Outgard: A Vermilion Revenant

A Vermilion Wanderer 

Not to rust in murky depths

A lone spark long forgotten

Rejecting  a tomb of a thousand lakes

A revenant stalks the moors

From Blighted Isles to jagged peaks

A spirit wills It. 

With the Outgard event occurring last weekend, we thought it would be a good time to show the single model we built for the event. The Outgard setting really sparked our imaginations because it delved into aspects of the 40k universe which are most certainly there, but are seldom explored: the undead, and feudalistic societies where technological marvels are reduced to being used as instruments to bludgeon people.  While many of the models shown for the project have focused on the masses populating Outgard, ignorant of the technology they repurpose, we wanted to explore some of the technology that may have been the underpinning of the planet in the long-forgotten past.

We found inspiration from the 1977 animated film, Wizards.  One of the primary characters in the film is a robot named Necron 99, who adorns an iconic poster for the movie (GW likely got the name for the Necrons from Necron 99):

Even before finally seeing Wizards, I was always struck by the imagery on the movie poster.

While Wizards is a pretty bad movie, Necron 99 always appealed to us due to his red attire and menacing eyes.  Remembering Necron 99, we thought: Why not create an ancient sentient robot for Outgard? It could even potentially be a Necron, one who tries to hide its inhuman form by dressing in red and wrapping its face in cloth!?

A lot of green stuff was used to make the model stand out from the base parts used in the conversion.

The conversion used pieces from a host of disparate models. The body is from a Skitarii ranger, with the troso removed and replaced with the power coil of a Necron warrior’s rifle. Its head was also built from a Skitarii ranger, keeping the goggles, but replacing the bottom portion with a Necron warrior’s head. The legs are based primarily on those from the new plastic Death Jester, with boots from an Elysian drop trooper. An extensive amount of green stuff was used to make the conversion more convincing, including extending and tattering his coat, and wrapping its face in cloth.

Despite a relatively limited color palete, the different shades of red make the model more interesting to look at.

The base was done using GW's Texture paint Martian Ironearth, before painting over it grey.

When painting the model, the there was no question about what color scheme would be used. Red, red, red! For the piercing yellow eyes, I used Vallejo’s fluorescent yellow. It was my first time using a fluorescent paint and now that I know it handles just like any other acrylic paint, I will probably think of using other fluorescent paints in the future. Additionally this model was the first that I experimented with object-sourcing lighting. Overall, I am quite pleased with the effect.

This was the first model that I used Vallejo fluorescent paint, and I was quite impressed with it.

Although not officially part of the Outgard project, we wanted to make this model in tribute to all of the talented people involved in it, thanking them for all of the inspirational models they have shown over the last few months!  Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the post office, the model did not arrive in time to be a part of any of the Outgard games.  Despite this, we figured people might be interested in seeing pictures; we hope you like him!


- Adam Wier