200984:31
pm
Even in death, blah blah blah…
Since I'm putting together a small Salamanders force, I'm using Vulkan in my army. Ironclad dreadnoughts are pretty lucrative to begin with, but when you're suddenly able to reroll all of the ranged weaponry it's got, it becomes a must-have. To that end, I'm building up an Ironclad who will be podding in on Turn 1 of most of my games to try and destroy as much armor as he can possibly reach.
Because he's a Salamanders dreadnought, I'm swapping out the stormbolter on the CCW arm for a heavy flamer - nothing beats that reroll. 
Aside from that, this is going to be a pretty straightforward Ironclad in terms of wargear. I'm keeping the Seismic hammer half because I think it beats the chainfist for most uses, and half because it's a 'hammer' and that's a big part of Sallies iconography anyway.
To that end, I've been working on the upper torso so far, and I thought I'd share a bit. I've not done much detailing, mostly just setting up the chassis. Some of my ideas are loosely based on the Ironclad Dreadnought Concept Art that got out over at Warseer. I'm referencing that for the torso, mainly; it seems the Ironclad design there has much more squared off shoulders, as compared to the stock dreadnought's slight outward incline. Additionally, since the thing is AV 13, I figured squaring the torso off by adding extra armor plating overtop was the best way to go.
Some pictures:
The torso's been squared off with carding, and greenstuff was used to patch up my sloppy seam between the plates on the front edge of both sides. It's filed smooth and flat, so it should be pretty indistinguishable.
The sarcophagus area was slightly filled, as you can see in the pictures, because initially I was going to go for the Forgeworld sort of design where there is a head in a terminator-esque alcove on the front of the dreadnought. I got talked out of this by a couple people, with the rationale that if it's got AV13, it should not be exposed like that, and some sort of monolithic front plate would be much better in terms of appearance. I will be adding some sort of reinforced sarcophagus plate overtop that area, once I figure out what I want it to look like.
The engine on the back was from a Grey Knight Dreadnought that I bought ages ago. I didn't use it on the GK dread because I had a spare engine from a Throne of Judgement which looked much more gothic and fit the Inquisitorial theme of the thing better. The pipes on the bottom of it were also seriously miscast (thanks forgeworld!) so I cut them down and got this thing to fit on the back here. I'll probably do more with it later, but I figured I'd get it out of the way.
Most important thing I wanted to discuss, though, was the Seismic Hammer arm. I was scratching my head for a while there as to what I wanted to do before I dug a furioso arm out of my bitz bins, and it all clicked. the CCW hand from the furioso arm found it's way onto the other arm, while I used the rest of it as a basis for the hammer. I figured it was ideal, anyway, because it already had a meltagun underslung. 
The wrist area is capped off by a bit from a Thunderfire Cannon that had four holes. (I had this left over, because I bought a Tfire cannon to use as a chassis for a large Shokk Attack Gun for my orks). I figured I'd borrow a bit more from the CAD art and put some sort of hydraulic piston-y things on the end of each.
Now, this is where I am having a bit of trouble, conceptually. Because Salamanders are big on the hammer iconography, I wanted to do an actual hammer on the end of these pistons - like a giant, scaled-up thunder hammer, basically. I thought it'd be more suiting than the back-massager the Ironclad in the CAD art has. However, I have a couple ideas bouncing around in my head, and I wanted a bit of feedback as to what might be the most viable. Both are pretty much hammers, but different in appearance.
Here's a picture of the base:
Idea number one is pretty straightforward - like a giant thunderhammer, scaled-up to fit on the end of the pistons, maybe with some sort of reinforced plating so that it could either smash with the top of the hammer, or either of the sides.
Idea number two is a bit lower tech. My concept was that perhaps their Primarch, Vulkan, being a craftsman of sorts, had some sort of artistic pursuits, and sculpted things from the volcanic stone on Nocturne in his youth, or spare time, or whatever. That's not really important. What I'm trying to get at is that this very hard, dense, volcanic stone had something to do with the Salamanders primarch. Maybe it was his special posing rock, that he used when he wanted to look particularly heroic. Either way, it's been commandeered by this Dreadnought as a somewhat-sacred beatstick.
Both are flamed because, well, Salamanders, and it looks cool.
I am fonder of concept number two, but I'm at a loss as to how I might go about making the stone itself. I want it to be cracked and a bit worn from smashing so many heretics to pieces, yet still retain that general hammer shape. My first impulse says that making a understructure out of styrene and sculpting with greenstuff overtop will let me add the cracks and such properly, but I'm pretty rubbish as a sculptor, and I have a feeling any cracks I try to press into the greenstuff with an xacto or what have you will look ludicrously silly.
I'm sort've looking for input at this juncture as to ideas for the hammer itself, and how I might go about executing said ideas. In the mean time I'll probably work on the legs while I think it over.
200984:40
am
Lights, Camera, Burn the Heretic!
I decided to keep my life simple and just use the yellow/orange LED. After a lot of harrowing drilling through the body, trying not to hit anything vital, I got the LED fitted comfortably into the head and down into the body. I actually drilled a hole in the cloak's back by accident, so I had to pop off some scales and smooth it over. I'll be re-scaling that later.
Anyway, here he is.
Once I fix the cloak a bit, I'll put his backpack on. The gaps between the gauntlet arm and the body are taken care of. The shoulder pad's sitting at a bit of a strange angle, admittedly, but it had to be positioned like that so that it wouldn't interfere with the backpack or the helmet's line or sight. (He looked a bit silly, since he couldn't see over it, so I had to tweak it a bit. )
I may end up putting him on a larger base involuntarily, just because I need to cram a coin-cell battery under his base properly. Probably going to be 35mm-ish, and a couple mm higher than a normal base, but it shouldn't be too big of a deal.
20082512:16
pm
If I said you had a nice body…
Just a scant two months ago, I sent my warboss bike off to the disgustingly talented Nozeminer, from The-Waaagh.com's forums, for a bit of work. Particularly, I asked him to sculpt me a mean, green, half-machine ork rider to represent Zanzag Barga, my ork Bikerboss. I told him I basically did not care about the time frame in which the model was done, which meant he could work on it at his leisure. Since then, he's put together some absolutely phenomenal work, which I feel compelled to share.
If you read this link, which leads to Zanzag's fluff, the model makes a lot more sense, but to recap: Zanzag is an ex-fighta-bomma pilot who lost his entire right side, clean down the middle, in a suicide run. To reward him, the meks and painboyz built him a fancy new bionic replacement for all the parts he lost. Unfortunately, due to it's weight and bulk, he's not able to fly anymore, so being an Evil Sun at heart, he turns to bikes as a way to get his thrills.
The model's theme borrows half from the Terminator movies (Ahhnold!) and half from WWII bomber aesthetics. Noze did some absolutely fantastic work on this guy so far - you can clearly see the bionic half of his body, and the bionic foot is a nice touch. The real work of art is the head, though - that half-bionic grin is just insidious.
I've given him a bit of input in terms of concept and ideas, but aside from that I've pretty much let him run wild with the sculpting, and he has done an absolutely incredible job. I'm not sure how long it'll be till the whole model's done being sculpted, but every time I get an update from him it gets harder and harder to wait!
Noze has also had the foresight to leave the model in a couple separate pieces.Given how awesome this biker is shaping up to look, I've decided to go whole-hog on the mini and light him. When I get the miniature back, I'm going to attempt to make a cast of the head, and then use that cast to drill out the 'bionic' eye and slip a red LED into his noggin (I'd hate to accidentally slip up and ruin the original head!) It should give him that authentic 'Come wif' me if ya wantz ta Waaagh!' terminator look.
There's a couple other things that need to be done to this model (particularly, the bike) after I get it back from Noze. I would love to add a grot hanging off the back of the bike, and I set aside the weedy runt from the Shokk Attack Gun kit that is getting 'sucked in' to the vaccum port on the gun for this purpose. Unfortunately, in the interim of sending this bike off for work, I seem to have lost the little guy, so I'm going to have to come up with an alternative. The bike's also getting a nice, big banner to trail behind it. I have some funny ideas for what sort of things could be drawn on the banner, but I'm going to wait until a bit later to let that cat out of the bag.
Anyway, there you have it. I get giddy whenever I look at this guy, and I can't wait to get him back and finish him off. Thanks Noze!
2008178:16
am
Eye contact
Up to my electrical shenanigans. I hollowed out the helmet and eyes so I could install lights in the head. It's still being cleaned up and worked on a bit, but you get the general idea:
The 'light bleed' that you guys are seeing is partly due to the thinner plastic where I hollowed out the head. Fortunately, that sort of thing is easily fixed with the application of paint - a bit of black paint on the interior of the hollowed out helmet, and the normal Salamander green overtop will completely conceal all of the unwanted glow.
Interesting thing to note is that a 3mm LED does actually fit inside a marine's head. Quite nicely, actually. I intended for his eyes to be a bright yellow/almost green color, and I fished a yellow LED out of my pile for that purpose, but it seems to be orange instead as you'll see in the pictures. I think that may actually have something to do with the LED getting too much voltage - it's probably meant for 2.5v and I'm feeding 3v into it here. Either way, I may not even use the 3mm LED, as I have ridiculously, ridiculously tiny SMT LEDS that are the right color and about half a MM wide. I can probably install one behind each eye if I do that, though I'm not sure if I want to deal with the hassle of that.
Anyway, just thought I'd show this.
20081611:19
am
BBQ time!
Here's a wee bit of update for this.
First thing is that I finished off his spear. I decided to go with the old rune priest blade, and I think it fits pretty nicely, actually. I thought it'd end up being two small, but currently it looks at least manageable. I also filed the styrene part of thehandle a little thinner, and added an eagle head to the bottom of the thing because, well, because.
Secondly, I completely retooled the Gauntlet of the Forge. Gone is the 'power fist with flamer stuck on' approach - now I'm using the 'apothecary arm with some sort of gun nozzle stuf on' approach. I think it actually looks pretty good - more integrated with the arm, for sure, and the existing tanks and wires and doodads on the arm give it an appropriate look. I hacked a 2nd ed marine pistol apart that was on my desk and stuck the nozzle where the chainsaw part used to be on the fist. It needs a bit more cleaning up and work, but I think this one's here to stay. The other options I've seen are all based around power fists, and let's be honest, Vulkan hasn't got one. He does have digital weapons, though, which is what I'll probably try passing the other fiddly bits (see by his hand) off as.
There's some gaps to fill with greenstuff, but I don't expect that to be too big of a problem. I'm seriously giving thought to lighting his eyes a yellow-green with SMD LEDs, but I've not made up my mind yet. I ordered a hundred pack from some company in Hong Kong via ebay, so god knows how long I'm going to end up waiting before they get here.
Anyway, there you have it for now. I will do more to this after my finals are over.
2008510:01
am
Scaling the cloak
Not much in the past few days, because, well, exams.
But, I've been trying scales again.
There's a few spots where it's a bit too linear, but overall, I'm not going to stress out about it. This stuff's going to look better with paint on and a backpack covering it.
2008212:53
pm
Ambivalent as usual
I smoothed the back of the cloak down a bit more, and plucked off some of the more uniform scales. I'm going to try filling them back in so they look a bit better varied. The flatter area on the right of the cloak now should make my life easier doing the scales.
I dug a MK8 helmet out and put it on here just to get a look at it. The details on the one I have in particular seem a bit soft, but it's still a better head than what I had on there, I guess.
Looking at the gauntlet, I may make one or two other variants before I settle on a final version, because this does look a bit slapped on and clunky.
200814:38
am
Forging a Gauntlet and Cloak
Here's some scales liberally smattered on the back of Vulkan's cloak. I'm going to need to add about twice as much as what's on there before I'm done with the cloak, but I think it's looking alright. I'm considering just going over the whole cloak with some really watered down elmers glue before I paint in the hopes that it'll help these little globs of greenstuff stick better to the cape, because I'm worried that they might come off through handling.
You can also see the Gauntlet of the Forge I've been working on. I've gone pretty simple with it. After digging through my older edition marine parts, I found a power fist that looked like a nice fit on power armor (rather than terminator armor) and an old flamer bit. I hacked the flamer up some and stuck it on the back of the glove, and with a bit of twisted wire 'attached' it to the mechanisms of the arm. Here's more pictures of it, as well as the shoulderpad I think I'm going to use on that arm:
I may consider sculpting tiny flames onto the back of the gauntlet, but it's such a small area I might be better off painting it.
Anyway, what do you guys think?
20083010:07
am
Swiss Army Rhino
The ubiquitous rhino chassis is the basis for almost half a dozen Space Marine tank variants. Although I have piles of Rhinos around my apartment these days, it still makes good sense in wargear terms to modularize things on such a chassis, so that it can comfortably serve different roles between games. With that in mind, I went about making a multipurpose Rhino that could be a Razorback, Predator, Whirlwind, or... well, Rhino, with just a moment's notice.
First thing you obviously have to do when you're going to have such a multipurpose and used chassis is to put some bells and whistles on it. In this case, headlights suffice:
There's a battery tucked safely away in the cabin compartment, as well as a small toggle switch. Both are accessible from the vehicle's underside:
The battery is accessible from the bottom so that, in the unpleasant event I need to replace a battery in the vehicle, I can do so without tearing the whole thing to pieces.
The rear hatch on the rhino has also been flamed-up to fit with the Salamanders aesthetic.
It's worth mentioning that the primary reason the front hatch and side doors on the rhino are bare at the moment is because I'm waiting on Forgeworld to maybe send me the doors and front plate I ordered back in early October. If I'm lucky, they might make it here before 2009!
Moving on, let's talk about the magnetic hardpoints. On the two side doors of the rhino, there's thin magnetic strips for the attachment of doors or sponsons. Beneath the top turret ring, there's also a magnet, which allows me to snap different main armaments down onto the tank.
I had to bump the predator turret ring up a bit so that it would still turn properly, as I didn't realize the rear hatch on the tank had to be the other way up for that turret to fit. Still, everything fits together nicely, and everything pivots and swings as appropriate. For example, the chassis configured as a Predator:
Pretty straightforward, right?
I've got a couple plans for this still. I want to add 'scaley' armor in the trim of the rhino chassis so that it fits more with the Salamanders aesthetic, but that should be simple enough. Once I get the plates I need from Forgeworld, I'll be set to paint this thing up.
20083010:01
am
Fire and Firepower
To be completely honest, I haven't done much with this Vindicator, and probably won't go too nuts - Vindis are pretty straightforward in terms of appearance and behavior. However, I'm doing what I can to add small bits of Salamanders aesthetic here and there, so I figured I'd share the my start:
Rather than the usual hazard stripes, I thought flames on the plow would be more appropriate. I'm going to add a second, smaller row of flames atop the first, and probably have a go at cutting out a couple small Salamanders icons for either side door.
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