Painting and Assembling the Primaris Outrider Bikes

I made some significant progress on the Outriders, but hit a bit of a snag...

 

One of the final bits of assembly was to build the riders' torsos and add the Imperial Fist shoulder pads. The kit has the shoulder pads molded as part of the arms, so I needed to cut away the left shoulder pad and fit the new pad over top. This was a little tricky because the arms have some very fiddly attachment points.

 

I also needed to dry-fit the handlebars and the rider on the bike to ensure that the arm holding the handlebar was lined up properly at the wrist. Once I had that sorted, I attached the torsos to a handle and sprayed everything.

 

 

The body of each bike was first primed black, then I masked off everything except the rear fender and the gas tank area, and sprayed them with GW Wraithbone primer and Tamiya Camel Yellow. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised that the Wraithbone completely covered the black with only two light coats.

 

 

When painting, I started with the bike parts and the riders' legs, following the same process outlined in my Imperial Fists painting tutorial.

 

 

After the yellow, I painted the tires and the leather seat. The tires were drybrushed with a mix of earth tones to give them a dusty tone and pop the edges of the tire tread. I initially went too bright with it, but a wash of GW Nuln Oil toned it down nicely.

 

 

After I painted the pouches and added the decals on the bike cowling, I gave everything a spray of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear.

 

 

Once the matte varnish was dry, I painted all of the remaining metallic surfaces and detail, and picked out the lenses on the front of the bike.

 

 

I was so excited to finally assemble the bikes that I overlooked one important detail: The order of assembly. The parts need to go together in a very specific order so all the cut-outs and pegs will fit properly. My plan was to completely build the bikes, and then paint and add the riders' torsos. I got one leg attached before I remembered that the torsos have to go on first, because they have protruding pegs that the legs fit over top of. If I had gotten both legs on first, it would have been impossible to fit the torso in the gap between them.

 

 

I was hoping to at least show off the finished bikes this week, but it looks like I'll have to finish painting the torsos before I can go any further.

 

 

'Til next time!