I Can See The End From Here

It's been a slow slog with the holiday and my kids getting out of school for the summer, but I've continued with progress on my Leviathan Crusader.  I now have the torso and left arm complete.

TORSO & DECALS

If you read my last post, I was still dithering about weather or not t build in a cockpit.  I decided not to do that now, but I've left the cockpit cover unglued in case I want to give it a go in the future.  Right now it's just held on with sticky tack.

I must not have tightened the leg joints as much as I thought.  I assembled the figure in an upright pose, but after a couple of days, it settled down into somewhat of a squat.  I'll have to keep an eye on that to see if it sags farther.

I also added some markings to the kit.  I wasn't a big fan of the over the top heraldry I'd seen on other Leviathan's posted around the net.  It reminded me too much of the Warhammer look.  I decided to go simpler with a little more utilitarian look.  Fortunately, after building model kits for almost two decades, I have a whole file drawer full of half used decal sheets from other projects.  I had a look through then and dug out some markings that I thought would work.  My first goal was to avoid anything  Nazi related.  From a fluff perspective the Eisenkern left earth before the rise of the Nazi party, but more importantly, it avoids any need to censor the pictures.  (for more information on that see HERE).

I decided to go back to the Prussian Iron Cross prominent with German forces during the first world war.  Unfortunately I've never built any WWI subjects and didn't have any left over decals.  However I did manage to find find a set of modern iron cross decals from an old 1/35 MLRS kit meant to depict a Bundesweher vehicle.  As the model doesn't have a proper "chest" I decided to put one on the right side of the face and another on the left arm shield.  For a squad or unit marking, I found the "415" decal from an old 1/48 Messerschmidt sheet.  

German war machines have never really been known for sporting much fun nose art, so I added a subdued sword and shield crest to the left side of the face.  I have no idea where that came from.  Unfortunately this decal was too old and after it dried the backing "silvered" a little around the edges.  I tried to get it to settle down some with Microsol, but this is the best I could get.

I also found some nice "caution" decals from an old SF3D Raccoon kit to each side of the face, the arm armor and the exhaust stacks.  Here's a picture with the upgraded vent stacks in place.  I don't have the Gothic ones painted so a comparison picture will have to wait.

SWORD ARM MODIFICATIONS

As part of a kickstarter reward, I received not only the standard sword arm (shown above), but also a more traditional looking sword labeled as Excalibur.  I wanted to be able to mount both and magnets seemed the way to go, but this looked substantially more complicated than than the modification on the exhaust stacks.  I searched around the net and found a wonderful tutorial from a blogger named Wazza:

Wazzas Hobbies Leviathan Crusader Tutorial

I followed his process exactly, so I won't bother duplicating it here, but It was reasonably easy and now I can swap between both blades:

Well that's it for now.  It's down to the home stretch, I just have the cannon arm, shoulder pads and base left to go.  I've got the cannon arm assembled and primed, but the rotating barrel is making it a pain in the butt to paint.  Hopefully I'll have something more to show next week.