A Short Knight, pt. 3: The Grand Finale

Welcome everyone to the third and final part of my recent Chibi-Knight project! This has been such a fun little endeavour, and today you finally get to take a look at the finished model, so here goes:

The paintjob for the actual Knight was actually just about finished last time. So here’s where we left off:

This only really left the basing, but since the objective with this entire model was to match the bigger version as closely as possible, I wanted this ethos to extend to the base as well. So for starters, check out the base of the bigger version of Gilgamesh:

As you can see, I used some pieces from the Space Marine statue from the Honoured Imperium terrain kit to represent fallen Imperial monuments, and I really wanted to recreate that look — and it seemed that fate was very much on my side…

I actually realised a long time ago that the aforementioned statue seems to have been created mostly by upscaling existing Space Marine bitz: If you take a closer look, many of the parts of the statue seem to consist of bigger versions of plastic bitz from the company champion that comes as part of the old Space Marine command squad box (incidentally, I am pretty sure the statue’s cape is an upscaled chaos warrior cape, but that’s beside the point). And I actually discovered a while ago that GW used a face very similar – if not identical – to the statue’s face for different kits as well. So it didn’t take much work to collect the pieces that would allow for a very close recreation of my original design for the base. Take a look:

The shield on the left is pretty much the exact same shield also worn by the Honoured Imperium statue. It came from the aforementioned Space Marine command squad kit. The sword is from a plastic Terminator — I’ll admit the company champion’s sword would have been a better fit from a visual standpoint, but the Terminator sword worked better due to its size and proportions. And the head on the right is a piece of a broken Imperial monument from the WFB/AoS giant.

So I used these parts (or rather, copies of these parts) to create a setup that was fairly similar to the original base:

Now I had to improvise a bit, due to the bigger Knight’s base having an oval shape (and hence more room), but I think the setup worked out pretty well. I also chose to have the head in an upright pose this time around — something I should have done on the bigger base as well.

So here’s the base after undercoating…

…and with the Knight provisionally placed on top:

And here’s the finished base, painted to fit the bigger version:

So all that was left was to affix the new Chibi-Gilgamesh to his new home, and then the model was done. So here, once again, the big version for the sake of comparison:

And without further ado, I give you

Chibi-Gilgamesh version 2.0

I am actually really happy with the way the model has turned out. I may have had to compromise a bit here and there because a couple of visual touches from the bigger model just couldn’t be reproduced at the smaller scale (at least not without ending up looking extremely goofy, that is), but you can still tell at a glance that this is supposed to be Gilgamesh at a smaller scale, wouldn’t you agree?

And there’s also my favourite part about this project, the somewhat harebrained, yet ultimately successful, scheme of adding a fully sculpted interior and pilot to a Knight at the Adeptus Titanicus scale. Check out the bigger version of Baron Harrowthorne again:

And here’s the chibi-version:

And now that the new model has been finished, here’s another comparison shot with its predecessor:

As I’ve said before, I really like how the older Chibi-Knight seems to represent the somewhat clunkier vintage Epic 40k design, while the new model fits the sleeker, more faithful designs from the new Adeptus Titanicus.

That’s not quite all, though. Because with the model finished, it was of course time to trot out the actual 28mm Gilgamesh in order to find out how well the new Chibi-Knight stands up to the big guy.

well,…

I think there’s definitely quite a bit of family resemblance, wouldn’t you agree?

Having managed to closely recreate the base also makes me stupidly happy, to be honest 😉

So yeah, a fun project all around! And you know what? I am also going to pledge this little guy as part of Azazel’s Mechanical November ’18 community challenge — fits well enough, I’d say 😉

In any case, it goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

A Short Knight, pt. 2

Hey everyone, here’s the next look at my current project, the recreation of my 28mm Renegade Knight Questoris, Gilgamesh, the Warrior King, at the Adeptus Titanicus scale. I haven’t had much hobby time since my update, but I’ve tried to make it count. So let’s take a look, shall we?

First of all, this is where we left off last time:

While the similarity between the Adeptus Titanicus Knight Questoris and its bigger 28mm version already astonished me during the building stages, the parallels even extended to the actual painting process: Due to the way the model comes together, it’s actually possible to keep most of the armour plates, especially the big top carapace and shoulder pads, separate from the Knight’s “skeleton” during painting, so it was once again a matter of undercoating the skeleton in silver and the armour plates in red, then work from there.

And since this was my biggest alteration to the stock model, I did of course have to start with the pilot, trying the best I could to have the paintjob make up for the lack of sculpted detail:

Even at this stage, I was already reasonably happy with the way the chibi-version of Baron Harrowthorne looked, so after that, it was mostly a matter of carefully blocking in all of the base colours. Due to the delicate sculpt of the Knight, this was a bit more fiddly than on, say, a bog standard Space Marine model, but it was still fairly quick work. Here’s Chibi Gilgamesh 2.0 with all the base colours and washes in place:

And now came the delightful part: I carefully tried to match as many visual cues from the bigger version as possible — including the decals used on the original Gilgamesh. In some cases, I was able to use smaller decals that were a close – or even perfect – fit, in other cases (on the kneepads, for instance), I had to use a fine liner instead.

But anyway, enough talk, let’s take a look at the mostly finished model:

Just to remind you, here’s the big version:

And here’s what I have right now:

Pretty close, wouldn’t you agree?

As for Baron Harrowthorne and the cockpit, I had to give the area another small round of tweaks, of course:

So, once again, let’s start with the bigger version:

And here’s the Chibi-Baron:

As I’ve said before, since there is so very little actual detail on the pilot, I’ve had to use the paintjob to suggest detail were none extists, and to create an evocation, for lack of a better word, of the much bigger, more detailed 28mm pilot. I am pretty happy with the outcome, though — if you take a closer look you can even see the glowing buttons on the control panel:

And here’s another comparison picture with my earlier Chibi-Knight kitbash:

So a few very minor tweaks notwithstanding, the new Chibi Knight is basically finished at this point — except for the basing, that is, and I do have a rather nifty plan for that. Let’s hope it works out!

Until then, however, I would love to hear what you think! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

A Short Knight, pt. 1

Hey everyone, still no painted models this week, alas, but rather a small project that had me sidetracked. Small in every sense of the word, actually. So what is this about?

The recently released 2018 version of Adeptus Titanicus has left me weirdly indifferent so far — surprising, really, as I always thought I would be right at the front of the queue if it ever made a return. But the focus on the biggest Titans somehow makes it less interesting to me (even though I’ll readily acknowledge that being able to own multiple Warlords without having to sell a kidney is probably one of the main draws of the game).

That being said, when the AT-scaled Questoris Knights were released, I knew I had to pick up some of them. And at 25 Euros for three, they seemed reasonably priced, so I made the plunge:

What really surprised me was how the detail on these is truly off the charts: It’s almost uncanny how GW has managed to make them resemble the bigger version down to some of the smallest detail. And I found myself regularly having déjà-vu moments while building the first model — it’s that close to it’s bigger kin. And seeing how I was already having those déjà-vues, I started feeling the urge to build a smaller version of my Renegade Knight, Gilgamesh — in fact, some of you might still remember my previous attempt at building a “Chibi-Knight”, roughly at the Adeptus Titanicus scale – from all kinds of odds and ends:

 

 

Building that smaller version – dubbed “Chibi-Knight” by me – was a fun project back then, and I think the model still holds up fairly well, all things considered, even if it’s maybe a bit too clunky. But having a base model that was already a fairly perfect representation of an Imperial Knight from the get-go this time around really made me want to one-up my previous effort.

So I got to work, trying to make one of those small Adeptus Titanicus Knights resemble this guy as closely as possible:

And after a bit of messing around, my first WIP looked like this:

Pretty good already, wouldn’t you agree? Here’s a comparison of my first WIP next to the previous, kitbashed Chibi-Knight:

I actually like how the previous versions’s slightly weird proportions make it resemble the visual clunkiness and retro charm of the old Epic 40k models. By the same token – and due to the more delicate sculpt of the AT Knight – coming up with a way to mirror those chaotic decorations was slightly tricky, and had to drop some of the detail that was simply too small to reproduce – or would look weirdly clunky (such as using a Bloodletter face on the gun barrel, for instance). I also got the impression that most 28mm GW bitz are just a tad too big to use on those delicate AT Questoris Knights, so this did take some doing.

In the end, I went for the visual essence of the model, trying to hit enough design cues to make it work, dropping some that were just too much trouble to get right, and figuring out which bitz to use for either.

So here’s the basically finished build for Chibi-Gilgamesh version 2.0 that I have come up with:

All things considered, I think I have managed to come up with a pretty good reproduction of my 28mm Gilgamesh at the smaller scale. But that wasn’t even the end of the project, because during the conversion process, I found myself staring at the Knight’s hollow interior again and again…

…and wondering if maybe….just maybe…

…it would be possible to add a fully realised interior as well — just as I had done on 28mm Gilgamesh.

Sure, the mere concept is a bit ridiculous, but once I had gotten the idea into my head, I realised that there would be no way to weasel out of this challenge: Chibi-Gilgamesh 2.0 needed a cockpit!

Coming up with a pilot was the most challenging part of that, obviously: I thought I was already out of the woods when I remembered some 40+ years-ish old plastic Army Men style soldiers my uncle used to play with as a child, and wanted to use one of those, but they turned out to still be a tad too big. As was a pilot from one of my uncle’s old model planes:

My next idea was to use a Z-scale model train figure — and indeed, those come in all shapes and sizes, even in a sitting position. And they are also readily available online. In batches of one hundred, no less!

In the end, that would have included purchasing them in China, however, and it just didn’t seem sustainable to pick up something so cheap and minuscule from halfway across the planet. So I was already planning a visit to the local model train shop when another idea struck me: I remembered one of the old plastic Bretonnian Knights from an old WFB starter box having a stylised little person as their heraldic helmet crest — maybe at just the right scale?

When I dug out the bit from my cupboard of shame, I realised the figure was pretty much the right scale indeed — but alas, it was a Lady of the Lake style sculpt:

Space Marine helmet included for scale.

Very fitting for Bretonnians, no doubt, but not a particularly good match to recreate my Baron Harrowthorne model at a smaller scale. But maybe there was still something there that I could use? So I shaved off most of the detail from the helmet crest, until I was left with only the bare outline of the model, then tried to carve it into a rough incarnation of Gilgamesh’s pilot:

If nothing else, I was able to leave the suggestion of facial features in place. And I realised I had the beginnings of a pilot.

The cockpit, on the other hand, was almost trivially easy to build: I used some tech-y leftover bitz (from a Heldrake foot, IIRC) for the reactor section…

…and if you take a closer look, you’ll see that I even included a small control panel for the pilot:

So here’s another comparison shot for you: The 28mm version of the cockpit and pilot:

And my WIP version at the Adeptus Titanicus scale:

Of course I realised that the pilot was still looking slightly too primitive, so I added some tweaks to him, greenstuffing in the tiniest shoulder pads and placing some teeny tiny plastic nubs on the model to suggest both the medals on the bigger version’s chest as well as the cranial augmetic implants:

The rest of the detail will be suggested by the paintjob — at least that’s what I hope! Now in all fairness, the pilot is probably still a tad too big, but there’s just no way I can come up with an even smaller version, so I’ll call this conversion a success!

This has been such a fun little project — and given the size of the model, I hope it’ll be easy enough to paint up as well. Maybe this could even be the model to get me out of my recent painting slump? Keep your fingers crossed for me! 🙂

In any case, that’s it for today’s update. It should go without saying that I am looking forward to any feedback you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂