Is your gang
tired of a constant stream of slaying, pillaging and loot carrying?
Do you need
a giant robot with an en-trained Xenos insect brain to do your heavy lifting and
face smashing but you’re too short of time in your hectic gang warfare life?
Then you
need, THE 6 HOUR AMBOT!
Beautifully Painted. Might have taken a while to do though... |
When Games
Workshop first showed the Ambot model off, I knew that I needed one in my life.
I also knew that I didn’t want to use their relatively ‘factory fresh’ paint scheme
because
A) I’m lazy
and
B) I wanted
mine to look battered and heavily used – like the piece of tunneling equipment
it is.
I wanted to
get it painted quickly – preferably between the time I dropped my Son off at
school and the time that my wife picked him up.
The
challenge was on – paint an Ambot in 6 hours.
I did cheat
a bit, the model was already assembled and primed black when I started and I
did the basing after bedtime.
In terms of
assembly, I cut off the silly looking rotary saws and under-slung weaponry - That
melta would get ripped off as soon as the Ambot had to start using those claws
on rock.
So onto
painting. I painted the head separately as I was worried I wouldn’t be able to
get decent access if I glued it on initially. So I superglued it to a bamboo
skewer where I knew I could get access all round it and proceeded to paint the
body in these handy steps, and forget to photo the head like an idiot.
Step 1. Make like It’s the 70’s and paint
it brown.
Calthan
Brown to be exact – the whole thing.
I did this
quickly with a wide, flat drybrush.
Step 2. Drybrush it silver – Chainmail.
This wasn’t
a particularly neat drybrush and was sloppier than I’d do to get an effect on a
regular model but this is partly intentional as a starting point.
Brown and silver - the classic. |
Step 3. Stipple with a Redish Brown – Dark Flesh
I used the
same flat, large drybrush to stipple the redder toned brown over the entire
model, At this point, I still wasn’t that concerned about neatness, as long as
the paint was appropriately runny – i.e. not too thick to obscure detail but
not running everywhere once it was down.
Step 4. Stipple with Orange – Macharius Solar Orange then Blazing Orange
Like the
step before, but I was more careful to limit coverage and not obscure the
previous colour. I started with a drabber orange with a more opaque tone before
moving onto a more vibrant orange in smaller patchier areas. The trick with
this is to get progressively smaller areas of coverage so that you still get
the 'lower' colours showing through.
Nuff said.
Watch out for pooling.
This may
take a while to dry, so go and help yourself to a cup of tea and biscuit. Yeah,
a good biscuit, not a digestive. Have you got anything better than shortbread?
Oh yeah, with a chocolate filling? That’s the one.
Step 6. Stipple on colour of choice.
I used a
small drybrush to apply a grey base colour to the body of the Ambot and a Blue
to the arm.
When doing
this:
1. Unless you want to do multiple
coats (i.e. 2+), pick strong base colours. Yellow would not be your friend for speed at this point.
2. Get the paint into the
crevices – this is where it would be most protected from wear and tear. Be less concerned about covering
flat plates and edges – this is where paint gets smashed off in double quick time. If you want guidance,
go and look at a JCB bucket – either online
or IRL if you live near a construction site.
3. Think about which areas would
get most wear. The claws and arms are going to get the paint taken off them much faster than places like the back
and torso of the machine.
MARK MISTAKE: I chose two
different colours because I wanted it to look like the arm had been replaced and no-one had bothered
to re-spray it (Classic cut and shut). Because the contrast between the blue and the grey isn’t that obvious, I
don’t think the effect quite works.
.
Step 6. Rust washes
Tunneling
machinery gets battered to all hell and at the end of a shift, any rock exposed
surfaces will be bright steel. If left, these will rust quickly.
I use a
combination of Seraphim Sepia, various rust colouring weathering powders and
Vallejo matt varnish mixed into different colours to apply light coats of rust
to the model.
When doing
this, I tried to vary the tone across the model and use lighter tones for areas
that would have seen more recent abrasion and the darker colours for areas that
only infrequently get damaged / scraped.
Step 7. Silver Highlight (With Chainmail)
I used a
bright silver to accentuate those areas of the model that would receive wear –
mostly claws, front edges, feet and sliding contact areas. To accentuate the
roughness of the model (and to save time) I used a small dry-brush for this.
Step 8. Uvver bits
There are various
hoses, lights, mandibles, gears etc that also need painting and I painted
these. I took the opportunity here to paint joint areas with a mix of typhus
corrosion and Nuln oil to emphasise the build-up of dirt and mud around highly
lubricated areas. I also finished the head and stuck that on – being careful to
scrape away primer from the contact points so that the head would have
something to stick to.
Ambot in the mist. |
Step 9. Profit.
Aside from
basing, the Ambot is now painted and ready to go. Set it to digging up useful
stuff in your mines or for digging out useless stuff from your opponent’s
skulls – the choice is yours.
looks great. Never could tell it was a quick job!
ReplyDeleteThat's mightily impressive effect for a quick job. I'll be stealing some of those techniques for sure
ReplyDeleteI like the different coloured arm to represent bodgedness, loved to have seen it be hot pink or neon yellow to really sell the effect.
ReplyDeleteNice, like the different colour with the arm but maybe a bigger contrast colour such as red or yellow.
ReplyDeleteSurprised it took 6 hours though