Jet Bikes; SotonShades vs Machinator

[SotonShades]

mini update time!

Good news; I have completed a plasma gunner biker.

Bad news; I have another jetbike very securely glued to my finger, so I can't do much else til that's sorted.

With any luck, I might have some pictures of both completed bikes before the end of the day.

[SotonShades]

One of the things I love about WIP threads is that you get to see people's mistakes, not just mind-blowing finished miniatures that you think you could never achieve yourself. With that in mind;



Yeh... that's on there pretty good. Took me about 15 minutes to pry it off. During which time, I managed to pull the nose section away from the seat/footplate bits.


Newho, on a more interesting note, Plasma Bikers!



You may all recognise this guy from the Dark Vengence box... Well, unsurprisingly I am stretching that kit once again! It wasn't until after I had stuck him on very firmly and FINALLY gotten his left arm to hold onto the handle par properly that i realised the right handlebar wouldn't fit under the gun symmetrically to the left handle bar. Bugger. Still, you have to look farily closely to notice and I am too lazy to remove his torso and make a spacer to raise him up by the required amount. Can't just reposition the arm unfortunately, with the head, torso, army, shoulder pad and gun all being cast as a single piece!



Biker number 2. The sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that he only has one handle bar at the moment. The other fits and is cleaned up, but alas I am currently out of superglue, so it could be a day or two befor I get round to finishing him properly. The even sharper eyed amongst you maye have noticed that the torso, head and plasma arm are from the old metal Bike Squadrun upgrade (which I think you can now buy as a Finecast upgrade). This guy has been sitting in my bits box for about a decade, waiting for a reason to be used. Well, if you can't combine a classic model with a brand new kit, what can you do? It also means he has a very, very wide plasma gun. Because, you know, girth is far more important than length! Don't let anyone tell you different buddy!



It is a good job that I only have the Captain left to add to this squad or I'd be running out of room on my desk! Seriously, these things are big enough to substitute for Land Speeders if you wanted a different take for your army! Still, I think the squad is coming along very nicely.

Speaking of the Captain...

[SotonShades]

you may remember (or have recently scrolled through this thread) that I was planning on using the DA robed legs for my Captain, but that said legs do not fit in the foot wells easilly? No? Well you know now...



This is the solution. Aside from trimming back the robes. This was actually sruprisingly easy to do though in comparision. After gluing the legs together, I dry fitted the seat, footplate and legs togetherto check wich sections i would need to remove. It worked out as being on the second ridge back from where the footplate angles up (keeping the rivets on the side nicely spaced) and at the junction of the footplate and the blocks to the rear. I used my flat hobby saw to mark across both sides of the footplate to make sure both sides would be the same I then made the 4 cuts across to the flat center section through the ridged footwells. I then used a hobby knife to score along the join of the raised ridge section and the flat center section between the cuts a few times before snapping the scrap section off.



I then used the hobby knife to neaten up the break, back scrapping to avoid taking off too much material, then sliced away what remained of the grav plates.



A quick dry fit, just to check the cut away worked with the central section. I'm pretty happy with it; in my opinion it looks rugged rather than overly chunky, which works for the Space Marines aesthetic.



Finally a dry fit of the legs. The robes sit nicely and look like they are flowing out in the turbulance around the rear blocks of the footplate, so spot on as far as I'm concerned.

Now I just need to find a good chest piece for him, possibly with or without robes as I can sculpt some on easilly enough, and then I can pop him together. Once I get my hand on some superglue I'll get his bike assembled too.

Then I'll only have to base, undercoat and paint these guys...

As always, comments, critique, lovelyness etc! [URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/63487083@N06/"]More pics on my flickr steam[/URL] (though not many. See you all soon,

Shades

[Cpt Codpiece]

wow a nice simple fix for a PITA problem.

the whole squad look swish yeah i tend not to get pics of the super glue accidents......
i did manage (i still do TBH) to glue one side of my mouth shut LOL rubbing resin/plastic dust from my face with a drop of glue (how i didnt know i have no idea) on my thumb. the right side of my mouth, lips glued shut....... a cuppa or two later and the glue/skin softened enough for me to peel the lump of glue off

[SotonShades]

And the squad is complete!

(minus bases and painting... shh)

Meet the Captain;



Nice full on shot to start you off!



That's more like it. As you can see, I've kit bashed this guy quite a bit, added a good number of extra details to the bike and pivotted the engines so they look like they are rolling the bike for a devastating sword strike.



I've used several DA bits, a few bits from the BA Sanguinary Guard box and a few other bits besides to make something (hopefully) unique. I really like how it's all come together to break up the motiffs of either of those two main chapters, and with the paint scheme I have in mind, that should make them all but dissappear into the model.



You can see here how I canted the bike over to the left. Originally I wanted to have the whole entirely within the central spar, like the original hole, but forgot to offset it slightly from the centre, so I ended up coming out the side slightly. Still, I don't think it has come out too bad all things considered. It also seems to be a quite tight friction fit, so the bike doesn't spin round on the stand too much despite the centre of mass being reasonably far forward of the stand and the odd angle of the bike.

[SotonShades]

Right, so a few more detailed shots;



The helmet was taken from the Ravenwing spure, with the forehead DA sumbol sliced off. The front half of the Torso is from the Sanguinary guard spures, while the robed back half and the legs again come from the DA sprues. The muscular folds in the BA torso match up pretty well to the DA robes, so I decided not to green stuff extras on, and will just focus on making the more obviously armour sections stand out from the robed bits with the paint job.



Adain, I've tried to mix up the componants on the arms. Rather than the sanguine blades I chose to use a DA sword arm for the Captain's Relic blade. I'm planning on making it stand out more than a normal powersword with the paintjob, along with the flares on the blade. The juxtaposition of the DA sword with the BA shoulderguard will hopefully mitigate the oviousness of either (if anyone else understands that lol). I've used the winged shoulderguards on both sides because I thought they were very appropriate for the artificer armour of a captain on a jetbike.



All the shields I had were far too wide and chunky to fit around the jetbike, so i had to convert this one up. I'm not dissapointed with that at all as I'm fairly ceretain that, again, it's helping create a fairly unique piece. The main body of the shield is a Terminator Storm shield, with the horizontal bar of the cross cut off and shaved down. The shield then looked far too small, so I extended it with plasticard, detailed with a couple of DA icons. The top icon usually looks just like the lower one bit without the skull. I hoped that clipping the wings free and swapping them over would help give a bit more shape to the shield and turning the sword around would again help detract from the DA style.

The general plan for painting this quy is going to be a lot of metallics. The body of the bike itself will be a dark gunmetal colour, with the eagle head prow and certain other details picked out in a heavy looking gold. I'm thinking of using a much brighter gunmetal/silver colour for the captain's armour, with deep red robes and a few other details picked out in gold and possibly turquoise (a spot colour across most of my SM army). The wings will sll be painted to look like styalised fire, again appropriate for my SM chapter, the Brotherhood of Fire) which will hopefully help tie him in to the army while making the other colours pop. I will probably do the sword as a slightly off white ceramic looking blade, working tonally with the reds while still standing out, especially against the metal of the bike.

[URL="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8197/8196408422_9f72c9507a_k.jpg"]Last but not least, a nice group shot.

[/URL]

As you can see from the RoBB section, this unit is going to take up a LOT of space on the battlefield. It might not be soo bad once they are on their flying stands, but still...

Newho, as usual there are [URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/63487083@N06/"]more pics on my flickr stream[/URL] and I welcome all your comments, criticisms and questions. Might be a while before I get them painted as I really want to crack on with my swamp board, titan and Koptaforce. And build up a few of the bikes from the ravenwing box to build a biker army around these guys... and finish off my other projects. And start my superheavy Ork Kopta... LOL

Who knows which hobby bug I'll be bitten by next.

Shades

[Kirsten]

really amazing looking squad there, great job dude. love the captain, and the shield is superb

[Meph]

Good stuff, man. That's an impressive looking squad you've cooked up.

Now paint, paint, paint!

[Cow]

I really want to see this unit all painted up, shame they cant be as hard as they look

[SotonShades]

Cheers guys. Unfortunately i am still waiting on my dragonforge bases to arrive (want to make sure they all sit on their flying stands properly before I start painting them, so i don't have to drill new holes, GS the old ones and repaint again!)

In the mean time, I have converted up a ten man bike squad to accompany them into battle; The Knights of the Aquilla.



I actually did the main (painted) Knights a good long while ago. Seeing all the bits I had left over from the Ravenwing box after doing the Jetbikes made me want to add to them, though this time without the Brettonnian Helmets and converted chest plates...



I see these guys as the equaries to the knights, or possibly initiate knights in training. As you can see, I have used the spare robed legs from the ravenwing box and the sergeant's bike and legs from the Dark vengence box. Mixing up the two has given a nice dynamic to the squad.



More marine bikers. As you can see, I have kept the Aquilla wings on all the bikes to a)use them up sensibly and b) retain the Aquilla part of the squad name, if not so much the Knight part.



Finally to round out the squad, we have an Attack Quad. I have had to trim back the Aquilla wing mantle to fit above the double front wheels (I still have a couple of bikes left from the RW box, even after this, though sadly they are lacking riders) and used a few extra elite/vehicle crew parts to mark the marines out amongst their peers in the squad.

There are more pictures availible if anyone is interested. I'll update you on the Jetbikes as soon as I can crack on with them. Comments and blah blah blah... you know the drill!

Shades