Thursday, 10 December 2015

Late last year...

...I bought a set of Titan-Forge Terra Guardians which are still sitting in a box somewhere in my work space unpainted. They are very nice, clean castings of sci-fi troopers that are somewhat reminiscent of Halo's UNSC troopers They are sculpted with a light armour, an exo-skeleton support on the legs and open-face helmets, with and without visors, and, strangely for me, bare arms. The bare arms are the reason they remain unpainted. The arms are very sinewy with deep depressions in the musculature which I really didn't like. Having said that the expertly painted troopers on their website look really good and once painted the musculature doesn't look so pronounced.
I did, though, really like the look of these and when Titan-Forge started a Kickstarter project I was tempted to give them a second chance and pledged for a couple of trooper sets - Armoured Guardians (equipped in a similar manner to the Guardians but this time with a full helm and the exo-skeleton extended to the still bare arms) and a set of the more heavily armoured Terra Marines. These sets are now available on the Titan-Forge website and I've included links in the text.
I also took the opportunity of ordering a couple of add-on's  - an tracked APC and a dropship which is now the subject of a WIP.
I understand that the vehicles are the first that the company have produced and the APC in particular is very disappointing in terms of the fit of parts and the extreme warping of several of the resin components. I've actually given up on the APC and hidden it in one of the darkest corners in the room after snapping the upper hull as I attempted to reshape it!
I was beginning to believe that the dropship too was destined for the same corner but as I really liked the design I decided to persevere and try and fix the problems. It's not perfect but... there where several versions of the dropship to choose from - different motive power; closed side doors; open bay with three passengers (two seated and one standing. I chose the latter.











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5 comments:

  1. Mr. Harold12 December 2015 at 02:51

    That is really cool!

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  2. Mike Lawler12 December 2015 at 22:38

    Glad to see some work on this. This design is one of my proudest moments and I wish the execution of the kit had been smoother but as you said, TF is still learning about vehicles :/ Could you show some details on your work on the nose? My original concept had cannons and those did not make it to what I received.

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    Replies
    1. dwartist13 December 2015 at 18:29

      Hello Michael, love the design not over-enamoured with the casting but not a complete disaster!I've added 'bits' to the nose (not yet complete - the cannon barrels have yet to be added over the brass pins) as the casting there was particularly poor. I've done a little more work and will today and will post pics later. Do you have any concept art to share?

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    2. Mike Lawler17 December 2015 at 17:53

      Sure. If you're not up to speed on how the dropship came to be, here's a little history. The campaign had stalled and TF was taking ideas. Most of them involved free stuff or changes to the tanks if I remember correctly. A lot of people were bashing the GW-ness of the selections and it was just in general in doldrums. I have eagerly been waiting for Antenociti to whip out the dropships he'd shown a year or more ago and was otherwise unimpressed with some of the outdated kits we have from others. I proposed a Valkyrie sized dropship. TF bit and I mentioned some ideas for what to look for. The initial exchange was very clumsy and I ended up throwing together a side view. They liked the general idea but propulsion and other features were tossed around. Some because of casting and others to fit the aesthetic. They came back with a really generic cockpit and I did a quick digital paintover with the notion that it should be a sensor array instead of a traditional cockpit and I changed the proportions they had to feel more like a two seat (front and back) helicopter. They wanted some ideas for general areas of the body which you can also see at the link below. Those had to be really fast because of the timeline so I cranked those out and I believe some of the influences from that did translate but again, casting was mentioned in why they shied away from the more H53 type designs (bulk on bottom)and why they ultimately avoided the butterfly tail. They liked that but said the volume of resin was prohibitive. The next bit was the engine/hover pods. For that I did detail illustrations and you can see from the pictures on that blog post, they were pretty good at adhering to my designs on that. While I really like the way the end design worked, the one thing I would love to see different would be that original butterfly tail with steering propulsion. It would be neat to see my original more V-22 oriented concepts fleshed out as well but I think the final design on the wings works well as is.
      http://www.michaellawler.blogspot.com/2015/02/dropship-concept-wip.html

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  3. Mike Lawler17 December 2015 at 17:57

    The link was at the end of my big wall of text and didn't translate to a hyper link so here it is for ease of use.

    http://www.michaellawler.blogspot.com/2015/02/dropship-concept-wip.html

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