A quick explanation for my lack of updates.

 Hi all, just wanted to give a quick update as to my recent online silence, here at least. 

I'm still here, but I've been in the process of changing pain medication, which has unfortunately had the side effect of making my hands shake too much to paint. I'm now in the process of changing back to the original medication, but with them being quite powerful drugs, these things take time. 

In the meantime I've finally had the chance to play with the 3d printer I bought earlier this year and made a start on learning Blender, so I can actually design things I want to paint! 

For my first project I decided to make a 40k version of the LeHaitre tracked motorbike/thing from the 1930s, which is this: 

As you can see, it's a pretty wacky looking thing to start with, and I thought it would suit 40k really well. I specifically wanted to use them for a small Tallarn project I've been thinking about doing for years, with them working as a ww2 Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) reconnaissance and raiding style unit. 

Once I'd had the idea, I went on a search around the internet to see if anyone else had already made one of these, but it didn't look like they had, so obviously I decided to do it myself. 

As for the modelling, I've never done any 3d design before, so I probably went in at the deep end a bit with this, but after a few weeks on and off, (I'm limited to 30-45 mins max at the pc before my left arm goes numb, so learning anything takes a while these days!) I finally came up with a prototype: 

the twin bolters I found online for free, and the baggage and legs are from file sets I bought. Hopefully the paid files will just be placeholders for a time until I get my head around sculpting organic objects and I can replace them. once I'd got the basics done, I decided to work on a Tallarn variant: 

I swapped out the RT bolters for a multi-laser, and the rider for a Tallarn style one I heavily converted from one I found online. I then decided to make variants of the riders, and do a variant with a towbar so it can pull the wheeled heavy weapons: 

The guy on the left is now holding a 2nd Ed 40k era Bolter, and the heavy weapon (unassembled so far, it's been sat with the rest of the project for years now!) can latch onto the back if wanted. 

So, yeah, that's basically what I've been up to. I must admit, I'm pretty happy with how far I've managed to get with it, both with the design, and the quality of the printed results. Now I just need to finalise the design to make it print more easily and fit together a bit better and I'm done. Eventually I'd like to replace the proprietary parts in order to perhaps put it up for sale, but I'm not sure about that yet, it's a bit niche, and can't see many people wanting it so it's a lot of effort for very little return.  

Anyway, next stop paint! (when my hands stop shaking.)