The Praetorian Project - Leviathan Mk. II production commences!

Every so often I get a wild idea to make something ridiculous, and the curse has befallen me again! I've been really enjoying working on my Guard recently which naturally brings me around to revisiting an old project - the Leviathan Command Vehicle. I'd built one years ago (before I had the blog), and the Mk. II version of the project has been lurking in the back of the Closet of Doom for years. It's high time it got a little forward motion! I started by dragging out the old sketches and browsing through the dozens of reference images I've collected over the years.

 

There have been some absolutely stunning, incredibly detailed versions of 40k scale leviathans over the years, and most have done work that is far beyond my talents - however, that's no reason to not give it a try! I have made the decision that I'm going to try and stay as true to the old Epic model as possible - More of a "what would an Armorcast Leviathan look like" rather than "what would Forge World do?" style. Based on the pictures below, I settled on a footprint of roughly 14"x9" - slightly larger than a Baneblade, which I thought would make it a reasonable size for tabletop gaming.

 

I started off with some half-scale sketches in the ever-useful quad-ruled composition book then measured and cut a set of panels from cardstock to test the fit of the main superstructure, which worked better than I would have expected. After that proof of concept I swung by the hardware store and picked up a mess of plastic signs (as it's cheaper than Evergreen/Plastruct in sheets), figuring if the main parts fit, I could press forward with the next phase...

 

After working up the upper structure I started laying out the templates for the lower half of the vehicle and hit my first major snag - the plastic signage that I got wasn't large enough to accommodate the templates so that's on hold for the time being while I research other options. I did go ahead and cut out the first set of panels for the upper structure from plastic and did some test fitting, though:

 

It works! At the moment the panels are just held together with tape as a test fit. I'm still working out how I want to brace the internal structure to give it some rigidity without making it too heavy. I'm toying with the idea of gluing the bottom and sides together, but leave the top panels off and fill it with expanding foam then trim off the excess before securing the top plates. I have a feeling that may be more trouble than it's worth however, visions of unintentional mushrooming foam sculpture dance through my head...

For the treads and weapons I'm going to be ordering a number of items from perennial favorite Tom McBride, whose eBay store Blood and Skulls Industry has a vast number of excellent bits I'm intending on incorporating into the project, including some 2" wide treads that should be ideal, as well as some beautiful turrets for the top and side sponsons. Here's hoping I can do the rest of the build justice!