WIP: Stormraven- Now to the fun part

This may be the last model I paint the inside of. It's such a hassle and really, when am I ever going to look inside them? That said, it's finished and looking good. Now on to the good stuff!

When we left off last week, I had halted progress on painting the interior to make sure my magnetization didn't further screw up the inside. Since then, I managed to plow through the painting, doing a decent job despite my waning enthusiasm for the work. I painted all the little hoses, seats, gold trim (weird place for it), and the fancy control panels. Even made sure the screens had some useful looking data on them and gave em a gloss coat. But my heart wasn't really in it. I went overboard on the weathering powder perhaps, but I envisioned this being a rough and tumble vehicle that will see a lot of troop transporting in muddy hot zones- especially with the jungle-y bases I've got on my knights. Rust, mud and blood.

With that done, I set about assembly, taking the time to mask off the interior before it was fully assembled because that stuff would be a massive pain to mask once everything was closed up. The only door I had to leave on was the front one as it's not easily attached once the glue is dry. I'll just be careful/creative in painting that area so it isn't painted shut. You'll also notice I had to leave the seating areas off, because GW in their infinite wisdom made those separate pieces instead of making the outside of the turbine housing a separate piece (you know, so you could have painted it all cleanly in one part and then assembled). It'll be a little tricky gluing those in nicely now that it's closed, but that's the price we pay for looking good. 

Perhaps I was a little hasty in my assessment of the quality of these tools last week. I suppose it could be my piecemeal assembly, but I certainly ended up with some choppy joints that required a lot of putty and cleanup. That and the shrink spots in some of the molds were pretty rough and needed to be filled. Most of it came out OK, but I'm feeling pretty grumpy with the front left corner now that it's all primed.  The parts never matched up properly, and my shaving off the side panel to get a clean transition to the top just resulted in a silly chamfer angle there.  I'm sure it wouldn't bother most people, but it bugs me. Looks like I'm going to have to shave off that rivet, re-putty, and then manually put a rivet back on just to get it clean. Grr. I think it was the Imperial Armor book that suggested sawing open a Brita water filter to use all that medium as rivets. I've had an old one set aside for months. Guess it's time to give it a shot.

It drives me a little nuts that GW doesn't make it easier for us to use all of the options they supply with their kits. The top turret, for example, has 3 weapon options. Then they give you this little armor shield that goes over the weapon. I think the pin and hole on the inside of the weapon is great- I probably won't even have to magnetize the weapons on, but that armor? Seriously, I'm going to have to magnetize that?  Nope. I had planned on making a mold of those parts and making myself an extra couple of castings so each weapon would have its own shield. Then Trip suggested I model it up in 3D. Duh. That's why he gets paid the big bucks. Took me 20 minutes to model it up, and I've got 2 extra sets done the same day. Good to have friends with SLA machines. 

So that's it for this week.  I'm all primed up, and after a quick little retouching on that problem corner, I'll move on to some serious painting.  Can't wait to start working on those crazy black/white/red GK patterns. Going to look great!

~Deet