So last week I had a day off because I was feeling like crap. Eventually daytime TV got to be too much and I took to aimlessly wandering around on the internet. My meandering course eventually brought me to this concept piece of art from forgeworld.
It struck a chord with me and with nothing better to do I thought I'd have a bash at seeing if I could re-create it in Sketchup, particularly as 3D printing and CAD have been in the news so much lately. Without anything to work/measure from other than this 3/4 angle pic I had a lot of free reign so I made it bigger than the macharis hull I believe it should have been based on. It's now roughly the same size a s a FW baneblade, this is because if I ever can get it printed I'd like it to represent a minoris with quake cannon. The plan would be to use the same chassis to create a second design with a huge comms dish and use it as a counts as carapace landing pad to grant indirect fire to the detachment.
I'm not too sure what the purpose of the anchor things would be, but it my mind I'm considering them to be generating an above normal gravitic attraction to anchor the machine and minimise energy dissipation through recoil. A sort of anti-anti-grav.
I've made it in several components, gun, hull, tracks and anchors.
As you can see I still have the back to finish but I'm running out of inspiration. Covering the breach with a hatch looks fairly boring and would lose the flavour of the thing (huge gun with a vehicle built around it) but I can't really see a way of supporting the spindly frame otherwise.
The one thought I had was to model a shell being inserted which would beef things up, any other thoughts or comments. I'd love to hear from you experienced guys as I'm still relatively new to this type of thing.