Chaos grav-attack !

Alright, some things get in our way sometimes... when I moved (back in December 2013) to the house  I'm living in right now (and am about to leave), the first model I started with was the dreaded chaos grav-attack.

Being of the obsessive kind, I knew I wanted my grav-attack to look like the original glorious grav-attack designed by Rick Priestley :

Picture from Solegend

And that meant starting on a deodorant stick base.

I first started incorporating some newish chaos tank bits to it to find "the look" I wanted like in a classic "pimp my ride" episode

And then realised I'd need to tune it a lot more to make it properly Rogue trader chaotic :

After some labial adjustements, I was left with a choice for the exhausts and I just couldn't find the right way to place them :

Huuum, no, this is not the look I want :

After considering some other options :

I asked the community on the oldhammer forum for some help on the matter and Suber from Oldschool workshop found the right idea I should have had long ago :

On top of that I was advised by Jonah from Meandering shades to try and add weird textures by adding a tiny drop of superglue on top of a bigger drop of PVA glue. the result is excellent and enables you to create excellent pustules, sores and scabs depending on how you apply the 2 basic components.

I shamelessly salvaged IKEA pen parts to make the reactors and the left overs even enbaled me to make another iconic Rogue trader figure...

The parts were roughly blended with the basic structure with green stuff and I prayed painting would make all of this look nice.

Painting wise, I cannot say I really enjoyed the process, I do not fancy painting huge pieces like this and the main mistake I did was to leave such vast areas of plain textures. If you look closely at Rick's example above, you'll see he cleverly drew trompe l'oeil to suggest more texture and parts than the deo stick as for real. I thought adding my little textures here and there with some added weathering would do the trick but the balance is not good to me.

The only fancy trick I tried on this one was to paint some oxydation on the exhausts and though they tend to lack contrast, I'm pretty happy with the result.

Just to tie the model a little more with the original setting, I replaced the former chaos marine head with a proper RTB01 beakie head. I just added some spinal shape on its beak edge to gove it a more organic look and to paint it like bone to make it properly sinister.

While I was in the cheap tricks zone, I threw some "blood for the blood god" GW technical paint in all the wounds I could find and added some liquid water on the eye and gum. I've always dreaded painting eyes on 28 mm models but I can tell you painting big ones on a chaos tank is not particularly easier (guess you can't decide to be like Fraser "God" Gray just like that).

This all means there are plenty of other things I could have done better with tis one but in all honesty, all I wanted was to finish it before moving home (again) for symbolic reasons and to be sure to have it ready for Bring Out Your Lead (the Oldhammer Week-End in Newark this summer) and the Deathrace game in which it will run.

Oh and finishing that vehicle makes me able to (mentally) cross one line in this :

Worth the effort I suppose...

EDIT :

After giving Conrad's advice a thought (see comments below), here are a couple of tunes I could use to accompany the grav-attack :

Proper oldschool metal for starters :

But maybe older classics like that one could also do :

But I'd also suggest something else for more laid-back moments with proper oldschool ZZ top :

I hope you'll find your pleasure with either of those, I know I do with both ^^