Tuesday, January 02, 2024

Weathering the Gothbot

I got so carried away with the chipping that I forgot all about the decals. I sourced these from eBay and they were a mixture of WWI and futuristic. I wanted the iron cross motif to nail them firmly into the 1st world war.

I thought red would be a more scary colour for a warmachine and Tamiya clear was just the paint for the job. Just paint the eyes white, then when dry add a layer of this clear paint for great glowing eyes.

I played around with various washes building up the rust and mud.

Shoot out it's optics!

I touched up the other vehicles while I had the yellow on my brush. They look so much better now, I think I went a bit too heavy with the weathering before.
A hungry wolf logo was painted on to the knee plate, it seemed very fitting. I got the idea from an illustration off Pinterest.

I also flicked brown paint from a brush to act as splattered mud. This worked well.

Just need to Matt varnish him and then put some mud on the base. The good thing about these single figures is I can base them easily, I don't have to get all the various flocks out and clear the big table.
 
Having made the decision to go winter with my bases, it was time to bite the bullet and weather the tanks.




I didn't want to go too crazy, so a few dabs with the GW blizzard pot and a quite brush with the Tamiya weathering powder. The Tamiya gives a great frost effect on the metal.




UPDATE: I think with the snow you have to be really brave and go for it. I went back to my frost covered tanks and heaped some clumps of snow on them. I think they look a lot better now. There's no doubting these are trundling through a frozen wasteland now. Normally I would say less is more but not in this case...be brave.



The vehicles tie much better into the other pieces of the Army now. It's given me a new born confedense seeing these results. 


The robot base has been muded up. Corrugated iron sheets and wooden beams have been smashed through, giving the base a story. A zombie arm from a Star grave sprue makes for an unlucky soldier caught in the collapsing dug out.


The pictures don't really do them justice but I'm a lot happier with this look than before.
UPDATE: Adding snow to the Gothbot. Using what I've learnt from the tanks, I piled the snow on top of the robot. I had thought that a hot running robot wouldn't have snow on it...so I kept the snow to the head area and limbs.
Patches of white snow looks better than a little frosting, so I made deep clumps of snow on the base too.
I wrapped a length of barbed wire from GW around his foot. I wanted to give the impression that these things are unstoppable and wade through most defenses.


The grim arm coming out of the wreckage was painted in British Khaki and rusting products were added to the iron sheets.


Once you start it's hard to stop, a little more snow was added to the tanks...
Finally, using the Tamiya weathering powers, a light frost was given to areas of the robot. These are good for highlighting edges etc.
The wooden beam shows a good cold effect made from the Tamiya product.

The bottom of his chest has been given a light frosting too.
I couldn't resist adding some eye lights on my phone, it had to be done.

Side view showing some of the Tamiya weathering.

Thoughts;
I've really enjoyed this project so far, pushing myself to take risks and try new techniques, with rewarding pay offs. This idea of a dark alternative war setting with advanced technology has plenty for the imagination to get hold off. Also surprisingly, there are plenty of models etc for such an idea. That has been half the fun for me, trying to find and make suitable models and machines. There seems to be a wealth of 3D prints on eBay that are very handy.
 Anything with crude rivets seems to fit straight in with the period, although half the time it does involve typing 'Steampunk' into the search.

4 comments:

Kev Moon said...

These are wonderful. Well done

Secundus said...

Thanks Kev, I'm quite enjoying this project.

Barks said...

That's some great colour choices and weathering.

Neil said...

They look great!