Hobby A.D.D

I seem to find myself easily distracted by hobby projects, as the amount of bouncing between ongoing projects can attest.

New tyrant and base

Now I've been distracted from finishing the heirophant by another tyranid gribbly. This time its an Armoured shell Hive tyrant with 2x twin linked devourers. This guy is a beast, and very hard to shift from the table top, esp if he hits the jackpot and get iron arm and lifeleech for powers, topping up wounds at toughness 7+ is just mean.

Taking the normal tyrant, I removed the front smoke stacks, and replaced them with the spiny carapace piece from the carnifex. Some surgery to the underside was required to get it to fit, but it was minor and should be self explanatory to anyone trying it themselves.

Torso close

The next thing to tackle was the devourers. Now I've never been a fan of the S 6 devourers being the same size as the termagants S 4 ones, it just smacks of lazy sculpting. Also you only get one set per tyrant. Fortunately I've been collecting bugs for a while and have a stock pile of the termagant ones.

So I glued 3 of them together for each arm.

They looked less "testicular" when I was sculpting them

They were attached to one of the previous editions scything talons by a length of brass rod, the bulbous egg sacs/ammo were made from balls of 5 minute putty, and green stuff veins were sculpted onto them as they were blended together to form the sac.

They looked less phallic in my mind I swear.

Next update should have this bad boy either finished, or well on his way.

I also have a couple of commissions in the wings, so expect more A.D.D in the future.

It's alive!!

Hi everyone, sorry for the scarcity of posts recently, but uni has been brutal!

That aside i have managed to pick up a brush in my mid semester break. Many moons ago I was given a Tyranid heirophant at a song. it was a little worse for wear, and a bit bandy legged from being left in a car during an Australian summer, but after a Jesus like resurrection I can show you a PIP.

Not much of a pic, but as a proof of life I think it will suffice.

During my attempt at dis-assembly, the shoulders of both right arms, one for claw, and a couple of spikes snapped off. Most were minor fixes, though I had to get alittle bit creative with the basing to make the claw work (and even then I'm not 100% on it). Rumors of Apoc II has set me painting this guy, and I hope to crush Johns Imperial guard with him at the soonest opportunity.

Orks!

Well its been a while, Uni is taking alot more time then I thought, especially since I'm not a maths brain doing engineering . . .

But I do still need to eat. So I've finished up a commission addition for an old army I sold 3 years ago, as the title says Orks.

This army was originally painted in 2010 while I was recuperating from an ankle injury. I went on to win several tournaments and a couple more podiums, an oddity for me because I've always been a painter first, gamer second.

The additions have taken waaaaayyyy to long to paint, but because they weren't a priority for the owner they got put on the back burner several times, and forgotten about in moves etc. But I finally finished them!

So, presenting . .

Boss:

Nobz:

Burna boyz:

This should be the last painting I do for this army until the new codex drops, when hopefully shiney syndrom will hit my client and I'll get some more work :)

Until next time, thanks for looking.

More Sons of Horus WIPs

Well its been a while. Things have slowed down due to the start of the uni year and the running around that is involved in that, I'm expecting it to be a very slow year of hobby until the holidays because of the amount of time I'll have to put into my degree.

However, I have some more progress to show:

Firstly, the model that I am most happy with so far, Bannerman "TBD":

Continuing the mixing of the Mks of armour, I also added one of the FW bionic arms from the character upgrade set they released. The banner is the standard from the SM command squad, with various purity seals which I have used to cover up an abortive attempt at damaging the standard.

 Betrayal say the Sons used to gild the skulls of worthy opponents, this is the first time I have added skulls to a model in the SoH force, though they should be making more of an appearance from now on.

Secondly, a Sgt for the new squad, armed identically to the previous one, he does however have a bionic arm.

 Next we have some troopers, one of which will have a plasma gun.

And finally we come to something different, I have been trying to figure out how to make my assault marines stand out, and didn't want to go with the named company of black armoured marines. So I decided that my assault marines will be a unit of World Eaters seconded to the Sons, or simply picked up in the heat of battle. In this way I can explain why they just get thrown out in the thick of the fighting, with no regards to casualties (I'm pretty terrible at keeping assault units alive) as the SoH commander simply doesn't care.

I need to buy some more of the FW chainaxes, and maybe one of the new sets with the pistols before I can finish this squad.

Thanks for looking. 

Drop zone commander: Something very different

Hi all.

Today I've been playing with a model my boi, John from The Painting Bunker gave me after he won it in a charity auction for Legacy, a charity here in Australia that supports the widows and children of ADF service members who have tragically died.

It, for anyone who doesn't know, is a Sha'tari Jaguar, a faction in a 10mm Sci-fi game called Drop Zone Commander invented and produced last year by Hawk wargames. Initially I was really excited for this game and John and I had many discussions about it, and how cool the models were.

Unfortunately at release I wasn't able to get any, and my interest waned while I got into 30k.

When John showed me this model I was struck by the lines and the eldar-esqe design philosophy. Then he said I could have it as long as I painted it and blogged it. So here we are.

Much has been made by the creators of this game about their resin technology, and its superiority to any other resin on the market. Unfortunately I seem to have been given a dud. Whilst it wasn't as bad as the worst finecast I have ever seen, it would be about average for that troubled product.

There were several air bubbles, and miscast pieces, in one case along the back of the model I had to carve out the triangle depression that should have been there. This did however demonstrate to me the quality of the resin when cut, it cuts beautifully, again similarly to finecast. Where this is superior to finecast is in its elastic qualities, I've dropped this thing from considerable height and its bounced, without breaking a single leg or weapon.

It also drilled really well, taking magnets for the turret and the waist of the walker incredibly well.

To paint it, I tried a technique using masks. In this case a series of pieces of flyscreen, which is a plastic mesh put over windows to keep bug out.  

I primed the model with Tamiya grey surface primer, then laid the screen over the area I wanted colour and sprayed through the screen leaving the impression of grey lines. I did this with a Purple/pink, then enchanted blue, then yellow.

I then sprayed the bottom white, using the screen to leave the grey lines for interest. The rest was brush work, using golds and silvers from GW, before gloss varnishing and oils, then dullcote to protect the finish and stop the oils rubbing off.

Finally just a shot to show the scale of the model.

Overall I would give this model a 3.5 out of 5, the detail is crisp and easy to paint, the design is cool and different, and the material is easy to work with.

Thanks for looking.

Azreal WIP 2

Just a quick pic to show that work is continuing on the SoH.

I added a secondary plasticard layer to the front of the sling to add some detail to an area that I though was looking more like a beauty pageant contestants sash then a sling.

Before anyone (Matt) asks how it works, I have no idea, its just for looks.

The only conceivable problem (besides the functionality) I have with this design, is the size of the buckle. I may cut it off, and redo it in pure GS. The only thing stopping me is that I used polycement to glue it down, and a buckle would need to be robust enough to be manipulated by someone wearing power armour gloves.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. Any input from the brains trust?

Counts as shenanigans: Azreal

Hey all.

Since finishing the spartan its been nice basking in the afterglow of the internets, but progress must continue, and the sons need someone to lead them.

I want to do a terminator heavy force, and to get them to count as troops in normal games of 40k, I need deathwing, or wolf guard. I've already done a wolfguard army, and Dark Angels just got a new book. So DAs it is. I'll obviously do a Belial conversion later (maybe a counts as Abbadon? Maybe I should do it soon, so I can be the first guy?) but Azreal seems like the most versatile choice, since he unlocks both ravenwing (jetbikes?) and deathwing.

The current plan is:
Azreal
dude with banner of devestation
30x tac marines
5-10 deathwing
3-6 ravenwing
dreads
maybe a predator.

But I also want the army to be able to be folded into any codex that catches my fancy. Ie Chaos. So some for though will have to be put into construction of the terminators so that they can cross codexes easily.

Anyway, enough dribbling from my brain. Onto the pics.

Front:

Continuing the theme of mixing armour mk's, the legs arms and left shoulder are mk4, the torso head and right shoulder are mk3. The little kilt, from the SM command sprue I think, is a nod to the Catphraci  terminators, and will be painted in a dark red. The left hand is plastic, whilst the right is resin, and in some kind of weird FW/GW disparity, they are completely different sizes. I didn't realise this before I glued them to the sword hilt. Obviously I will run him as a Preator with Paragon blade (GL terminator force sword) in 30k, cause that's what everyone else seems too.

Left side.

 This angle shows the flow of the pose a bit better, I was trying to capture a mid-underhand swing, and the momentum affecting the slung combi bolter. He has been pinned numerous (9) times, with one in each shoulder, elbow, wrist hand/sword (one piece of 1.6mm brass rod), right knee and left foot.

Back:

This show the sling and the swing on the bolter a bit better, I tried to 30k up the plasma gun a bit, whilst still retaining the mastercrafted look. Some of the back pack mounting had to be removed to aid the flow of the sling, but its covered anyway, if its too noticeable I'll resculpt it before priming. For tournament WYSIWYG purposes he also has a bolt pistol, frag and krak to cover almost any load out. The little shield can count as a refractor field. I also added a pouch to the holster of the Bolt pistol, to cover up the ugly nothingness of the design.

I actually quite enjoyed putting this guys together, and as the first character I wanted to make him stand out. I'm thinking a white helmet, red plume as a nod to this guy being a terran luna wolf veteran, I will ofcourse make up some fluff to explain away why he wasn't purged on Istvaan 3.

Thanks for looking, anything you have to contribute to the list, ideas on paint, or what you think I did wrong I'd love to hear them.

Aaron