Topic: WK's return to the Empire - Update 4/10 - Abandoned gatehouse

[White Knight]

Another building,  a quicky this time as it is mostly stone. Another hardfoam one from the Ziterdes range. I'm calling it a belfort because that's what it looks like to me (for those not familiar with the term, it's a medieval watchtower/belltower). This is one of the more recent models in the range I think and it shows, crisp, hard edges and detail everywhere, you wouldn't believe this is foam until you pick it up and feel the weight. Hopefully they'll keep adding more with this level of quality.

I did some weathering on this that doesn't come out well in the pictures. Basically, some of those vertical streaks and shadows you may detect are actually greenish streaks in reality. Really. I'm actually quite happy how well this came out with minimal effort.



And in case you're wondering about the size, here's a scale shot with some figures (again, this is an impressive model sizewise) and some detail shots:

[Gneisenau]

Ooooh! Aaaah! Looks great! The weathering is definitely visible.

I don't know whether you've elaborated on this before (apologies if you did), but are you happy with that hardfoam?

[PeytonS]

That looks great, I definitly wouldn't have thought it was made out of foam!  The details are quite crisp.

[White Knight]

Well, if I could get all of my buildings in that material I would. It's sturdy and light and I don't have the same anxiety as with resin buildings where I always fear that they will chip or the glue will loosen or I will drop them and they will fall apart. I'm not saying you can't damage these, but the risks just aren't the same to me.

[ras-alkar]

Love your stuff WK! Traded away my Marauder dwarf army 1990 away ... and still miss them.

Never heard of zvezda doing foam stuff. Where did you get this stuff??

Cheers Ras

[White Knight]

We've all traded away stuff we thought we'd never use and then end up regretting it. 

Not Zvezda, Ziterdes. A German company.

http://www.ziterdes.de/ziterdes/en/index.php?we_variant=en

[White Knight]

It's been ages since I painted anything for this project and when my lovely wife bought me a Lemax Halloween Gatehouse for my birthday, I knew I had to make this top of my list of things to rework into a wargaming model (you know, so I can still be entitled to get toys from her in the future).

http://whiteknightminiatureimperium.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-abandoned-gatehouse.html

As with most Lemax buildings, this had great potential but needed a little TLC to bring it up to the standards and to remove some of the out of scale bits that tend to feature on them. I'll go into that a bit more below, but first the pictures of the finished gatehouse, which I tried to paint in order to match my earlier buildings in this project.

Some Empire dwarfs are exploring the abandoned gatehouse. Looks like it hasn't been visited in a long while and small scavengers abound, but then who lit those torches? Figures added for scale.



The gatehouse from different angles without figures:















And a comparison between the original model and the modified and repainted one below. I removed the oversized gravestones and skeletons. I did leave one of the skeletons under the arch as it was about the right size. I also got rid of the lighting system, since it couldn't be hidden. I used some plastic bits from a Warhammer fortified mansion to cover the large whole on the side where the switch box was situated. I should have removed the torches as well, since they're a bit big and there are big gobs of hot glue attaching them to the wall, but I didn't want to lose too many of the original building's features, so I kept them on. The building also has moulded on bits of green slime oozing in places. As I didn't quite see how to make that work, I decided to flock them and turn them into overgrown bits. I also used that in a few spots to hide some of the mouldlines that couldn't be removed, the lower body of the model being a type of porcelain.

[GamesPoet]

Love what you've done with that!

I looked it up ... turns out Lemax seems to point folks towards the folks who are selling their product.  I started checking out the links to various sites, and finally found this item on one for $49.99.  It is tempting.

[Rowsdower]

Jayce?

[Zak]

That looks great also looks like it was fun to paint 

[Zygmund]

Great conversion work! The result is hugely atmospheric, not toy-like at all. 

-Z

[White Knight]

Thanks guys, I think it really looks the part for that GW Empire vibe.

Jayce?

When I took that original picture he was the only one nearby for scale.

[Novogord]

It looks really cool and has a good vibe to it.
The only thing I find strange, is that is abandoned and still the torches are lit.

[Rowsdower]

Thanks guys, I think it really looks the part for that GW Empire vibe.

Jayce?

When I took that original picture he was the only one nearby for scale.

I felt a bit silly as I nearly called him 'The guy from Wheeled warriors' as i'd forgotten his name then I remembered his name was in the title

[White Knight]

It looks really cool and has a good vibe to it.
The only thing I find strange, is that is abandoned and still the torches are lit.

I did think about that and then considered the torches are probably magical and still work for that reason. Might have been a good idea to paint them in an etherical blue or green instead but it's done for now.