Gillyfish's Legio Atarus log

[Gillyfish]

Greetings all. I picked up some titans for my birthday back in October and expanded my legio at Christmas. I am most likely going to go with Atarus as I quite fancy learning how to paint red well. My only previous substantive attempt was a Dark Angel techmarine and I'm aiming for a nice, rich, deep red, ideally.

 

Legio strength is currently as follows:

 

1 x Warlord

2 x Reavers

8 x Warhounds (I got six for Christmas, what can I say?)

3 x knights

 

I have mostly assembled two of the Warhounds and have now started on the Warlord. I suspect I will want to do some spraying before too long to paint the lenses in the helmets of the Warlord and one of the Reavers, as I'd like to get an Axiom (is that the right one? - I can't remember off the top of my head) maniple up and running as a starting point for the collection and then add the knights, before working on a light maniple.

 

I am planning to paint the knights in colours that are distinct to those of the legio, but still work in some of the legio colours (perhaps blue and bone to contrast with the red and bone of Atarus?). Thoughts on colour schemes would be welcome.

 

Progress is likely to be slow; I have a 7 month old and a two-year old, so I can only make progress once they are asleep and housework is out of the way. Nonetheless, I'll post up some pictures as soon as I can.

[Brother Dallo]

Nice to see another stompy robot log. Don’t sweat the slow progress. Just use this hobby as a way to de-stress and if it takes a bit longer to do stuff, that’s the way it is.

 

Have you got any plans for the basing? I find that a cohesive basing scheme is a great way to pull an army together and it really helps to “sell” the scale of the Titans if you have the odd tiny building or vehicle scattered in there.

 

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

 

Dallo

[Fajita Fan]

Red isn't hard to paint, Mephiston is a really solid base color.  It's good that titans look really good in red, too.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Fajita Fan

[Gillyfish]

Thanks for the comments. :)

 

I don't have fully developed plans for the bases just yet. I am looking to add some old Epic marines and Rhinos I still have on sprues to the bases, which should look nice, and I also have some old Epic ruined buildings.

[Mendi Warrior]

Sounds a good plan, the old Epic ruined buildings are nice to work with. 

[Gillyfish]

After quite some gap, here is some progress:

I've used several differently types and grades of gravel to suggest debris. The untextured areas are intended to be road/pavement and I intend to use technical paints that priduce a nice cracking effect around the feet to suggest the weight of the titan (and then paint over it).

I cut up some old Epic ruins (you can just see the last bit towards the rear of the base on the left), which makes it look like the titan is striding through the ruined building.

I did try to spray undercoat the base yesterday and then my can ran out. So no more progress until at least tomorrow evening! Oh well!

Edited August 8, 2019 by Gillyfish
Spelling.

[Mandragola]

It's a start! I think the base will look good. Best of luck with the rest of the model.

 

You might want to get hold of the Loyalist Titans of Legend terminals if you can. There's quite a nice Atarus warlord in there with a much better plasma reactor.

[Gillyfish]

It is indeed!

 

Thanks for the tip about the terminals - I will see if I can pick those up. I have also been undercoating some Warhound components, but still need to work on their bases.

 

I have some 6mm Napoleonic casualty figures that might look good on a base, painted up as Vostroyan style tech guard/skitarii.

[Fajita Fan]

Just be careful of your pelvis angle, it's easy to make a Warlord look like it's falling over if the pelvis isn't relatively level.  The bulk of the model is on top so it appears top heavy even in the best case scenario.  After my first guy who looks like he's falling over a building I got very conservative with my Warlord poses.  Sadly Reaver legs are such a pain the :cuss that poses have to be relatively conservative. 

 

You might get a torso assembled and dry fit it before going a lot further (wish I had).

[Mandragola]

Just be careful of your pelvis angle, it's easy to make a Warlord look like it's falling over if the pelvis isn't relatively level.  The bulk of the model is on top so it appears top heavy even in the best case scenario.  After my first guy who looks like he's falling over a building I got very conservative with my Warlord poses.  Sadly Reaver legs are such a pain the that poses have to be relatively conservative. 

 

You might get a torso assembled and dry fit it before going a lot further (wish I had).

 

This is solid advice, but personally I do like a dramatic pose. My approach is to dry fit a lot and then see what I can get away with. It also helps to study some running people and creatures to get an idea of what you're trying to achieve. I've managed to get a charging warlord that I'm pretty happy with and reavers doing all sorts of things.

 

One thing I would always suggest is to build any titan's body first. There's no posing to do there. It's much easier to check your legs are posed correctly when you can see what they look like with the body.

[Gillyfish]

Thank you for the advice. The body is actually assembled and was used for posing purposes, although I think I unfortunately made it squat a little too much. It should still be okay as the base will help to make it look like he's turning to the right of the base and has either been rocked back a bit by received fire or has crouched slightly to get a better shot off. At least, I hope that's what it will look like, rather than a constipated warlord...

[Gillyfish]

I have managed to make a little progress. I've basecoated the metal on the Warlord's legs and torso.

I have also done some work on my first two Warhound bases.

They still need gravel applying and I intend to cut up bits of card for the base on right to look like paving slabs thrown up by the shells. Casualty figures and the infantryman are Baccus 6mm napoleonics (Austrians), which I will paint to look suitably futuristic. I also have some cavalry casualty figures which might be appropriate to use elsewhere.

I recently was given some more models due to a birthday, so the Legio stands at:

2 x Warlords

3 x Reavers

8 x Warhounds

3 x Questoris Knights

4 x Cerastus Knights

Of these, one Warlord is being painted, two Warhounds are progressing (as you can see) and the three Questoris are partially assembled. So lots to do!

I also have quite a bit of scenery to assemble - some 4Ground and some TT Combat. I should now have enough for a decent board, once they are assembled.

[Brother Dallo]

Looking good Gillyfish. Nice to see some more progress.

 

Looking forward to seeing how these guys turn out. The craters look good on the bases.

 

Dallo

[Gillyfish]

After a long hiatus due to the birth of child three and lots of work cause by the pandemic, there has been some progress! I have been mostly focussing on the Warlord so far, trying to get the colours about right. The base needs more work and I need to re-paint the knee caps, but the titan is coming along reasonably well.

I have tried to paint some of the pipe-work behind the plates, to provide a little more visual interest and have used blue as a bit of a spot colour. The casings for the Ardex are Caliban Green (doesn't show up well in the picture), but wanted to avoid over-use of green as the colour combo can look a little too Christmassy and Atarus already risk looking like candy-canes. I have had thoughts of using black chevrons sparingly as well to try and counter-act that a little bit.

[schoon]

Looking good!

 

Did you assemble the leg plates before or after painting the skeleton?

[Gillyfish]

Thanks schoon.

 

I painted the leg armour separately and then glued it in place afterwards. Same with the top half. The pictures were taken just ater gluing the chest and side armour and head in place. Weapons will be magnetized and are still being worked on. I have a quake cannon to assemble, so will start with the bellicosas and then can always swpa them when I build and paint the second or add additional weapon options.

[Mandragola]

Lovely stuff. Great to see this project start back up again.

[Gillyfish]

Thanks Mandragola. I switched over to working on buildings after child three was born as it enabled me to go and deal with the baby quickly more easily than this, so I do now have a couple of nice pieces of terrain built (4Ground buildings). Looking forward to actually finishing some titans and playing some games though!

[Lord_Borak]

Really nice looking titans mate. The Cream looks ace 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Nice work Brother, love that bone colour!

 

Sorry I haven't been in this area for a bit to comment earlier..

[battle captain corpus]

Awesome work Gilly! Love the bone it’s spot on!

 

BCC

[Gillyfish]

Thank you all for the kind words. The bone/cream did take a few tries before I was completely ahppy with it, but I do now have a method for painting it fairly quickly and consistently, which is definitely good!

[Gillyfish]

The kids were away last week, so I got some hobby time. The Warlord is completed sufficiently to game with although I need to finish the tilt plates and do some additional work on the bellicosas.

 

 

n

 

In addition, I put the finishing touches to a 4Ground building I had been working on. It is sufficiently large to block line of sight to a Warlord and should also work for LI infantry to garrison when that's released.

 

 

Finally, I constructed my first Reaver, got a Quake cannon ready for building (before discovering my superglue had dried up) and painted some more of my two Warhounds. So... getting there, very, very slowly.