Oi Vey... This has been one muther of a project! And I'm not done yet. Still waiting for some parts to come in before I can finish it but I can talk about it.
This project has been so incredibly involved that I'm not actually sure where to start with it. The base was it's own special adventure, while building the main body of the machine was practically a project unto itself. So let's start by talking about the base.
As I explained previously, I wanted the Knight to be crushing or standing on something. Something is iconically dangerous. I settled on the body of a Carnifex for this purpose. Carnifexes had long been the "Big Baddies" of the Tyranid army, on a part with Dreadnoughts and able to take utterly horrendous amounts of punished. Well up until 5th edition anyway. Though even in 5th, a Carnifex isn't something you want to ignore. So I put a battered and beaten Carnifex body on the base. The base itself is the Knight Titan sized base from the Goth Teck series by Dragon Forge.
So I got a Carnifex and assembled the main body but not the head. In order to mount the body on the base I ran it across a surface sander for a few seconds to give it a flat side. With that accomplished I mount the body on the base with a combination of pinning and super glue. With it properly mounted I used a hair dryer to soften the plastic of the tail and flex it a bit to give it a more "dead" look to it.
I knew I wanted to distress the body and show battle damage to the Carnifex so that was my next step. For this I fist went to town with a 3mm drill bit and bore out several holes in a pattern to suggest automatic weapons fire. I applied the holes to the back of the armor and across the side of the body. I wanted to make it look like it had put up some sort of a fight. Once I had the holes bored out, I came back with my exacto blade and scored up the edges of the holes and carved cracked into the armor around them. Then I went to work on the head. I used my pin vice to add some bullet marks to the head crest and then to bore out the eye socket of the Carnifex.
Finally I attached the head to the body in a slumped own position to show it's dead as a door nail.The big thing I needed to do in order to sell the entire "Stomping on the dead body" I needed to quasi-level out the back a bit and show some distress and breakage from something the size of a knight titan crushing the back of the Carnifex. In order to accomplish this I took a razor saw and some needle nose pliers to the back armor and made a combination of bends and breaks in the armor to accept the flat foot that was too come.
The big task to accomplish with the base was ensuring there was sufficient space to house the battery pack, wires and switch for the lights. Originally I was going to use a 2032 dime-cell battery to power the circuit, but the battery pack for such a battery has exposed leads. I ran into a problem with these as the glue or modeling putty tended to interfere or even break the exposed connections. So I opted to use a AA battery pack even though it takes up more space. The Dragon Forge base isn't deep enough to accommodate something on the scale of a AA battery pack so I needed to find another solution. I found it by making an exploratory trip through a Michael's craft store where I found an oval wood base only slightly larger then the diameter of the knight base. So with the wood base I was able to route out a space for the battery pack, the switch itself and the wire leads.
As I explained previously, I wanted the Knight to be crushing or standing on something. Something is iconically dangerous. I settled on the body of a Carnifex for this purpose. Carnifexes had long been the "Big Baddies" of the Tyranid army, on a part with Dreadnoughts and able to take utterly horrendous amounts of punished. Well up until 5th edition anyway. Though even in 5th, a Carnifex isn't something you want to ignore. So I put a battered and beaten Carnifex body on the base. The base itself is the Knight Titan sized base from the Goth Teck series by Dragon Forge.
So I got a Carnifex and assembled the main body but not the head. In order to mount the body on the base I ran it across a surface sander for a few seconds to give it a flat side. With that accomplished I mount the body on the base with a combination of pinning and super glue. With it properly mounted I used a hair dryer to soften the plastic of the tail and flex it a bit to give it a more "dead" look to it.
I knew I wanted to distress the body and show battle damage to the Carnifex so that was my next step. For this I fist went to town with a 3mm drill bit and bore out several holes in a pattern to suggest automatic weapons fire. I applied the holes to the back of the armor and across the side of the body. I wanted to make it look like it had put up some sort of a fight. Once I had the holes bored out, I came back with my exacto blade and scored up the edges of the holes and carved cracked into the armor around them. Then I went to work on the head. I used my pin vice to add some bullet marks to the head crest and then to bore out the eye socket of the Carnifex.
The big task to accomplish with the base was ensuring there was sufficient space to house the battery pack, wires and switch for the lights. Originally I was going to use a 2032 dime-cell battery to power the circuit, but the battery pack for such a battery has exposed leads. I ran into a problem with these as the glue or modeling putty tended to interfere or even break the exposed connections. So I opted to use a AA battery pack even though it takes up more space. The Dragon Forge base isn't deep enough to accommodate something on the scale of a AA battery pack so I needed to find another solution. I found it by making an exploratory trip through a Michael's craft store where I found an oval wood base only slightly larger then the diameter of the knight base. So with the wood base I was able to route out a space for the battery pack, the switch itself and the wire leads.
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