WIP: Necron Army - Part 5: Ghost Ark and HQ

More progress on the Ghost Ark, as well as the HQ from the Command Barge kit. Pics after the break.


Last week, I parted out the Ghost Ark into sub assemblies. With the model in manageable pieces, it was much easier to prime and basecoat everything. As seen in the header image, I used Vallejo black polyurethane primer.

With the black primer down, I applied a layer of vallejo grey polyurethane primer to the areas that would be yellow. This is important in getting a bright, clean color. Spraying yellow over black requires many, many layers, and often results in a sickly, dingy tone. A little overspray here is fine, as we'll mask it later when applying the base colors.

With the lighter primer applied, I then sprayed vallejo gold yellow in two thin coats over the parts.

I did something similar to the necron warriors that will ride inside the Ark. Again, no worries here on the overspray, as the yellow will be easily masked using liquid mask medium before the silver is applied.

Next week, we'll mask all the yellow parts and apply the metallics to finish the model.

I also started on my HQ, the Necron Overlord, that's included in the Command Barge kit. The battleforce is great, but it's not really an army until you have a unit to command it - and the Command Barge is actually a great bargain. You can buy it to get the only plastic HQ in the army, and then build it out as the Annihilation Barge, which is the more useful of the two builds.

I've parted out the overlord in sub assemblies, to make reaching all the details easier, and then mounted him on cork caps to allow for cleaner handling during painting.

Anyone who's built the model will notice a small change I've made - I swapped out the overlord's legs with a set from the Lychguard kit. Because he's meant to be standing in the barge, the included legs are not walking, and it gives the model a very boring, undynamic pose. These legs will make our HQ stride into battle.

I base coated the model with vallejo black primer, then applied a coat of grey primer, as I did with the Ghost Ark parts. Once the primers were set, I applied vallejo gold yellow in two thin coats. As with all the other parts, I'll mask the yellow, and apply the metallics next.

That's it for this week. A marathon airbrush session allowed me to make great headway on both of these kits, and I'm feeling good about my progress.

-trip