Imperial Fist Contemptor - Part I

 

Strictly speaking, 12 barrels of firepower.

I've decided to continue to prepare more models rather than get any painting done, and so here is the next Contemptor Dreadnought being prepared. As the title suggests, this is going to be an Imperial Fist. With twin assault cannons and a purposeful stride forwards I couldn't really imagine it being anything else.

This is the only "Betrayal at Calth" pattern mono-pose dreadnought kit that I'm not changing too much of. There's the assault cannon that replaces the power fist (with said power fist going to yet another dreadnought in the works), but otherwise I'm keeping the pose as it is. This saves a lot of converting effort and I actually think it fits the feel I'm going for. The arms aren't glued in place yet, so I can still adjust them slightly, but I don't think I will. The only reason for not gluing them in, is that it makes painting much easier at this stage. I can also verify that assembling the plastic assault cannons is so much more pleasant than their resin counterparts, and they don't really look any different. Had I known this before then I might have simply bought spares from ebay, but too late now. 

There are plenty of examples of Imperial Fists dreadnoughts around the Internet, and I'm likely to take heavy inspiration from some of them. Black shoulders, at least one black kneepad, white helmet with a red stripe down the centre. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there. Weathering is going to be difficult, but overall it should be fairly straight forward if I wanted it to be.

The real trick about it will be the base. It took me a while to come up with an idea for that, surprisingly enough. In terms of sculpting it's all quite flat, which will force me to add visual interest with colours and lighting. The grating on the ground I'm intending to be drainage, so something old and corroded fits with that. Spare sprue glued together and covered slightly to fill gaps will act as a sidewalk perhaps. The dreadnought it likely standing on a road, which I can make blue/black to contrast with the brighter yellow of the Imperial Fists. The road I can also use as a source of secondary reflective ambient light, making the legs darker and more desaturated. I've already started browsing imagery of bulldozers to see how yellow behaves in different lighting and environments, which I'm hoping to then use with the airbrush to play around a bit with this model.

Aside from perhaps a little bit of rubble and any other minor details, this model is now ready to be primed. I may get that far soon, but as alluded to earlier there still remains one more Contemptor to prepare before I get stuck back into painting.

-- silly painter.