Imperial Knights - Cerastus Twins in manufactorum pt10. Shoulder pistons

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammer on the Cerastus Knights. I had been stuck with the shoulder pistons. They have U shaped socket, which means you can't attach them and they stay in place. And if you glue them you're stuck with that position. So I decided to seal them up first.

I cut the round nubs off some sprue and trimmed them to fit in the socket.

I then removed all the extraneous material beyond the socket and drilled a hole through the centre.

I did it on all the shoulder joints.

I then took the piston...

And removed the bar that would usually locate inside the socket.

A hole was drilled through the centre, which would locate with the newly drilled hole in the filled socket.

All four pistons had 1mm steel rods carefully glued in. 

This created the moveability I was after.

But obviously these elements need painting up now.

The extra resistance from a properly hinged piston will help whatever pose the arm is put into hold. Well that's the plan.

However, I have discovered that the end of the piston does limit the shoulder's potential position due to the locating arms inside the shoulder joint.

I'll work it out but this issue has been bothering me for so long, like the carapace hatch hinges. I'm just really glad to finally solve it.

Imperial Knights - Cerastus Twins in manufactorum pt9. Chevrons

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammer on the Cerastus Knights. Well this was fun... You know I asked who needs masking tape? Well I do as I adapted my usual wooden coffee stirrers to mark the stripes, by just using them for the thickness.

But following the contours of the carapace just wasn't working. I pencilled in the lines but they appeared off and in the end I started to freehand them.

Basically eyeballing them as a flat surface so that lines just look straight rather than shifting at each corner or recess.. It gets a bit janky toward the back of the carapace, due to the curve of the shell but there's not actually a lot of stripes showing.

There are still some little decisions to be made, whether any additional detailing is required. But I decided that the inside right toe should be black to match the shin guard.

 I know I was holding out for more red, but this just made sense to me. Similarly the yellow toes won't have stripes. I also had a slightly narrower gauge of stripe on the lower torso compared with the carapace shoulder.

You can still see the pencil guides and how off the were. Hopefully I can cover them up with highlights and battle damage.

Well the stripes on the shoulder seem like they follow on from the ones on the carapace.

It's actually very difficult to tell if they would be contiguous or are offset. The red bit breaks the alignment just enough to make it look right.

But I don't think it is!

Again, hours of debating which line to keep yellow and which to be black. You make the decision are happy with the result and then realise it's not right.

But I'm not going to change it like I did with my Helverin. Check out the shoulder panel:

Before, you can see the top right shoulder pad was black, yellow, black, yellow.

After, when I put it on the Armiger I had to repaint it yellow, black, yellow, black.

But this almost looks right.

I also striped the top of the head too.

Next up I need to solve the issue with the shoulder pistons.

Imperial Knights - Cerastus Twins in manufactorum pt8. Heraldry blocking

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PaintingWarhammer on the Cerastus Knights. With the yellow basecoat in place it was time to block in the black and decide if the gamboge was 'goldilocks', or not enough/too much.

The question here was should the red right extra shoulder armour remain red or also be yellow. 

I was relatively happy with the traditional markings on the shin plates.

But it felt like there was an excess of yellow [the chest plates were both going to be yellow too].

So I went with it staying red and decided the Ion Shield would be black.

That sword is going to be fun to paint at some point. I think it's going to me lava but will that even show up against the rest of the model?

Just getting the clean lines on the different fields is rewarding sometimes. Who needs masking tape?

Again, a lot of yellow, on the left-hand side of Acheron.

But I considered the chainfist matching the legs, with red on the outside and black on the inside of the blade. 

But again, the excess yellow made me just leave it red.

But the Promethium tanks were always going to be yellow.

The gun-shield for the Flamestorm Cannon is the exception to the rule in also staying red.

I thought it'd be fun to have a yellow ion-shield too. The only issue being that adding in the black to the leg armour plates means there's a lot of black in this view, or specifically - much less red.

Hopefully the half red, half yellow/black chest plates will help rebalance the scheme.

As much as I love the chevrons, house Raven does need to represent the red and black. We'll have to see what the chevrons do to the scheme next.