The Atlas Titan Project, Tales from the Hobby

I am thankful to have the opportunity to share with you all, the truly remarkable story of how a simple hobby project, grew into one of the single largest undertakings in the entire miniature gaming community. It has been amazing to witness this five-year-long project as it has developed and special thanks to Kim and Josiah for allowing me the chance to share their story on how the Atlas Titan Project came to be and where it's going.

Well... Let's get started!

 Back in 2015, our story starts with Josiah, who was inspired by the many individual Warhammer 40,000 Imperial Titan-builds that existed online. He remembers the exact start of the project, since his niece was born around the same time. During 2015, in our corner of the Canadian wilderness, a recession had occurred and Josiah found he suddenly had a fair amount of free time since he was only temporarily laid off from his job due to the slowing economy, "what a great opportunity to explore and try building a small scale titan," said Josiah. 

Little did he realize that as he started building the legs of the titan with PVC pipe and plastic card by hand, that his original scope for a smaller titan was not possible anymore. Undeterred, he scaled up the project to make it much larger. During his days off he would be seen at our local hobby story cutting plastic card and going through dozens of glue bottles. This would be how I would meet Josiah and start to understand his goals. I was unsure if he would ultimately complete the project, but when I saw him I would socialize with him and pass the time. 

As he built the titan he would make each section modular, so he could ultimately store it as pieces and pull them out when he needed to complete details. As time past, Josiah would collect small pieces that were destined for the trash bin and find them a new home as a part of Atlas.

Once the base shell of the body was completed a couple years later he met Kim and their journey as a couple would begin. As they would hangout, less and less time would be spent on the Atlas Project (editor: as he should!), however Josiah soon learned about her talent for creating artwork and fine details. He would ultimately show her Atlas and from time to time she would add green stuff laurels and give advice on creating internal stability of the model so it could stand on it's own. 

"While I was able to help whenever I wanted, it was still very much his baby, it wasn't 100% a team project yet," said Kim. "His original plan was becoming a bit too ambitious, because we realized if we continued with that scale it would have a struggle standing it up at the local game store."

After a while, Josiah would ultimately return to his job and the demands of his workplace would take his attention away from the project and he would be back to normal every day life. 

Fast forward to 2020, Josiah and Kim would become engaged (Editor: Congratulations!). Little did everyone in the world know, but COVID-19 would disrupt life for the couple. The shoe was suddenly on the other foot and now Kim was off work.

"I was talking with our local hobby store and he mentioned that he was going to be opening up a second store and asked about the titan. He was still interested and thought it would make a good centrepiece for his store," said Josiah. 

Now that Atlas was a team project, Kim and Josiah started working on the project at a faster pace. Kim designed the cathedral section that would sit atop it's back and would begin the painting process. Kim was able to add lots of little details to the design of Atlas, helping to tell the ongoing in universe lore for the titan (Editor: perhaps a future article). The titan is being painted as a battle-worn engine of war that had seen centuries of conflict and was slowly being eroded over-time. There will be cracks and imperfections which matches Atlas perfectly, since the whole machine was handcut with no laser printers or CAD files.

Josiah would work on the titan in the evenings, while Kim would work on Atlas in the early mornings till 3 am. 

One day Kim shared photos of Atlas with me and our local miniature wargaming community. I felt compelled by the project and that it should be shared with the greater community (with permission of course). 

"When I saw how much progress had occurred with the Atlas project, my jaw hit the floor! Knowing how hard it is to finish a regular hobby project it was refreshing to see it nearing completion. I didn't want their hard work to go unnoticed, especially by Games Workshop or the larger hobby community," said Adam (Editor: A bit meta don't you think Adam? Shush you... I mean me).

After talking with Kim and Josiah we put the first post out to the world on Twitter to see what kind of reaction it would get for making the largest GW Titan "miniature" in the world... After being blown away by the positive responses and love for the project, the 3 of us became compelled to work together and share the journey. 

That brings us to this moment in time. Ideally Kim and Josiah wanted the project to be finished for August, but that deadline has been pushed back because they are getting married... so yeah that might slow it down a bit lol.

  

While the project started off as a small idea, it ballooned into the massive project you see today. Their ultimate goal with the project is to get unofficial rules for Atlas from Games Workshop so game clubs from around the world can face off against this god-machine. 

You can show your support for the project by re-sharing pictures of the titan with games workshop and the greater #WarhammerCommunity on social media. 

Thank you again to Kim and Josiah and have a fantastic future together.

Sincerely,

Adam