So I wanted to have a go at giving it life again. I wanted to make it interesting, whilst taking every opportunity to hide the hideous paint work, since even a fresh coat isn’t going to save this one I fear.

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Also done a lot more work on the body, filling in the gaps. Once it's all constructed and solid I'll file down all the joints, then use filler to smooth them out. Hopefully the end result will be seamless.

Taken a few shots with the pilot dumped in for scale. It's not quite as I wanted it, but I was lazy and rather than create my own centre for the fans I used a bit of pipe I had laying around. Unfortunately it was a bit larger than intended. Hopefully the finished thing will look ok. Still, seems to be coming together nicely.

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I'm designing the infrastructure as I go, hence the strange horizontal support piece. I couldn't get it as low as I wanted because of the lack of height of the model (the pilots head would have been stuck out the canopy), so I cut out a hole to drop the pilot into. Means I'll be able to use this as a base for control panels around the sides, should work nicely.

I should keep a piece count on this, not sure but I'd guess I'm up to 25 or so so far, and loads more to do. Was intending to do the fans today, but got diverted into painting a couple of the other models. More tomorrow I'm sure. 

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Anyway when trying to come up with a decent sentinel proxy for my guard army I thought I’d have a go at a mini gyrocopter. Sort of squats meets g-police.

Messed around in maya to come up with a design which is evolving far more during creation than I’d like.

It needs a name, which I’m struggling to come up with. I thought perhaps something like Gnome (or some variant there of). That way the pilots can nickname them lawn-ornaments, a pratchettian tribute to the dwarf/squats. See kind of makes sense. I’d like to stay away from insect names, everything that flies these days seems to be a wasp or a bee or something similar. We shall see.

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I modelled it up in maya in an hour or so, which explains the crude design. I wanted a faceted look though, sort of pseudo-stealth type thing. Plus I have this thing about low-poly models, so I'd love to have a go at a "real" version.

Original design had two pilots, but partly due to fluff and partly due to size constraints I've dropped it to one. The idea is this is a recon vessel only, as the sentinels are in fluff (no idea how they really play in games, since you know, I don't game). The weapon is more a self defence thing. As such I thought the need for a gunner is a bit unnecessary, the pilot can manage the to cope I'm sure. Plus gives me more room to play with.

The dangling tail thing comes from a rather swanky g-police render I found on the tinterweb. Not sure if it's an official model or a fan thing. But it had a really long tail that reminded me of a fishing pole. Didn't have the room to do it on this since I'm trying to keep the footprint small, but I liked the arc and the downsloped rear wings.

Modeling has now begin, albeit slowly. I was planning on doing three of these at once, but the plastic work is proving really awkward. My design was too rough around the edges and I'm having to do some serious bodging to get it to fit. I'm sure it'll work in the end, but the idea of doing three right now is a little much.

Going to try and remember to take lots of photos as it builds up. Plan is to start the turbofans tomorrow.

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I'm quite happy with the mechanics behind this though, it now happily supports the .5metre long barrel in any position, and is all fairly sturdy.

Also started detailing the track unit with actual tracks on both side (gasp) and riveting has begun. Long job but it's already looking much better for it

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I've been working mostly on the structure for the barrell support. Not really done the aesthetics yet, just the actual meat. The support struts are based on some american spg I've got a model of, no idea what it is. Possibly in BF1942. Anyway, they're made of foamcore sandwiched between two sheets of plasticard. As such they're pretty tough. The cross supports are abs tube and again, like rock. It's all good. But then it has to be pretty tough, the assembled barrel (as seen in one of the gallery shots) is almost half a metre long! The pistons that will hold it up are going to take some serious thought, but I reckon I've got the design nailed.

Not show in any of the photos, but before I stopped work on this I had a go at detailing the interior at the front. Not sure how well that went really, so might end up scrapping that and just sealing it in. We'll see. Also need to come up with some sort of targeter turrets to replace the lascannons. I think perhaps we might be out of range for them on this. Heavy bolters are just in case they need to mow down any trees or anything

Like all my modules will have, this one is based around a pair of cardboard sides with notches cut in to fit over the pipes joining the track units. The fit is rather tight, which serves both to stop the module falling out, and also to improve the structural integrity of the whole thing (not that it really needs it, excuse the pun but it's built like a tank!).

These sides have been joined together in a rather rough fashion at the moment, I'm going to cover the back, front and top in plasticard so I've not gone far beyond the structure with cardboard.

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The post Project Overview appeared first on BlokeCrafted.

The turret and wheels come from a 1/35 Luchs 8 wheeled vehicle, and I even brought the axles across and used them to support the wheels.

Detailing like I say isn't finished, but is well under way. The engine bay has a nice metal grille now, as does the custom built exhaust pipes. Happy with the turret too, the autocannon elevates, and the custom sniper rifle for the tank commander works well.

The front end is taking a bit of work, needs a decent vision slit on the right, but the heavy bolter mod I think works nicely.

Not had much time to work on this recently because of other things. I entered this into the competition over at WIP in its admittedly unfinished state. Erm, it came last. heh! Not sure if that's a critique of the design, the modelling or the photography, or some combination of all three. Of course some of the other vehicles were immense and I wasn't expecting to win, but last is a bit of a kick in the nuts.

Oh well, don't do this for fame and glory, do it because it keeps me off the streets

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Also started work on sniper 2. This guy is getting himself into position. I'm already halfway there with his scenic base, but want to finish it a bit more before showing it. Should come out ok I hope

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