Fiddler WIP Part 1

This is the first part in a mulit-part process documenting the build up of the the Fiddler Mech by White Dragon Miniatures.  It is a really cool original design, it comes in 1/35 scale, but if gamers were interested in using it in systems like Infinity or even 40k, it does scale nicely with 28mm figures.

In this project I am going to attempt to replicate the pose of the Mech that is in the artwork on the White Dragon Website. When I saw this artwork I knew immediately I wanted to build it.

The kit is a multimedia kit consisting of mostly resin pieces and some brass rods for the barrels on the weapons.  I felt the packing was a little lax as far as the pieces went.  They were organized loosely
into 3 bags and then packed with foam.  I think some better thought could have gone into organizing the spurs.  There is a lot of pieces in this kit and it was hard to keep everything straight at first.




 I found the pieces of the kit to be, for the most part well cast, albeit a little soft on the details in some spots.  The 2 areas I was disappointed with the most was the wench and the greeblies around the shoulder joints.

There was a few parts that the casting was quite horrible on.  The lower leg sections seemed to suffer the brunt of this miscast.  In addition to the legs there were several pieces that had  sleight mold lines, sometimes I feel like the small mold lines are at times worse than the big ones, to me it seems like it takes more effort to putty and clean those, than it does the large ones.  But, this is resin and semi-professional casting so I am willing to live with some imperfections.

Over all I am really happy with this kit and I am looking forward to finishing it.  I have already seen a few wip's on it, with a variety of colors, but I think I am going to be going with a light blue-grey color.  I have also sourced some appropriate scaled decals to add a bit of realism to the over all build.

Onto some build up info...

So have assembled the Fiddler into its major sub-components, upper and lower hull, weapons and base.

 During assembly I also took care of some of the softer details, I replaced the wench with a scratch built one, and I drilled out all the anchor points as well to add a little more detail to the model, at this point I am not sure if I will be doing anything to the detail on the shoulders as it is all well hidden when fully assembled. I am pretty much ready to move forward with primer and paint, I am going to need to wait a few days for the snow to stop before I can prime, but once I do I will get more pics posted of the progress.

Here are a few more pics of my favorite part of this model, the big ass gun!!

Well, almost a year since my last post, but this post comes with some information and the announcement of some changes coming up!!  I will be graduating in 2 days, this means more time to get back into painting and and updating things around here on a more regular basis!! So I thought I would take some time to post some of the stuff that is in the pipeline so that everyone knows what is coming up.

I have been doing a lot of gaming commission lately, and I have been feeling the need to get back to my roots and do some regular modeling.  Over the next few weeks I have a few projects that I will be posting on that I am making progress.

The first of them will be for all those Star Wars geeks out there!!

I have picked up a couple of 1/144 scale model kits form Fine Molds!!  The Millennium Falcon and Slave I are the once I currently have, given some more time I will probably pic a few of the 1/72 scale fighters, like the X-Wing, Y-Wing and Tie Fighter.  Rest assured it will be enough to pin to geek meter for just about any one!  If you are interested in picking up any of these kits swing on over to Starship Modeler's web store, they usually have all this stuff in stock!!

The next piece of modeling that you can expect to see in the next weeks is this beauty here!!

 

This is a 1/35 scale mech called the "Fiddler" it is produced by a company called White Dragon Miniatures . This is probably the model that I am most excited to start!!  I have had it for a while, but due to school and other demands it has been collecting dust.  I pulled it out today to asses things a bit better in preparation for working on it....

Some other things that you can expect to see from me some time in the next year would be a few of the models over at Industria Mechanika. It is a very cool website by a very talented modeler.  Specifically I am looking at their Dust Buster and The Rook.  There is some other items that I will definitely be picking up as well as there release schedule dictates.

In addition to these I have some more commission work that I am working on for Jay and Trevor over at Chainattack Podcast.  For Jay I have already done quite a bit of stuff for him, here is a link to a gallery of some of his stuff. Also worth mentioning is that Jay owns Discount Games Inc.  He has some fantastic prices on what he sells, I highly recommend him for all your gaming needs, and his increasing hobby line as well.  Some of you know Trevor from Chain Attack as well, I have slowly been working on his Orange Skorne.  There will be some more contributions to his army as well over the next few weeks.

The other thing I will be working on is some reviews for some of the mini's that I have painted.  However, what I plan on doing is assessing them from a assembly and painting standpoint.  One thing I have certainly learned is all model and mini's are not created equal.  I am working on a grading system that will asses a models assembly, paint-ability, convert-ability and over all fun hobby score.  This is something I have always wanted to see that I think will be interesting to do.

Look forward to seeing how this year goes, thanks for checking in!!