Racer Modeling

Going through some tutorials on Digital Tutors. This is for a racer model that I finally finished modeling. I had to tweak a ton of vertices and edges because they seem to get added in weird places for no reason. I want to eventually go back and smooth out the rings surrounding the engines, as well as a lot of other stuff, but I'll do that some other day. Next up will be texturing!

Moon and Stars

A scene I am developing from "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. I really liked the idea of the slaves looking out from their cart up onto the violet moon and red stars. I'll try and work it up a bit better and finish with color. The shading isn't that dark on the middle going right but whatever. I'll fix it. Just a concept thus far.

Dreams

I recently had a dream where I was standing on a cliff-side looking out over a vast open landscape. There was a gigantic broken mast coming up from the fog below and it pierced the sky far above my head. I stood there in the calm air looking out upon this object wondering what it was. It exuded an evil presence. So, I drew it out. This is just the rough draft of it, I've worked on it since. I'm considering putting it into photoshop and finishing it with colors.

The Well

An ink drawing I did that took nearly ten years to complete. If I had to call it something I'd call it "The Well". I really really like how it came out. Just wanted to post some artwork since it's been a while since I've posted anything.

Work work work...

Seems like I don't have much time to work on my model but I have been progressing slowly. The abomination is almost ready for priming and then the real fun begins. I discovered that when I glue parts together it is good practice to put a little too much glue in the gap areas and then simply wipe it off with a towel of some sort. This both gets rid of those unseemly glue blobs on the gaps as well as filling the gaps in nicely so I have less work later. After it dries it's a quick scrape with the exacto and I'm good to go. Sure beats having to try and use glue as a filler later on. Putty works great for the big gaps but it's a tad messy. I'll try and post shots of the filler I've done for both situations. Glue is much easier if the gap is small but has a tendency to run all over the place if I am not careful. I should look into thicker glues. Anyway, I now have the tail assembled and gap approved as well as a few other bits on the main body. I'll soon attach the lower right arm, some of the legs, do a bit of a cleanup and then some sort of QA over the whole model before I prime. Why do I take all the time to make it look pristine before I paint? Well, because this model is huge! Gaps and mold lines are even more obvious at this level and past that I don't like my stuff looking all hastily put together. If I am to paint it (or try to paint it) professionally then why not assembly professionally? I also think I am going to try a new method for basing. I know a lot of people like to glue the model to the base first thing and prime the sanded base with the rest of the model, but I have not had luck doing that. I always end up getting highlight paint as I am completing the base all over the model and it's a bummer. I suppose I could be more careful in the basing portion but I'm just going to make it easier by outlining the parts of the model that touch the base, then work around those outlines. I've seen GW do that with the Screaming Bell tutorial on their website so I figure I might as well give it a shot. Can't be that bad. I was also thinking of using some of the left over bits from the abomination to mod some of my rat ogres or something. Might look neat if I can do it right.

Well, that's all for now. I'll post pics of the final prepped model before I spray it. Should be fun!

The Abominable Hellpit

 I begin with the assembly. What do I do right and what do I do wrong? Well, instead of pre-fitting the pieces together to make sure they worked together correctly I ended up getting excited and just started gluing before I even though about it. I tend to also forget about scraping off mold lines or getting ahead of myself. Sadly as I go along I see those flaws and it bothers me. It's even MORE annoying when I have a model almost fully painted and I see stuff like that. Bits of plastic that weren't shaved down, or metal bits that got missed. With the abomination though I feel like I've done a pretty decent job in cleaning up the pieces. After I calmed down and started fitting pieces together before gluing I realized that it wasn't going to be perfect anyway. When do they ever do that as it is? As you can see in the first photo (the underside of the "belly") there were some major gaps. Thankfully for Zap-a-Gap glue I could fill those in and am in the process of smoothing those connections out so they don't look so bad. To the touch I can't tell that there is a gap there but after the primer goes on I guess we'll see how it looks. Usually with past experience my attempts at doing this very thing have proved more than adequate. In fact, I can't even tell on some of my other models that a gap existed in the first place. That always makes me smile.

So, onward. The model is starting to come together nicely all in all. I chose the warp grinder spike for the jaw, as well as the spiky left lower arm and the mechanical lower right arm. I felt as if it were a bit more deadly that way rather than just the typical stuff I see in most stock photos. I love the fact that this model comes with SO many different choices to arms, rat heads, etc. I haven't even gotten halfway through the assembly and yet there is still a ton of stuff left on the sprue. You'll see in this next photo some of those options I opted for. I really liked the extra rat head with an arm coming out of it on the top of the main head. I am not sure if I like the rat that extends out of the lower jaw area though. I may end up cutting that off in the long run before I prime but we'll see. Maybe it'll "grow" on me. Haha.

 Lastly I wanted to point out some of the other gaps that are visible on the right side of the body under the armpit area. I'll have to clean this up some more but currently it isn't too bad. I am worried though about painting the entire model (even though I'll be doing it in pieces) with all of that stuff in the way of the bulk of the body. Some of the undersides of things might be hard to get to, but then again how often will someone look at detail on the underside of something or in a shadowy area. My perfectionism comes in to play there so hopefully it isn't too bothersome to paint. I wanted this model to be one of my best works so I'm practicing on other models first. Must get my blending, layering, and glazing down if I am to do this one well.

This is my example of my layering and blending colors to fade out, with lighter parts where the light would be shining on. I'm currently working solely on the orange armor and haven't even come close to finishing. Queek was more of an experiment than anything. I do like the way I've been able to fade some of the armor from brilliant orange to a reddish orange. I think once the model is done with the effect over all parts it'll look pretty cool. This is what I want to achieve eventually with the Hellpit Abomination's skin tone and the bones that stick out of its body.