Tau Riptide - Finished!

I've posted a couple of images of the Riptide in progress, but here are a whole bunch of the finished piece. Of course, thanks to the overhead positioning of the front hatch, the interior doesn't really show up in any of the photos. Not to worry. My client likes it a lot, so that's always the best part of finishing a commission.

I hope you enjoy the photos too.

I'll be taking this along to the Crystal Palette at the NOVA Open this weekend, hopefully he'll do well there before I ship him off.

Speaking of the NOVA Open, you still have a chance to get in and buy a few more raffle tickets to win the great Redemption of the Fallen army (containing a Ravenwing squad painted by me).

Here's a link to photos of the whole army.

Here's a link to the page where you can buy your tickets!

Additionally, Incursion is reaching its final days on Kickstarter. Head on over, check out the gameplay video, and think about pledging to this excellent rerelease.

Cheers
Dave

More Tau WIP

A little bit more work done on the Riptide. I have now painted the bulk of the torso, including the darkened interior, red panels, and comfy seat. It's quite tough to try and get a good shot inside that thing! Also, for some reason the blue is showing up as a lot lighter than it actually is, so I'll have to play with that for the final shots.

Additionally I've completed a Shadowsun in the same color scheme, but with the added bonus of Active cloaking occurring. Shadowsun and the three drones are all in some stage of adapting to their surroundings.

The whole approach to this was inspired directly by Cagn on Le Blog De Kouzes. You can see his great Remora Drone below, and obviously my "transition" line and glow is a direct (if inexperienced) attempt to mimic the effect.

I hope you (and the client) like it!

Cheers
Dave

No time for sleep...

I was recently asked to build a Riptide with an open cockpit for an old acquaintance. I agreed to take on the project as long as I could work on it for Golden Demon. The photos below show the first few stages of the build, the most complicated being the hatch, of course.

I thought I might have to do a lot of hacking to get a kneeling pose (I really wanted one of the thighs to be a good place to position the pilot), but GW have learned a lot since the Dreadknight and you can very easily pose the legs this way.

Finding the right place to cut the front off was much trickier. Fortunately I left the "shoulder" assemblies off until I'd sorted everything else out. The white plasticard around the opening was primarily to tidy things up, after all the hacking away.

Here's the hatch with its back and front on display. I filled in the back (interior) to smooth things out, and then added various dials/buttons/displays that look like Tau controls.

And here it is with the hatch in place.

And with the command seat. Initially I built a "capsule" of sorts that was designed to slide into the body cavity. Unfortunately to pilot the model the Tau would need to have his shoulders removed, so a different solution was needed. I curved a piece of plasticard up in the back of the body, and built a few more display/control panels (seen stuck next to the seat above and below) to hide some of the items inside the cavity.

As well as the Riptide itself, I'm planning on painting up the support systems in case my acquaintance wants to add them at a later date.

And here's the final pose. The tank commander will be switched out for a kneeling pilot.

Until next time!

Cheers
Dave