Taff's Marine WIP blog

Now obviously this is currently blank as it s a new blog and Im sitting at my desk at work enjoying bacon sandwiches whilst watching the nfl on my second screen. Life could be worse!

Now on with the show.

OK, so I have meant to do ablog like this for a long time. As I'm sure you all know I like to paint, model and create goodness. It makes up for my questionable generalship at times!

At the moment I am working on a second storm talon. i have one made up on the traditional way and has a legal paint job (i.e. three colours). But I am not a fan of the model When you look at the dark eldar stelath ship, the WW1 ork ships, the flying boomerang for necrons I feel dispondant when I look at the "made by a child with play dough" storm talon. Therefore I decided to change it.

I am making a storm apachie!

With a bit of luck I will figure all the photos out and that but, as they say,

Watch this space

apache helicoptors are too cool - really looking forward to seeing this as a proper WIP and especially to the finished article - dont be shy on pictures - the more the better!

All i saw was something about a bacon sandwich...

Organising my photos is going to take some time. Bear with me.

I hope we get pics of that sandwich too!!! Yum

Pretty sure that that would be deemed indecent content and mod Paul would have to put his foot down!

too late, i cant resist!

I'm gonna need to change my pants....

So, as my previous post said I do not like the storm talon model a great deal. There's nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't look right based upon what the other flier look like. Especially now I see the chaos one. Mine seems lamer by the day, almost embarrasing

Below are some pictures of my "proper one". It's only part painted at the moment so don't judge too harshly. Naturally feel free to comment and offer help or guidance!





Now google apache. Look at any image and you'll see it's cooler!

So I got to thinking. Marines should be cool, the ApacheI IS cool. Lets put these two in the pot and see what I come up with. Hence the blog entry.

Below is my first attempt at large scale conversion of any model. Sure I've done the head swaps, the quality bases and the like, but this is quite close to scratch build at times. My first part of the vision is shown below...



Now what I have done on this might not be apparent but, here we go. The assault cannons at the front have been remodelled to put them into the cockpit more. I believe this makes it look more stream line. In gaming term it will still turn 360 of course however it just looks so clunky.

The next thing I did was to lengthen the tail. As a helicopter model that short stunty thing was just no good. Since I had to cut it of anyway I then turned the tail over to make the top large than the bottom. This obviously helped to give me a place to put the tail rota!

Speaking of rotas, the below images show my first attempt at the main one. Yet more conversions here and some serious kit bashing. I intend to use some form of wire on top of the blades to break them up so they are not so flat and boring.





So, this is how far I am into it at present. I have some socialising to do this weekend(I am selfish I know), but hope to be able to work a bit more on it. The next stage will be to finalise the rotas. Any thoughts or guidance will be a great help. Mrs Taff loves them (and as she married me so she is clearly a high class lady of good taste), but I think there is something missing.

After that I await some post and start adding weapons. While I know the apache is really col and I want to emulate it as much as possible, I know I will have to adapt here to ensure I get something that is both functional, cool and as near to free as possible!

So that's what I promised, let me know what you think.

T[quote]

good work so far!!!

i think with the rotors, if you look at the real life equivalent i see three things - theres a load of mechanism where the rotas stem from - might be worth seeing if you can add some?

the rotors are also slightly longer? and less straight?

other than that i see no fault - youve done a great job on that!

im looking forward to seeing the famous apache rocket pods on its "wings"!

I actually don't like the ones with the circular thing above them. They seem to be some sort of recon device. Unless we play some pretty seep and messed scenarios I think I will skip it for the sake of awkwardness!

With regard to the rotas, so you mean the sightly curved shape at the end? Almost like a Scimitar sword?

yeah, exactly that...plus they are a bit thinner at the base and thicken out a couple of feet into the blade.

Aslo, cant see from your pics, but thr rotors are slightly diagonally se, not all horizontal (as with my deffkotpas)...but to be honest thats a lot of fiddling for little gain when it looks good how it is!

A beauty - coming along nicely; I agree with homo though its not quite right and I realised partly the blades as he said are thinner at the rotor (allows for blade tilt) and they're long on an apache if memory serves, almost to the tail long......I've found a pic btw which may or not help and you may have already seen it but it should be on email fella

So based upon feed back, this is what I cam up with. The blade length has gone from 6*1cm to 9cm long and 2cm wide at the end. I also added the spiked bit that had been mentioned. Below is the comparison of it on the size of the apache itself.



I still intend to add wires to the top to make it less plain. I think the spike at the end would have to be painted a different colour to try and explain the different levels of it. I tried to cut it in one piece but the material did not want to play ball!

Thoughts?

much better!

if you go with a silver rotor, try painting the spike warplock bronze (tin bits), highlighted with mithril silver.

alternatively paint it in your armies purple as a spot colour?

really good job, looking forward to seeing it built together now!

Ask and you shall receive.

While considering the new rotar blades and gathering more feedback I have gone to work on the body of the Apache. below are the picture.







The weapons platforms are now on. Originally I wanted them to be flat, but there is something about the slant which, while taking it away from the apache itself, makes it a lot more space marine. I think this is important to differeniate the to at times otherwise I would have probably been better off buying a real model and painting it purple and black!

I've had a few issues with the thrusters on the side. I do not want them to be big. That was one of the major issue I have with the Storm Talon. I have used these smaller ones. I think they work nicely as the main power will be coming from the over head blades anyway. In addition I have kept the 4 smaller thrusters underneath the body. In my mind at least the rotars over head and tail will be the "working parts" with the thrusters on the side and underneath being the "space marine" parts.

What do people think?

T

OOOohhhh, second page!

I'm really liking it so far. I normally have a hard time seeing a finished model when conversions are part ways through and they are all covered in GS and what not!

I think it's more apparent what hobo was saying about the rotors, they stand out a bit more now as being a bit out of place in style to the rest of the model.

Really good work though!!!

With a bit of luk I will manage to finish the main rota blades tonight so hopefully there will be more photos tonight. Ideally I would like the majority of the build finished by the end of the weekend so I can perhaps spray it and get to painting next week. I look forward to this being finished and placed in my fliers cabinet!

its starting to come along really nicely - your last pic is really starting to really shape up like the real thing - still looking forward to the missile boxes under the wings!

So I was lucky enough to squeeze some modelling in tonight, and ere are the results





I think it looks so much meaner and better for this. I was fiddling with straightened paper clips on top but they are too long now. Looks like I'm going to have to buy some wire from the modelling shop! Shame!

I guess next must be the weapons! Got to be careful I get the order right as I've still got to paint the inside of the cockpit and glue the actual body together!

As always praise, constructive cursing and pointers are more than welcome!

Cheers

T

Looks quality mate, is it just me or do the blades look like theyre in reverse?? (I believe they're right tho!) any thoughts?

Hobo is there any way you can reverse the posts order so that the latest shows first rather than scroll to the end to look at the new ones?

I think they are spot on. A bit fatter than real life but that gives it a characture that suits the nature of models. Thinner vlades would look odd?

My onl thought is that the wings should be horizontal as youll be mounting the rocket pods on them and it would be wierd at an angle??

Ill have a look rich - might be possible but that isnt the norm in forums...im the meantime you can hit the 'last post by' to head straight to the last post

I did consider straight wings but they looked pretty odd. The rest of the model is not straight at all. Really I'm just making everything harder for myself. Meh!

And here is the end of the nights work - some weapons have been added





I'll have the second pod soon enough

One question though, do you think I should add any thing to the inside (as in nearer the copter)? I have some single us missiles I can cut up which would physically fit. Maybe I'm tired or high off super glue but thought I'd put it out there. If you need photos from other angles, let me know.