Ork Battlefortress, Part 7

The modeling phase is just about complete. It is still missing some glyphs on the sides as well as the driver and the rokket crews, but the fortress is ready to roll. I was surprised at how much better it looks with just a basecoat on. Several people over at the-waaagh.com mistook it for the forgeworld model.

The refitted zzap guns have had their turrets attached with magnets so they can be rotated and swapped out with lobbas and kannons. There is still some debate on the end of the barrels. It may still look a little thin. I’ll paint them up and see how they look before any decision is made.
I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 rivets on the beast. I am glad that step is over. I’ve had to go over them several times, rubbing them with my fingers, to make sure they were all attached well. Same thing with the knobs on the roller.

The cab still looks a little plain. I’m going to put some glyphs on either side of it, but I’m still not sure that will be enough. I could go back and rivet the top section more, but that may be overdoing that theme. The other thought I had was to put the rokket launchas on the sides of the cab and make the observation deck a true observation deck. Put an ork or two up there looking through binoculars.

I’ve said all along that I have been scared to paint this thing. I’m not sure my skills can do it justice. This is a mockup of my first thought of what the painting should be. Last week I painted the red and started on the check-work on the side armor. The dark red worked very well. Over the dark basecoat (it is actually much darker than it looks in these pictures) the red has the perfect tone I was looking for. The checks, on the other hand, don’t.

The small check-work along the rivet beams on the side armor caused most of the problem. The small pattern disrupted the rivets and totally hid them. So all that work I put into them cannot be seem. On top of that, because the rivets stick out, it breaks up the clean lines of the checks and makes them look messy. I’m afraid I’m going to have to strip the paint off that side of the battlefortress and start over.

I think I’ll leave the larger checks along the top, they look well, but replace all the thinner strips with a simple metal coat. It will be a much less intricate look, but it will bring out the rivets and make the whole project look more robust.

Any thoughts for improving the cab are welcome. Right now I’m leaning towards doing the very top section of the cab in large checks, mini cooper style. We’ll see how that works out.

I’ll post again once some good painting progress is made.