Customer: Josh Bacon

Project Outline: 30 Tactical Marines, 4 Veteran Sergeants, 2 Rhinos, 2 Landspeeders and a Dreadnought with all the trimmings. Ummm... yeah. Gonna be a busy guy.

Here are the infantry. I'll be rebasing these guys onto custom resin bases to match the other Dark Angels models I've painted for the customer.

A couple of the Veteran Sergeants suffered some minor damage in transit, a broken arm and banner pole. Nothing major.

Here are the vehicles. I've swapped the Dreadnought onto a resin base already. I'm also going to be magnetizing the Landspeeder bases to allow for easy storage and transport.

First up... the Dreadnought.

First up is Venerable Dreadnought 'Baphomet'.

The customer wanted this guy to look suitable epic, with all kinds of banners and script denoting his various battlefield exploits, both in life and in death.

I put scripture on various parts of his armor, as well as various banners. The two banners hanging from the front of the sarcophagus tell of his time spent in both the Deathwatch and the Ravenwing, as seen by the symbols painted on them.

Here's a shot from the right front, showing the script on the plasma cannon, as well as the 'wave effect' of the plasma core.

From the back, with more hanging banners.

A close up of the removable back banner.

Here he is with his various weapon arm options, all of which are magnetized.

Update 10/4/11

Here are a selection of Tactical Marines from the 3rd Squad, hence the freehand "3" on the shoulder pad.

Here's the whole squad. I'll be painting up the Veteran Sergeant for this squad, along with alll the other Sergeants, after I finish the rank and file.

Update 10/7/11

Here's the 4th Tactical Squad, complete with freehand unit markings on the shoulder pads.

In this shot, I forgot to add the laurels on the Sergeant's helmet...

... but I fixed it before I took this close-up shot of a few Marines.

One more Tactical Squad to go, then it's on to the Rhinos and Speeders.

Update 10/17/11

Here's the 2nd Tactical Squad, with freehand markings on the shoulder pads.

These guys have the classic plasma weaponry associated with the Dark Angels.

Close-up shots of a few of the Marines. I particularly like the book hanging from the belt on the plasma cannon guy.

Up next....

Rhinos!

Update 10/17/11

I've got the extra armor conversions done on the 2 Rhinos. Forgeworld saw fit to discontinue the Rhino Extra Armor Upgrade kit, so I was forced to take matters into my own hands.

I started by grabbing some side armor plates off of the Vindicator model. Gotta love eBay for the bits! :)

The Vindicator side plates look fairly similar to the Forgeworld kit. they just need a copule of extra touches.

Since the Forgeworld kit covered the fenders, but the Vindicator side plates don't, they needed to be bulked up with plasticard.

Here's the armor plating on the left front fender. The rivets are a bit tough to see in the picture. White on white washes out pretty badly in my photo setup.

Here's the armor plating on the rear right fender. The white chalky stuff is plastic filler putty, an acrylic resin about the consistency of toothpaste. Once it dried, you can cut it, snd it, whatever. Great for filling gaps.

I also had some Dark Angels icons laying around, so I used them to spruce up the armor plating a bit.

Up next, primer and paint.

Update 10/25/11

Here are the Rhinos all painted up.

They've got Tactical markings on the right front fender and the 3rd Company 'slash' on the left front fender.

Both Rhinos also have a freehand Dark Angels chapter symbol on the top doors.

Here's a close-up of the armor plating on one of the Rhinos.

Next up... the Landspeeders, all painted in Ravenwing colors.

Update 10/28/11

Here is the color test on the first of two Ravenwing Landspeeders.

I went through a couple of test paint schemes before I came up with this one. To break up the traditional "all-black" color scheme, I painted a few of the armor panels in a different colors.

I first tried white panels, since the traditional trim color for the Ravenwing is white, but they ended up looking too much like Black Templars.

Next I tried using Dark Angels Green, but it was too... dark. Green with black accents can look good, as seen by the Infantry further up the page, or even the Salamanders Landpeeder in one of my other Commissions, but Black with Green accents has to really 'pop' to look good, and Dark Angels Green just didn't cut it.

This led me to using a bone color similar to what you would find in the Deathwing models. I think it came out well. I also added some freehand iconography. I may add some other markings depending on the customer's input.

Here's a shot from the front.

Here you can see the navigation lights painted in the standard red and green on the port and starboard sides of the aircraft.

The next speeder will be coming soon.

Update 11/1/11

I've implemented the changes to the Landspeeder paint scheme and finished up the second one as well.

The changes weren't anything major, just the addition of numerals to the right shoulder pads of the crew, and some script along the sides of the hull below each crew member.

The base is magnetized for easy removal and transport.

The magnets themselves are surrounded by plasticard tuning, which adheres better to the plastic of the stand and the Landspeeder than the metal of the magnet itself.

When the stand is in place, it just looks like any other bit on the underside of the Speeder...

Here is the stand detached from the Speeder.

Up next will be the Veteran Sergeants.

Update 11/10/11

Here are two of the four Veteran Sergeants, all painted up complete with freehand back banners showing the names of the Sergeants.

And here are the other two. The banner on the left is one of plastic ones with a relief image cast into it.

The other banner is similar to the first two, which are similar to the Chapter Banner done for the same army in a previous commission.

Here is a custom built Interrogator Chaplain.

I used Asmodai as a base for the conversion. The crozious is custom built and the backpack and banner are from the Dark Angels sprue.

The banner has "REPENT" across the front of it, which is a classic slogan common to Chaplain banners from back in the day. The banner also has the Company 'slash' in the bottom left corner to signify this guy is attached to the 3rd Company.

Here are all the characters together in a group shot.

* Update *

I noticed in the previous shots that the laurels were missing from a couple of the helmets, so I went back and fixed that little oversight.

At this point all that remains is for final customer approval, some clearcoat, and a few glamor shots, then these guys are ready to ship.

Update 11/15/11

The customer likes how the models turned out, clearcoat has been applied, and it's time for a final 'glamor shot' of all the models before I pack them up and ship them.

Bag 'em and tag 'em! This one's a wrap.