Mixed post - both the Bleh and the Exciting

Thats right, there are two items for the blog today. The first is really kind of blah, but it is progress. I have a big project I am working on but I felt I needed some side projects to plink away at while it was underway. The following is one of those side projects.

The Bleh....

So in an attempt to have a "Complete" Eldar army I decided to assemble at least 1 Vyper. I may do more in the future but then again, they do not excite me. Overall I am not a huge fan of how the Vyper looks and I really dislike the chair mounted on the back. While assembling my Vyper I decided a couple things:

1. I would use an idea taken from Blue Table Painting and modify the back of the Vyper to remove the chair.
2. I would magnetize the weapons (both weapons) so I could swap out how the Vyper is armed.

 After putting together the Vyper I am still have a "Luke Warm" stance on the model. It just does not excite me overall, and for my taste it is less exciting than both the jetbikes and the wave serpent chassis used by the grav tanks. The approach I used was nearly identical to how I painted the grav tanks (base coat, wash, lines/detail, wash, free-hand, wash, gems & canopy). I did notice where the wash pooled on one wing, but I just was not excited enough by the model to go back and fix it.

Lets take a quick look:

Here is the Vyper with no weapons.





And here is the Vyper with the weapons mounted by the magnets. The way I have this set up I can swap the same weapons I use for my walkers and Wraithlords.

The Exciting!

So here we go with the exciting part of this post! Those who have been keeping an eye on my Queue have noticed that I have a Forge World Avatar currently on the building table. As part of putting this together I am assembling step by step pictures as I go along. These pictures will be used for a series of tutorials at some point in the future. My intention was to hold pictures of the project until I had the model complete and was able to publish the complete tutorial series. Thats out the window once I looked at the near-final assembled model.

At this stage I have a little bit of filing and trimming remaining for the greenstuff, but the model is 95% assembled. I should have a base coat on by the end of the week and painting started immediatly following.

As you will see in the picture below, the Avatar will be modelled holding up a Tau Crisis suit with the Avatar's hand driven into its chest. I am modeling the crisis suit to have its weapons destroyed during the battle and the whole model at the moment just before the killing blow has been inflicted. I have also green-stuffed the melted parts of the suit where the Avatar's hand has driven into the chest, along with one leg having been chopped off during the fight (including the exposed bone).

So, here is a quick look at where things are at.