Project Log: Chaos Warhound Titan

[Moonfog]

Hey everyone. As mentioned in my admittance form, I am a novice when it comes to working with the more advanced stuff, however as an x-mas and birtday present for myself I bought a Warhound Titan for my chaos force and I am now in the early stages of putting it together. I'm hoping to get some feedback and some tips&tricks in how to proceed to make this piece what I want it to become

I've gone through and laid the various pieces out to get a look at everything. All the big pieces are there, and all the small pieces appear to be there as well with no obvious and large defects. There are two pieces that need some tender love and care, but nothing major. I also did a bit of dry-fitting to get a feeling for the assembly.

I have now cleaned off most of the parts and they're out for drying as I type this. I expect to start sawing/clipping and making the parts ready tomorrow before I start doing some dry-fitting. That will hopefully also give me a rough idea on where and what to pin.

Took these pictures yesterday:




Now, my plan has so far been to assembly and focus on the feet and legs first. However, BlueRonin pointed out to me that this may not be the best of ideas given that they - in contrast to the main body - need to be adjusted and positioned. I am thus considering assembling more of the top first to give the hip some "feel" before I decide on the pose for the feet. I hope to avoid a pose where the Titan looks like it's taking a crap, or a pose that simple makes it fall over all the time. So my first question to the more experienced modellers is; where do you usually start assembling your titan?

Anyway, I'll keep you updated on the progress, and I really do appreciate all the input you might have for me.

[Arkangel]

Well.... I actually did it the other way round I started with the the legs on my Warhound first. What I will say is. I would build the Main body or at least pin it so you have the main structure to go onto your assembled legs. The main issue is always going to be the stance. A MASSIVE help with mine was infact WARHOUND a member of this blog. He actually built and painted the Mars Pattern warhound and one of the original Lucius pattern for Forgeword, both the iconic Fire Wasp red one and the War Griffon one.
If you take a look at my addmitance form and my photobucket in my signiature you'll see both my Warhound and my Reaver. One tip is that when you finally pose the waist/groin pivot use a small spirit level that way you'll know that the main body wont be tilted and less prone to wanting to take a dive.
one of the other issues with posing the legs is whether you want flat feet or whether your going to base it and have it in a more dinamic pose. this will heavily effect the build of the feet. If your going for a flat footed approach then again i would suggest you build those at the start as this will also aid you when it comes to the more tricky part of cutting the 'ankle' pistons to length.

Hope this helps anymore questions feel free to ask

Arkangel

[mangozac]

Arkangel's got you covered! And seriously if you follow any advice BlueRonin gives you in person I'm sure you can't go too far astray

Traditionally it seems normal for people to start at the legs (scratchbuilders even prefer to do it this way it seems), but it does sound like there's some merit to building the torso first. It all joins at the hip so I don't reckon it would make much difference, but for posing and balancing it might be best to have the torso done.

[Moonfog]

Thank you for your replies. This is indeed looking like a better option atm. Having gone through everything (just finished cleaning everything ) the thing I'm most concerned about is the positioning of the feet, especially since - as you mention - you need to cut the pistons to the required size.

I am looking at having one foot level at least, simply to provide a solid base and enable me to really practice putting the stuff together..

First it's sawing/cutting etc, but I think I will drill the pin holes and stuff for the main body (I'm thinking about the pieces that really have only one pose) first to get an overview and then start dry-fitting and experimenting with the feet. Like you say mangozac, they really are two separate pieces at first. Guess I'll get a better look tomorrow when I start sawing.

And yes, I will be bothering the hell out of BlueRonin until this piece is done

[mangozac]

Are you going to mount it on a base? If so then your posing options expand...

[Munkey Joe]

Ace project..... Cant agree more, you cant go wrong with building a titan in this place!!!!

I'll watch your progress with interest.

[Moonfog]

[Moonfog]

Was able to get some more work done on this baby today. First I cleaned the final pieces and left them to dry. I then went to work sawing and cutting to get away the mold pieces left over. I did some rough polishing to get away some of the worst parts and then did some proper dry-fitting (proper since this was the first time I was able to properly fit the pieces together without large molds getting in the way). Here are a couple of pictures of the dry-fitting of the main body:




It also made me realise there are a few pieces that need to be painted before the final assembly. There were also a couple of pieces, especially the very detailed interiour of the main body where I am kind of scratching my head as to why they are so detailed given that they'll be hidden inside of the main body and outside of all view? Perhaps a retractable roof is in order

I've read quite a few guides so far, and all of them start with the feet. I took at long look at the hip/main body part and it does look like I should be able to start at the feet and work my way up without messing up too, given the freedom of movement on the top body. I am going to have one flat foot and try to have one sort of leaving the ground. I plan to build the feet and the main body almost side by side and constantly dry-fit the parts (like some of you have already recommended ). My main concern remain the knee->hip area, so any tips on how to approach that is welcome, especially since they fit together in so many ways, it's very difficult to get a proper dry-fitting. One of the pieces that is going to help holding the ankle pistons together is broken, however it doesn't look like it's going to be much of a problem, if I do need it I'll give some hard pinning and green stuff a shot. I don't really think it's necessary to replace that whole piece.

Alright, back to what I actually did. I started to work on the flat foot and actually got a bit further ahead than I had originally planned. As you can see from the pictures below, it's assembled and at that point it is held together only using pins, nonetheless it proved to be quite stable. I was pretty happy with how that turned out, when putting glue and the pistons on it should hold up pretty nicely.




That's it for now. As I've said, I really want to take my time with this and work thoroughly, so I probably won't update every day, though I will certianly do research on it almost every day

[mangozac]

I wouldn't be too daunted by all of the pistons - so long as you do it all methodically there shouldn't be any problems. Are you planning to pin all of the joints?

[Moonfog]

[BlueRonin]

[mangozac]

[Arkangel]

To be honest I didn't pin any of my 'pistons' i did have lots of super glue and a bottle of insta set handy. The pistons are quite small and really only help with posing the mini as apposed to the actual structure. As long as you pin the major areas your good. If you want I can post a pic or 2 of my Warhound broken down in to it's different parts?

It really helps with painting and when you finally come to storing it you'll definately need to go for a 2 part affair.

If you do want some shots let me know and I'll post some tomorrow for all to see how i pinned mine etc.

Hasta

[mangozac]

Oh yeah agreed I wouldn't bother gluing pistons either.

[Moonfog]