Dannage's Imperial Forgeworld!

[sheep]

You're a lucky man, i would kill for a room like that!

I look forward to the pics, the teaser looks very interesting. I agree about the lack of feedback being stifling to a new project.

Cheers

Sheep

[Dannage]

Heh heh, thanks Sheepie. I'll like the room that much more when I'm confident it wont leak again. Been raining a bit recently though and so far, no water... Fingers and aquilas remain crossed!

I got given the brief a while back but it was some time in February I actually started on the model. Some time around Christmas, I think, I came up with the general idea though, which went onto the whiteboard (darned useful thing to have!)



Then in February, I made a start. Since this was going to be an 'arena' I was going to be fairly limited in what I could do with the model itself, so I knew I had to have plenty of actual characters around to fill the space and add detail. I also wanted the place to look grandiose, but for figures not to get in the way of the action, so I decided it needed to be a multi level affair, with plenty of layers, so I could put figures in the lower levels, while the Horus/Emperor action took place on top... So, here we see me making a start on characters for 'the pits' (an area where Horus keeps animated corpses, little evil creatures and human slaves, for his amusement.

We also get to see the chaos symbol appear on the flat wooden boards, adding the chaos symbol into the arena on a grandiose scale!

[sheep]

Looks interesting mate, hows the detail going to be built up?

Cheers

Sheep

[Dannage]

All shall be revealed in time, my friend, though as I say, the detail was going to be mainly in the characters around the place.

With thanks to my out of work carpenter dad for doing the cutting out (Though I was expecting straighter lines out of you dad! heh heh) I then bought some lengths of dowel rod, and two skulls. The skulls were from Clinton Cards, and cost £4.99 for the pair. They will probably be available again just before halloween, and are well recommended for chaos terrain lovers!

At this stage it was easy to get a feel of how the barge would look.

[Dannage]

Then a black undercoat for all the floors, lights added underneath the skulls, a back board added and steps to the throne cut up.

[sheep]

Now that i was NOT expecting! It looks great mate, what the spacing between the floors though?

Cheers

Sheep

[Dannage]

Well, making an arena, I had to keep a flat-level surface for people to play on, but I wanted to give it depth and I wanted to be able to stick loads of models in, without getting in the way of the players actions!

Horus' throne now sits three floors up, above pits, gantries and walkways... All above a gigantic glass floor.

[Dannage]

Speaking of the glass floor, since the old BFG Battlebarge model has ribbing on the outside, it only seemed fair to add ribbing where the glass floor goes.

[Dannage]

Then, time for some red paint and some holes cut in the back wall...

[Dannage]

Of course, the whole point of the big glass floor is to show we're in orbit of holy Terra, so the base board needed a little painting.





Tecnically I should have put lots of cloud on, but I was pretty happy with the blue shading and didn't want to ruin it, so you have to imagine that Horus has blown the clouds away to cear his descent to the planet... or something.. The black looks a little overcooked in the second photo, but the paint was still wet. When it dried, it actually came out really well!

[sheep]

Looks great mate, and is an awesome concept, though in the fluff the worlds oceans boiled off centuries ago, though i suppose no one would recognise a big dust bowl as being earth.

Cheers

Sheep

[Dannage]

Ahhh... Or Baaahhh... I'm exposed as the fluff charlatan that I am! ... I guess The emperor felt bad and missed his green and blue earth... So had them paint the ground blue where the oceans used to be... tee hee...

[Dannage]

These pictures can show you in layers, what's going on. So above, we got Earth.. which is now a bit old-earthier than it should be! .... Below, the base board, which lifts the whole model above, so we can look down on earth from afar...



Then the bottom layer, showing the pits.



Then the lower floor of the throne room



Then Horus's Floor



And then with stairs and back wall

[Warlord Nazgred]

WOW that looks absoloutley amazing can't wait to it finished, consider this thread subscribed!

[Dannage]

Thanks Nazgred. Though it wasn't quite finished when it got to the event, it was in a pretty good state (Except the bit where I put my boot through it, but that's another story.. ahem)

Though the boss said people would bring and be able to play with their own characters, I decided that in case someone didn't bring an emperor or a Horus model, I would provide one of each. This would also enable me to reveal the scene with characters all included!



Some wounded marine models, blood angel death company, sanguinary guard and chaos marine bits came together to give me a contingent of Blood Angels to battle in the depths of the ship!

[Dannage]

Just a shame my phone is so blurry...

Still, one thing which reassured me that my skills have improved is that a lot of my friends thought someone else had painted the minis for me. I guess you just put a bit more effort into scene character models, than when you are painting rank upon rank of tactical marines!!

[Bob Hunk]

Having seen the finished project up close I'm very interested to see how it all went together. Keep up the amazing work!

Very cool room btw.

[de Selby]

This all looks pretty amazing. Show us more!

[Dannage]

Your wish, my command and what not...



This was a while later. Because I wasn't uploading pictures anywhere and the whole thing was being kept under wraps, I started forgetting to take photos, so you miss out on much of the in between bits from here on in!

I had decided that the model required some detail on the back wall. The original plan was that I was going to be able to start publishing photos a few weeks before the event, so I had planned to just take photos of the top of the stairs, and then surprise everyone when the entire arena was revealed. Still, there was only one photo released prior to the event and the organisers didn't want any more out there... So not many pictures!

Anyway, I decided the way to make the scene a bit more interesting, a bit more 40K and a bit more 'multi level', it needed a walkway along the back, with arches to break up the wide flat back wall.





And then moving into the middle, because our circles sawn out of the wood didn't look all that regular, I got some round plastic mesh things. I think they're used for cross stiching or something. Two smaller ones were cut up and used for the back wall windows, while larger ones had their insides cut out and came to use in the centre pieces.

Also the first ten or so coats of watery paint to make some form of chaosy portal!

[Dragon Lord]

Definitely envy you for your workshop there Dannage. That arena for the fight on the bridge of Horus' battle barge is quite impressive too, and the blood angels look rather nice. I'm curious, I recognise Horus as being made from the Chaos Lord kit but what model did you use for the Emperor?