Gatling Rathound (Part 3)

The final result! Ended up taking a bit more time and effort than expected but I'm really happy with the miniature. It fits right in alongside the rest of the army and for a 3D print 31mm tall the fidelity and detail it printed raw was really impressive. Much of that fidelity got lost sadly with my print-line filling process but if that can be refined it shows great promise for use in the future.

Even for someone with zero previous experience, the concept of kitbashing a 3D sculpt was surprisingly easy to get my head around. With the vast amount of free models provided on thingiverse the options it opens up are fantastic.

All that said I don't see FDM printing as a viable option for churning out foot troops and the like. I feel like it's greatest strength is in providing the framework to help you get closer to those weird idea's and conversions you have had kicking around the back of your mind as well as terrain.

I do expect that to change in the future though and am interested to see how 3D printing advancements evolve the tabletop hobby!

Above are some WIP shots of the base, the rocks are pine bark with milliput and small rocks to smooth the transition. Added a few small shrooms, made with leftover greenstuff used on the Rathound. Texture was a mix of backyard dirt, sand, tile grout and coconut fibre. Wetblended a bunch of browns and greys, drybrushed with ivory and then washed with cammoshade/agrax/nuln splashes. For the vegetation some armypainter tufts and bits of dried moss stuck into bush/shrub-like shapes. They also got some washes before attaching the model.

Gatling Rathound (Part 2)

After priming I started laying some colors down to figure out how I would paint it. Greyed out all the flesh and furred areas and used Seagreen for the armor panels inside the trim.

While doing this I started to run into my first issues. The gesso and gloss varnish had dulled a lot of the details but I also hadn't left enough of an exaggerated edge in the 3D model between the helmet and face as you can see above. The face is an area the eye is already drawn too so I figured painting on the separations wouldn't really suffice and it was time to break out the greenstuff.

Had been a few years since I had done any greenstuff work but it came out alright I think. A big help was reading David Soper's blog entry on sculpting his P30 project. In particular the following quote:

"I’ve found it important to understand that Greenstuff changes in nature as it cures. When first mixed it’s very soft and sticky but over time it becomes firmer and less sticky. This means that, although hard to sculpt, when first mixed it will adhere to a surface very well. It is also soft enough to blend edges with the surface it has been stuck to. However, in order to sculpt Greenstuff with any sort of defenition, it has to begin the curing process. As the Greenstuff becomes firmer it becomes easier to create crisp forms and details."

After fixing the issues with the helmet I started filling out the rest of the basecoats and noticing more borders that were undefined and would need some greenstuff help.

The picture above is after deciding the main color areas and blocking them in. You can also see where I have sketched out the highlights on the body and my first attempt at a heated metal effect on the chain gun. The organic areas handled the filling paint a lot better than the machined parts so ended up adding a bunch of small greenstuff embellishments to those as I went along.

Top left shows some bands on the side tanks and a lip around lens, below it a rim on the tail spike and a rebuild of the claw on the foot. Next to these is the main tank, added trim and rivets around the bottom to separate it from the body. Next two pictures are the trim on the armor plate, built up the interior rim and made the rivets more pronounced. Last two pictures on the right shows some fur I added to the join of the tail.

Top chaingun is the end result of my first attempt, way too saturated and not grimy enough. Repainted silver over the effect and then did it a second time below. The 2nd attempt I thinned the washes down by half with water and glazed it on in a slower more controlled fashion.

Some areas I brought back the detail lost during the filling process with paint effects. An example in the picture above which shows the shoulder fur pad. Top picture is just basecoated with some inital shadows sketched in. Below it you can see how I painted some fake fur textures on to try create some depth.

Gatling Rathound (Part 1)

I've had an idea simmering in the back of my mind for awhile now. A Moulder/Skyre collaboration as proxy for the Ratling Gun weapon team. The official sculpt is a bit dated and it was one of the holes in the new Skaven range I wanted to fill up with something a bit different. The cavalry base would give enough space to go with something similar to Forgeworld's Wolfrats but with chaingun hooked up to it like the Stormfiends. Had initially thought about using a chaos warhound or similar wolf-shaped mini as a base but it was on the back burner among plenty of other weird ideas. 

VERSION 1

A good friend of mine moved back into town and while we were catching up I told him I had recently picked up painting miniatures again. He mentioned he got an Ender 3D printer earlier in the year and how big the scene was for printing miniatures for Table Top and D&D. He pointed me in the direction of Thingiverse to see all the great work people put out and also made the unfortunate decision to offer full use of his printer. He promises he enjoyed the process but I don't think he knew then what he was getting himself into!

He linked me to a channel called 3D Printed Tabletop and a video called Digital Kitbashing. In the video it  showed how you could basically convert and kitbash multiple models uploaded to Thingiverse to create something new. He used a free program that comes installed already in Windows 10 called 3D Builder.

Booted it up and messed around a little and figured out the controls. It's very limited and the equivalent of MsPaint in terms of 3D programs but I had zero experience with 3D sculpting or models so a basic version was all I needed really. A night of trawling the models on Thingiverse and slicing and dicing and I had the first version done.

Again I take no credit for the sculpting here, 3D builder lets you spawn in basic elementary shapes like spheres, cylinders and cubes only. The work I did was cutting up other peoples models and shifting them around in a way I described to a friend as "converting with control+Z". It's based on a wolf sculpt by GloomyKid with some rat teeth and a tail added to make it more Skaven like. The main reason I picked it was for the muzzle and face which I felt were similar is aesthetic to those of the new Skaven snouts. 

Below is a full list of links to the 3D models used in this version and later ones, they are made by some really talented folks:

Wolf : My scuffed 3D Builder had an issue loading the file, for some reason the area between the teeth and gums had a bunch of voids and they were not connected. I took the opportunity to take the teeth out and rebuild it with some basic shapes into a more rat-like arrangement of gnashers in v2 onward.

Tanks and Tail: Arch-Lord Discordant, I ended up using the 3 tanks with connecting pipes and tail parts from it scaled down.

Armor Plate : Alternate heads for a 40k Bot I believe, Back armor/Chaingun housing

Chaingun: Chopped the gun off a Rubric Marine then rearranged it a little.

Skaven Symbol : Shaved a tiny bit off this Warp Cannon proxy for the symbol on the armor.

Eye Lens : Cybork Eye from an Ork Bust, ended up dropping this part after v1.

Nose Plate : v2 Onward, a suit of armor for a pet rat! Used the helmet part but chopped most of it off.

Skull Armor : v2 Onward, one of the leg plates from a Nurgle Knight upgrade kit. 

After knocking it together I sent it to my friend and he printed the first version out above. The first mistake I made was not checking the scale as it was pretty tiny, shorter than a Clanrat. The pipes especially seemed to be a bit of a struggle for the printer to get right. My mate wanted to reprint it with some different settings and a smaller nozzle but I wanted to change some things and separate the parts of the model. Version 1 the gun and tail were separate already but I figured smaller parts would allow for quicker prints when figuring out orientation and print settings.

VERSION 2

I might have taken this idea a little far! Version 2 had 8 parts as I ended up removing the pipes connecting the 3 tanks. My friend came over for the weekend and brought his Ender 3 with him. The multiple smaller parts allowed for more reprints while it was here and being able to watch how the printer actually worked was a big help in understanding how to make the model easier to print. 

The model was similar to v1 though I swapped out the Armor plate models as I was having issues when merging and subtracting the first one. The face was a pretty big rebuild for me.. I used cones and the smooth and simplify functions to warp them till I got lucky and they were teeth shaped. Some ovals in the gum line for the new teeth to sit in and the mouth was a bit more rat-like.

The eye lens on version one leaned the model too close towards 40k for me so tried to make a Skaven-like helmet for it. The eyes and skull plate were both from the Nurgle Knight kit. The eye guards being parts of a shoulder-pad symbol and the skull plate was one of the leg armor options. There is also a chopped up pet rat helmet underneath with the cheek guards just being some edited shapes spawned in.

Above is the FDM print in its raw form, missing the tanks and tail. You can see where the detail was a little too small for the printer and it overcompensated on the eyes. The supports also left the bottom texture a little rough. Had a bunch of changes I wanted to make to the model for a 3rd version but wanted to use this version to see what it would take to make the FDM plastic surface and print lines smooth enough to paint on top of.

The experiments began with a blasting of Rustoleum rattle-can 2x Primer. The first thing I learned was the semi porous nature of FDM plastic prints as it drank up the spray paint and took forever to dry up correctly. I replaced the missing pipes with some paper clips bent and drilled into place. The Skaven symbol also didn't come out great so we reprinted it pretty tall then I sanded it down and glued it on top. The picture above was taken after these steps but it also had a pretty thick double coat of Gloss varnish.

Had learned about using varnish to fill gaps from Vincent Venturella's excellent Hobby Cheating series and gave it a try as the primer had done nothing for the FDM texture. The gloss varnish did a great job filling in the micro print lines but not completely.

Had picked up a cheap bottle of Artists Acrylic Gesso while at a local art store and remembered an old Dakka Dakka post about using it as a primer. Watered it down and slapped it on pretty thick. My thought was it would flow and shrink up and help smooth out the more stubborn FDM textures. It worked a little too well though and alot of detail got lost during this step.

Hit it with the rattle-can again after just to see how it looked. A lot of the sharper details and intentional crevasses were lost or blurred but the general texture of the model was as smooth as I could ask for it to be. At this point I switched back to working in 3D builder on version 3.

 VERSION 3

The plan with version 3 was to shift around how the model was cut up into parts, after watching the printer work in front of me I also wanted to try and simplify the shapes as much as possible. Areas on the model where I assumed the change in detail would be to small for the printer to register it was trying and overcompensating. Places like the tail and the eye plates were giving issues when printing version 2.

Swapped out the tanks with some simple circle and cylinders shapes aligned in the same position with the idea that I would do the piping using more traditional modeling techniques after. Replaced the eye plates on the helmet with more circles and cylinders to drill the holes out myself. On reflection the gun housing didn't need to be its own piece but being able to reprint the head, gun and tail separately was the right move. The gun in the picture above would also get swapped out as my friend remodeled it completely with deeper grooves between the barrels. The tail as well got smoothed out using the simplify and smooth options a few times.

This is the print in its raw form after support cleanup and some light sanding in places. Was really happy with how it came out! My friend suffered through many reprints and edits for me as he had taken to the challenge of trying to get it as close as possible. At the end I probably had 8 extra chaingun parts alone!

Assembled it up and started filling in the gaps between the parts and a little bit of greenstuff work joining the tail. Bent up some paper clips to act as the pipes between the tanks and some greenstuff connectors for the pipes. 

The picture above is after 2 coats of Gesso and then a layer of gloss varnish over it. The print lines and imperfections were pretty much gone at this point but needed to give it a prime to see how much detail had been lost. Also put in a second pipe on the left side.

And here it is after the prime. Did lose a little more detail than I wanted from the filling process but on the bright side the surfaces were smooth and solid enough to paint on top of like a normal model. Overall was a really enjoyable and rewarding deep dive into the worlds of 3D modeling, printing and basic miniature design. Wouldn't have been possible without the help of my good friend who did all the printing or all the artists sharing their work for use on Thingiverse.

When Sprue gives you Hand-Weapons make Spears

When I first assembled the initial 20 Clanrats from the Isle of Blood set it was 8th edition and Skaven Slaves were still a thing. The kit came with 20 spear arms and 20 hand weapon arms so I had split the Clanrat sculpts between the ones with more armor which got spears and those with less which I earmarked for hand weapon armed slaves.

Now that slaves aren't a thing anymore I want them all armed with spears for simplicity sake so I decided to try convert up the hand weapons into spears. (Leftmost spear in top 3 pics is a non-converted spear for scale)

I did the sword arms first as I figured they would be the easiest as the blades were already on. I carved up old sprue into suitable sizes and then pinned them to the pommel of the sword hilts. Some look better than others but they pass well enough when painted up.

Next up was the club arms, there are two copies of each of the different weapons in the box. The picture above shows them next to their unconverted version. The blades were plundered from my old middlehammer bitz box and include 40k Ork boyz daggers, multi-pose Skaven blades and Night Goblin spears. They were pretty chunky blades so I shaved them down a little with varying success.

And above are the same arms after finishing them up. I ended up using the other half of the nun-chucks as the bottom of two of the spears and shaving off some bolts from the Ork dagger hilts I used for two of the blade attachments.

I postponed doing these arms while painting up the bodies of the clanrats so had to paint them in a batch of 11 at once. Left is basecoats down and right is after washes and highlights. The rust is done with Scorched Brown, Dark Flesh, Skrag Brown and Blazing Orange wetblended and stippled randomly in layers to build it up. 

These are the last few, mostly daggers which got fully replaced and the cleavers which got edited into a kind of halberd/axe looking set. 

Nothing too crazy but had the WIP pictures so thought I would throw them up. 

3 Blind Mice

         Started painting up the Rat Ogres after doing the first 20 Clanrats. Had the two from the Isle of Blood set and the old Eshin sculpt from when Mordheim first came out. The Mordheim one originally had a very bent over pose that I wanted to switch up. Pinned the chest to be standing up correctly and then greenstuffed the gap between the loincloth and his belly button. Ended up with an 8 pack but Moulder mutations have ended up a lot worse.

I painted it as a test for the scheme, using the darker colors I had used on the Leader of the Clanrats unit. It was really dark and I kind of hated it so I ended up stripping it and going for the polar opposite scheme on the next one. Managed to find a picture of the alternate scheme in an old folder. I'm sure some might even prefer the old scheme but there wasn't enough contrast for me and it was really boring to paint as well.                                                                                                                                                                                            Painted the IoB Rat Ogre on the right side next, the skin was mostly Zandri/Karak/Ushabti blended up. Looking back I wish I had been a bit braver with the shadows on it and the rest of them. Started up the restripped Mordheim and other IoB one but only really got basecoats down when all the Endtimes/AoS rumors started up. We also got kittens at the same time and one had chewed up a Clanrat after I left my painting setup out over night. These two things along with some life changes lead to the hobby getting pushed to the side for a few years until the painting bug bit again recently and I finished the two on the left.

They will be getting swapped over onto some rounds for AoS so won't be finishing off the bases of the left two.

Remnants of the World That Was

These 20 Clanrats were painted in 2011-2012, it was my first time painting after another 4 year gap. Wanted them to look good but was still pretty aware of needing to do really large units of these so tried to take a bunch of shortcuts using the techniques I knew at the time.

The grey fur for example is just a Codex Grey basecoat hit with 3 coats of Devlan Mud. On a side note I miss Devlan Mud, Agrax just isn't the same! It was my first time using the new wash range and was really impressed compared to the old Citadel Inks I was used to. The metals were stippled and drybrushed, it was my first time trying weathering and it's pretty basic and heavy handed but works alright for the effort involved.

Had initially wanted to stick to a neutral/monotone scheme of greys and browns for the whole army but the weathered metals expanded the palette a little. Teal/Turquoise/Sea-green has been my favorite colorband in general so decided to use it on the top cloth of the less armored rats as the armored ones upper halves were already quite saturated with that color for the verdigris.

The cloth areas I spent a little more time on and did in the old layering style. I had read about blending with glazes via a forum post but the tutorial was in text and I didn't understand the need to wick off the excess paint. I thought I was glazing the top cloth but was actually just tinting the highlights back with a Scaly Green wash.

I wanted to keep the palette super limited throughout the army but I might have taken it a little far with the mushrooms being the same color as the cloth and verdigris. I'll be re-basing them for AoS on some rounds eventually and will probably go with a more traditional red/brown mushroom look.

Another reason I kept the palette small at the time was less choice and more circumstance in that a lot of the paints I had assumed were OK had dried up due to bad storage and care. Almost all the paints these guys were done in are either out of production completely or at least had a name change or two since but I'll give a small rundown of what was used:

Bleached Bone: Used for the pale skin areas on extremities and tails. Mixed it into everything below for any highlighting to try keep the tones similar across the model.

Snakebite Leather: Lower robes, straps and base flock.

Scaly Green: Top robes, verdigris and mushrooms

Codex Grey: Furred skin areas, drybrushed on slate rocks.

Dwarf Bronze/Tin Bitz: Clanrat armored areas.

Scorched Brown: Spearhafts, wood shields, base rims and timber.

Scorched Brown/Dark Flesh/Fiery Orange: Rust on weapons and chainmail.

Boltgun Metal: Wet/Drybrushed on chainmail and spears.

Blood Red/Fiery Orange: Eyes

Devlan Mud: Everything

Chaos black was mixed with the Snakebite and Scaly Green for shading the robes. Was mixed with Scorched Brown for the base rims as well.

The banner and shield markings were my first attempts at freehand. They came out alright but the dags are pretty rough looking.

An Introduction

My first time discovering Warhammer was on a visit to Belfast, Ireland in '91. My Mom was taking my sisters for a haircut and I was roaming the shops nearby when I saw the yellow and red letters above a glass-fronted store proclaim Games Workshop.

I was entranced by the painted miniatures on display and curiously walked inside. The walls of boxes, blisters, and books detailing these Sci-Fi and Fantasy universes that seemed familiar yet still alien and new was pretty mind-blowing for a kid who grew up in South Africa and had no idea a store like this existed. With a combination of begging from me and some Redshirt sales tactics I was able to convince her to buy me my first miniatures. A bright green box containing 8 miniature plastic Orc warriors.

Most have suffered pretty badly from being dragged behind me through life, rattling around in cardboard boxes through various moves and periods of storage. The one below is the least damaged and has survived with its first paint job semi-unscathed from when I was around 11 or 12. Quite happy to still have them in the collection as not everything from those days has survived the ravages of time and space.

Every 6-12 months we would go back to the UK and I would manage to hunt down the closest GW store in whatever town we were in. They were often in the larger malls so while my sisters and Mom would be doing their day-long shopping excursions I would go and sit in the local Games Workshop and paint. I managed to collect a small army of Orcs and Goblins but my exposure to the hobby was a pretty rare treat limited for a few days of the year mostly.

Mordheim came out and I loved the atmosphere, style, and art of the game. I had always liked the Skaven since reading about them and Skarsnik under Karak Eight Peaks in my old Warhammer Armies O&G book. Built up a small band of the Eshin Warphunters and even played a few games on some great terrain in the Solihull store on a visit that side. My painting skills at this point were limited mostly to basecoat, drybrush and ink-wash and that's where it stayed for a long time.

As with most people I took multiple breaks from the hobby as I grew up. Living in South Africa it had always been a solitary pursuit limited mostly to collecting and painting. Had a few false starts in 40k including Black Templars, Space Orks and eventually Chaos Space Marines. I had moved to a larger city to study where there was limited access to Citadel stuff from the few hobby and boardgame stores there. My housemate decided to collect a Space Marine army after I got him into the lore and art of 40k. I built up a 1500 point CSM list and we played many games of 3rd edition.

Moved away and took another break until the 8th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy dropped and the beautiful Isle of Blood sculpts and Skaven redesign brought me back to the hobby. I bought the Starter set, Doomwheel, Screaming Bell and Stormvermin while on a business trip up to Johannesburg. I wasn't too worried about the rules just knew I wanted to paint the kits. Finished the first 20 spear Clanrats from IoB but life changes and Endtimes found the hobby taking a backseat again.

Fast forward a few more years and I have recently felt the pull of the paintbrush and plastic coming from the garage. Had stopped halfway through some Rat Ogres so figured I would at least finish them off just for fun. Heard the 2nd Edition of AoS rules are actually pretty decent and a good mate of mine has made the unfortunate fiscal mistake of showing an interest in getting into the game. Tried my best to warn him but after a painting lesson or two on some old mini's the bug had bitten him as well and the beginnings of an Ironjawz army, paints and tools were in the mail and on their way.

With the potential for some actual games the plan is to finally push through and finish painting my Skaven army, a board and terrain. Most of my old forum haunts seemed to be ghost towns but have been glad to see the hobby community is still alive in blogs, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitch. The access to tutorials, in particular, has blown my mind and I learned about more techniques in the past few months than the past two decades.

Have setup an Instagram account to have somewhere to post my stuff but figured I would try and make one of these blog things for my long winded and nonsensical ramblings, this post being a prime example of a quick intro gone wrong!