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.
2010292:26
pm
This. Is. My. BOOMWAGON!
So!
About... I'll guess, maybe, two weeks ago, I was poking around The Waaagh's forums, and I saw that a friend of mine named Stuart was selling a looted wagon. The wagon had originally been made by another Waaagh forumer, named MTD, and Stuart had picked it up off him a while back, but was looking to downsize his own ork force.
I figured having a looted wagon wouldn't hurt, and I did like the general shape of the tank, so Stuart and I haggled for a bit, and not long after, a tank shows up on my doorstep.
This is what it looked like around the time I bought it; these pictures were taken by Stuart.
No offense to whoever painted the thing, but I really do not like the patchwork squares ork camo scheme. Fortunately, I had the foresight to make my giant jar of stripping solution, well, giant, in case I ever needed to toss something like a whole tank in there. So, into the Warp it went, where it had a nice, relaxing soak in Simple Green overnight.
I pulled the tank out, and started scrubbing the paint off, only to find that I couldn't quite defeat the patchwork patterns. The areas of color on the tank came off easily enough, but the black primer seems to have been masked from these areas, and bonded really well to the plastic, so I can't get it off very easily. I resolved instead to just leave it looking a little patchwork in the hopes that one good coat of primer overtop the whole thing'll fix it all right up.
With that addressed, I had to make a couple modifications to the tank to suit my liking. Pictures first!
I popped off the top hatch, and added my own version with a grot tank commander sticking out, since the model needed some character. The head on the grot is one of the ones from Micro Art Studio. I can tell any of you thinking about buying these heads that they are a nice product, but they do not fit on the current grot plastics - the heads are too big for that. I had some fantasy goblin plastics, though, and since those guys are a wee bit bigger, you can get away with sticking one of these big melons on them without too much in the way of consequences. I gave him a sword just for the whole 'Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!' memetic effect.
I tinkered just a little bit with the back end by drilling some holes out of one of the exhausts and turning it into a cowling for a bigger exhaust pipe. I also wrapped the end of the boomgun barrel in chain, and put a cow(?) skull overtop, since I thought it was a nice touch. Glyph plates were added sparingly in places where I thought they'd help provide a bit of interest.
Truthfully, there's not a ton to do to this thing - it's a reasonably well-made, orky looking tank, and Boomwagons don't need much in the way of extra wargear or ornamentation. I was considering putting Rokkit Launchers on the thing, since they are able to take two additional ones, but someone pointed out to me that I'd basically never get to fire them since you can't fire other guns along with ordnance weapons, and in the event I can't fire the ordnance weapon (because of, say, the Don't Touch Dat! rule) I probably still won't be able to get much use out of the guns.
The only thing I'm really considering adding to this thing, still, is a banner somewhere around the back end. Not a vertical one, but something like a wavy flag behind where the commanding grot is.
I think I may give salt weathering a go on this thing - I bought it mainly because I thought a good paint job'd turn the model right around, and it seems to present a good number of surfaces for me to experiment with.
2010291:44
pm
Not quite a legion yet!
My first order of the Legion of the Damned's come in, and I'm working on cleaning up the metals and removing those godforsaken mold lines and flashing. I thought I'd show you guys the big pile of crap I've been able to amass over the past month:
I did manage to get my hands on a lot of old Legionnaires - the ones from 3rd edition. They're slightly smaller in size than the current edition of marines, but I figure if I lump them together in their own squads nobody'll be the wiser. That, or I can put them in vehicle hatches or the likes, where they'll end up making the vehicles themselves look a bit bigger by comparison!
There's a couple classic heavy weapons in that bin - the shoulder-mounted heavy bolters, lascannons, that sort of thing. All of them are the Legion versions, so they have skeleton iconography all over 'em. I think it'd be a pretty cool look to bring this kind of shouder-mounted retro weaponry into a newer, modern army style.
2010291:36
pm
Concept sketch for the Gauntlet
Just thought I'd pitch this up here, as I've been receiving some reasonably good ideas from my readers and I wanted to show what I was thinking.
I actually really like the idea of the gauntlet-flamer being something like what Huron Blackheart has. I've talked to one of my talented sculpting friends, Zsoulless from over at The Waaagh, about maybe having a custom arm sculpted up, because the more I think about this design the more I like it.
I've considered using Huron's actual arm, and modifying it a bit, but I'm not entirely sure if that'd work - it's a very chaotic piece, and the hand would have to be totally remodelled.
In any case, this is something I'm going to endeavor to make before I default to my heavy flamer arm backup. 
I sort've want to take a crack at maybe sculpting it myself, just to see what happens but I have no idea where to begin - probably an armature of paperclip or something, and then the basic cylindrical arm shape, but I can't imagine sculpting fingers like that properly.
2010279:39
am
Burning sensation
So I think I'm probably going with the ol' Termie heavy flamer arm for my counts-as Vulkan. I gave slinging a flamer nozzle under the stock chaplain fist a shot, and I'm really not happy with it. I've just kind've roughly puttied it on there, to be sanded and filed once it hardens, but truthfully my sculpting skills have never quite been up to par and this is a prime example of that in action.
The concept's there, I guess but truthfully I think the heavy flamer arm'd end up better in the long run.
2010239:02
pm
Legs on legs!
Well, I'm still working on it, but I felt like taking a break from trying in vain to sculpt some sort of bone details, so I took some pictures instead.
I stuck a quick plasticard spacer between the dreadnought's right arm and the torso - I'll use a bit of putty to smooth that whole area out overnight, since I can't be bothered to deal with waiting for the stuff to dry while I'm still working on things. The arms are also magnetized on now, in the event I need to remove them for game reasons (weapon destroyed) or I ever feel like making a hurricane bolter arm.
I also decided to see if I could play on the skeletal appearance of the dreadnought a bit. I filed the groin plate down and puttied it smooth, and then used some of the newer skeleton plastics to make a pair of legs hanging off the front and curling down between the legs.
I think it's a neat look with the ribs and skull right above it - better than the dodgy-cast purity seal that was there earlier. There were some bubbles on the underneath of that whole groin plate that I got to fill while doing all this.
I need to add some sort of additional armor plating to the upper leg area, on either side of the hips - nothing really clever's struck me yet, though.
Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I need to add an engine to the back, and then do a fair bit of legion-related detailing - see if I can't get some bone textures and flames on the open spaces, and skulls everywhere else. I've also been thinking a narrow banner that hangs between the two launchers up top might be a nice touch, but I'm waiting to see what I do to the launchers themselves before I start filling that area in.
One last picture for fun's sake:
More to come!
2010235:02
pm
Press-mold rib experiment
So I've got a couple things going on with the Dreadnought at the moment, most of which are drying and won't be ready to be finished off until later tonight. I hate waiting for putty!
In the meanwhile, I thought I'd try something. My buddy Zsoulless is a pretty great sculptor, and I asked him how I might go about sculpting ribs onto things. I thought it'd make good over-detailing to stuff like the cyclone launchers and maybe dreadnought shinplates or the likes. He recommended I get a baking clay like FIMO or Sculpey, and make a 'negative' of the ribs first. I gave it a shot, and figured I'd throw the results of the experiment up here.
This is my mold. It's not that great, but whatever, I'm just trying things out.
Here's what happens when you press GS into it and pull it back out.
It's not great - I probably won't leave that on there - but it's an interesting idea, nonetheless. I may have a go at making yet another mold with the ribs spaced a bit closer together, since I sort've like the idea of ribcage details over the cyclone launchers. I just wish I was a bit more of a sculptor, so I could just smear GS overtop this thing and somehow make it look like ribs, like all of those talented blighters do.
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