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Tau Riptide and Imperial Guard Diorama Showcase

    So life has conspired recently to throw my hobby time a curve ball. I meant to post the weekend after the Shocktober event with dorka morka but that didn’t happen.

    We do a lot of our own food among my family and friends here and the weekend following the event was ear marked for processing pigs. It didn’t seem like any big deal and was a great experience (it was the first time I have taken part in pigs).  

    But anyway late into Sunday when I was separating fat from soon to be sausage my dominant hand went numb. I figured no big deal it will come back when I quit doing what I am doing.

    So I continued for another 3-4 hours. We finished and it was not surprisingly still numb. So I figure well it will improve in the morning. Monday rolls around, still numb, and it is making work a pain (I write software so I type all day).

    Well anyway the long and the short of it is from what the saw bones said I have induced carpal tunnel  through the repetitive activity that weekend.   So it will either get better or not and at this point I can’t tell if I have just gotten used to it or if it has improved.

    Most of my hand is still numb so woohoo. But anyway to the point, that threw a huge kink in my painting plans. I was not able to finish the helldrake for the standoff, and for a good while I didn’t think I was going able to do anything for the bronze spawn simply because I couldn’t rely on my dominant hand to do what I expected when it came to such small movements.

    Enough of that shit, I got it figured out and have had some friggin success.

    So today I want to share with you my diorama entry to the bronze spawn.

    I was hoping I had a few more in progress pictures but I seem to have lost them. I have had a riptide in progress since may of last year and I have been trying to figure out something to do with it besides the obvious.

    The model is nice and big and imposing and is just begging to lay the hurt down on somebody.

    Along with the riptide I had some guard laying around and the idea behind the diorama took shape in my feeble brain. I wanted to so something big and something I had never done before.

    This is what I came up with.

    riptide1
    riptude2

    So the Riptide was already based in a jungle theme that I was not really happy with so over a lunch break I broke out the air brush and went for a standard tau color scheme.

    It didn’t take long to get the Rip Tide looking appropriate. 

    With the base down I moved on to building the terrain for my epic scene. According to the rules for the Diorama category in the bronze spawn the entry had to be a minimum of 4” by 4”.

    Well let me tell you something, yes I am compensating for something. This is my favorite part of any model for whatever reason I love basing and building and environment for my models.

    dbeg3
    dbeg2
    dbeg1

    I am not quite sure the precise dimensions here, but is pretty big.

    I used kabob skewers and lots of glue and pink foam to build up this defended position to be occupied by the guard squad, and assaulted by the rip tide.

    I thought I had pictures of the next step but I can’t seem to find them. But I applied a metric butt load of joint compound all over the base to smooth out the base and give it a more natural transition. from one level to another.

    Then came the painting lots and lots of painting. The quality of the individual models is not as high as I would like it to be, but the project as a whole works out pretty well.

    dcomp10
    dcomp9
    dcomp8
    dcomp7
    dcomp6
    dcomp5
    dcomp4
    dcomp3
    dcomp2

    That was a long winded explanation to get to basically a picture dump but I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to putting it up against what every one else has ready for the Standoff which is just now a week away.

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    8 Comments
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    Thor
    Admin
    10 years ago

    That looks awesome. The pose on the Riptide is perfect and the entire scene works. I think you have that category nailed.

    What did you use for the snow? That the crushed glass stuff?

    Thor
    Admin
    10 years ago

    It looks great and works very well on the diorama.

    JustHippie
    JustHippie
    10 years ago

    DAMN, that’s all just Damn.
    We weren’t sure on the diorama size so threw that out. We really just didn’t want folks to submit a 25mm base with 2 figs on it dancing.

    Sure that carpel tunnel isn’t from typing? Probably just aggravated some nerves processing. Have you tried icing the heck out of it? Like 1/2hr on, 1/2 hr off, rinse repeat.

    JustHippie
    JustHippie
    10 years ago

    It could just be a pull/strained muscle/tenon/ligament too. Ice, Ice, Ice.

    Damn nice! And you still have time to touch stuff up if you’re not happy with it.