Saturday, May 04, 2013

Team Helbrute update

Well first off the good news. Gotten some interest in the Helbrute thread I posted. Disease on Bolterandchainsword posted an older pic of a Helbrute he was converting to have a power scourge.
It's a nice approach. I'm hoping he'll post newer pics as he explained this was a work in progress.

Next the bad news: I killed my first attempt. See the LEDs I installed run best on 3v of power. The Dime battery I was using provided exactly 3v of power. So no need to install resistors. Well until I went to test the circuit with a 9v battery and promptly blew out all three LEDs. :( So yeah. Bummer.

Now the better news: I don't quit. I ordered a half dozen Helbrute models on Ebay and have managed to get a fair amount of work accomplished on a HelBrute with 2 power fists with red LEDs installed behind the head and in the palms of the fists to represent the flammers.

So here you can see the extent of my work on the model thus far. Built and wired the base, though it still needs some green stuff work to fill in gaps. Built the two power fists, and carved up the body. 

I'm going for a sort of "roaring in anger" sort of pose for it, a bit like this:

So I have to reposition the body and arms. The upper torso will be angled back and the power fists will be positioned outward relative to the body.

I'm also installing LEDs into the torso, and in the palms of the fists to get some lighting effects going on with the model.
Here you can see the left power fist with the LED illuminated. I'm also going to install similar LEDs in the torso to provide red illumination around the face.

Now... here's the really annoying part of all this: The fact that I'm incapable of doing a simple easy project. Allow me to explain. Build a Helbrute with a different weapon load. Easy. Pose it in a new way. Okay, bit more of a challange. Install LEDs to light it up. Okay, don't see that too often. Now do all of that on the same model. Okay now we're getting into a challenge. See because the HelBrute is a snap-fit model, a large amount of the detail in it is modeled to accommodate it's pose. Which means in order to change the pose I have to change a lot of details.
The feet are a prime example. I wanted to model the HelBrute with it's toes clutching on the edge of the rockface. So I have to cut off the toes that will be in a different possition, and re-attach them in their possition. But to do that I have to make sure the base will work with the model. Which means building up the base UNDER the model itself. But wait I want to light up the model. So now I have to pass wires out of the base through the model. You see how I'm just compounding the challenge? Yeah. That's where it is.


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