I first assembled the central core body as pointed out in the instructions, and placed magnets in the front two shoulder sockets.  One thing you want to make sure is that the legs in the middle are wide enough for the Tervigon sack but will still fit on the base itself.  I also put some green stuff with a magnet in the neck socket and on the back of the neck of the Tervigon and Tyrannofex heads.

I then placed two magnets on the bottom hoofs and I let that glue dry overnight.   I then placed 2 magnets on the bottom of the base.  Before the glue is settled on the bottom of the base I slid the model around until it fit nicely.

Once the model is settled on the base, I started on the sack. I used green stuff and magnets along the seam of the Tervigon sack.  You may not get the seam to fully shut but it’s hidden underneath the model so it’s not too bad.

For the Rupture Cannon I just glued magnets on the arms so that they fit nicely in the shoulder and that the left arm lines up with the gun.

Once your model is assembled and your happy with now all the magnets fit, the next step you can paint the model anyway you like.  Here are how my two friends turned out.

Good Luck!

A note from the Editor: It is with great pleasure that I present to you a labor of love and wonderful tutorial from one of our new contributors, Andy! This complete tutorial features his fantastically painted Blood Angel’s Stormraven which he slaved over in the beginning of 2011. The original tutorial, which can be found on Andy’s blog, was delivered over nine parts. Andy has been gracious enough to recreate that tutorial here, slightly condensed, for you, the Turn 8 audience (also, it gives some better exposure to his work … win/win!). Please enjoy and feel free to leave our man a comment or two.

In this installment, I’m gonna go over the icons I used for extra decoration.  First off, the Stormraven comes with plastic relief icons of the basic Blood Angels “winged blood droplet”.  I used one of these on the front right of the vehicle, but I also had some left over Blood Angels icons from the Baal Predator kit.  You can also buy these icons separately at a bits store or eBay.

The first icon I’ll go over is the angel dropping blood from a chalice on the left wing.  For all the icons I used a white base coat to make the colors really pop and the fact that the colors were mostly whites and light colors.  I painted the scrolled portion and the angel’s garment Bleached Bone.  I kept the wings white and used Blood Red for the actual blood droplet.  I used Dwarf Flesh as a base for the face and highlighted with Elf Flesh.  For the gold crown I used Shining Gold and then a Burnished Gold Highlight.  After all the base colors were painted, I washed the wings with Azurman Blue Wash and then highlighted with Bone White.  For the scroll portion and garments and used a Devlan Mud wash and then Highlighted again with Bleached Bone.  I highlighted the blood droplet with Blazing Orange and then Skull White for the specular reflection.  I then used Chaos Black and a very fine brush to put in the text.

For the Skull/Chalice icon on the right wing, I based the gold parts with Shining gold and then used a Ogryn Flesh wash in the groves.  Then I highlighted with Burnished Gold and then Mithril Silver.  For the skull portion I used a Gryphonne Sepia wash and then highlighted with Bone White.  The blood droplet and scroll portions were the same as the left wing icon.

For the Blood Angels symbol on the gold star burst located on the front left, I painted the wings similar to above but made the Azurman wash 1:1 with water.  The outer ring behind the wings is a Chainmail base with Mithril Silver highlights.  For the scroll portion, I used a Gryphonne Sepia wash instead of Devlan Mud and it had a warmer look to it.

For the main Blood Angels symbol located on the front right, I painted it very similar to the last icon.  After I was finished with all the symbols I went back and put Devlan Mud into the crevices surround the icon where it touches the hull.  This helps the icon punch forward and stand out.

Decals

Now for applying decals, I found a great tutorial at Dakka Dakka from user, winterdyne.  It is a little more focused towards self printed decals but the parts about applying the transfers is all we need.  Check the link out here.

I’m gonna sort of abbreviate those instructions for my purposes here though.  First off, to apply decals you’ll need a few things:

• Microscale Industries Micro Set and Micro Sol Solutions (view here)
• A pair of tweezers
• A sharp X-Acto type knife and cutting board
• A small sponge (the ones that GW sometimes puts into blisters work PERFECT) and something to put the sponge and some water in (maybe a small plate?)
• Gloss Varnish (from GW or wherever)

OK first, cut the decal out of the decal sheet.  If you angle the sheet right you can see where the edges of each decal is and you’ll know how you need to cut it out.  Cutting just outside of that decal’s edge is probably best so you don’t damage the decal itself.

Next, put water into a small plate or something else to hold the sponge and make a wet palette.

Now, paint Glossy Varnish onto the area you want to apply the decal.  Apparently you get less bubbles/folds etc if the surface is smooth and not porous.  Let the varnish dry.

Next put your little decal onto the wet sponge.  You’ll see it soak it up pretty much instantly.

While that soaks a little bit, brush some Micro Set (make sure it is SET and not SOL, BLUE BOTTLE!).

Once you cover the area you want to apply it to with Micro Set solution, use your tweezers to get your decal from the sponge.  You can use one of the tweezers to edge the actual decal off the paper backing by now.  You should be able to just grab the decal with your tweezers and slide it off once its part way off.

Place your decal and set it how you want it to be, because of the Micro Set solution you’ll still be able to move it around and adjust it until its perfect.

Once your happy with the placement, use a dry brush (meaning not wet) to dab the decal and surrounding area to remove excess Micro Set solution.

Once its set and a dry, dab small amounts of the Micro Sol solution (RED BOTTLE).  Don’t go too crazy with this stuff, just a little bit will do.  Put it on the actual decal and around the edges.  Again, use a dry brush to remove excess Micro Sol solution.  Let this dry.  You may see some “wrinkling” this is normal.  After the fluid dries it will flatten a bit, if you got the excess fluid removed.

After this is dry, put on another coat of Glossy Varnish to protect your decal.  This step also helps remove the decal edges and smooths things out.

If you like you can Varnish with a Matte Varnish after this step.

I tried this process first on a Tau Crisis Suit I did for a tournament.  I put a bonding knife icon on its chest and then a normal Tau symbol on his Jet pack.

After I was confident with the process, I put on the 4th Company symbol of the Knights of Baal on the tail of the Stormraven.  These are the only decals I plan on using since used so much iconography bits on the rest of the ship.

Here are the final picts.  Basically all I did since I put the decals on was varnish the entire model.  I used GW’s Purity Seal for everything except the base and the cockpit area.  For those areas I used Vallejo’s Matte Varnish which matches GW’s Purity Seal pretty much exactly.  Here are a few photos:

We hope you’ve learned a lot from Andy’s fantastic tutorial on how to build and paint a Blood Angels Stormraven.  If you’ve enjoyed this series, please let us know in the comments section below, and/or like us on our Facebook page and let us know there.  We’d love to hear your feedback and maybe we can get Andy to do a few more of these in the future.  Thanks for reading!

A note from the Editor: It is with great pleasure that I present to you a labor of love and wonderful tutorial from two-time guest host, Andy! This complete tutorial features his fantastically painted Blood Angel’s Stormraven which he slaved over in the beginning of 2011. The original tutorial, which can be found on Andy’s blog, was delivered over nine parts. Andy has been gracious enough to recreate that tutorial here, slightly condensed, for you, the Turn 8 audience (also, it gives some better exposure to his work … win/win!). Please enjoy and feel free to leave our man a comment or two.

In the next part of Build a Stormraven, after priming everything Dragon Red and magnetizing the wings, I started to paint the details on the ship.   First I put a base coat of black on all areas that I wanted to be black or Boltgun Metal.  The black areas are meant to create a sort of visual rhythm (a series of light-dark-light areas), too often people will paint a model all one color and call it a day.

The first parts that I actually wanted to do finished detail work was the cockpit, top turret and top intake vent so I could glue the canopy on the cockpit and glue together the top turret.  I used Blood Red as the pilots highlight color and a 1:1 mix of Codex Grey and Black to highlight the black areas.   For the buttons and control panels, I use a variety of colors (blue, green, red) and just highlighted them with a quick dab of white.

Generally the Boltgun Metal areas were utilitarian in nature, ie. turbines, parts of landing gear and turrets.   Stuff that moves around a lot or may be fixed or replaced a lot by servitors.

Next up was doing detail work on the wings.   For Dragon Red, GW’s Blood Red makes a great highlight color.   So after filling all the groove lines with Black Ink (Badab Black?), I did highlight line work along all the sharp edges and lines with Blood Red.  Then as a final highlight you can also use Blazing Orange on the corner edges of the highlighted areas.  I didn’t use Blazing Orange on my Stormraven, but I have begun using it on my latest Blood Angels troops and it looks great.  I’ll definitely be using it from now on with my Blood Angels army.

For the areas painted Chaos Black, I used a 1:1 mix of Chaos Black and Codex Grey for the highlight lines.   For the jet engines and turbine fans on the wing tips, I did a base coat of Boltgun Metal and then did a heavy wash of the Badab Black wash .   After that I drybrushed the engines and turbines with Boltgun Metal to remove the “ink spots” and still leave the black ink in the recessed areas.

After doing the line work I added paint chip battle damage.  I tried to make it look like these hits happened while the ship was at a high velocity so I gave them a directional streaky brush stroke.   First I laid down whatever the highlight color of that section was, Blood Red or the 1:1 mix.   After the shape is established I used the 1:1 mix of Chaos Black and Codex Grey inside that shape making sure to leave the original highlight color’s edges visible.   Lastly, I put Boltgun Metal inside to show any exposed metal.

Next I’ll show how I made the base to my Stormraven.   For my Blood Angels army, I want them to have urban themed bases.  In fact I wanted them to be a post apocalyptic urban rubble look just like their home planet, Baal.  Eventually if I ever get enough space (and money), I want to make an urban themed Realm of Battle board for my Blood Angels (I also want to make a desert themed one for my Tau).

But for now, I wanted to do a real nice rubble laden base for my Stormraven.   Thanks for my friend Kung Fu Dave, I was able to get some scrap terrain bits.   I also had a bunch of actual rocks that I was gonna use as bigger boulders.   I painted all the terrain part first before gluing anything to the base.    I made the terrain masonry a drab Codex grey and then washed it with a 1:1 wash of Black ink/wash and water.   I then painted the metal relief portions with Boltgun Metal and then the same 1:1 wash.   After that I painted the details with Gold and Mithril Silver.

After this I glued down the larger rocks first, then I glued down patches of GW’s gravel base mix and finally filled in the rest with GW’s sand base mix.    I primed all the rocks/gravel/sand with black and then drybrushed Codex Grey onto everything.   For the larger rocks I also did a final light drybrush of white along the edges only.

Then I finally glued on all of the terrain rubble portions trying to make them not poke out too far from the main base.

For the next installment, we’ll have final picts, how to paint the detailed icons and a tutorial on how to make your decals blend in with the rest of your painted model.

A note from the Editor: It is with great pleasure that I present to you a labor of love and wonderful tutorial from two-time guest host, Andy! This complete tutorial features his fantastically painted Blood Angel’s Stormraven which he slaved over in the beginning of 2011. The original tutorial, which can be found on Andy’s blog, was delivered over nine parts. Andy has been gracious enough to recreate that tutorial here, slightly condensed, for you, the Turn 8 audience (also, it gives some better exposure to his work … win/win!). Please enjoy and feel free to leave our man a comment or two.

Primed!

For part two of how to build a Stormraven, I have my Stormraven primed with Army Painter Dragon Red spray paint.   For those used to GW’s primers this spray paint is a rather different animal.   Its a thicker paint out of the can and a bit more touchy than GW’s.   Make sure the humidity is not above 50-60% when you are painting and also make sure its not too hot or cold out, I’d say no hotter than 85 degrees and no colder than 50 degrees.   Also you will have to spray a bit closer than GW cans, which are generally best at about 6-8 inches from nozzle to model.   Make sure the Army Painter nozzle is about 4-5 inches away from your model.   If you get further you run the risk of the paint drying before hitting the model and this creates a sandpaper like texture.   If you paint on a hot humid day (or on a rainy day), you’ll also get this same sandpaper texture.

Even with all these high maintenance instructions, I HIGHLY recommend priming with Army Painter sprays. Their selection of color is fantastic and for the most part, color matches GW’s line of paints. I also used the Skeleton Bone Spray paint (matches GW’s Bleached Bone) to prime all my Tau army.

With that being said, Dragon Red is a darker shade than GW’s Blood Red. The closest GW paint is the Foundation Paint: Mechrite Red. But unfortunately this isn’t an exact match. So I had to find something else…

The best match I found for spot paint was a 1:1 mix of Vallejo’s Gory Red and Bloody Red from their GAME color range. It’s pretty “spot on” (:P) and I really like how their containers seal up nice and aren’t prone to drying as quickly as glass/plastic pots that GW and other paint makers use (ie. you don’t leave the top open when you’re painting, you just unscrew the cap squeeze out the amount you need and reseal). The dropper tip also allows you to be exact when mixing colors in the fact that you can count out how many drops of paint come out the tip. The paint itself is a bit thinner, and requires more coats when painting but in the long run this is better because your models don’t look like you glopped on the paint.

Magnetized!

Next, I show how I magnetize the wings. I used Sabol Design Army Transport carrying cases to move my armies around and when fully assembled the Stormraven will only fit into GWs Monstrous carrying case and I didn’t want to have to spend $70-80 bucks on that. So I decided magnets were my only choice. Luckily, it was pretty easy to magnetize the wings on this thing. As you can see below, there are slots where the wings attach to the main body. I just did a little filing and the magnets slid right in.

For the wings themselves I just glued them to the inside grove corners like below.

The only other thing I had to do was file down the edges of the wing attachment area because the top intake vent wasn’t sitting quite flush to the main body of the vehicle.   But after about 5-10 minutes of filing it was fitting snugly.   Now I have a Stormraven I can take apart and carry around with me, nice!

Next time we’ll go into Painting and Basing of the Stormraven….

A note from the Editor: It is with great pleasure that I present to you a labor of love and wonderful tutorial from two-time guest host, Andy!  This complete tutorial features his fantastically painted Blood Angel’s Stormraven which he slaved over in the beginning of 2011.  The original tutorial, which can be found on Andy’s blog, was delivered over nine parts.  Andy has been gracious enough to recreate that tutorial here, slightly condensed, for you, the Turn 8 audience (also, it gives some better exposure to his work … win/win!).  Please enjoy and feel free to leave our man a comment or two.

The Interior:

Ok, so I’m FINALLY posting my walk through of the building and painting of my Blood Angels Stormraven.   So,  obviously I unsprued things and filed down all the mold lines etc.   I decided to actually paint the inside of this thing (for some reason).   First I black primered the interior (not the outside).   Then I used Boltgun Metal to pretty much coat the entire interior (Space Marines aren’t into interior design so much).   I used the Black Ink (not Badab black, I have an old bottle of the stuff and its MUCH stronger than Badab Black)  with a half water half ink mix and washed the hole interior.   If you have Badab Black, just use that straight up with no dilution.  Then i did a dry brush of Boltgun Metal again to get rid of the “watermarks”.  For the walkway ramps, I also did a wash of Devlan Mud to show where the Marines would trudge dirt and grime everywhere when they embark and disembark.

Next step, I used Scorched Brown on the leather seats and highlighted with Bestial Brown.   Gold parts were based with Shining Gold, highlighted with Burnished Gold and then a little bit of Mithril Silver on the corners and points.

For the tv monitors, on a base of Black, I blended up Regal Blue, then Ultramarine Blue and then Ice Blue going Black in the upper left of the monitor to the lightest blue in the lower right.   I put a few dabs of White to give a shiny, specular highlight look.   I didn’t have the Glossy Varnish when I painted these but I would use that in the future after the monitor is done.

For the Red buttons/monitors, I blended up from black with the Mechrite Red Foundation paint and Blood Red adding White dots for the shiny specular reflection.

Assembly:

Now we’re ready to glue it together.  The instructions that came with the kit are actually quite good and thorough (compared to past GW instructions) so I basically stuck close to that.  But, I use the Sabol Designs Army Transport carrying cases and foam, so, I had to leave the wings detachable so I didn’t have to buy a big new GW case to carry my Stormraven around.

So I basically just glued the main body together except for the top turret and top intake vent.   I left the front hatch openable but I chose to glue the back hatch closed because the model design seemed like it would keep falling off.   I didn’t glue down the pilot canopy so I could paint that in detail as well.   I also made sure not to glue down the jet fans by the front landing gear and on the ends of the wings.    I’m using my Stormraven as a transport/anti-mech option so I glued down the meltas in the front and I glued the Lascannons on the top turret (I figure I can just buy top turret bits from bits store online if I ever wanted to change the top turret).  I also decided to just glue in the Hurricane bolters in case I ever use them (and they also look awesome).

In the next installment we’ll talk about priming and magnetizing…

In the last podcast you heard me mention the use of a styrofoam cutter so I thought I’d write up a little tutorial on how to do that.  I dug around my house and found a few scrap pieces of foam and decided to build a quick modular hill.   I gathered some foam, the cutter, flock grass, white glue and some grey primer.

Using the cutter I went around the foam pieces and held the wire at a 45 degree angle.  As I was cutting I moved the wire in random up and down movements until I cut out the entire piece to give the hill a nice rocky look.  I did the same thing for the rest of the foam pieces.  You may want to stack the foam pieces a few times and cut them again to make sure they look good stacked on top of one another.

SAVE THOSE SCRAPS!  After I cut up the main pieces I saw that I had a little left over.  So I cut that out too and this time I cut the top of the foam so that it wasn’t flat along the top.I then sprayed all the pieces with the grey primer, of course you can use just about any color you want but I wanted more of a stone look so I went with grey.

After the paint dried I spread on the white glue along the top of each piece of foam.  Once the glue is spread on where you want the grass to stick, sprinkle it on and let it dry for a few hours.  If you have two different colors for grass thats good too as you can make some nice transitions and depth.Once it’s dry, lay down some cardboard or newspaper and tap off the excess grass, that way you can gather up the grass easier and use it again for other hills and things.All done!  Here are some extra shots of the hills in use!  Remember to have fun and never get discouraged, if some one doesn’t like your hills just blast’em with some plasma cannons!Here are some addional pictures of the rocks I cut for Dave that I mentioned in the Podcast. These show a different style for the stone as well as what you can do with more time to paint the final product.