running some gladiatorial arena games at AdeptiCon next year, with up to six trucks at a time taking to "the pit". At the start of the project, we weren't 100% certain about the way we would go with the rams, so The Client let me have free rein to come up with something fun. I put together three different styles of ram, each of which will have different rules in the games. The first of these rams is the old-timey, cow-catcher type of scoop from the days of steam-powered locomotives. 

The second style is designed as more of a car-tipper. The angled rail goes in under the vehicle, which is then forced up along the steel beam and eventually the car tips over.

And finally, a three-pronged penetrator. This trident-style ram is designed to cause maximum damage to the worky bits of an enemy vehicle.

As you will see throughout the following photos, I also tried to add a fighting platform of some sort with a handrail the imaginary Warboys could be hanging on to as the monster truck races to war!

The bodies of the vehicles were kept separate from the chassis to make things easier when it came time to paint them.

The car-tipper was built separately, as it needed to contact both the chassis and body. Once all pieces were painted, the car-tipper was glued into place.

I'll post the paintjobs on these six trucks next time. I hope you like them so far.

Cheers
Dave

October Kickstarter plugs : )

Sometimes things are a bit quiet, but at other times you have three friends who all have quite different Kickstarters running at the same time! Here are my three friends and there various  projects : )

First up is John, from Ninja Division, with their Kickstarter for Super Dungeon Explore: Legends. John and the team have a very solid track record with SDE, and the fact that they funded in 15 minutes bears that out. If you like chibi-style models that love to go dungeon crawling, then this is the KS for you. Click HERE to check it out!

Next up is my buddy Jeff of Dragon Forge Design. Over the years I've used hundreds, if not thousands of Jeff's resin bases and they have always been of superior quality. He is currently running a quick-fire campaign to help expand his Goth-Tech range, very cool for any steampunk themed minis you might happen to be painting : ) Jeff's closing in on 50% funding, and it won't take too much to get him all the way. Check it out HERE.

And finally, there's my friend Bryan. Bryan is a gaming industry veteran, fellow freelancer, and a massive gaming, movie, and comic geek. I sat in on a Q&A at GenCon earlier this year and Bryan was on the panel. His answers to questions about, in this case, whether or not your game was "ready" were always well reasoned and humorous. He has launched a longer campaign to try and fund a printed version of so many industry panels. By supporting Bryan, you get to ask him questions (the number of which very by you pledge level) on any topic, but I'd suggest keeping them focused on the gaming biz - any facet of it really, board games, minis, RPGs, etc. You can check out his campaign HERE. (Also, my neighbor is working on the cover for Bryan's book!)

All the best to my friends working hard to bring new content to the world we love : )

Cheers
Dave

WARLORD - Video 3 is now up on YouTube : )

I'm very excited. The next video is complete and up on YouTube. I'm starting to get the hang of a few things. Hopefully you are feeling a bit of an improvement overall with these videos. Certainly an interesting medium to work in.

In this video you can also see the sandbag walls I'll be using on the base of my Warlord. They're the ones I sculpted for Secret Weapon Miniatures, released earlier this year. I highly recommend you go and check them out : )

And think about supporting my Patreon campaign, too ; )

Cheers
Dave

Mechanicum - Tech-Priest Dominus

This cool model was released just after I hit pause on my Adepts Mechanics plastics purchases earlier this year. With all the work I had coming up, I knew I wouldn't be able to get to him in a timely fashion. More recently, I have been reading through the Skittari and Cult Mechanics background in their respective codexes and admiring this mini more and more...

...so I bought him.

Although he is incredibly detailed, the painting didn't take too long at all, and I think he looks great skittering across that Dragon Forge Tech Deck 50mm base  (not yet available, but coming incredibly soon).

Cheers
Dave

Solar Auxilia - Another distraction...

There were a few moments last week where I was tidying up my iPad, and tapping away at a few thoughts. While doing so, I stumbled across the "collection" army list for the Solar Auxillia, just over 3,500 points worth. Taking closer look, I realized that if I simply painted up six tanks (of varying sizes and degree of lethality) that I would complete that list.

I started with the low-hanging fruit, the Leman Russ tanks. I painted the first of these back in February of this year, and had the other two basecoated all this time.

Two evenings worth of work over the weekend and I've managed to get them painted and good to go.

Next up, the last Dracosan Transport, then to work on the Stormlord!

Cheers
Dave