GMM's Giant Parade Part 1 - Freehand Covered Titans

(Hello out there! Recently BigRed over at Bell of Lost Souls asked me to do a couple of throwback articles to Titans I have done. Thought I would try and post it over here too. Hope you enjoy and thanks for stopping by!)

Today join me looking back at some of the larger models I have done. Today we look at the “Sistine Sisters”, a Warlord and Reaver titan like you’ve never seen before. The release of Titanicus and interest in that, both my own as a hobbyist and that of clients booking Titanicus projects and working with them on color schemes, has me looking back fondly at some of the larger scale Titans and Knights of the past.

I’m a pretty focused person when I work, and on one project at a time, so when I get a chance to stop and look back at older things it’s a nice, fresh rush of excitement and fond memories. Anyway, let’s get to the pictures!

 These two Titans were commissioned a couple years back. The client had one main broad concept he was after – a set of Titans that was as much a monument and testament to the glory of the Imperium as much as walking war machines. It’s also really quite fitting of the personality of man in the 41st millennium as GW has written it – war is glory, war machines embody that, and everything is quite on the nose. So it certainly seemed quite perfect and fitting to us that the Imperium would make such things.

The process of sourcing all the images for the freehand was quite fun. I essentially let him loose to find his favorite images, at a factor of about four times what we would need to cover it. Reason being each image needed to be composed both within the composition of the whole Titan, and within the frame of each panel. Not every image would work in every panel shape.

To work this out, I did a mockup or map of each panel part, and then took all these images and arranged them in photoshop as they would lay out on the titan. So I had an overall view of this “map” and how the colors would flow across it, how each panel would look and interact with the others near it, and also tell how they would lay into the panel shapes.

After this, it was as “simple” as zooming in to each panel and looking at it as I painted. I love doing freehand, so these weeks of nothing but painting panels was a lot of fun.

The Titans are assembled with the strongest materials possible. Epoxy for any part that carries weight or is bigger than your thumb. Large nails, with the heads cut off with bolt cutters, were used as giant pins. Finally each connection was bored out and fitted with a range of 1/2 inch magnets (all the weapons) to full 1 inch magnets (waist). The inch magnets work out great. With a little muscle and torsion, the waist comes off, but more than strong enough I could pick the Warlord up by the waist and carry it around.

The base is cut from plywood, and then sculpted over using a lightweight but hard Smooth On putty. After this holes were counter sunk into the bottom and very large screws attached the legs. I used screws instead of epoxy and pins so it could be removed if needed. Large enough screws with pre drilled holes are about equal grip anyway.

The models on the base were painted to match his existing army and to both make the base more interesting and to blend it in with his army on the table. This is a Warlord after all, so the Macharius I had sitting around was the perfect equally over the top base decoration to go with them.

That’s it for this round! Hope you enjoyed the little blast from the past as much as I did. Back to mulling over Titanicus while getting some paint on the current project. See you in the next one!