Mingati - an East African Knight Titan project

[BeatTheBeat]

Love this thread, and really looking forward to seeing your skills applied to the Knight. Great work!

Cheers,
BTB

[depthcharge12]

*puts on old English voice*

 

Absolutely smashing chap! Your green stuff skills are superb.

[Mechanist]

An inspired project, loving the African theme.

[EdT]

I just got back into the office this lunchtime, and look what was waiting for me!

 

 

More photos later when I get him properly out of the box. I can't wait to get started; the quality of this model is absolutely superb and it's clearly going to be a joy to put together. It almost seems a shame to convert, but I'm sure I'll get over that...

 

Speaking of which, the free Scion that FW has thrown in is also a lovely sculpt. Not suitable for this project of course, but I'm sure I'll find a use for him somewhere else.

[EdT]

So, finally I've had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with Mingati- and he is a fantastic model. I've not noticed any warping or indeed any mould-lines whatsoever; the components also don't seem to have any mould-release agent on either, not that it's stopped me from going at them with a toothbrush just in case. I'm gradually clipping off the gates, the few tiny bits of flash etc to get everything ready for assembly, but I'm in no hurry; I want to do this properly.

 

With that said though, as I cleaned up the components I really couldn't resist starting off on some personalisation. My overall plan with Mingati is to build him from the inside out; first I’ll do the interior, then the core torso, then the limbs and finally the exterior armour plating.

 

So first off is the absolute core of the model; the command throne and the pilot’s compartment. Given that Mingati is not a knight that spends time in a comfortable hanger but is always on the move, I wanted the cockpit to feel customised, cluttered and lived in; this is effectively where the pilot (who is now called Miterienanka, or "one who is quick to claim glory by killing a lion")  lives. While I suspect Miterienanka probably prefers to sleep out under the stars, I imagine there will be many evenings where he cooks his dinner on top of the carapace and retires inside to bed down for the night.

 

The thing that dominates the cockpit is the command throne, and I definitely felt the need to Africanise it. Unfortunately the Masai don’t really do chairs (or interior décor full stop really) so I had to use my imagination somewhat. I did find this chair, which was brilliant, but not that practical to convert; after some thought I decided that something a little more like this or this would be more suitable. A command throne where various trophies had been added to it over the years from fallen foes would not only fit nicely with Mingati’s background, but also be rather easier than building a whole new one from scratch.

 

My first cut to personalise Mingati came on the command throne then- I removed the mechanical bits to either side of the headrest, so as to eventually allow some horns to go on there. Here's what it looked like;

 

 

I then gave the chair a skin covering. You might remember my proof of concept in the first post; so using my texture mould I rolled out a thin sheet of greenstuff and then carefully draped it over the chair, pressing it in to follow the shape of the thing and getting rid of the excess by trimming it down with some nail scissors.  It’s funny how things stick with you, but I always remember a photo in a very old White Dwarf where somebody had painted one of the old 2nd Edition Ogryns  (the one with the horns, I think) with zebra-print trousers that were “made of skin from the feared Catachan Devil”. Well that’s the plan with the chair covering; at some point in his career Miterienanka and Mingati killed a Catachan Devil (perhaps as part of that world’s compliance?), and kept parts of the hide as a trophy. I’m thinking of adding some to a pauldron as well; it seems like something you’d want to show off.

 

Here's what things currently look like; hopefullly you can see the subtlle texture on there. Once it has cured I'll start adding more decoration.

 

 

While I had the greenstuff out, I did a few more things too. First off, I added a fur hanging on one of the compartment interior walls; this was done the same way as the skin on the chair, but with a mould I’d made from a sheet of sandpaper. I figured that this stood in quite nicely for very short fur, without having to make things smooth and featureless. Once I was happy with the way it hung, I added a microbead at the top left and right corners to represent pins. I see this as Miterienanka’s bedroll; when he needs it he removes it from the wall and wraps himself up. Here it is waiting to cure.

 

 

Finally, I had a little bit of greenstuff left over, so I did a quick test. Earlier I'd tried to simulate a duct tape repair to one of the cables on the powerfist, but the greenstuff work all seemed a bit thick and unrealistic on reflection. It occured to me that as I was rolling out thin sheets of greenstuff, I could just wrap some round like tape and see how it looked; so with my leftover greenstuff I made two field repairs, one on the same powerfist cable as beofre and one on the lower exterior of one of the side torso pieces. I think it looks quite good, and will go well with all the scratches, scuffing and bullet holes I intend to add.

 

[the Belgian one]

i'm really curious to see where this project is going... you sir have a great concept ! i'll follow this ... closely...

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Impressive work, so far.

 

As for the green stuff being too thick to represent duct tape, you can easily justify that by saying the green stuff represents "ironsilk," an alloy that is as flexible as fabric under normal circumstances, but becomes as rigid as wrought iron when appropriately treated. (You can't expect duct tape to hold up to gunfire, unlike the materials one uses to repair armor.)

[Noctem Cultor]

I know your just using left over GS but if you want the effect just use small duct tape strips.

 

Looking forward to seeing what you do to the knight.

[Dantay VI]

Paint it brown and sticky looking then it could be denzo tape. We use loads of it off shore because it is highly water resistant and offers decent IP.

 

I am liking this project :)

[Doghouse]

I think this is superb and inspiring stuff. :tu:

[EdT]

Thanks all- really glad people are enjoying this. The Atrapos model is beautiful and I'm determined to do it justice.

 

Now, I have a quick morning update; with the greenstuff cured, I was free to get on with customising the command throne. My first step was to add a big feathered crest, and I found that  one of the ones from the Silver Helms kit was a perfect fit, once the central section had been cut off. I also added some horns to the throne, doubtless culled from some great beast in the past. These were taken from the Tzeentch banner in the plastic CSM kit plus a set cut off a beastman skull. The final addition was another Silver Helm feather with a gem I'd cut off something on the bottom; I'll paint this like a big bead.

 

Here's the result; I was quite pleased with the way that you can still see the pipes behind the throne but the attention is mostly drawn to the feathers. To my mind at least, everything now has the blend of technology and tribal ostentation you’d expect for a Knight hailing from Kalenjin.

 

 

One thing to note with the knight cockpit is that it's basically pretty tiny; I had a few other plans for various bits and bobs to put in there, but there's simply not the space. Here is the throne with the fur hide-covered wall dry-fitted to show just how little room there is, and also to show my total progress so far.

 

 

Next up, the other wall of the compartment (subject to the arrival of a package from the ever excellent Zinge Industries) and possibly the commencement of work on the top carapce, which I've realised will unfortunately need major surgery.

[Mechanist]

That's really cool. The texture on the green stuff works so well, I think you have a brilliant balance and hit the brief spot on.

Can't wait to see what's next.

[BeatTheBeat]

Haha daaaaamn, that is insane! Awesome, and pretty much exactly how I hoped it would turn out. You're headed in a great direction! Now more, I demand more.

Cheers,

BTB

[EdT]

I'm glad people approve of the direction of this!

 

Sadly I didn't get my hoped-for Zinge consignment that would have let me finish modelling the interior, so I figured it was a good opportunity for me to get some paint on the bits I'd already made. It seems weird to be painting part of a model I haven't even built yet, but I won't be able to do it once it's assembled, so...

 

Here is one side and the (unconverted) front interior section all ready to go. You'll see I went for a giraffe print pattern on the wall-hanging; I was tempted to go for a leopard print, but chickened out. While I'm really pleased how the hanging ended up, part of me wishes that I'd stuck it out; but the overall effect is the same, I suppose.

 

 

 

Next up, the command throne.

 

 

Not the best photo but you get the idea!

 

With these three sections done, I then glued them together. Firstly the chair and the side piece; I really like how the animal prints interact here.

 

 

And finally, with the front section on too. 

 

 

All of which is great, and it'll be very satisfying to finish off the interior and move on to the rest of the model.

 

Unfortuntely, there's just one problem; unlike the regular Cerastus chassis, the Atropos (while lovely) doesn’t actually come with any obvious access to the cockpit. This is a real shame and something of a let-down, to be honest; it would not have been difficult to alter the model in the design phase to make a visible interior possible.

 

I realised this might be a issue before Mingati was delivered, so while I was waiting I put some thought into what I could do to mitigate the problem. Thankfully, one solution to this did present itself when I examined the 360 degree view on the Forgeworld website; maybe instead of a mundane hatch with hinges, the carapace of the Atrapos is segmented, and two of these segments slide forwards on little rails to expose the cockpit. Here’s a really crude photoshop suggesting the sort of thing I mean.

 

 

Thankfully, when I had a look at the actual components on delivery, this solution seemed pretty viable; it would need some very careful cutting though, not just of the top carapace but also of some of the internal roof detail provided on its underside (and it has to be asked, why provide roof detail for a model which has no way of displaying the interior?). The good news though was that the two panels that I wanted to slide away more or less exactly covered the cockpit roof; so perhaps this was what the designer intended? If so, it’s a shame that the ability to access the interior wasn’t included in the stock model.

 

Anyhow, my job for this afternoon is to carefully remove two of the roof sections on Mingati's top carapace and then replace them to make it look like they'd slid forwards to let Miterienanka go walkabout. It's a scary prospect- if I ciock it up I risk ruining the whole model- but it has to be done. Doubtless once that's accomplished, I'll need to work out how to fill any gaps that result, repeair any damage and also make the whole thing look seamless and workable- but one problem at a time...

[Noctem Cultor]

Just wow this is so on theme. Live the throne so far.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

I wonder if it would be easier for you to replace the Cerastus Knight's torso with that of a "regular" Imperial Knight. (What to do with the leftover Cerastus Knight's torso and the "regular" Imperial Knight's arms and legs? Why, build a second Knight to accompany your Mingati, of course!)

[Mechanist]

Painted cockpit is looking ace.

Do you have any instant mould? If not I would get some before you start cutting. At least then you can have a backup of those pannels incase of problems.

[EdT]

Thanks all.

 

@Bjorn- that's a nice idea, and one I considered- but I didn't really want to buy a new Knight, and tbh I rather liked the Atrapos torso too. It's ok though; the operation is half complete at the moment and is going pretty well.  Who Dares Wins, and all that...

 

@Mechanist- definitely, that's a precaution I've taken- although so far thankfully I don't seem to need the moulds.

 

In the absence of any photos of this (yet), here's a very quick pictoral update; I think I've decided on Mingati's heraldry. 

 

One of the most striking aspects of the Masai ‘look’, and a major reason why I chose to adopt an East African theme, is the design of their shields. This isn’t just striking in terms of looks; as far as anyone can tell, before Masai society splintered in the 1890s when the Rinderpest plague killed their cattle, they had a heraldic system as almost complicated and elaborate as Medieval Europeans.

 

One side of the shield would bear the tribal and family lineage; the other would bear the warrior’s personal heraldry, with specific designs denoting particular acts of bravery. This seems to map across quite nicely to Mingati and Miterienanka; one side will display the Knight’s heraldry while the other will change according to whomever is the pilot.

 

 

 

Here's my initial thoughts on the overall heraldry. Mingati is on the left, and as you can see it is quite heavily cog-based to reflect his machine nature; the toothed wheel was actually a very common motif on Masai shields, so that's rather handy for these purposes. On the other side there's Miterienanka's heraldry. The black spot is an important honorific in both Masai and Kalenjinite culture; small circular areas on a shield signifies the bearer has committed some act of extreme heroism.

 

More soon...

[malika666]

Very awesome! By the way, you might also want to look into Afrofuturism a bit for inspiration. One of the cool things about the Knights - which is something the Queen Bee model really has - is that you can add a bit more 'modern' elements/icons in there, so to go beyond the usual "medieval Europe in space" or "[insert current/part Earth culture] in space". To truly show that whilst the model/character might have certain cultural roots, it does have a history of hundreds and hundreds of centuries. Food for thought!

[Mechanist]

That's awesome, the depth and research is going to really add that extra level to this model. Keep it up.

[Ace Debonair]

By the Emperor, this is excellent in both design and execution so far!

Top stuff!

[EdT]

A little bit of progress to show today.

 

@Malika666- that’s a great link- thanks! A wonderful seam of pictures to mine there! I particularly like this one, which anticipates some of the things I was thinking about when I put Miterienanka together. It does seem that I was groping for precisely this sort of theme without being aware of the existing genre. I completely agree, btw, that the goal shouldn't be to mindlessly replicate another culture just in the future, but rather to use cues from that to create something new and interesting. You want that feeling of antiquity; Mingati is basically a living relic of a long-since collapsed society living in a post-apocalyptic era.

 

And on that subject, FWIW when I think of the Age of Technology society that built Mingatil, I see it as being, not so much Afro-Futurist, but Afro-retrofuturist; “Mobutu-punk”, if you like. There’s something really quite cool about that aggressively modernist but self-consciously African style that a lot of the post-colonial regimes were pushing in the late 1960s and early 70s before the money ran out; I see Kalenjin before Old Night as being full of buildings like these and being run by lots of very grave elders in abacosts and animal-print caps.

 

 

How does this translate to Mingati? Well I have a few things in mind; for a start I’ll be giving him a nameplate surviving from his initial construction which very much has this aesthetic. I actually feel that the curves of the Atrapos knight itself has something of this too, which is one of the reasons I chose it over the other variants. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestion; I like to think that Mingati was originally constructed as a vehicle for the rangers who looked after Kalenjin's megafauna reserves, so anything that can suggest that is a bonus.

 

Now, on to some progress. As mentioned before, if I wanted a visible interior, I needed to do some surgery to the top carapace. Luckily, I’d just bought a razor saw, and this made the initial cuts fairly painless.

 

 

With this done, I then very carefully began to cut along the sides. It was a difficult job made much more challenging by the superfluous interior roof detail, which made the resin at the place I was cutting far thicker than it was elsewhere. After a while I resigned myself to more or less losing this element; it was more important to get the exterior right, and I could always replace it with something else.

 

 

Eventually, I got the necessary roof panels off, intact. It wasn’t a 100% perfect excision and there was a bit of damage to repair on one side of the carapace, but nothing too disastrous. In all, I was very relieved. The next job was to sand the panels down to neatly stack, and then place them in their open state- at the front, having slid forward to be on top of each other. At this point, they just look a bit plonked there; when I sort out the rest of the carapace I will add some little rails to make clear how they have shifted.

 

 

While I was cutting the panels out, my eye fell on the little access plates on either side of the main carapace section. I figured that this would be just the sort of thing to fall open during combat; so I cut one of them out, drilled out some of the bolts and replaced it to be ajar, adding a conduit that had come loose at some point and was now dangling from the resulting gap. When it comes to painting the model I’ll make sure there is some staining from whatever liquid the conduit contains- presumably coolant fluid- dripping down onto the rest of the Knight. Finally, I added a few lengths of duct-tape to the panel, to make it look like there’s been an effort to stop the thing swinging open entirely until there’s time to make a proper repair. I’m hoping that touches like this will really sell Mingati as a living, ancient machine that is constantly being patched up on the go.

 

 

 

Now, one other thing;  before I can sort Mingati’s general pose, I need to get some of the base done- so I took the first steps in that field. My concept was fairly simple; I want Mingati to be standing there victorious at the conclusion of a hunt, having just dealt a critical blow to an apex predator. The Knight will be pinning the dying predator to the ground while Miterienanka gets out to finish the job on foot- which for him is a sign of respect. Of course really there’s only one appropriate terrain for this to happening on- it’s got to be somewhere that looks like the Serengeti, doesn’t it? Here’s the sort of landscape I’m hoping to replicate.

 

http://m8.i.pbase.com/o4/15/700115/1/66410718.sOPB0thD.serengeti2.jpg

 

As scenic bases go this isn’t massively challenging really; I already have the long grass needed. It’s a good opportunity for me to make an acacia tree, though, so that’s where I started. I’d bought two thicknesses of poseable wire from an art shop, so I started by twisting three lengths of the thicker wire together to make the very rough approximation of a tree trunk. The beauty of it is that even when twisted together everything is adjustable, so I could tinker until I got the shape I wanted. Here’s what it looked like at this initial stage;

 

 

With that done, I then got the thinner gauge wire out, and twisted it back on itself several times. These form the main branches. The more twistiness, the thicker the branches but also the more texture the tree has when done. I kept adding branches until I got something that looked like the skeleton of a tree; then I started tweaking the positioning of everything until I felt it would approximate the distinctive flattened dome canopy of an acacia.

 

 

Then it was time to add some flesh to the bones. I stuck the skeletal tree to a base and then lathered on a coating of matte medium, making sure to cover all the metal and trying to make it broadly even, but not worrying too much if it wasn't. This gives more body to the tree but also retains the wire’s flexibility without cracking other layers added on later, meaning that if I want to I can continue to tweak the position of branches even after everything is painted.

 

 

It looks weird at this point but I'm not done yet- once this has dried then I can add the outer bark layer.

 

 

The other element on the base, of course, is the dying great beast. My first thought, in choosing a predator for Mingati to despatch, was a gigantic lion- and I picked one up from a toy shop very cheaply. As you can see, it’s the size of a 28mm scale tank and seemed to me to have the necessary threat for it to be a plausible foe for a Knight. But the more I looked at it, the more conventional it seemed. Lions are great and all, but maybe I could find something a bit more original and fun?

 

 

So I did a bit of ebay trawling, and found a perfect alternative as a bargain.

 

 

This chap is a 1/35 scale Utahraptor, is just as big as the lion if not bigger, and seemed considerably more vicious and threatening. I also loved the fact that it had feathers. The task, of course, is to reposition the model to be sprawled dying on the floor; but I'll get to that..

[the emperor is scottish]

Love it love it love it. Stunning work so far EdT and can't wait to see more.

[Black_out]

The amount of work you're putting in to really show the culture you want to display is just incredible. Absolutely superb work and I can't wait to see more!

[Pearson73]

To echo the above, your attention to detail is fantastic, this is a most interesting project.