Some sort of Deep-Space Potato? - Astral Claws Converted Storm Talon

"Redemption of the ludicrous" is a term I throw around occasionally.

I'd say my work on the Storm Talon fits right in there. For those of you who don't know or possibly need a refresher on the original mess, here it is. It looks like Games Workshop was trying to make a cross between a space ship and a helicopter, with a little Harrier mixed in.

Ultramarines' blue really helped the "toy" thing, either.

What it ended up looking like was an action figure toy. Or as some forumite put it, a Space Potato. It doesn't look capable of conventional flight, but looks designed for it, what with those little wings. Also, the weapons looking tacked on really gave it the feel of a late addition.

After playing around with a few concepts like trying to make it look more like a helicopter, I settled on emphasizing the sci-fi side. Specifically, it's keeping aloft on oversized jets, not tiny wings.

The tail came off, but I carefully cut off the last segment of the hull so that the pieces required minor trimming to clean, then added a third jet in the middle. This didn't look quite right, so I trimmed down the hull segments a little further. The swivel-jets were reversed, 'cause I thought they looked too bottom-heavy, and liked being able to see some of the details. Also, the side wings came off, there.

The Assault Cannon turret looked pretty weird and unwieldy. I re-mounted them without the turret thing, vertically where the sensors used to be, with a couple spacers and some creative cutting. Not as practical, but way cooler.

The missile pods were the hardest to figure out, I tried a lot of positions, but settled with the slightly awkward over the cockpit look, with some spacers and random tech details to fill the gaps and unify the pod.

And then there's the base- I thought 20-ish square inches of flat looked horribly boring, so I put down an ancient terrain piece from the 3rd edition starter, added a spare sniper scout, and obfuscated the horrible coat of paint below it with lots of burn/corrosion damage, which I thought looked pretty intentional.