Based from Blaars papercraft plans I set upon mock up the paint scheme I saw in another picutre.
I nick named this scheme Desert ridge line. I think MW4 had a similar camo skin. I went in to far more care and detail with this model as i was planning to take moulds of the whole Mech and casting it in resin. This also ment i had to think about how each part would be cast. Paying particular attention to surface details and how far to assemble parts.
Here the Styrene master loosely put together to make sure everything matches. The pen marks are notes to myself on details, surface joints etc (all those white squares are easy to muddle!) It took me about 1 month to get to this stage.
Now the fun process of mould making can begin. There's no doubt this stage is super fun but also quite messy so I don't have that many photos.
I used the smooth on starter kit, Lego and plasticine (play doe) to make the moulds. (Casting such a large model drinks pints and pints of silicone about 6kgs in this case!). There's a good 8 part video guide on youtube which I followed;
Once the moulds are done you ready to pop out mechs like cookies! This has to be the best stage to reach you finally get to see your work go from boxlike substructures to stompy stompy mech like goodness. It took 2months to get to this point and now you can cast a whole Mech in under 1hr bang tidy!
You'll note the use of green stuff modelling putty. This is needs to fill cast lines, gaps and bubbles that appear in the resin casting process if you don't have access to the pressure casting equipment. You'll also notice I'm in the process of adding extra details using styrene, wire etc I decided to add these after casting because i wasn't 100% sure how sharp they would come out. On to painting
Painting is where I feel most experienced in model making. I love how well the paint scheme came out, I like my mechs solid colours and weathered (you can see the improvement from the Armorcast atlas painted 10years earlier which I used car spray paint eek!). I chose Eridani Light Horse decals for no other reason than they complimented this paint job.
I stunned myself with how well this came together. The final height is 21cm around 1/43 scale and weighs in at 750g. Knowing that you can cast parts really focuses ones mind on getting the details right and removes those headaches of building free hand symmetrical objects like legs.
Here's a nice image of the steps of production.
I have also cast another Hunchback from my left over resin (resin doesn't keep once opened) thats going on eBay so you too can enjoy owning and painting your very own large scale Mechwarrior 4 Hunchback. Everything you see here (bar my craft mat, cheeky monkeys) is included;
My next project will be a Osiris more on that next time.
