Monday, August 27, 2012

Space Wolf Conversions using Chaos Warriors...part 1

 I've done quite a bit of converting of Chaos Warriors into Chaos Spacemarines in the past, but what a lot of people do not realize is that they make pretty cool looking Space Wolves.  Matt Gubser, who sculpts of Reaper Miniatures and a number of other manufacturers, was one of the first people that I saw do this style of conversion.

All this work is on commission, so I will not be painting any of it.  I'm instead painting Warriors of Chaos and Vikings at the moment.  The conversions require spacemarine legs and bits and Fantasy Chaos Warriors.  What I am doing is removeing the chaos warrior legs with a jewelers saw, and then adding the space marine legs in there place also cut with a jewelers saw.

Anyways, the models can be kind of stale, since they are based on the rank and file chaos of warriors.  So to make up for that lack of dynamics you need to overload them with detail.   So I've added a bunch of furs, beards, hair, claws, chain, and drapings, I recommend clicking on the collage photos to enlarge them.
The basing is something I normally do not like to do, but sometimes that is what is required, big rocks to stand on.  In this case the slate rock is faked by a large chuck of bark.  The miniatures above are just temporarily pinned to the bark at the moment.  Some of the hands are simply pinned for the addition of pistols and such later.
Above another view of the model on the right in the previous pic.  One thing I need to be a bit conscious of while doing these is to watch the knee knocking on the one on the right.

4 comments:

  1. Finally, someone doing this conversion right. For so many years we've been seeing people jamming on bolters to these figures without bothering to fix the elbow. Any shots from the back? The SM back packs seem to be sitting properly in these photos.

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  2. Very nice. These guys would make great wolf-guard/wolf-lords etc. Very reminiscent of the cover of the SW Codex.

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  3. Thanks guys. The elbow is quite easy, with it being a nice big socket you can simply trim down a normal space marine arm. I've also converted enough of these into bestigors and two handed weapon warriors to know that even scuplting an elbow pad is very basic. When you do that I use a dremel to remove the elbow.

    The backpacks are probably one of the more easy things to do, but like you said alot of people mount them too high. Trial and error until you get it to a point where you like it. Then I mark all of the models in that same location with a Sharpie. I like to drill a pin in the back and then make a box out of GS, center the box on the pin and as the GS is curing apply the backpack to the pin, don't press the GS to much to mush it out, just push gently enough to get it to fill any gap on the back pack. Basically you are making a shape that is similar to that of the regular space marine.

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  4. These also make cool Chaos Space Marines too. I generally will mount the Chaos backpack a bit higher to put an emphasis on the chaos pack.

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