May 21, 2013

The Emperor on Golden Throne, a mini-display diorama by White Metal Games

Greetings from Terra! I have an extra special treat for your today, fellow wargamers! By now I’m sure most of you seen the concept art for the Golden Throne from the inside cover of the 5th Ed. 40k rulebook. If not, then just follow the link!

This art was so icon, so inspiring, that I felt moved to create a mini-diorama depicting the scene. I’ve seen one or two of these floating around the web before, but I’m not sure any have been as truth to the imagery as this one.

Now, bear in mind that this isn’t a gaming piece. Although, i suppose, you could cook up some sort of ‘Assault on the Imperial Palace’ scenario and attempt to play it out. That’s an apoc game I’d like to see!

The figure was constructed from a variety of scenery pieces from the Warhammer 40k Terrain line. For the Emperor himself, we used a zombie torso and arms, a servo skull for the head (then sculpted a jaw and some lower teeth), and finally we used a spare Valkyrie ejection seet for his lower body. For his legs, we sculpt the robes and stippled them to appear mottled.

for the cables, we made dozens of cables out of grey stuff using a specialty tool we picked up, let them dry, and then fit them into place. We probably could have made dozens more tubes, but we didn’t want to over due it, even though the concept art in face has what looks like hundreds of tubes! This is simply an interpretation , after all.

Painting wise, we stuck to a limited palette, building up various shades of gold for the throne, toning it back down with glazes and washes, and then highlighting it back up gradually. For the Emperor himself, we used a similar process, starting with dark flesh tones and working our way up to pure white for the final highlight.

A little red OSL on a few places, like the diode to the left of the Emperor helped add a little color to the model. We choose note to use OSL on his lens, since we wanted the Emperor himself to appear seemingly lifeless. We stippled on a little silver here and there to create a look of worn metal, chipping with time. In retrospect, we should have been more selective with it’s application and stuck to edges instead of open areas. A little rust effect would have also gone a long way, maybe a few streaking lines here and there. There is also room for improvement . . . and jello.