Sunday, 26 January 2014

'nids part 123 - PROJECT Y Scratchbuilt Tyranid Skyshield Landing Pad pt5.

This isn't much of an update as really it's just the fact that the DAS clay is dry now and you can get a sense of scale and perspective with the towers. However, it's a two-fer, in fact it's technically a three-fer and there is a bit more progress further down the page.

A sense of scale with the Termagant in place.

A close up of how the Capillary Tower slot interacts with the Skyshield Landing Pad.

And here I am testing just what is visible once the Aegis Defence Line is positioned in front of the pad.

At ground level any Termagants will be invisible underneath , although taller models will be able to get a bead on them. Of course if they're next to the wall they'll be 'visible', that's what the save is for but I'm planning for all eventualities at Throne of Skulls to ensure I've somewhere to hide against Apocalyptic Barrages - under/inside the pad and then against D-Weapons I'll just have to hide behind my Bastion.

The fleshy musculature has been sculpted onto the support fibres from the 6 Capillary Towers. I laid down masking tape on the edges so I could get a flat base for my detachable walls. As you can see each tower slot is labelled and each wall will fit snugly up against the respective Tower. The footprint of the slots are mapped out and everything is coded so I know what goes where. A considerable amount of time has been spent finessing this although there are still gaps in places but the tolerances are acceptable.

Here's a close up of the pad deck. It's considerably thicker than I planned but I've alwasy struggled with fine detail and hopefully this will be more durable because of it. It has bowed a bit, despite my efforts, following the drying of the DAS clay but it actually looks more like stretched flesh because of it. The fibre muscles must have taken around an hour to an hour and a half to do. I think I had all this very clearly in my head but it all seems to have evaporated, so they're guestimate times now I'm afraid.

And here's the third bit, I've added Milliput to the edges and then scored them to look like many layer of fibrous tissue. It's not great but it should suffice when it's painted. In truth the Milliput was far less forgiving than the DAS clay but I wanted something strong to anchor the edges for durability and strength in the whole piece. I think there was about an hours work here.

So sculpting is done, hooray! Next up the painting, Red Oxide spray primer and some fun :)

part 10. | part 11. | 



  1. looking good, cant wait to see what you finally decide on for the walls, keep it up

    1. Yeah me too, it's another leap of faith so I'm reluctant to press on... but I must do or I'll just not bother.

    2. You must! Actually, it still looks awesome without any unfurling walls. Very different, very alien. Your work and your faith in Tyranid fortifications in general has inspired me to try one of my own.

  2. Wow!!!! Cool! Really-really awesome, man!