Prometheus Rising Studios   Ben Mininberg's models, toy customs, and design work.

I’ve spent the second half of 2020 quarantine steeping myself in classic 2nd Edition Warhammer 40k. There’s been a big revival of interest in Oldhammer in the last few years, both on the 40k and Fantasy sides. The books and artwork are incredible, the models are fun to collect, and the paint schemes are delightful. I’ve been pouring over vintage White Dwarf magazines for inspiration and history lessons, loving every second of it. My 2E Blood Angels Space Marine 3rd Company is about half done, and will get plenty of its own coverage when it’s ready. To back them up, I managed to get my hands on a couple of my biggest grail vintage kits, the Armorcast Titans! I’ve lusted after these models since probably the seventh grade and they’ve always been prohibitively expensive and rare after those days. I managed to snag a couple earlier this year and took my time with them, sanding and puttying and cleaning them up for paint. It took a bit to decide what Legion scheme to go with, but I settled on the classic Fire Wasps style that was in so much of the original Titan Legions and Adeptus Titanicus artwork of the era. I already have a modern-style Warlord in the Legio Astorum scheme (posted on Instagram but never properly photographed for the site) and I wanted to differentiate between the modern style and retro machines.

These were a big exercise in airbrushing for me, trying out some new techniques and products. The chevrons on the carapace armor took two tries to get right, and I’m sure I did them about the most complicated way possible, having to mask the stripes twice to block on the colors and then do shading to blend everything together. MVP product for this project had to be the Shaders from AMMO by Mig. These are like super-thin acrylic inks ready for spraying out of the bottle and can be used to build up shading and tone very gradually. They were a lot of fun to use and will definitely be handy in the future! The real-fire effect on the legs of the Reaver was a last-minute decision that paid off really well. I watched a couple videos on the technique and then cut my own miniature templates from some card stock and went to work. Really happy with how that came out as it covered a botched masked flame job that did not work at all.

Finishing these up also required some freehand logo work that took some creative efforts to get right. I didn’t have any decals for the Fire Wasp logos, so I masked and sprayed the background fade pattern, then cut masks of the wasp silhouette and sprayed that, and then had to paint in the wasp details with a fine brush. They were a bit harrowing, but they worked out. Not looking forward to having to do those again on the two more Titans I have prepped for painting!