Caught behind enemy lines, and no way to fix his Garm, Doran had to do some drastic measures to repair his mech! He praised the gods that that headshot was only glancing and didn't totally penetrate his cockpit, or he would have surely been done for. Luckily for him and his comrades, even though his mech's leg had been blown off, along with his one arm; an enemy mech scrapyard was near his original target. With the front lines moving further away each day, they have taken the chance to salvage what they could from an Omnimech and a crashed aerotech fighter that had been ditched here unceremoniously. With only one leg, of which the knee has started seizing, and needed to be braced, it was going to be a long trudge home back to the barracks!
Unfortunately, with the start of the contest, my original digi-cam died on me. This left me in a bad position, as I couldn't take pictures and paint along the way.
I kind of went crazy building and hacking up some of my old minis I had kicking around to make this mech super-cool-looking. Looking back on it, hopefully I haven't gone too far, but I was just having too much fun. I really wanted to play up that Junkyard Dog feel to the mech, and I thought there was no better way then to make it look like it was built from a few different sources! Hopefully this doesn't get me in trouble.
I finally got a camera, and in emergency mode I had to do a quicker-than-normal paintjob to get it in.
Basically I took the original Garm model, and used my clippers to cut the arm off at just above the elbow to make it look like it was blown off. Then I started thinking - why just have the arm, let's go for the whole leg! Away I went with my clippers, and surgically removed the right leg from the hip. OK, now what?
Looking through my bits box, I found a mech leg that was about the same height to the hip. I believe it was a Loki or some such in a past life, but I had long since lost all the bits. I had to hack it apart from its waist as well, as the legs were joined. Once off, I flushed off the base and flushed off my cuts with a file, so it would stick on with as much surface contact as I could manage.
I decided since the arm was blown off, the pilot probably would want to jerry-rig some new armament to his mech, so a quick weld and rewiring of another mech's arm to the shoulder joint would allow aiming up and down at least, and torso-twist would allow left and right aiming.
I had a metal scribe I bought way back and hadn't really found a use for it till now. I used it to push in bullet holes and scrape at the mech to make some battle damage, and then used the edge of my needle files to score gouges on various parts of the mech.
Looking at the mech I decided to add a bit of add-on plating, but I didn't want to just use plastic, as I wanted some interesting shapes. I had an aerotech fighter that I got a while ago that was miscast, so I decided to use its wings as perfect plates to add to the mini! I bent and filed some of them, so they conformed to the shape of the Garm. Perfect!
I then left the mini alone for quite a while to try and figure out my camera problem. Finally, I bought a camera at the last second, and took pix of my mini. Only then did I notice that I may have glued the right arm on wrong. Looking at Iron Wind's webpage, it looks like what I thought may have been an autocannon was actually the shoulder joint! Oh well, it looks cool the way I did it. So there it remains!
I primed the model black with Citadel spray and let it dry. Once dry, I glued on some extra techie bits on the base (from my bits box), and used some sand flock to do the base.
Almost all colours I use are Citadel, with the odd Vallejo here and there.
I painted the Garm with a basecoat of Catachan Green. I proceeded to go back over the armour plates with a 50/50 mix of Catachan Green and Camo Green, taking care to leave the cracks Catachan. Once this was done, I went back again with a 25/75 Catachan/Camo mix and highlighted the plates. Once this step was done, I blacked down everywhere that wasn't supposed to be green, as well as painted all the scratches and dents black.
I basecoated the salvaged mech bits Scorched Brown. Once this was dry, I drybrushed Dark Flesh over the whole area. With some Blazing Orange, I stippled colour here and there to help represent rust blooming. Once done, I went over and again heavily stippled Tin Bitz, then worked over the areas with Boltgun Metal to give the final metal look.
The main trick is not to overdo it, as you want to see the browns and reds coming through. I recommend almost a jabbing style to put it on, as the highpoints will grab it - leaving the rust in the deeper sections.
I then went over the aerotech "patches" with Scaly Green as a basecoat, then a drybrush of Vile Green. I wanted to go for a patina look to these parts. Once this was done, I went and drybrushed the areas with Tin Bitz, making sure I left the patina-look in the crevices, etc. Once done, a lighter drybrush of Brazen Brass and then Dwarf Bronze finished the effect. (I know most say patina should not be in the cracks, but on the main surface - but I like it in the cracks.)
I decided that the green armour just wasn't doing it for me - it needed toning down. So I did up a batch of 1/5/1 Brown Ink/water/Future, and washed the whole model down with it.
Once done, I decided to do an inverse chipping effect on the mech bits and the aerotech bits. I picked areas that I thought would wear or chip the least, and started putting odd-shaped black bits to represent where the original paint had not yet totally chipped away. Once this was done, I used some German Grey to paint within the black splotches, to start the colour of the old paint. Codex Grey was used to highlight the grey splotches.
The same was done for the aerotech bits, except I used Red Gore within the black splotches, then highlighted with 50/50 Red Gore/Blood Red.
The lens areas I painted Regal Blue, and then highlighted the top half with 50/50 Regal/Ultramarine, then a straight Ultramarine line at the top. A small reflection spot was made with a bit of Space Wolf Grey, to represent a twinkle.
At this point, the model was pretty much complete. I decided to paint the base with watered-down Scorched Brown, then drybrush with Vomit Brown. The junk bits on the base were basecoated Tin Bitz and drybrushed Boltgun, then given a Brown Ink wash. To finish it all off, I glued some green static-grass on the base.
I had fun doing this model! If I don't get any farther, I would still be happy that I just got to take part. Thanks, TMP, for letting me do this.