Re-posed Dreadknight.

[Chairman_woo]

Please note contruction guide is a few posts down B)

 

So I love the model but dislike the pose GW have chosen as default. I had to chop every joint in the legs and a bit of fiddleing certain hoses and pistons, but I managed to get both walker and pilot into a position I was happy with. Its basically finished, there are a couple of hoses I want to put back on around his calves and a bit of tidying on the greenstuff work (the legs on the pilot need tweaking too).

 

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight2/IMAG0118.jpg?t=1303298232

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight2/IMAG0117.jpg?t=1303298232

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight2/IMAG0116.jpg?t=1303298232

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight2/IMAG0119.jpg?t=1303298232

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight2/IMAG0126.jpg?t=1303298232

 

I was all for putting a helmet on him untill I got him posed, and somehow I felt he needed the shouty helmetless head instead. I'll try to do some better pics when its daylight to show where most the work needs to be done if anyone is interested in trying themselves.

 

Edit: I also added my own bodged teleporter made from leftover bits to the top which I forgot to mention (from heavy psylencer mainy)

 

Edit, Edit: Replaced broken links

[Marshall666]

Quite Simply,

 

Made of win!

 

Looks great!

 

- Marshall

[Brother-Captain Sicarius]

awsome pose B)

 

stunning!

[boreas]

There you go, I knew this baby could look good!

 

Phil

[alloyslayer]

That looks epic!

[Sothalor]

Nice! Any chance of a more in-depth guide as to what you did and where?

[Joasht]

Now THAT model I'd buy!

[Aidoneus]

Nice! Any chance of a more in-depth guide as to what you did and where?

Seconded. I was thinking of altering the Dreadknight along these lines, myself. Your model is gorgeous, and I would love to use it as a basis for my own conversion.

[Doomaflatchi]

Agreed. I would also like to see a tutorial detailing where and how the various parts fit together, so I can see what would have to be changed/cut/fiddled with to change the posing.

 

Well done on your conversion! :lol:

[Inquisitor Fox]

That pose is remarkably similar to what I was thinking of doing with a Dreadknight... any advice or information on which bits needed to be shaved and how hard it was to do would be very welcome :whoops:

[Red Lost Soldier]

I was also hoping to do this. I'd also love a more detailed look at how you did it.

[Gentlemanloser]

Win!

[Reclusiarch Darius]

So much win. I like my Dreadknight as he is, but I'll probably convert my other one like this one. More 'ragh imma charging your tanks' pose to it

[boreas]

Yeah, it show that GW can produce great models but they suck at marketing them. They usually won't pose them optimally and the photography is pretty bad.

 

A bit like with the Tau Battlesuits' legs you can cut the joint with a very sharp hobby knife (black line) and repose it.

 

http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_KYc5-ZYzLRk/TYdNJ2ZtzyI/AAAAAAAABqE/98RkKOK-lb0/Untitled.jpg

 

Of course, if you bend the knee, you'll probably bring the leg forward, and will have to cut and re-pose the termi driver. All in all, not simple, but far from hard and I guess it'll be worth it for a dynamic charging pose!

 

I can't wait to get mine (Wayland shipped last Thursday, so it's a matter of days, now!)

 

Phil

[Chairman_woo]

Than you for all the positivity guys, I knew I wasnt the only one who thinks GW's marketing team cant pose to save their lives :D

 

I must give alot of credit to the model designers tho, the kit is incredible and took less work than I was expecting (not that it dosn't get fiddly in places). There is so much incidental detail all over the thing and if you dont follow the instuctions in the box you will certainly end up missing entire pices. Definately reccomend putting your pride away and reading the booklet for this one, no one will think you any less of a man for doing so ;) .

 

I should really have taken pics while I was making it but as so often happens with projects I'm exited about I was lost to the world once I'd started. So I'm going to try and use a combination of sprue pics and pics of the finished wooknight to try and explain where cuts needed to be made etc. Theres a dainger of this becoming confusing if i;m not carefull so I'm going to try and break things down into sections as much as possible. It took me 3 or 4 hours to do but a great deal of that was thinking time, and waiting for certain patches of green stuff to set hard enough to continue.

 

This will not be impossible without a model saw and green stuff (a craft knife dosent always "cut" it (see what I did there)), but it will be much much harder and I cant reccomend both items enough if you do alot of conversions. I am also assuming that you are folowing the instructions to build the DK itself as I cant go into every detail, just the divergent and important bits. Anyway here goes...

 

 

1. Legs!

 

This is always going to be the hardest part and easily took me the longest to get right, I cut both legs appart straight away so I could have maximum freedom in posing him, in hindsight I might have got away with only cuitting the left leg to get the pose I eventualy settled in (from the DK's perspective) as the right leg is basically in the position it started in. You may as well assemble the two halves of leg before you cut them as its both quicker and more likely to line up properly when your done ;)

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/Wooknightcut1.jpg?t=1302011563

 

So appart from the main cut which should be pretty strraight forwards (I cant reccomend the GW saw enough for this, its fantastic!), but you also need to take off the two hoses on the far left of the pic (these can be re attatched later after being shortened to fit), and the small "flange" which would have been where the piston on the far right of the pic would have attatched. These pices will stop you being able to bend the joint more than a fraction if you dont mod them. I reccomend cutting below the knee as I find its much easier to pose that way as it gives you two solid sized pices to work with, instead of the thigh part being very fiddly.

 

Part B. Is the bit that attatches to the pilots foot, this needs to be repositioned more on the inside of the thigh to make the DK anatomically feasible, but this you should leave for later when you come to put the pilot in place. (We are very much positioning the pilot to match the DK not the other way around!)

 

Part A. is where the thigh joins the hip, this is not a ball and socket joint however by deleberately reversing the left and right hand sides (so the joint would be back to front as GW intended it), and use a healty ball of greenstuff in the cavity you can get much much more freedom of movement and because its tucked away you dont have to worry about it being too neat. Just smooth off any ragedy green stuff and you should be golden (I bloody love Green stuff!).

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0134.jpg?t=1302013696

 

The feet have nice ball-socket joints so you can just push the shins into them with a little green stuff and have plenty freedom of movement, this then hopefully leaves you with either 5 or 4 distinct parts (depending on if you cut both legs or not) to build the legs with. 2 sets of shins and feet, 2 sets of "thighs" and 1 "groin" (or 1 of each and a complete leg). Green stuff in the Hip joints, and the knees and gently but firmly assemble the legs and start posing. You will need to be relatively generous with the green stuff to make it stay together as you pose, but you can easily remove most of it later once you are happy with a position.

This will seem fiddly because basically it is, but remember green stuff takes a good 30mins to hour before it starts to loose pliability, and can always be removed and re applied so if you are getting frustrated, take a break and come back to it. You could just go ahead and superglue the kneed joints once you are happy with them, but I reccomend atleast starting stage 2 before you start with any plastic glue, as you may want to make adjustments once you start with the pilot ;) .

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0127.jpg?t=1302012516

 

I have yet to re attatch the small hoses to this part but it should be a simple if very fiddly job. That "piston" I mentioned eariler just tucks away neatly into the leg (hence the slight trim on the pic before) rather than being attatched to the "flange" I also cut. If you dont do this you simply cant bend the leg that far which defeats the object somewhat.

 

 

2. Minime, Junior, Pilot!

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/Wooknightcut4.jpg?t=1302015758

 

GW's concept is wonderfull but unfortunately the way they have put the kit together as standard also somewhat unfeasible. Once youve played around with the joints in the previous stage you should see what I mean, the pilot simply dosent have the freedom of movement to fight as dynamicaly as he should with his legs just attatched the the front of the thighs. However the simple fix for both fluff and model is to assume that those foot plates are attatched to articulated arms in the thigh that move around. The dreadknight armour is hooked up to the pilots black carapace so it knows what position his legs are in anyway, the footplates are mainly for controlling the feet/shins and not the thights themselves. Hence they should be articulated enough to compensate for the diference between the position of foot relative to knee in many positions. I hope that made some sense anyway as it can be a hard idea to "articulate" (see what I did there).

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0128.jpg?t=1302014405

 

Re posing the legs is relatively easy after the previous stages, and having a bit of play left in the dreadknights legs will make this even easier to get looking good (but also more prone to disaster/frustration I suppose :tu: ). cut out the groin and one of the knees, you will want to completely remove the "stripey joint material" from behind the knee (only one knee unless you significantly bent both legs for whatever reason) as we can just substitute this for green stuff to reposition the shin/foot part. The groin part is almost completely obscured so you don't have to be too neat here, but using a couple of blobs of green stuff attatch the pilots legs (well one leg and one thigh) to the groin part of the dreadknight. From here you can position the legs as needed, and using the "footplates" we cut off right at the start (you did keep those right?) connect the feet of the pilot to the inside of the dreadknights thigh. with green stuff in behind the knee of the leg we cut you should have a fairly easy time getting the bent leg to match the DK leg (remembering what I said before about foot matching foot and knee matching knee ;) ).

 

3. Torso

 

Pretty simple stage but I thaught it worth mentioning as I spent a while agonising over it myself. In the pose I have gone for the torso is swung all the way over to the left (DK's left) to exagerate the "I'm comming to get you little men!" pose. The torso and groin join with a clever little tooth system that makes positioning very easy.

I also should mention as it caught me out, that the pilots torso fits snugly into the cavity but it can take some pushing to get it in if you assemble in the order I did. It needs to go in all the way or the harness wont quite fit, its a nice design touch also I think as the whole torso of the dreadknight is "locked in" to the pilots. This part of the DK's anatomy we can definately keep I think as it works very well and makes perfect sense, good work GW! :D .

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0132.jpg?t=1302017432

 

 

4. Arms

 

Some fiddlyness to be had here if you want to repositon the arms, but why stop now! Re positioning the arm joint was easy atleast, but it has a few knock on effects you need to account for.

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/Wooknightcut2.jpg?t=1302015905

 

nice simple cuts here, shortening the hose a little on the back of the elbow but otherwize a straight amputation. Then we re attatch the arm in the position we like; cut away all the "stripey joint stuff" and use green stuff to replace it in the new position. You can easily add some "stripey bits" with a suitable tool once you have the arm into position. Please refer to the previous picture for where I cut the pilots arm to match, this should be pretty straight forwards and will depend to some extent on what you do with the DK's arm.

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0129.jpg?t=1302016288

 

I used blobs of green stuff in the shoulder joints to allow me a little more freedom of movement but this is not essential. You may find you need some green stuff on the pilots shoulder joints regardless tho, as there is very little play in them as standard.

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0131.jpg?t=1302016310

 

To attatch any of the guns to the modded arm you will need to cut off the hose and reposition it slightly off to the side, but it should fit very easily once on (it gets in the way in the standard position). See part D below.

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/Wooknightcut3.jpg?t=1302016414

 

Also the "piston arm thingys" that sit above the shoulders will need trimming down if you have significantly changed the position of the arm, this you will just have to work out at the time, but the pic above shows where I made the cut. Also there is a little notch on the part that attatches to the shoulders (part C) if you trim this off you will get greater freedom of motion as its almost a ball an socket joint it fits into.

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0130.jpg?t=1302016583

 

Hopefully when you have finished you should have something not a million miles away from this:

 

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/chairman_woo/Grey%20Knights/Wooknight/IMAG0133.jpg?t=1302016662

 

 

Hope that helps some of you guys and answers a few questions. If theres anything you feel Ive missed or you want to ask please feel free. And thank you again for the positive comments, I'll post up some pics once I get it painted (tempted to start a GK project log).

[A D-B]

That's freaking killer. Thanks for sharing it, dude.

[dublindawg]

Great tutorial on repositioning. One comment would make is in the last set of cut pictures, you show that you removed the end of the piston connecting to the upper left arm. While it makes for an easier assembly, it removes the actual ability of the arm to swing. I would suggest instead cutting out the piston rod between the torso connection and the mid cuppling. This would give the appearance that the piston rod is compressed from articulation of the arm.

[Chairman_woo]

Great tutorial on repositioning. One comment would make is in the last set of cut pictures, you show that you removed the end of the piston connecting to the upper left arm. While it makes for an easier assembly, it removes the actual ability of the arm to swing. I would suggest instead cutting out the piston rod between the torso connection and the mid cuppling. This would give the appearance that the piston rod is compressed from articulation of the arm.

 

Yes absolutely, in hindsight that would probbably have worked better and is definately something I will bear in mind for next time. You know how it is when you get you head stuck in a task... :D

[Red Lost Soldier]

Very much appreciated, still awaiting my DK in the mail (sucks being at the bottom of the world) but will be archiving this thread for later.

[Sothalor]

That is just great. Thanks for posting!

[Wildfire]

Too funny. I read the thread title and thought you were talking about a dreadknight taking a nap! :cuss

[krewl]

Great looking model...

 

Wierd thing was I looked at the topic first, noticed there where no pics, (Maybe my browser had a burp?) and wanted to comment on it, and then I looked at the thread a 2nd time and voila, usefull pictures where there.

 

Still, great work, very inspiring!

[Chairman_woo]

Too funny. I read the thread title and thought you were talking about a dreadknight taking a nap! ;)

 

 

Damned english language strikes again! Yes I forgot "reposed" is actually a word well spotted.

 

Title adjusted acordingly (tho its probbably not the best word still).