'BFG' from ByronM: 30K Mechanicum Thanatar Siege-Automata

I had a few possible entries lined up for this week's theme entry for BFG (Big F@$#ing Gun), but in the end decided that I would keep with my ongoing projects and do something that helps progress one of them.

I therefore decided to paint up my 30k Mechanicum Thanatar Siege-Automata.  This thing is a BEAST that towers over everything and has a main gun that is bigger than a Space Marine, so I think that should count as a BFG, right?  The main gun is a Hellex Pattern Plasma Mortar, that is described as being able to arc huge balls of plasma over defensive structures into the enemy lines.  Now, I am not sure how you arc plasma, but OK sounds like a hell of a lot of fun! It then has two huge mauler bolt cannons as it's secondary weapons to help lay down suppression fire if anything is left standing after the mortar hits them.

Not only is the guns on this thing freaking huge, the whole thing is!  To give a sense of size the base is a 120mm x 92mm oval base and a marine barely reaches to his knee! 

This is the model that made me fall in love with the 30k Mechanicum army in the first place, so I wanted to make sure I did it justice when I got to it, so I took my time on this one.

I started it by airbrushing in various layers of browns and working up to reds to get the right shade and pattern to the armour.  I then went back and cleaned up the black under structure of the model with fresh black paint, and then started painting in the metal with gun metal and oily steel.  Once that was done, I washed it down with armour wash and black ink, and then highlighted it again.  I then added some AK engine grime around all the pistons and bolts.  I hope this gives the metal enough depth to look realistic rather than just shiny like metallics tend to come out.

I then went onto the couple of lights and sensors that are on it and painted them as blue gems.  Then the servo skulls and helmet bronze, washed, ad then highlighted copper.

 

 Once that was all done, I put the decals on and then started some weathering.  While I have decided to keep a fairly new look to the armour with no scratches, dents, or rust, I did use weathering powders to dirty up the edges a bit, and really coated the feet and leg plates.  I will be going back to do this on all the other Mechanicum robots that I have done so far to match them up.

Last up was the weapon glow on the mortar and bolter.  While technically not needed on the bolters, I wanted to keep a consistent look across the army so did it anyway.  I think the blue / white gives some good high contrast to help make the figure pop a little more than it would if it was just red and metal.

Overall, I am very happy with how they came out.  Oh, yeah, didn't I mention that I did a matching pair for my entry!  Yeah, in my madness, I decided I needed two of them.... 

I so can not wait to get this force on the battle field.  However, from everything I hear they will suck...  But at least they will look cool doing it!