{"id":6653,"date":"2019-10-22T22:30:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T02:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/?p=6653"},"modified":"2019-10-22T22:37:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T02:37:56","slug":"vroom-vroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/?p=6653","title":{"rendered":"Vroom Vroom!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

People always seem a bit confused when I make fun of the Knights of Montesa, but this is because most people have not read the Military Orders fluff section of the original Human Sphere book from N2. Behold the storied history of this noble order (emphasis is mine)<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In short,<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Nobody wanted them to exist.<\/li>\n
  2. They’re only operating on a temporary pass.<\/li>\n
  3. They’re slightly worse than other knights.<\/li>\n
  4. They struggle to prove their value.<\/li>\n
  5. There have been repeated attempts to shut the order down.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Or in even shorter, BAHAHAHAHA THE OFFICIAL FLUFF SAYS THEY SUCK.<\/strong> XD<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    *ahem*<\/em><\/p>\n

    In N2, and in the early days of N3, the Montesas’ stats pretty much backed up their shining reputation– they had crappier armor and were worse shots than every other order, and their only functional niche was an ability to deploy halfway up the table without any defensive abilities to stop them from being immediately killed in that forward position. Needless to say, they were not popular army choices. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    However, halfway through N3’s run, the Montesas got some merciful reacharound from Corvus Belli in the form of a full overhaul. Their stats were bumped up to standard Knight levels, and they were given a profile with one of my favourite weapons in the game– a Light Rocket Launcher. After that overhaul finally gave them a reason to exist, I went ahead and painted up a random Montesa knight I’d picked up somewhere along the line:<\/p>\n


    \n<\/p>\n

    Over the next two years, I popped that useful rocket-throwing profile into a list every few months, and he more or less did his job each time. However, Spain was evidently not satisfied with the state of the Order; about a year ago, the Space Catholics army as a whole received a major update, and during that shake-up, the Order of Montesa was completely rebuilt from the ground up. The Order’s focus on mobility had traditionally manifested as “drop us off at the fight in a helicopter”; however, they were now completely re-concepted as a unit of heavy cavalry mounted on Space Motorcycles.<\/p>\n

    This new profile injected fresh purpose into the beleaguered Order of Montesa, finally giving them something substantial to differentiate them from a sea of very similar Space Knights. I’ve been excited to try them out since the new profile was published, but thus far, Spain has not yet announced a release date for the Space Vroomies. However, I’ve never let minor obstacles like “the model literally doesn’t exist” stand in my way, so when I needed a distraction from another project a few months ago, I sat down and started bashing out my very own Space Jouster.<\/p>\n

    Of course, I didn’t really want to sculpt a motorcycle from scratch, so I knew I would need to scrounge that part. None of the ones in the Infinity range had the PanOceanian feeling I felt the Montesa needed, so it actually took me quite a while digging through other companies’ model ranges to find exactly the right base model. I eventually stumbled on exactly what I was looking for in Wizkids’ “Deep Cuts” line of D&D and Pathfinder minis, and also found a base Knight model that seemed perfectly posed to ride it:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Yep, those will do nicely. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Coming from a different company as it was, I was initially concerned that the motorcycle was going to be too big for my knight. However, some riding enthusiasts in my local community compared them for me and declared that this was pretty much exactly how big a motorcycle would need to be to carry a load as heavy as a knight in full power armour.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    With that settled, I got to work. I only needed select parts of the rider, so I made the first of several major excisions by chopping him in half at the waist.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Montesa Knights have a different chest armour design than the Father Knight model I was using as my base, based more on the concept of a bulletproof vest than heavy armour plating.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    This meant that I would need to completely resculpt the chest. To make space for this later work, I used a pair of hobby clippers to remove about 1\/4″ of chest plating.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    For reasons that I can’t really justify in retrospect, I decided that it would be a good idea to attach the rider to the bike at the very start. To do this, I ran a length of wire into the bottom of the chest piece, and then added a kink into it at around the distance where the model’s butt would fall in a seated position. Holding the wire up against the legs helped to find the correct spacing for this.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The other end of the wire went into the body of the motorcycle.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Weird observation about the Father Knight model I used for the rider– the pose is super awkward on foot, but the extended arm is absolutely PERFECT for a mounted model. So freaking dramatic. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Before I got to work on detailing the bike, I needed a solid concept sketch to sort out the design. I’m a pretty competent artist when it comes to people and buildings, but I’m pretty mediocre at drawing vehicles. So, rather than struggle through trying to freehand a convincing-looking motorcycle, I just downloaded some line art from the Internet and drew my armour plating over top of it.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Because of my inexperience at drawing vehicles of any sort, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to come up with a really subtle and cool design that “feels right” for PanOceania; instead, I contented myself to directly copying shapes, angles, and even entire panels from the Montesa’s armor. After a few hours of drawing and erasing, I had something I could live with.<\/p>\n

    In the end there’s nothing subtle about this: it’s literally just Montesa armour stretched over a bike.<\/p>\n

    Ehh. *shrug*<\/em><\/p>\n

    Enough colouring– on to the next page for the start of construction!<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I typically sculpt with clay, which is an immensely forgiving material with a working time that stretches into months. However, I wasn’t going to be able to use clay for this project; clay needs to be baked, and the plastic model I was using as my base would be reduced to a puddle by that process.<\/p>\n

    Instead, I was forced to go back to my roots and work in Green Stuff putty, which is… fine. Ugh. Honestly there’s nothing terribly wrong with it, and you can get great results with it, but it can get a bit frustrating trying to work on details quickly in the window before the putty becomes too tough to work, which is typically about two hours. The solution to the limitations of putty is to work in many thin layers, finishing each panel with an extremely thin film of putty smeared across the previous imperfect layers. All it really takes is patience.<\/p>\n

    I don’t have that, so instead my solution was to rush things out in one or two layers anyway and be okay with it kind of looking like shit. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    To establish some landmarks to guide the overall construction, I placed putty around the front and back of the seat. I didn’t really smooth this at all; it’s purely under-structure, which would be entirely covered later on in the process. I also put some similarly structural putty down underneath the knight’s chest to keep it stable.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    To break myself into the armour sculpting process with an easy job, I decided to tackle a big, smooth, simple panel: the lower fairing. Mimicking the Montesa’s simple chest padding, this panel would just be a single contoured shape that flows around the front of the bike’s frame.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I placed the putty down in small globs, and then blended them together with a metal hoe tool. I pushed the mass of putty around until it sat inside the contours indicated by the concept drawing.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The putty starts to lose some of its flexibility after about 90 minutes, so at that point I made my peace with whatever shape it all sat in and smoothed it as well as I could with a clayshaper.<\/p>\n

    This is a good example of what I was talking about at the top of the page– if I wanted this to look really good, I would build the panel up in a succession of thin layers. One just to smooth over the bumpy base model, another to define the edges, a third to fill out about 75% of the desired thickness of the panel, and one final layer just to create a smooth top surface. The outcome would absolutely be better if I worked this way, but the slow cure time for Green Stuff would mean adding weeks or months to the total time for the project.<\/p>\n

    I just didn’t want to dedicate that much of my life to this silly model, so I did the best I could in one or two layers per panel and called that good enough. Yes, it means that my armour plates will be lumpy. Yes, it means my edges and corners will be soft like they are here. But ultimately, when I’m forced to work in Green Stuff, I’m going more for an overall impression on the entire model that perfect craftsmanship in the small details. I save that level of effort for clay. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Alrighty, on to the upper fairing. This was the area of the model where the Montesa’s armour had the most trouble fitting over the vehicle’s shape, as the very flat helmet of the PanO knights looks a bit odd when pulled out over such an extended shape. I had to modify the shapes a bit to make it work, and add an entirely new panel on the back just to fill the empty space that basically doesn’t exist on the human version.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    While that was setting, I added a base layer for the side of the seat cushion. I started by laying down a trapezoidal layer of putty and smoothing it over.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Next, I used a metal hoe tool to press down the outer edges and create a raised inner area of padding.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I liked the vaguely hexagonal bump I had made on the bottom, so I decided to continue with a field of hexagons along the rest of the padded area. This is exactly the same process I demonstrated in the Nomads section of my “Heavy Infantry Muscle Underlay<\/a>” video, so go check that out for details on how I’m setting up the lines to create a hex grid.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    As with everything else on this project, once I’d carved out the main details with a metal tool, I went in with a clayshaper to smooth it all out.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once the first panels of the upper fairing had dried, I applied the material for the next layer, approximately corresponding to the knight’s forehead.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I smoothed it together, making sure to leave a round space around the headlights.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I then added some detail gubbins to match the bits on the side and back of the knight’s helmet. I opted not to include antennae on the bike, as that might look a bit too silly for what I’m going for. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Working around the putty’s long cure time required me to continually shift between distant sections of the model, so while the fairing was curing, I put some more work into the seat. Building on top of the landmark putty I placed at the start, I made a shape that looked like it would accommodate a knightly ass.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The design of the seat wasn’t really based on anything from the Montesa’s armour, I was just filling space. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Looking at references for different motorcycle seats, I realized they tend to be built in multiple layers held together by straps. I put the same structure onto my knight’s seat, laying the straps across the lower layer of hex padding and under the bottom of the bike.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    With those two areas progressing nicely, I moved onto a new area– the wheels. I wasn’t overly concerned with putting heavy armour on these; a minor hint of plating was sufficient to get the look I was after.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Looking over the Montesa’s armour, I determined that their boots have four main plate sections from toe to calf; I matched this by dividing my wheel armour up into the same four sections, with the same plates dipping below the same adjacent plates. Given the profoundly different shapes involved, that was the closest I was going to be able to match this part.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once it was all smoothed down with a clayshaper, it didn’t look half bad. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Random progress shot! You can see in this shot the kind of prep work that was needed to apply these plates– the underlying surface of the plastic model was quite bumpy in many of the areas where I wanted to apply armour, so in these spots I had to carve and shave the plastic away to make space.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The rear wheels only got a tiny two-panel armour plate, because knights should always be heading toward<\/em> danger. If rear armour becomes relevant, they’ve failed Space Jesus. >:(<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Heeeeey, remember that multi-layer process I said I wasn’t doing? I did do it in two spots, over the fenders. In this first layer, I’ve laid putty into the outer shape of the panel I wanted to create, and paved over the bumpy base structure with a single smooth plane.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    You can see how thin this layer actually is from this progress shot of the front– I placed a small blob of putty on one edge of the panel…<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    …and then smeared it downward into the shape I wanted. I ran out of putty before hitting the bottom, so another small blob was added at the lower limit and smeared back upward.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I didn’t bother smoothing either of these base layers, as they would both be covered by later layers.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    While that was setting, I switched back to the knight and started looking at how much work he was going to require. He was going to need a full putty rebuild from the chest down, but I couldn’t start that until the motorcycle was basically finished. The arms, however, were separate pieces that I could work on without disturbing the bike.<\/p>\n

    The sword arm was basically perfect straight out of the blister, but the gun arm was going to need a weapon swap– the Father Knight comes with a Spitfire, while the Montesa’s profiles are restricted to shotguns and MULTI-rifles. I really hate the visual design of PanO’s MULTI rifle– it looks like a caulking gun to me– so I scrounged a shotgun from a Croc Man to transfer to my knight.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Both weapons were quite extensively wrapped into their former bearers’ limbs, so it took quite a bit of work with clippers and knives to get them clear. Whenever you do this kind of work, you need to make a decision about which side of the cut you want to preserve, and which side you want to utterly destroy, because it is EXTREMELY rare that you’ll be able to cleanly preserve both parts.<\/p>\n

    In this case, I prioritized the gun in both cases, even though I was planning to keep the knight’s arm for my conversion; simply put, I’m far more confident in my ability to convincingly recreate an arm than a gun, so I’ll always sacrifice the wielder to keep a weapon safe.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Speaking of which– the inner arm and most of the hand got completely wrecked, necessitating a complete resculpt. Given the simplicity of PanO arm plates, however, this wasn’t really that big of a deal.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    A bit more filler putty was needed to complete the bond, but overall I was quite happy with how the shotgun looked on the seated knight. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Mucking around with the guns ate up exactly the right amount of time to let the base layer around the fenders set, so I moved on to the next layers. I wanted to borrow aspects of the Montesa’s shoulder pads here, so I first created the shallow dome shape for the top, and then added the rest of the armour plate around it, leaving a dip for the dome to show through.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I finished both large plates with a final detail layer, which came out a lot smoother due to the layering than it would have if I had tried to get it all applied in one go.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    It doesn’t look like I got any good progress shots of it, but you can see here where I’ve diverged from the original concept by adding more armour between the existing bits of the fairing. I thought that leaving more of the original model visible would be a nice effect, but mostly it just looked empty, so I filled it in. I broke this part into a few plates that sink into each other to allow the flexibility to bend and turn.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    A lot of the transferred details were pretty meaningless, like here where I turned the knight’s breathing apparatus (at least, I’m assuming that’s what that is…)<\/em> into basicallly a little windshield. Pointless, but it reinforces the reference to the Montesa.<\/p>\n

    With that, the bike was basically done (aside from some random cleanup and nitpicking)<\/em>. On the next page, I’ll start building the rider’s body.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I needed an armature to build the legs around, so I started by drilling a hole through the lowest part of the peg I had placed for the knight’s midsection.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I ran a piece of 22 gauge picture wire through this hole…<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    …and then bent it into the correct lengths for the segments of the knight’s leg. I had initially been concerned about a mismatch in scale between the knight and the bike, but was relieved to find that the knight’s foot fell at almost exactly the same spot as the riders in all of the reference photos I had been looking at. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    To immobilize the wire, I wrapped a thin layer of putty around it. On most models this foundation layer would be much narrower, but PanO knights are HUUUUUUUUUGE, so I wasn’t concerned about over-puffing the outer layers by putting on a bit more putty at this stage.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once the base layer firmed up, I applied a sheath of putty around it and pressed in PanO braided muscle cables as detailed in (once again)<\/em> my muscle underlay video<\/a>. It’s a really great video, you should definitely go watch it. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I realized I was going to need a bit more space to create the chest armour, so I used a power drill to punch through more of the knight’s original chest metal, and then removed the excess scraps with clippers.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Putty went into this cavity.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I was trying to match the Montesa’s armour design as closely as possible, so I straight reproduced the wide pecs of the body armour. The “belt buckle” here is a modification, which I’ll explain a few steps from now when we get to the cloth layers.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once the muscle underlay was set, I started applying armour plates over top of it. I had to be pretty careful when applying the putty for these layers; I’m usually pretty sloppy at the edges and just blend any excess into the surrounding areas, but in this case, that would cause the excess to fill in the details on the underlay. To avoid this, I just had to be fairly precise when depositing putty and carefully cut and lift excess material away if I overshot it.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I pressed details into the knight’s thigh and knee pads.<\/p>\n

    It’s pretty appalling for me to look at these detail shots now, because they’re SUUUUUUUPER soft and round. Sigh. Stupid putty. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The boots were probably the most complicated part of the entire model, as the art dossier doesn’t convey their full geometry very well. I had to dig around on Google Image Search and find a blog post<\/a> with good, close-up 360 shots of the model to get a better idea of what I was building on the sides and in the back.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    As always, putty was put on, then mashed into a single mass and sectioned out.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I used metal tools to distribute material more precisely and better recreate the boot’s panel shapes.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Finally, everything was smoothed out with clayshapers.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once that was done and hardened, I added a final “front flappy ankle bit”.<\/p>\n

    Yes, that’s the technical term.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I knew from the outset that I wanted to mimic the Montesa’s armour design as closely as possible, but a lot of the details on the Father Knight are close enough that only a PanO player would actually recognize the difference. I went back and forth on whether I cared enough to fix the faceplate– the Father Knight has a double-armed cross, while the Montesa’s visor has only a single set of arms. I eventually concluded that the double-armed cross is distinctive enough to the Father Knight’s design that I would benefit from replacing it.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Soooo… clippers. Sigh. :\/<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    It wasn’t a lot of work to replace.<\/p>\n

    FUN TANGENT TIME<\/strong>. With the armour nearing completion, I started to notice some problems that I was going to have transferring the layout of the Montesa’s robes into a mounted pose. Here’s a stock Montesa:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    They have the standard Knight robes, which drape down in both the front and the back. This is fine for knights on foot, but it interferes with riding– from what I found in my reference research, the tabards have to drape to one side, which can cause awkward tangling with the bike’s moving parts, restricting movement and even risking to pull them off the bike in some situations. For this reason, there have historically been a few different ways that armor and cloth were modified to allow riding. The first was to make the skirt<\/span> short (typically mid-thigh level)<\/em> so that it wasn’t long enough to catch on anything:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    The second was to split the cloth along the front instead of the sides, letting it fall neatly on both sides of the motorcycle:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    There were also examples where both were done– cloth down to the knee with a split either in the front, or both front and back. So, with that in mind, I set about sketching out a variant skirt<\/span> design for the Montesa<\/span> armour with a front split; however, as soon as I drew it out, I realized that it actually already existed– on the armor of the Equestrian Order<\/b> of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. Should’ve been obvious in retrospect, actually. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    The Sepulchre Knight complicates it a bit by also adding a vest\/cape, but the lower cloth is exactly the type of split design that you would use for riding a bike. So, my adaptation to correct the cloth problem was pretty straightforward– I just needed to copy the Sepulchre’s tunic design. Easy-peasy. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    To start, I laid a foundation layer of putty to simply bridge the gap between the knight’s hip and the seat.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once it was set, I added a thin layer of putty over top of it, in the position where I imagined the cloth would rest when parted at the rider’s belt buckle.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    This is not how the cloth would drape in this position. The raised “ribs” would rest in a loop going left to right, not radiating straight away from the rider. I know this, but screwed it up anyway. I’m fairly mad at Past Spud right now. >:(<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    HEY LOOK, MORE OF HOW THIS WOULDN’T LOOK.<\/p>\n

    I R MASTER SCULPTMAN<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    At this point I was just adding random details. Here, I added the pedals around the knight’s foot. The strap leading down to them was pre-formed off the model and allowed to set, and then lifted into place and stuck down with more putty.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    A similar technique was used for the hand grip, though this one was more complicated since it was so much larger. I only let this one set partway, so that it was still flexible enough to bend when I applied it to the bike.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I stuck the ends onto the fairing, then curved it around the back to where the rider could grab it when needed– though of course, in the battle pose I would be constructing, he would be mostly letting Space Jesus take the handlebars while he menacingly brandishes his weapons. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    And that… was pretty much it. Two nights of putty cleanup…<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    …and ten days of painting…<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    …and my bike started to look pretty damn sweet. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

    I put a lot more effort into the paintjob than I typically would, especially for this particular army– my Space Knights don’t have the greatest colour scheme, and I typically struggle to make them look even passable. However, this was definitely going to end up as a showpiece for the army, so I took the time that was needed to polish the turd to a gleaming sheen. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Once the painting was done, I cut the bike off the Tactical Rock it shipped on, and figured out what sort of base I could scrounge.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The bike was posed to go uphill, so I needed to find some sort of ramp for my bike to be going up. This wasn’t easy, as my Space Knights are all based on Warsenal Tunguska bases, which are all pretty flat. I dig around in my parts bin, and eventually stumbled on the scenic base I didn’t use when I made my Uhlan<\/a> a few years ago. I filled in the Uhlan unit logo and text with putty and glued it to a 55mm Tunguska base, and it was pretty much good to go. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    PAINT!<\/p>\n

    I didn’t try as hard on the base as I did on the actual model. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    I stuck the bike down with a wire on each end to keep it firmly embedded, and… that’s it. Bike Knight was ready for prime time. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

    Fancy pictures on the last page!<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n