Get your brushes and clippers, and welcome to the Space Dinosaur Hobby Table, where I cover what I've completed recently in the Age of Sigmar hobby, along with my thoughts on the sculpts, how easy they're to paint, and any tips or tricks I can pass on to make your life easier. Today's post covers a project that has long been in the works: my converted Stormcast Eternals Stardrake.
This project has been a long time coming. I've completed portions of it in spurts, but now with a final push I have completed the painting and the basing of my converted Stardrake. The reason I converted it is simple; I think the four legged variant looks derpy and blocky. Not at all like a sinuous, deadly creature. So with some fiddling about I found that, with some involved green stuff work, you could attach the wings to the shoulder joints and create a wyvern instead of a drake.
I also had to do some pinning with a drill and some paperclips in order to secure the model to the base, which I had to build up differently in order to support the new pose. This involved a bit of trial and error, but I got there in the end. Up next are a couple of comparison shots from the original green stuff to the painted result.
Once all the sculpting was done, I let the model sit on the shelf for a very long time as I tried to settle on a color scheme. I wanted something to contrast the dark, metallic black of my regular Stormcast Eternals, but white intimidated me as a color. Thankfully, GW has a contrast paint, Apothecary White, that made my life a lot easier. I primed the model with Vallejo Grey, then basecoated with the contrast paint. Once dry, I used Nuln Oil to tint the top scales a darker grey color, then brought some highlights in with white. I avoided drybrushing because I didn't want the model to look chalky.
I also knew I wanted the wings to have a red hue, but not a primary red. Something more subtle. I used Army Painter Chaos Red, washed it with Carroburg Crimson, then highlighted with Army Painter Dragon Red. It was an utter pain to get clean lines between the pale ribs of the wings and the red membranes. I was driven insane and eventually had to settle on good enough.
The rider was the easiest part of the painting. He's just a standard Stormcast hero, so nothing too crazy there. I did pin the saddle to the model, and it's stuck on with blue tac so I can easily remove it while transporting the model to prevent breakage.
Finally, we have the basing. I mixed in some scatter terrain from Warcry and added some elevation using cork board. To add the texture I used tile grout. Unfortunately, when the grout dried it caused some warping of the base, but I resolved it by breaking the grout once dried and then covering over the crack with flocking.
And with that the project was finally complete! Now for my overall thoughts on the model, I will judge it based on two categories. Firstly, the sculpt itself will be scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 5 being average, 0 horrendous, and 10 a marvel. For a reference point, I consider the Stormcast Liberator to be a 5, neither great nor bad. Just a passable, average model. Then I will score on Ease of Painting, between 1 and 5, 1 being a slog to paint and 5 being a breeze.
My Stardrake review:
Sculpt: 7/10
The original sculpt has some really cool features to it that I think gets hampered by the awkward posing, especially with the stiff fore-leg.
Ease of Painting: 1/5
This model takes a while to paint, has a lot of different textures, and hard to reach areas. You can lower the difficulty by using simpler paint schemes or contrast paints, but if you want a multi-toned dragon expect to put in a lot of work.
Final tips: Do this in sub-assemblies. The wings were awfully difficult to paint once assembled, making it really awkward to work with. I had to rip the model off of the base at one point in order to work it. I'd also recommend an easier paint scheme than white. It took a lot of work and back and forth to get it to look right. If you want that, feel free, but I have a second one of these and I won't be painting it white.
-The Space Dinosaur
Really cool conversion! Was it difficult to get the wings to work?
ReplyDeleteThanks! It took some effort getting everything lined up, mostly how to make it look natural.
ReplyDelete