Build a Survivor: Sunstalker Edition (Patreon)

As an alternative to the Vibrant Lantern builds I'm going to provide a few build articles here and there as time passes (and I get my hands on the various sprues, let me know if you have any you want to get rid of). 

This will be a public post, so you can link people here and they can get ideas.

This first post will be building a female survivor armed with a Denticle Axe.

Now the first part of building a survivor for me is making sure that the build is worth the effort of assembling.  This involves a trip over to the gear cards and a quick assemble, sometimes this happens during a campaign, sometimes it's thought about in between.  

The Denticle Axe build however is very simple.  I know from experience that the Denticle Axe and Cycloid Set were designed to fit together.  So the grid is easy to assemble.

(Full Cycloid Armor gives the prismatic ability which makes every half affinity all colours, so all affinity abilities are unlocked here).

This is not a cheap set to put together, the Denticle Axe requires the killing of a Level 2 Sunstalker, plus a lot of resources.  However this is the best assassin build in the game right now and also the best axe build outside of Warlord Armor.

I've chosen not to choose the remaining items at this point because they'd likely include a shield and monster grease plus a luck charm.  However I want to be flexible on this, so I'm just going for the main strokes.

Now I'll run through the build process.

Tools:

A Knife, small nail clippers, a sculpting tool, a pin drill, copper wire, plastic cement, wire clippers and needle nose pliers.

The Sprue:

There are two sprues for survivors in the Sunstalker expansion, the second sprue doesn't have anything we need for this build, so I'll leave it intact.  A few pieces fell off, I've bagged them separately 

Step 1: Multipart Assembly

I actually put together all the split arms and torsos (and whatever other parts I can) without removing them from the sprue.  I find it easier to assemble the arms when one part is still fixed to the sprue.  This does mean I assemble arms I'm not going to use, but I find that it's very useful to do this.

I assembled all arms and all the torsos here and this is what the sprue now looks like:

Make sure when you remove parts from the sprue that you clean any mold lines by gentle filing or trimming with a sharp knife.  Just do it slowly and carefully, remember you can take plastic away, but putting it back on is very time consuming and difficult.

Step 2: Lower Body

I'm going with a female survivor here (because female survivors are the best) and I have two different poses to pick from, one is a more static standing still and the other one has quite a large stance and more movement to it.  I decide to pick the latter, which is a three part kit as below:

Assembled she looks like this

Step 3: Torso and Head

I have already glued both halves of the torso together back during the preparation step, so all I need to do here is pick which of the two female torsos I want to use.  I choose the one with the 'boob window' because it's more defined and dynamic and gives the model more feminine power. 

You can also see that I've chosen to not use the standard Sunstalker Head  and I've picked one of the unarmored heads instead.  I do not much like the Bathing Cap design of the Cycloid Hood so I often swap it out for an unarmored head.  I actually do this with a lot of the helmets in the game, the unarmored female heads are just too good to not use.

In addition the flowing hair of this particular head will add more dynamism to the final pose.  However I am going to have to paint the head separately from the body in the end because that hair will get in the way of the back and neck.

Step 4: Arms and Weapon

First of all, I take a look at the three Denticle Axes I have to choose from.  The two with hands on them have a very neutral grip, good if I want to have her holding the axe two handed, but I want a one handed grip here. So I pick out the one without a hand on it and glue an open hand need the bottom of the axe shaft.

This done I can pick which arms I want to use.  I know I want to mirror the legs by having a bent arm on her right and a straight arm on the left.  I want the flow and lines of the model to move from the head to her left (the viewer's right) so you are drawn to the axe, because the Denticle Axe has one of the best designs in the game.

I settle on the following arm pose

The exact impact of this pose becomes more apparent when you look at her in three dimensions.

All that's left to do on the assembly part is to glue in the hands and loosely fit the head so I can see if it's looking good.

Step 5: Pose check

Time to make sure she looks good and as intended

I'm very happy with that pose, it's dynamic and strong.

Step 6: Filling Gaps

So what you need to do now is fill in any of the gaps on the model.  You can use either plastic putty from Vallejo or Liquid Green Stuff from Games Workshop. Both of these brush on and fill in the smaller gaps.  However if you have larger gaps (i.e. The Gorm) you're going to need to use actual modeling clay like Green Stuff (or it's grey, silver and brown variants).

Here's my Plastic Putty, my old worn out brush and one of my more used artist pallets.  I slightly water down the Plastic Putty for smoothness, but only a small amount.

Once the gaps are filled she looks like this.

The line on the arm should disappear with undercoat and painting. It's more noticeable here than it actually is.

Step 7: Time to Paint

I will share her pictures when she is completed!