1/2. Spend about 2.5 hours on a ton of pieces. Magnetizing and pinning all of the weapons. Hands. Head to torso. Glue fins together. Glue little back of the leg pieces. Put pulse laser back together... Pins required because I also in washing this snapped off the little targeter piece. End showing the assembled and magnetized combinations for the weapons :). Good night! Good boost of steam. Mess with how the nine pieces of each foot will start to be organized.
1/5. Snag 1.5 hours to add the screw in waist concept. Used pieces from the plumbing section at Home Depot to accomplish this. Used a 1/4" plug and a 1/4" cap to recess into the top waist. Lots of drilling and dremmeling to get this to recess in far enough but worked out great. Lots of glue in the cap section but no glue on the plug which ended up actually screwing into the lower waist section to create an even tighter fit. One problem that came up later was when the upper cap piece was set it wasn't perfectly parallel so when it screws to the lower waist there is a bit of a rub on the resin joint. This will rub off any paint later but will give almost a stop on the torso rotation so that is nice so it won't randomly unscrew when in action. Also glue fins to the lower legs and the missile launchers to the holo field projector fins.
1/6. Spend about half an hour laying out a piece of plywood for the base. Looking like a 16 or 18" diameter circle. This is huge. Also research foam cutter and foam for a hill I want to put on this. I also cut out the fractured Aquila from gw and mess around with placement.
1/8. Add another magnet to neck connection to improve sturdiness. Look at and decide on 15" diameter base just to reduce a little square footage on the table. The back foot may be just close to the back edge but should be fine.
1/10. Cut out and sand 15" diameter base. Collect some wood to support the Aquila. And plan for higher foam area a bit and feet posing. 45 min
1/20 sneak fifteen min to magnetize, we'll start to drill for magnets in main shoulder pads and mounts. One shifts slightly and will need some dremelling
1/21. Foam factory tools arive! Cut out main mass sections. Glue needs to warm up so I bring it inside. Maybe about an hour messing with these tools then cutting and laying out the foam. So, I went a little overkill on ordering sheets of foam for the base...I forsee a lot of hills in my future...
1/22. Glue foam and screw wood to base. Glue feet sections. Magnetize main shoulder pads. Glue shoulder mounts to fin assemblies. We'll see if this was a good choice for painting these. It seems ok to get to everywhere especially since the fin areas are going to be black. 1 hour total in the very cold garage. The super glue is taking a little while longer to set due to the low temperatures.
1/24. Spend about 1.5 hours messing with the base and gluing the feet together. Foam cutters are working very well. I'll see if gluing the feet now is going to bite me later. Now I need to start the major pinning into the base etc. I think I'm going to glue first and pin into the glued assembly where I can. Base is looking cool and I think and will mess with the foam coat by adding grit tomorrow. I hope to seal the whole thing so I don't have any base coating issues with the spray paint and the foam.
1/25. Spend about an hour making a test terrain foam piece and mess with foam coat with grit, and without. I think 'without' still has enough texture for what I am looking for over the majority of the base. I mess with a few medium and small brush techniques and settle probably on large brush for smoother areas major applications but small brush very quickly for detail work. This base is going to take a while and probably most of my three pound thing of foam coat...
1/26. Well about two thirds of the three pounds... Finish coating the base and get a pretty nice crater effect for the stomp. The edges might need some touch up and sanding and more fill however as some of the edges were a little brittle and when I moved the base some compound fell off under pressure. I just didn't want the thing to stick to the temporary cardboard work surface. I think this will look pretty good and I hope to base coat this tomorrow night! Then maybe drilling and doweling or pinning the legs!! Also I experiment with paint schemes for the base on the test terrain piece. About two hours total on the project tonight.
1/27. Two hours base coating, then painting/dry brushing the base. Going from a muddy field to the rocky step emplacement. Came out pretty well with some rusty highlights. I'm pretty happy with this actually. Hopefully will be able to drill and set the feet tomorrow night :). Let's continue the 'modeling for most days in a row' in quite a while...the one thing I'm not super happy with is the base edge detail. I should have offset the major foam about half an inch inside the wood base. Then I could have hit that with the tapered grout/mortar that is the foam coat. I still may add a thin Mdf overall base and then clean up some of the edges where the wood is still showing due to some of the not-so-hardened-coat last night chunking off (never happened). I also could not get that nice smooth black base edge. If I had started with my plastic spatula thing, that I found half way through the grout application, I could have rounded the short edge better like the tall edge. I left this edge mostly black as far as the color, but the grout still spills over the edges and is not as 'clean cut' as I would have liked. Not the worst looking thing in the world, but not exactly what I was hoping for. I ended up sanding the edges after this dried before painting actually and it worked out ok for the edging (but yeah, that's where more compuond flaked off).
1/28. Take a break and spend half an hour on the vampire hunters base...you know, have to get some other units geared up for this upcoming Apocalypse game too.
1/31. Spend fifteen min working on the glaive-to-mount attachment. Not done yet but trying a pin and magnet combo.
2/3 put magnets in top of glaive housing. Will need to green stuff the plug up. Pin feet to base positions and use sticky tack to pose legs on base. Pose is pretty dynamic and is pretty much working how I wanted. Ideally I would have a longer drill bit to get deeper into the wood block under the Aquila but if I glue the foot to the base too it should provide enough torque resistance I think [I actually ended up just pinning it and it stands just fine without gluing down the feet - this may snap in the future, but the brass rods have a little flex which is nice]. I try to spray fix the surface of the vampire's base and then go over with more base coat later as an experiment due to other models grit and gravel coming off at times. Looks a little chunky but is holding good [as i used spray adhesive...not spray-fix...doh! mis-read the can we had I found out later...not the best...]. Slight compromise as the texture is not as nice. Should paint out ok I think though. I also pinned the elbows to the upper arms. I was a little off on one and will need to do some green stuff in the joint. 2 hrs
2/4 base coated a bunch of stuff on one side. Some things on two sides. Will need some more tomorrow. Half hour.
2/5 sneak a half an hour to base coat some more things and drill and pin the elbows and weapon arms together. Including ten min of base coating before work :)
2/6 order a bit too much kr multicase storage solutions for all of the models I realized I wanted to take the apocalypse game but did not currently have transport for :x
2/7. Spend about an hour and a half pinning legs and posing. Temp pin everything up and take some pics. I'm very happy with how the pose has turned out so far :). I also pin the torso sections together. I still need to fix one pin in the thigh to the hip before putting the torso on but I need to get some sleep...
Total time elapsed - 31:20
Next up - more assembly and beginnings of painting.
-ZS
