201091:48
pm
Basing of the Damned?
Just to get some input on this, since it's something I've been pondering all morning: How should I base the legion?
Right now, I'm sort've liking the idea of them being atop some temple ruins, since that sort of thing adds to their mystery a bit. I've found two commercially-made bases that I'm considering right now:
Dark Age Games Groundwerks - Temple Ruins:
These are nice, but I'm not sure if I like them because of how well they're painted, or because of the actual designs. There's a very limited selection of them - only 3 smalls, two mediums, and one large, so I'd end up with a lot of repeating elements across the army. I'm not sure if that's good or not.
The other potential right now is Micro Art Studio's Temple bases:
These are nice, but a little hard to get (from Poland) and I'm not sure how much I actually like the repeating text elements in the floor.
What do you guys think? Any other ideas? Can anyone tell me from personal experience how either of these bases are? I can only seem to find painted pictures, so I'm not sure of the quality or detail on the actual pieces.
I'm also open to other ideas. I could just do the same old simple rock-basing I do for everything, but I felt like these guys deserved something a little more elaborate. Lava bases are practically cliche at this point, and would have too much of the same colors as the rest of the minature.
EDIT, FEB 9, 2010:
I've settled on the bases for my Legion. I'll be using the 'Ruins' series of bases from Scibor's Monstrous Miniatures:
They're very nice. They're also expensive as shit, but I figure I may as well go all-out if I'm buying bases. Hopefully the quality lives up to my expectations.
I think, despite buying these new bases, I'm still going to have to make my own custom base for my Legion of the Damned Ironclad. Why? I'm buying tickets to Gamesday Baltimore for this year, and I'm thinking that if painting the Dread goes well, I might enter it into the Daemons just for giggles... and their rules specifically prohibit using models and parts that aren't your own creation, so sticking him on a pre-made resin base is out of the question.
2010811:28
pm
Activate cloak-ing!
Here's a bit more on the Librarian, now tentatively named Aduro Terranum after the DakkaDakka.com forum member who suggested it; apparently it's some rough latin for the expression 'To Light The World Aflame', so it seems appropriate.
I found a cloak, courtesy of the... well, very, very, very old Von Carstein model from 4th edition WHFB. I certainly wasn't playing back then, but I picked this up off eBay on a lark, and I'm glad I did - it fits the back of Terminator armor like a glove.
A little dremelling in the small of the Terminator's back was needed, right below the vents, to get the cape to sit properly, but it's just the right height and width to go there. It splays out more to one side than the other, but I think the asymmetry adds a bit of interest to his pose. I'm currently picturing the left arm swept out, like he just swung it around from the front (which would work nicely with the cape). On the base, there'll be a ring of fire encircling the front left quarter of the miniature, gaining height as it nears the cloak and his hand. It's hard to explain, but I have a pretty clear image of it in my head, so you may just have to wait. 
I'm hoping this miniature firewall on the base will be acceptable to most players as a storm shield, because the pose I'm picturing wouldn't be too hospitable to me strapping a shield on the left arm. We'll see!
201085:14
pm
Powered by The Warp
I've been working on this on the side, as it were. I've always liked the idea of a Librarian, and back when I was working on my Salamanders I was collecting parts for a nice conversion. Most of those parts are no longer helpful to me, as I've switched over to the Legion, but I still want to make a Librarian for the army, so off I go.
The start of this conversion is actually a Terminator Chaplain. The reason for this is really simple. I was looking at the Terminator Librarian model and thinking to myself, "That's not going to work for the Legion. The head needs to be a skull." Fortunately, before I set about trying the miserable task of dremelling out the head cavity, I remembered that the Chaplain Terminator was... well, pretty much exactly the model I'd be making, so why not use one as the base? It's one of GW's best models, anyway, covered in a ton of rich detail.
It just so happened that I did have a Terminator Chaplain around, so I started working on him... and this is the first few small steps.
I'm waiting for the greenstuff to fully harden before I set about cleaning it up by sanding it a bit, but you get the idea of what's going on here. I carved a psychic hood that'd fit right over the normal Chaplain Terminator armor, and then greenstuffed the seam over - after sanding, it should hopefully be seamless.
I also yoinked a rather neat sword off a fantasy model -Archaon, from WHFB's Warriors of Chaos. (Side note: I still have the entire rest of the model, horse and all, and nothing to do with it. If anyone wants to buy it, drop me a message. 
) It's a good-sized flaming sword that I originally intended to use for my Salamanders - but it fits the Legion just as nicely.
When I get around to the left arm, I'm probably givin' em a Storm Shield, since that seems to be the preferred wargear loadout of everyone I've asked. Not sure what it's going to be, or how I'm going to make it yet though.
I also have no idea what this guy's name is, yet. Feel free to pitch ideas.
ArchaonA
201084:38
pm
Burny Death Hugs
So, thanks to Zsoulless' help, Redemptor Thanasius looks to be pretty much done, with some minor exceptions.
The "Hellfire Gauntlet" (which is simply what I've decided to call it; Vulkan's has a fancy name, it's only fair) is now finished-off, though not yet actually attached, so don't worry about the gap between the body and the arm. I'm well aware he looks like he wants a hug, but I think it's really only due to the open palm, since the posture is identical to the standard Power Armor Chaplain now. Either way, I still think he looks great.
I'm going to add a bit of cabling hanging from the plug in the bottom of the gauntlet that runs up the arm and to the fuel tanks in the backpack... and a skull has also been added to the knee pad of the leading knee, just because it seemed an appropriate place to put it.
I am probably going to have to do a fair bit of practicing on some older metal marines before I'm comfortable painting this guy. He shouldn't be the first thing I paint for the army, at least, since I want to do a decent job on him and I need to get the hang of painting black armor first.
Anyway, he's pretty much done. I'm not certain if I'm keeping his 'Redemptor' title, since it sounds a bit inquisitorial, but I wanted something as catchy as 'Forgefather'. The name Thanasius is staying for sure, though; it's a corruption of the greek word 'athanasius', which means 'immortal death', if the internet is to be believed.
201072:49
am
Dental hygene not just for teeth
So, this was something I'd heard about and felt like trying.
The idea's straightforward enough - you use toothpaste as a mask for airbrushing. As you'll notice, and as I've since come to determine, I've applied the stuff like a bit of a moron - I should have kept it to the edges of plates and the likes, but I really didn't know what I was doing. Anyway, you simply squirt a bit of toothpaste out onto a palette and grab a sponge like blister foam and just dab it around a bit. Then you airbrush right over it. Which is what I did!
I decided to go for a Goff Scheme that I imagine will be a fair bit black, but I made the tank a bit more on the grey end of things because I figure I'll end up using some Black Wash on the armor later on in the process to make the plates stand out a bit better... which will bring the grey shades right back down to a dark, Goff-y color.
Anyway, once the airbrushed paint has a chance to dry a little bit, removing the toothpaste is incredibly simple - you just hold the tank under a faucet, and off it comes in about a minute, no scrubbing required. You'll notice from my final results that the masking looks a bit more like... well, some sort of retarded camo scheme, rather than rust, largely due to my irresponsible toothpaste placement. Also, I didn't pick up on the fact that the toothpaste would mask off some areas almost transparently - a very thin layer of the stuff's all that's needed, and I didn't realize just how effective it'd end up being.
It's interesting, for sure, and most of all it seems to do it's own sort've blacklining around the 'rust' areas. I'm hoping at this point I'll be able to cut the effect down a bit by painting some plates in red colors and adding things like checkmarks.
201062:37
pm
Rust and green
I figured I wasn't going to do too much more to the Boomwagon, so I went ahead and primed it using Krylon Rust Primer, which is a nice dark brown/orange color. After that was done, I whipped out two colors and just started spraying plates on the thing at random: The darker color is P3's Thornwood Green, which I find makes a really nice dark metal contrast to the rust... despite being a green color, it looks more like dark metal than green when applied over the orange rust. I also used some GW Vermin Brown in the airbrush to increase the contrast a bit.
I'm looking at it now and wondering what color I'm going to paint it. The idea was to put this kind of varied rust color on underneath, and maybe try my hairspray masking or experiment with salt masking techniques. I'm thinking a dark black Goff color with checkers and maybe some red might look nice; that, or blues and yellows, since it is a looted wagon.
Any ideas, guys? What colors do you see when you look at this?
2010510:01
pm
Fist of Fury
So, I have to share this, both because it's a nice step in progress on the model and because of how awesome it's going.
First thing's first: Because this guy is going to be sort've a figurehead for my army, and because I can't sculpt worth a damn, I'm now working very closely with a friend of mine named Zsoulless from The Waaagh.com. Z is not only a disturbingly talented artist but a truly excellent sculptor, and I've managed to talk him into helping me make the Huronesque flamer-fist design I'd previously whipped up.
Well, Z's come through in a big way. He's gotten a start on the Gauntlet, and it's looking really fantastic.
These are his pictures, so they're not quite as large as my usual, but I think the details are still fairly clearly awesome. The fist borrows the concept of having the flamer nozzle in the palm from Huron, and Z's added a very convincing mechanical assembly on the back of the gauntlet that includes a fuel tank and hoses. There's a plug on the bottom of the gauntlet for an eventual cable that will lead up the arm and, presumably, into the backpack with the brazier and big fuel tanks.
Z's also come up with a brilliant substitute for Kesare's Mantle by making a skull press-mold cloak. Now, instead of being layered in dragonscales, the Vulkan counts-as will have souls of the damned screaming out from his tattered cloak. I think if I could paint them up to look a bit ethereal (maybe some grey-blue highlights on a black cloak, to make them look ghostly) it'd be awesome.
The scythe bit is something I figured out before I sent it over to Z. After looking around for inspiration, I actually discovered a great miniature with a very nice scythe - Reaper's Death Priest. After eyeballing the dimensions of the scythe up a bit, I ordered one, and it seems to be a pretty perfect fit. There's a paperclip running down the middle of the styrene tube in the handle that serves as a pin for the scythe's head; wraps that match the chaplain's existing handle will hopefully be sculpted up to the head of the scythe over the white styrene part. I was also thinking that it'd look great if the skull that serves as the base for the blade were lit aflame, so that'll need some attention. Going to have to practice some OSL if I want this model pop, I think.
Anyway, I'm really excited about where this model's going now that I have Z's help on the greenstuff end.
201058:59
pm
Housekeeping
This is just a general notice that I've finished updating Wordpress and all of the related plugins I have running on The Warforge right now. As far as I can tell, everything went smoothly, and everything should be working as intended. If this isn't the case, please let me know so I can address the problem!
2010301:40
am
Charity Case
My good friend Mike has just informed me that he's currently trying to rid himself of a pair of Warmachine lots that include a fair bit of Mercenaries. Having seen and handled these in person, I can vouch for two things:
- These models are actually very nicely built and painted.
- Mike can't take flattering miniature photos to save his life.
As a favor to him, I'd like to direct your attention to these two auctions, which you can find HERE and HERE. The starting bids on these things are really ridiculously generous, since there's a ton of warjacks in each listing.
Give 'em a look!
20103012:49
am
Dreadful Machine
A couple more baby steps with my Legion Ironclad!
I wasn't sure what to fill the top of the dreadnought in with, between the two launchers. After a bit of head-scratching, I dug a neat little iron-halo-esque bit out from god knows what kit (I'm pretty sure it's non-GW) and then spiked a banner on there behind it. The banner's from the Vampire Counts Skeleton Warriors box, with a flaming skull added from the Warhammer Fantasy wizard kit. I've been thinking it might be really interesting to paint the banner up as a burnt, tarnished, and otherwise mostly destroyed Fire Hawks standard, as a homage to the Legion's fluff background. Something to think about, anyway.
I also added a couple bits to the sides of the hip joint, in those open areas that were bugging me. One is a sensor module, hacked free from a pintle-mounted hunter-killer missile launcher assembly, since most dreads seem to have some sort of sensors located around that area. On the opposite side, I just pinned some simple scroll canisters there.
I added a second layer of flames overtop the first. It looks a little messy, because I did some pencil sketching right onto the model that since got smudged; primer will hopefully make the torso look a fair bit sharper. I riveted the top layer of flames, since it seemed appropriate.
I like the current pose it's in; it's somewhat turned, which makes it less static, and more interesting.
There are a couple areas I need to address before I'm happily done with this model. These are the arms, and the engine.I'm not entirely sure I know what to do with these areas - I could try hacking more flame designs out to glue overtop, but I don't want to turn the whole dreadnought into some sort of hotrod. Alternatively, I could try sculpting bone motifs, but I'm not particularly talented with greenstuff, or for that matter sculpting, and I'm leery about ruining parts of the model.
Anyway! Work continues. I'm open to ideas and suggestions.
Recently Updated
- Sneekboss Snogrod
February 28th, 2010 - Looted Boomwagon February 24th, 2010
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- Legion Librarian February 8th, 2010