Monday, July 27, 2009

Brief News Update; Tau-storming

For my loyal followers (...such as they exist, at any rate). I am indeed alive, but have been somewhat thrashed by real life. Summer classes run for about...5 weeks? Save that you meet four hours a night, two nights a week. It's been a bit of a thrashing, but stuff's gotten done.

The Tau army continues a gradual buildup. I need to throw up photos of the Kroot, as they have been completed (well, minus 2 'hounds.') and based. The Hammerhead's still waiting on touch-up. The Broadsides are a little WIPpy at the moment, pending some components in a trade.

The army is still short some Crisis Suits, as I'm fielding three teams of three, the commander, and two broadsides. I've got one I might re-do, and the Broadsides are somewhat inspired by the good old Battletech Rifleman IIC. I've got the torso bulked up and a radar dish over the head, though it's borrowing some components from the Mechwarrior: Age of Destruction 'Ghost' battlemech. (It was the image I could find. Seriously. Please just kind of disregard the colors...) I'm a fan of the Ghost's bulky lower legs.




The Rifleman IIC is just cooler.My beef with the Broadside is that it just looks like an XV-8 with more guns. You still have the jet pack, you still have the spindly legs...no. We're getting something that looks a little more impressive.
I'm still picking my brain on what I want my Crisis Suits to look like. Part of the reason I started Tau? Crisis suits. The look. I'm a big fan of Armored Core 4's (and the sequal, For Answer) Noblesse Oblige. It's the wings.








Of course, the question is how exactly do I pull off the wings? I'm toying with cutting off the jet pack, and making them look like they're thrusters. For those of you not so familiar with Armored Core, those 'wings' on Noblesse are actually massiv triple-barrel energy weapons. Not quite on the Crisis Suit, but if you really doubt the inherent badassery of the Noblesse? Take a look at it in the old AC4 trailer. I see Crisis Suits as moving like that, albeit slower. Mostly, it's the side-strafe booster action that makes me think of the jump-shoot-jump kind of thing.

The other thought for booster arrangement is the one on White Glint. You can take a look at White Glint in action here. I think I tried it in my prototype conversion, but didn't do the angles right and didn't get a secondary set of boosters on it.

Kroot pictures to come sooner or later. Oh, and the Piranha's pretty much painted. Just need to touch up the pilots, and they'll get posted up.

5 comments:

TheKing Elessar said...

You do pilots last?
When I paint Grav Tanks, I always paint the crew before I glue them in, and paint the hull afterwards, though it's already based by this point, lol.

Raptor1313 said...

Ah. For the Piranahs, the upper bodies are still detached from the skimmer itself. The Piranha, being open-air and all, lets me access the cockpit and I'm actually doing it last so I can fine-tune it.

For my Eldar stuff, I've actually not done pilots at all. I'm just doing my canopies in gold. Base brown, then I think it's shining gold, then devlan mud wash, then touch up the supports to match the vehicle it's on.

Squirrel_Fish said...

I like the idea of wings (or at least stabilizers of some sort) on a Crisis suit - it makes it easier to conceptualize them flying circles and blasting dudes with plasma.

As for application, consider adding another jet pack onto the model similar to the first model here (http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9075&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a) and then plasticarding wings of your own (I like the idea of fins or vanes running down the jetpack exhausts).

TheKing Elessar said...

I considered doing that, in some ways wish I had...but for Ulthwe vehicles I couldn't find a colour I'd have liked for it.

Also, I'm just egotistical enough that I painted all that detail because I can... ;)

Raptor1313 said...

@ Elessar
I think gold would've worked for Ulthwe. It'd be a nice compliment for their palette, or just a washed gray or something.

@Squirrelfish
Those are some tidy conversions. Thanks for the link. I like the additional jetpacks, though my problem is that in practice, that's a LOT of spare jet packs to get in. It is, though, some good food for thought as it's in actual Tau terms.