++++INLOADING DATAFILE 006++++ WIP Dias of Destruction commission

So this post might look familiar for anyone who follows my friend Jason's work over at adhdgaming.blogspot.com, but here is my take on my Dias of Destruction project for him.  Anyways, Jason requested that I make an appropriate model for Abstrudael Vect for his upcoming Dark Eldar army, and I immediately started having ideas on how to do it.   We both wanted to make a model to represent him on foot and one to represent his "pimp-mobile" Dias of Destruction, and after telling Jason what I would need component's wise I got to work.   Oh, and I hope to be the first to actually make a really great representation of Vect in the community as no one seems to have done so till now. Its still a work in progress but here is where things stand so far:

So the basis for the design was to make something that looked like it was its own vehicle type within the same school of design as the other Dark Eldar vehicles.  I initially planed on making the entire raider wider to accommodate the crew and Vect's thrown, as well as the pleasure slaves I really wanted to add to the model.  As I started playing around with the kit though it became really quickly appartent that this would not work, but then I had another idea.

I had convinced Jason that I required a fire prism to make the conversion work, and by now he and all my friends are used to just accepting my crazy impossible sounding ideas, so he went for it.   I took the raider and cut it into two sections right along the a conveniently placed grove in the center of the side.   Once this was done I put together the entire bottom of the raider including the deck and the engine compartment without the rear of the hull.   Once this was done I took the turret from the awesome new fireprism kit and I cut it roughly in half without the cockpit portion or the cool rear tail part of the turret (You'll probably see though in an upcocming dark eldar flyer conversion.).  These I placed in the rear of the raider to alter the shape and give it wings.

 It was surprisingly hard to fit the wings into place because there were only two tiny points where the two models actually touched, forcing me to use zip kicker to get them to cure.   The left side went on fine, the right had to be broken off and repositioned about 5 times before it matched up just right.  Once this was complete I took the rear of the raider and I placed it on top of the wings to make it raised up above the rest of the model and to keep the empty spaces in the conversion from being visible.  As I wanted there to be plenty of space for his throne I left about an inch wide gap between the two halfs of the rear hull, again being extremely carful to make sure both sides lined up. In the end it looked like this:

As you can see in these pics I used green stuff to merge the shapes together into one form and to fill in the frighteningly huge gaps in the conversion.

 ::::CONVERSION TIP::::: HOW TO GREEN STUFF LARGE CURVED SURFACES
Something that lots of people have a lot of trouble with when trying to convert eldar or tau vehicles is making the large curved surfaces both armies vehicles feature.   Plasticard is extremely unreliable for this and requires lots of sanding to look anything close to right, and green stuff is hard to form into the correct shape.  The key to doing it is to not use any sculpting tools at all for it, just use your fingers. So to get a result like what I did on the sides of the rear hull just make a decent amount of green stuff, remember that the rule of thumb with green stuff is that less is always more, and smooth it onto the model with your fingers.

I always use some petroleum jelly as a lubricant when I work with green stuff, its cheap at walgreens in the babyproducts section and it will keep the putty sticking to the model and not you or your tools.  Once you have the putty smoothed onto the model just start rubbing your index finger back and forth over it with a small amount of pressure, slowly pushing it into the proper shape.   This is one of the few circumstances in green stuff work that your fingers are viable tools as in this situation their comparatively huge size helps you achieve a very consistent result. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 As for the other details in the model I was originally going to have stairs running down from the rear dais, but it didn't look right so I made a ramp instead from the side ramp of the raider kit.   This of course prevented me from using the normal sail in the middle of the raider though, instead I intend for this thing to have two sails in the rear coming off of the wings.

As for the crew Jason told me he wanted to have incubi instead of the usual kabalited warriors crew, which surprisingly was all too hard.   As you can see from the earlier pics they fit the model quiet well and with a few simple hand swaps they could man the dark lance and steer the ship just as well as any warriors.  One thing I think came out really well was my placing their glaives on their backs, it looks very cool and helps to reinforce the fact and they are quite badass.

 When I get back tonight from visiting my folks in Rhode Island I'm going to see if I can finish this bad boy up, oh and don't worry there will be lots of pics for Mr. Vect soon enough :)