Project log: Warhound Titan

[Joey]

Zac; check out this blog for some cityscape scenery inspiration. I particularly like the thick floors.
http://thepaintingbunker.com/category/scenery/

[Munkey Joe]

[mangozac]

[mangozac]

I keep promising to post pics of the overall progress so I've got some really quick, terrible, low light, blurry shots to share tonight! Yay! Here's all of the cleaned up and washed parts mounted on skewers and ready for priming/painting. I'll probably do the priming on the weekend.



I also started planning the diorama layout on my piece of 8mm perspex. The solid line on the right is where the perspex will be cut to size. The light pencil lines show the T-intersection that the Titan will be walking around. The size of the street should be approximately to scale. At this stage I've abandoned any ideas of doing a snow terrain in order to save a lot of potential for grief



That's all I've got for now! Better pics next time I promise!

[Arkangel]

Sorry I'm getting to the party late mate but I've been man down.
Ok one thing for 'ANYONE' building or thinking of buying a Warhound, under no circumstances ever use the 'Black' pipes provided by FW the rubber will not only be a bitch to paint it eventually degrades and cracks/breaks. Take this under advisement. I was told this by one of the individuals who built/painted several for Forgeworld. AKA Warhound on this forum.
I never bothered with mine and I don't think it really makes much of a difference to be honest.

The best thing to do is as you have Zac and use some form of metal tubing or wire braiding/piping.

Looking great so far

I finally have a few pics of my latest project so hopefully I can share that and it'll tie into one of my first projects and bring things kinda full circle.

Hasta

[mangozac]

Thanks for the tip Dan - although as you say it's a little late

OK so a bit more research has been done regarding the diorama:

Buildings:
As mentioned before I'm going to use a , which I've already got ordered. They're not cheap, but will provide all of the walls needed for the diorama (and then come). I must say though I think they look far more appropriate for an Imperial city than the Cities of Death buildings (unless they are heavily modified).

I opened up the Manufactorum box that I have and was delighted to discover that it contains a few of the gothic building accessories - including a couple of spares that I obviously kept when I sold all of my leftover bits! There should be enough for the small section of city on my diorama. Still the lesson of the day is: NEVER SELL YOUR SPARE BITS!

The buildings will be flat roofed and I'll probably build an aircon/air purifier unit on the roof of the main corner building to add interest.

Furniture:
I want to have a few pieces of furniture inside the buildings so I did a bit of searching. One thing I discovered is that there is a lot of awful looking 28mm scenery out there! I eventually stumbled across who have some really nice quality accessories.I'm planning to get:



They also do but I'm still deciding if there would still be books on the shelf of a war-torn city. I can't see why not?

Road:
I have to decide if the roads are concrete, asphalt or stone. I'm thinking asphalt, since it would provide the kind of contrast with the concrete sidewalks and kerbing that I want. Can anybody suggest otherwise? I'll put a manhole or two in the road, and a storm drain along the kerb somewhere.

Since a Warhound would weigh many, many tonnes I was wondering what its impact on the road would be. Would its feet break up the asphalt? Concrete probably wouldn't suffer as badly. Should I make imprints in the road where the Titan has stepped, and sink its feet in slightly where it currently is?

Getting really excited about this diorama and finally building a highly detailed city section!

[Blindhorizon]

This project is gonna be freaking awesome! Theres nothing like a giant warmachine smashing its way through a city.

[Munkey Joe]

Hey Zac...

I think a asphalt surface is cool... And done easy with Sandpaper..... BUt here we go.......

I think the weight of a warhound would MORE than enough break apart asphalt. Maybe if you put Thin sandpaper over a sculpted bed and had breaks and cracks sculpted into the bed... or Use clay for the road and texture it with sandpaper....

Concrete MAY be better for sculpting as its easy to make it crack and such. Maybe make them a true concrete while the sidewalks are more "colored concrete"..... Dunno

I think stones are out unless you got some Quick way to do them.... I sure dont know a way to make a "modern" stone road work....

Your a fantastic model maker so Im sure youll have something great to show off soon!!

[mangozac]

[Commissar-Krad]

Titans would weigh more than enough to ruin normal roads, unless they were on a special titan road or airport tarmac (which can be several feet thick) they would definitely crush asphalt, split concrete, and probably fall into the sewers.

Asphalt is much softer than concrete and this would squish and concrete would crack and buckle. I think your plan would be a good way to approximate asphalt.

[Munkey Joe]

Sounds Solid Zac..... Or not solid enough to support a Warhound!!! LOL

I think you have a good plan and cant wait to see it in action. If it works Im reserving the right to Shamelessly steal the idea for my own means...

[mangozac]

OK looks like I'm the guinea pig then!

I'll see if I can pick up some florists' foam today and I'll do a small test before committing to the diorama.

[Munkey Joe]

[mangozac]

Asphalt success! I figure large main avenues of an Imperial city may be reinforced to support the weight of such heavy vehicles as superheavy tanks, but a smaller street would have just standard pavement, which is relatively thin and weak. So I wanted to model heavily damaged asphalt, damaged not only by the Warhound's steps but also potholes and other general traffic which causes potholes.

Here's the technique I've used:

So we start off with a slice of florists' foam:



Then mix up some asphalt. I used dirt (I was in a hurry so just grabbed it from the backyard but usually you would want to sieve any impurities out), plaster of paris, a little PVA, black acrylic paint and some water. You really need to make sure you don't skimp on the paint: in the end it turned out far too light (although remember in real life asphalt fades as it ages, so unless you're modelling pristine new pavement you don't want it to be totally black).



Apply the asphalt mix to the foam. Note that the mix won't actually stick to the foam so it can be a little tricky. To smooth it out I ended up placing a piece of cling film on top and then using a glass bottle as a rolling pin. The only disadvantage of doing this is that it can leave the top surface a bit too smooth, so you may need to rough it up again afterwards. I've read that you can use some sandpaper on the cured asphalt mix, but I'd be weary of sanding marks.

Note that you don't want the asphalt to be too thick. In real life the actual asphalt layer is only about an inch thick (generally atop a bed of crushed rock) so try to get your model asphalt down to about 2mm thickness (which is still far too thick according to our scale, but for practicality will work well).



The weather here has been pretty wet so it took the asphalt about 48 hours to cure properly. I tried doing some impressions earlier and later and found that the most realistic results came from doing it later. It's hard to tell but the Titan toe has been used to compress the asphalt is it sitting on and in person it gives a really authentic subsided/crushed effect. It would look even better with a thinner layer of asphalt (I applied it too thick). The pothole looks great though! You can see that once it dried the colour was nowhere near dark enough.



So the next step is to start roughing out the diorama! I did do some priming of the Warhound last weekend so I might even begin putting down some basecoats soon enough. Although I've got a pretty hectic couple of weeks ahead of me so it might be a little while before the next update...

[Blindhorizon]

Waterfilled potholes also, a couple here or their should look good.