I like to name my tanks and vehicles by theme, and the trio of Cyclops fit perfectly. I tend to draw my names from Hesiod's Theogony. Cyclops just feel right for Vindicators...tanks with one massive gun in the center of their heads. I've named all my Dreadnoughts after Argonauts, and tried to name my Rhinos after steeds, but found that it was hard to do so for chasses that I switched around from Rhino to Razorback to Predator to Whirlwind.
Here's the nearly-done result:
I got the upgrade kit from a guy on Bartertown who was leaving the hobby, if I remember right. I got a great deal on it, just shy of the cost of buying just the current plastic Vindicator sprues online. The kits are nearly identical, but the FW version is missing side armor plating. I thought about buying the plastic side armor from a bitz seller, but it wasn't worth the $5-8 price tag. Instead, I'll just be putting basic blank doors on, and using some banners and icons from the Venerable Dreadnought and Ravenwing Upgrade sprues to break up the big, flat surface. I figure the linen color of those, plus some silver/white crux terminates icons and then purity seals will do nicely over the big, wide blue surface.
Speaking of big, flat, blue surfaces, I'm not sure what to do about that siege shield. I know a lot of people love to use it for freehand murals, hazard stripes, or very involved battle damage or weathering. I don't do weathering on my Ultramarines, so that option is out. I do feature some small areas of freehand, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea of Marines or their serfs spending ages on a fancy mural on the front-facing surface of a tank that is designed to doze through rubble, smash down walls, and deflect incoming munitions. Some poor bastard spends hundreds of hours pouring his soul into an intricate rendering of Guilliman...and the paint is blasted off in the first volley of incoming heavy bolter rounds that smack into the Vindicator. Oooops!
Hazard stripes might be interesting, and they do look very good on the examples I've seen. I've also seen some examples where just a simple Chapter symbol and some unit markings work nicely.
Anyone painted a Vindicator? What'd you do with your siege shield, and why?
When I did mine I put my chapter symbol on there and the company marking. On my tanks I did do a dirt/mud effect since they're from a swampy planet and used that effect to sort of fill in the rest. Still, the shield looks pretty vacant and I wish I had done more with it.
ReplyDeleteA mistake I made, in hindsight, was making most of the shield look like a canvas. Meaning, I only did metal on the bottom and trim parts of the shield, the obvious areas. The rest was done in black which created a MUCH larger area that just looked empty.
My suggestion would be to just keep that central part of the shield as the canvas (hopefully you know what I mean), and that will minimize the amount of work you need to do so it looks interesting.
I think I know what you mean...use only the area below the headlight guards and above the blade teeth?
DeleteI'm leaning towards hazard striping after looking through my copy of Imperial Armor 2. Kind of like this:
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120415210340/warhammer40k/images/a/a8/Vindicator07.png
Although a google search gave me this, which I really like:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=103244&d=1293991764
I like the lopsided look of the stripe that actually seems to balance the offset of the shield and the gun.
A written litany for your foes to see is an idea, I did some small stuff for my Grey Knights and liked the effect.
DeleteExactly what I meant.
ReplyDeleteI also like the asymmetrical look of that second one. Something like that you could do as they did and disregard everything I was saying. I was referring to if you wanted to do some icons/symbols/whatever.
big ole hazard stripes for the win.
ReplyDelete