Hobby Time: Chapter Master on bike

Sup y'all? Time for a hobby post. Today I am showcasing my 90% finished chapter master. The fluff for my chapter (the emperor's ghosts) is that their bike company have a different colour scheme (crows on tombstones) to the rest of the chapter (metal armour with white faces). This is because the chapter eschews ridiculous ancient warfare tactics like charging around on bikes (fluffy ghost armies use a lot of planes and mechanised infantry). The Chapter Master, brother John Smith, utilises the typical colour scheme, except that when he mounts up he gets on one of the crow-wing bikes. That is what you see here.

The power fist is from the devastator squad kit and I love it for this model. I always picture him driving out in front of a big outrider detachment, spotting the enemy and indicating the charge direction. I can also imagine that he has a laser pointer in his finger for targetting orbital bombardments. The bike is a regular bike with black knight and Ravenwing bike bits added, specifically the black knight tailwing (so much sexier than the straight up Ravenwing one) and saddlebag accessories, and Ravenwing front grill. The base I bought on the cheap en-masse off ebay. Most of my guys have similar bases. They were to go with my cemetary display board at last year's club tournament (see here).

I imagine what most people are interested in though is the forcefield. I detest the idea that dudes are running around with literal shields in the year 40 000. I also find it fanciful that a shield could protect you from a heavy blast - that shit rocks the world around you, not just from one direction. I find these considerations to be doubly fanciful when it comes to people riding bikes. Have you ever tried riding a push bike while pretending to swing at something with a sword or fire a gun? That shit cray. My boys need to be able to keep at least one hand on the wheel while charging forward to lay the beats, so the shield eternal/storm shield is modelled as a force field rather than an actual shield. This is more awesome than modelling a windscreen and more realistic than modelling an actual fucking shield.

The conversion is really easy. Take a piece of chicken wire and cut it to the appropriate size. Make sure you have a nice long sliver of it that you can jam into the front of the base as shown. Take a tennis ball and get some initial curvature by moulding the wire around the ball. Once that's done, check it against the model and do some extra moulding to make sure it really envelopes the rider. Drill a hole in the front of the base and glue that baby down (be careful of frosting)..

For painting I think an airbrush would be ideal but I did this with a brush (primed white using a can). Start with a medium base blue (e.g. Mordian blue). Next take a royal blue (Altdorf guard blue) and blend in towards the middle (check the internet for blending tutorials). Then a slightly lighter blue (Calgar blue) and blend even closer to the middle. Then take a really light blue (ice blue) and finally a white, gradually getting closer to the point where you want a shot to have impacted on the shield (the middle). I usually have mixed layers in between i.e. a 50/50 mix of Altdorf and Calgar blue etc. This gives you a solid transition effect. Note that it should be mostly white - the blue is at the edges.

I've still got a little bit of work to do on this guy. I want to weather his armour and add more highlights. The bike is pretty much done but I think I can spruce up the saddlebags a bit and add a few more details here and there. For a post on how I paint my bikes see here, though note that those were the test bikes which have more texture to work with. Since then I've moved to use a lot more blending to get the tombstone effect on the flat panels. Weathering is critical to break those panels up as well and get the beaten up stone look. I don't have any WIP pictures of bikes but when I paint my black knights I will remember to take some and do a proper post.