The Beast Lives

It breathes, it has brakes, runs, makes noise, my awesome Ork battle truck is coming to life. Well maybe not an ork battle truck, but more like my '51 Ford F-1. Lots of blood, sweat, and money in this one.

Lots of work not enough time....

Lately I have been swamped with commission work, building lots of cool things. I like seeing ultra cool armies, even more so than one off pieces. For me there is something about all of the models making up the army when done well and right that is just intriguing. I think its a really under-appreciated portion of the hobby. In my opinion, a lot of the individuals that just build the one off competition models haven't the appreciation for armies filled with creativity and work, and fail to see the effort put forth, because all they can see is the flaws in the technique in particular individual models in the army. Many of them cannot see the big picture, all they can see is this micro version of the picture. And of course many of them feel quite superior, to the army builders. My eyes are very wide open, even moreso, after a short debate over the upcoming Adepticon Rogue Demon painting competition. That's unfortunate...its their loss.

That said, thought I would show a few pieces that I have recently finished and currently working on. Currently working on converting some Forgeworld Ogryn from 40k to Fantasy. This is a WIP picture, the detail on these huge models are intense, learning a bit of nurgle techniques from them. More to follow on these models, someday soon.



And some more bloodletters....

And this one is for me. I have been thinking about my orc army quite a bit lately, knowing that I need some centerpiece models for the army, this one of them that I have in mind. So I'm working on this in my spare time. The head on the right may just tip you off to what its for....

Not sure that I will be able to pull this off, but I am going to attempt to.

A little work done

Been very busy of late with commission work, so not much head way on my own stuff but I do have some things show.

I've had a few space marine bikes since I did my Templar army a long time ago and never put them together, so I thought I would play with that model a bit for fun while building a bunch of commission stuff.







Haven't mad much progress on the orcs, but I have been playing with a few things to distinguish the heads. The goal with my orc army will be not repeat a single model in the army.

Predatorial

A predator in our midst. This mini has been sitting on my desk for a long time, so I decided it was time to actually perform some work on the model. Its coming around and finally looking like something inspired by the movie creature.

A late arrival....

A long time ago I started this model, back when I was playing my Khorne Beastmen. I wanted a better Doombull for my army. I recently just got around to finishing the model. I have no plans to paint this model, but it was fun to build none the less, in an attempt to freshen up the old model. I really dislike those hideous feet that the normal model has. And the flowing hair matches the rest of the minotaur and other doombull model in my army. I also gave the model a neck, GW back then must not have liked necks or something, much like my Blood Thirster.

Spawning a new bug

A long time ago I built some chaos trolls for my beastmen and absolutely hated the models after I finished them, they were quickly thrown out of the army. When the spawn kit came out I decided to strip them down and see what I could do with them, and the first turned out pretty cool. This is the second one, chaos troll converted into chaos spawn. Now there was a bit of dremel work done and bit of GS work done to blend all of the parts to make a nasty looking bug. Now I really like the chaos trolls as chaos spawns, much better.

Some more messing around with 40k Chaos...

Sometimes all it takes is really subtle conversions to make your army unique and interesting. These are some examples of just that, simple head and arm swaps and use of a variety of chaos space marine parts. Take advandtage of all of the new plastic pieces out there. The great thing with chaos is that the 40k parts and Fantasy parts are practically interchangeable.

Finale to Armor Tutorial

Got around to shooting pics of the pieces from tutorial. A fun bit of work, getting ready to prime, and very soon expand the number of bloodletters I have at my disposal. And here is the final work minus the bl spine pieces, hope you enjoyed the tutorial:

Continuing the Armor Plate Tutorial

Now back to the arm. I’m not making a number of plates, but I am using the same technique to make raised edges around the perimeter of the plate. In this picture I am gently denting the plate with the cup chisel. I do this by pushing edge in and then gently drag it back to smooth the central area. Again we are doing this after we got the plate completely smooth and the edge defined.








Now with this being Khorne, I kind of like to do that beaten brass plate look so I’m taking another step here, to make it look like it was beaten out with a hammer, a sort of ball-peened hammer look. For this effect, I’m using the ball stylus.



There you have it. How I make armor plates. After you have all of that done, decide if you want rivets and straps and other thing added to them.

I'll put up some final pics of the Bloodletters in a bit.

Next step plate making

Alright, let’s do some armor plates. Here we have a set of bloodletter legs, I’ve added a sheet of GS to the legs in the general shape that I want on the leg, and smoothed it out with my fingers. Again use water and/or lotion on your fingers to smooth out the GS.

Next shape up the armor plate edges with the knife end of your sculpting tool. Done right this will give you a fairly sharp edge.

Smooth out the plate. In this picture you see me using the round cup smoothing out the GS. This is a cool picture, as you can actually see the water between the cup and the GS, as I was lifting the tool to back up and smooth an area out.

Here you see me using the spoon/spatula end of the metal sculpting tool smoothing out the GS on an arm.

At this point I want to make the plate on the leg into several plates, so I’m using the firm flat chisel point to make raised edges for what will be overlapping plates.

More to follow soon.

Posture and Armor Plating Part 2

In this post we'll correct the posture of the bloodletter and see some general gap filling and smoothing tips on GS work.

Stage 1
We’ll cut the torso at the waist, straighten it out matching the back groove where the spine piece goes. Pin the two pieces back together with using some pin material and a pin vise.

Fill the gap with GS and smooth it out a little, one of the quickest ways to smooth it out is by simply dragging your finger gently across the GS. Put a little water or lotion on prior to doing that. The goal is not just too smooth it out, but also to blend it in to get a smooth transition from plastic to GS.

Stage 2
Allow stage 1 to cure for awhile. In this stage we want to make the area we created in stage one to look like it has abdominal muscles. Roll out a small sausage of GS, and place it approximately where shown on the pic below.

Blend the edges of the sausage into to the torso with fingers and/or sculpting tools. If I use tools I’m generally using the round cup chisel or the tapered round to do the blending. Once the edges of the sausage is blended into the torso I'll use the round cup chisel to do some general correcting of the sausage to rid it of any possible ridges.

Below you see me blending in the GS with the tapered round.

Now we need to define the abdominal muscle, again I'll use the tapered round and gently add an indentation down the center.

And the final product, shown below. Allow this to cure a little and do the next set of abdominal muscles.

Next post, we're ready for the actual armor plating of the miniatures, but the thing to take out of this how to smooth out the GS, which is critical to making armor plates.