Blood Angels Army Project (pic carpet bombing)

[Meph]

Alrighty, a month and a half onwards and not that much has been done. Personal life and work life have been rather busy and exhausting but I did squeeze in the odd hobby hour here and there.
Also bought myself a Nikob D3400 and a tripod on Black Friday at a rather ridiculous discount. It's been well over a decade since I worked with RAW (.nef actually) image formats so that needs some tweaking here and there, especially with presentation photos.
As you can see below, lots of skill to (re-)learn.




And here's the main progress of the past weeks, the Storm Talon reborn. A lot of time was spent pondering and contemplating, seeing as this whole build is without plan. But bit by bit it's taking shape.

I like how the nose turned out, looking much better than I feared and the knight bit blended in nicely with the body. I also have the gun assembly figured out, as well as a separate sighting system that will be installed just below the beak/nose, with the gun system sitting below it on it's 'standard' connecting point.

I though long and hard on how to install the canards but in the end I just took a saw to those side bits so I can slide them in neatly. I'm wondering whether to blend them in nicely to the body (extend it to the hull using plasticard, or leave them somewhat separated as-is. What do you guys think?

The wings, I'm honestly not too sure about those. If I had all the time and skill in the world, I would completely reconstruct the sucker with the wings more in the middle, and a complex engine-rotating system a little more aft, but since I decided this would be a minimum-effort project, I'm going to row with the oars that I have. And actually I consider this project to be a warm-up session for the Stormhawk rebuild I've got lined up as well, so I don't mind the more wild exploratory kitbashing. With the delta wing this far aft, and the rotating engines in their default location, the whole thing does give off a kind of ornithopter vibe, which suits the Storm Talon I think.

At the very least, this rebuild has a more plausible wing surface area where air could actually flow over and under instead of that utter brick-like design of the regular storm talon (especially that silly turret and those ridiculously oversized weapon pods).
I reconstructed the wings of a Stormraven to have it's missile pods on the wing tips, and had to improvise the missiles-, and exhausts themselves, kitbashed from another kit as I didn't have the Stormraven's original missiles anymore. Tempting as it was, I decided not to go for a complicated, modular, and magnetized setup, so the build will be missiles only, no Heavy bolters or lascannons.

Thoughts?

[Meph]

Hmmm, looking at the model right now makes me think I can probably move the main wings up and forward a bit, seeing as those canards will be pumping furiously all the time. I can relocate the wings until they're touching that little backwards scoop on the top. That could balance out the craft quite a lot I think.

Green stuff needs drying now.

Built up the back/shoulder a bit using two parts of a sprue, and blended in with some green stuff. The wing is just a tad too low now. Although the wing is not blocking the engine nozzle, I would like to have just a tad more clearance to allow for a better air flow over and under the wings. I'll use the tabs I cut off of the large Stormraven wings. Perfect thickness, and I can continue to build up the wing using plastics only so that the meld bond of the plastic cement will ensure a solid structure.

Oh, and as you can see I gave the chevron masking an attempt on the Land Speeder Tempest. Not 100% tight but not too shabby nonetheless. I think it's reasonably accurate for painting.

[StraightSilver]

Looking forward to seeing more progress on the Storm Talon, looking good so far.

[Meph]

Well, a preview of the Storm Talon, and the Derededededeo also received his masking.



More progress this weekend.

[Meph]

Some progress from over the past few weeks. Din't have much hobby-time, sadly. But still, I got some stuff done. I've done some more stuff today, but didn't take any pictures yet.
But the progress to far:

-Found sweet and easy way to build up the back spine. I clipped a part from a Valkyrie, and some spure.
-Finally got my head wrapped around the sighting mechanism. It's the lens bit with the two hoops, with the gimbal on the bottom right. Plus greenstuff, plenty of green stuff.
-Also concocted a neat gun assembly.
-Gave the tail a rounded leading edge with some suitably shaped plasticard.
-Built up the 'shoulder' of the wing with greenstuff.

oh, and some **** got red, yo.

[Meph]

And the progress of today:
I added a thruster assembly to the tail. It made sense, giving it better maneuverability, both in hover as well as level flight.

[Meph]

Things are moving along nicely. Despite not having much free time to paint, I did manage to get some stuff done.

The Storm Talon is complete, which came as a small surprise actually. After so much time fiddling with bits, cutting, sanding, etc., it suddenly popped into ready-for-paint status.
I'm currently assembling the pilot to see see if I have to glue in the main cockpit console bore painting or not.
Actually, since the last set of photos I just had to add the canards and my original plan was to extend/blend the canards into the fuselage. But after much staring and contemplating I figured they would look better without the extensions so I just had to slot-, and glue them into place and close the little gaps with some greenstuff. I'm getting eager to give the model its black under coat so it will be easier to see the actual state of the kit-bashing and sculpting.



And the other models have gotten most of their red coats on. I gave them my usual layering of drybrushed highlights, washes, and glazes. I just need to add the lightest highlights with Ice Yellow (VJ), and maybe another glaze. And then it's peelin' time!
I hope there's not too much bleed-in of the red onto the black as I've noticed that some bits of masking tape are not as tight as they used to be. Fingers crossed!



What say you?