HERESY! - Death Guard Contemptor finally complete!

It has been a while, but since I finished the Warlord, I've gone back and taken a closer look at what I need to work on for my Death Guard. This Contemptor Dreadnought has been sitting on my painting table for a little over TWO years! I've painted on it here and there, so it was a relatively simple matter to finish it up. Here's a reminder of what it looked like before paint.

With another contempt packing twin Kheres assault cannons, I thought it might be a good idea to create something not quite as fierce, but with a bit of a punch. Multi-melta and a Power Fist with heavy flamer.

I hope you like him : )

Cheers
Dave

Dreadnaught Rylanor of the Emperor's Children Legion

So, things haven't really calmed down since getting back from Adepticon, but hey...it's been a lot of fun.

I managed to grab an hour or so to sort out the photos of Rylanor, and finally get them up here on the blog. You've seen the teaser pic before, but not these "completed" pics of the beast before painting. Let me begin by thanking the artists who painted nearly two dozen different Pre-Heresy Dreadnaughts for the Horus Heresy card game that were then featured in the Horus Heresy artbooks from Black Library. Each Dread looks a little different, and there are plenty of great styling cues. My second thanks must go to a modeler that goes by the handle of Insaniak. A while back he built a great Pre-Heresy Dreadnaught that he posted on his site and on his DakkaDakka blog.

And so on to Rylanor. There are a lot of parts to this guy and I'm not really sure where to start, but I'll forge ahead anyway. If you have any questions just drop them in a comment.

As you can see from the pics, there are five materials used in the construction. Obviously GW parts, plasticard, Greenstuff, Brownstuff, and cables from Jeff at Dragon Forge Design.

I built the Dreadnaught in four (well five) sections. First the legs, followed by the torso, then the two power fist arms, followed by the autocannon arm.

As you can see from the picture above, I kept most of the leg and torso assembly from a standard Space Marine Dreadnaught. That's because there are a lot of great parts there that could be replicated, but there's no real need. What I did, however, was cut up most of the leg assemblies so that I could lengthen the legs and poses them in a new stance (a long advancing stride). Plasticard rods and tubing were my friends in this case.

The feet were actually scratchbuilt early in the process. I cut out the basic shape, started building up the Brownstuff and Greenstuff, filed the putty down to the final shape, then added the detailing plasticard strips around the edges. Once I had the feet, I could then finalize the position of the legs and the lengths of the pistons etc. When they were all fixed I added the hoses back in using the DF power cables. The final two stages for the legs were a) the shin pads and b) the "waist".

For the shin pads I cut them from panels of plasticard. Originally I was thinking of angular pads, but as I went along I decided to add a curved front to them, adding more bulk and linking better to the Pre-Heresy aesthetic. To add this curve I pressed a lot of putty onto the flat panels and carefully burnished them to create the smooth surface. Oh, and the cod-piece was done the same way.

The "waist" was really just a matter of throwing down a chunk of Greenstuff onto the standard Dreadnaught waist, smoothing it out into a good sized cylinder, then carefully adding the ridges by running the blade end of my sculpting tool around the cylinder. Took a few tries, but I think it looks good once it's done.

The torso was a lot more trial and error. I built the standard Dread torso, then began hacking away all the front panels. I wanted to remove not only the flat panels of the sarcophagus and the panels on each side, but I also needed to cut enough away so that when I re-puttied everthing, I had enough room to do so. Fortunately for me, right in the middle of working on Rylanor, GW released the Venerable Dreadnaught. I was able to use one of the Ven Dread's curved sarcophagii for my version. Once the head and new sarcophagus were in place I started to build up layers of putty. I used Brownstuff almost exclusively for this stage, as I wanted to be able to file the putty as it dried. Brownstuff sets almost rock hard, so can take some pretty vigorous sanding and filing, and it holds a sharp edge.

Here's a shot of the bottom of the torso. I built a small "gut plate" using plasticard, that would cover the extended waist of the Dread. I then bulked it out and gave it a curved surface with Brownstuff and the burnishing end of my sculpting tool.

Here's a close-up of the rear of the legs, where you can see the extensions, the power cables, and the extended waist.

The arms are all based on plasticard tubing, cut at varying lengths and spliced together. I took a lot of cues here from Insaniak's Dreadnaught project (which I urge you to check out). Lots of plasticard cutting, gluing, and a bit of putty work where appropriate.

Its getting quite late, so I'll leave you with a few painted pictures that John Shaffer snapped for me while we were at Adepticon (I didn't have a chance to get my own shots before the show).

I'm quite happy with how he turned out. I hope you like him too.

Cheers

Dave

How many days 'til Adepticon?

Only four? Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? In just 96 hours time I'll be sitting at the bar, relaxing with a beer (or a dirty martini), but before then there's still plenty to do!

First up, last post I teased you with a shot of this Pre-Heresy Dreadnaught's legs. Here he is in his semi-complete stage. Inspired by the work of Insaniak (a fellow Aussie converter who posts a lot on Dakka), and the artwork from the Horus Heresy artbooks, I put together this interpretation of Rylanor, the Emperor's Children Dread from Fulgrim and Flight of The Eisenstein. Since this photo was taken I have finished the modeling work and I'm almost finished with the painting. I'll be delivering this piece in person to the client at Adepticon. As it was such a fun project, I figured I'd do a full post on him next week, after the show.

I'm going to be playing in the 40K Championships on Sunday at Adepticon. I always think "Championships" is such a grand title and I feel like a bit of a fraud playing in them. I'm so far from a champion player it's still kind of funny. Anyway, I decided to take some advice and added this Veteran squad to my list. They'll be rocking shotguns, two meltas, a heavy flamer, a demo charge, meltabombs, and the sarge has a plasma pistol and power sword. Although more pricey than I typically go for, I think they'll do me proud. To build them I used the torso/head pieces from the Vraks Renegade Enforcers (from Forgeworld). The skull masks were a lot of fun to paint up! You'll notice some interesting weapons being carried by these vile devotees of the Dark Gods. Stolen directly from a poster on Dakka Dakka, whose name escapes me right now (please post a comment if it was you), the shotguns my boys are carrying are a mix of IG flamer and grenade launcher. I have plenty of both just lying around and when I saw this conversion, I knew I had to try it too. I like it a lot and I think it adds some great bulk and a slightly archaic look.

So, the Veterans need to be delivered to the right place at the right time. I'll be finishing off the Locust in the next few days (I hope) to use as their Vendetta transport. Quite a bit more work to do, but I do enjoy my plasticard work.

And here's a shot of a Wolf Priest I had to paint up for a buddy of mine. When I was out in Phoenix last October for the Battlefoam Wild West Shootout, I made a bet on the outcome of the Broncos/Giants game that was played on Thanksgiving night. Sufficed to say, my boys in blue did not follow through on their promising start to the season and I was left holding the proverbial bag. I hope Jason gets a lot of enjoyment out of this figure.

One last bit. Unfortunately we've had to cancel our Napoleonic game originally planned for Saturday night at Adepticon. That big bugbear of hobbyists everywhere (real life) got in the way of finishing up their units for some of our players so we decided that it would be best to bring it all along next year instead. My apologies to anyone who was really looking forward to seeing it. I might bring my finished units anyway. We'll see if they fit : )

Anyway, take care, and I'll see you all (hopefully) at Adepticon!

Cheers

Dave