Mhara gal WIP 3

Here is the almost finished Mhara gal!

As you can see I tried to incorporate a goat skull into the plasma cannon, not sure how successfully considering it is 100% sculpted. 

I was at a loss as to what I should add to the shoulder, then I realized a trophy/sacrifice would be appropriate. And considering the size of the dread, a whole space marine fits there! 

The spike was added first, then I drilled a hole through the marines torso and threaded it one, the limbs had to be cut and reposed to achieve a more realistic "drape". 

Next post will be some better pics of the dread in the photo booth. 

Thanks for looking. 

Mhara gal, Arktun the anointed WIP

Just a quick one today, talking to Rictus about what I should do with my contemptor from the Battle at Calth set, and he suggested a Mhara gal. 

Considering the plan is had up til then was terrain, I immediately grabbed the gs and the bitz box. This is the first gs session wit minimal thought and rouge thumbs ruining my work.

One thing I wanted to carry over was the animal skull and teeth from the gal vorbak, as I found them to be some of the freshest and creepiest details on the gal vorbak kit. 

More WIP shots soon. Thanks for looking. 

Bearers of the Word, Muster

Welcome one and all to another post that starts off with an apology for failing at updating, sorry about that . . . 

Inspiration for my scheme

As usual though, after a long hiatus I have pics of finished minis to make up for it.

 Its been along time since I painted anything for the Horus Heresy that wasn't for my Sons, the last thing I painted was that test world eater, who coincidently has been repainted to make it into this squad, he was the test again, and just turned out well enough to not need another re-re-paint.

Quite happy with how the metallic red has come out, it is a Vallejo model air colour, "Signal Red", there are several layers of GW washes to bring it down to a more muted colour though.

The eyes on these are yellow, not green as in the inspiration picture, not for some paint theory reason, but because I don't actually own any green paints! Surprised the hell out of me actually.

The only things I can't get to work are the inscribed geometric symbols in their armour, I  have actually repainted armour panels that I just felt it wasn't working on, like the chest of the guy with pelvic parchments.

I'll have another couple of posts on these guys coming up, and have a few more at the base coat stage. Funnily enough, while base coating my airbrush carked it, so these are the first models I have painted, entirely with brush, in a very long time.

It is also actually a really hard scheme to photo graph well, so I apologise for the quality of the pictures, I really need to set up a proper light box one of these days.

Thanks for looking, and hopefully I'll have something else for you all shortly.

New WIP

So it didn't take long for the DE bug to bite.

One of the most impressive models at the time of release, and of the DE, and GW range at the time was the Razorwing. It, and the scourges pretty much sold me on the entire miniatures range.

I got a bit carried away today when I was digging through some boxes and found an old Razorwing, it was dusty and coated in paint already, but 20 mins of TLC and I got it to the point I could prime and base coat it again.

Some of the surfaces are a bit rough, but I still love where this is going. the second picture is more representative of the colour too.

Stay tuned for more soon.

Thanks for looking.

150 followers! And more terrain!

Wow, thanks so much guys, late last week the blog ticked over 150 followers. Thank you all so much for liking my work enough to follow me, here's to 150+ more :p

As for what I've been doing. . . well, something will remain a secret, for now.

But I can show you more of the terrain WIP that I've been doing for the tournament this weekend (damn that snuck up).

After the disaster with the chipping coating on the masks, I reapplied the finish by using a textured paint, this seemed to hold on well, and filled the gaps so that I could apply a grey undercoat, followed by Tamiya Dark Yellow spray.

This was followed by some green washes of various shades to add an aged look.

I then added a brown wash to some parts. However this ended up giving a German WW2 camo effect (no pics), a dry brush of bone, and a thin over spray of Tamiya Dark yellow sorted it out, and toned the effect down to acceptable levels.

To add some more interest to the terrain, and impart a story element to it, I clipped the fire brands from the GW flagellent kit and painted it with the airbrush to simulate fire. A rudimentary OSL effect was done in the eye sockets at the same time.

They were then stuck in the eyes of the masks, and soot was then sprayed (probably too heavily) to the eyebrows and lower lids/rims of the mask.

A while ago (18 months??) I bought a bunch of second hand terrain. In it was a whole bunch of tyranid capillary towers (24) and a bunch of CoD buildings.

These will form the basis of the next update. 

Thanks for stopping in.

Terrain post #2

A second quick post about the terrain project I've been working on with my mate in preparation for a tournament.

WIP building

Once we'd built the buildings we needed to paint them. Texture paint wash brushed on to provide a concrete look, and protect the foam, then they were primed using cheap spray paint from Bunnings.

Once that was dry an over spray of white to add some quick shading, and a thick wash of grey to bring the white back down in tone.
Then they were weathered and drybrushed with light grey to pick out the details.

The craters are just GW plastics glued to some MDF, Painted Dryad bark, drybrushed Steel legion drab, then Ushabati bone. The water effect is a polyurethane resin tinted with some serephim sepia wash.

More updates with the terrain as it happens.

Once more into the breach: Terrain

Hello everyone, long time no content, but thats par for the course with me unfortunately.

But good news everyone, I'm finished uni for the year, and back into the modelling frame of mind. Since the last post my friend and I have decided to reinvigorate the local gaming scene, to do this we will run a tournament. To run a tournament we need terrain. Hence the content of this post.

Finished water filled crater

To begin we collected materials, and ideas we'd had from previous terrain making, and new materials including:
- Foam core/board
- GW craters
- GW trees
- pre-loved vehicles
- Basing materials (MDF, glue, sand, rocks etc)
- Clear resin for water

What follows will be a bunch of images of what we made from those materials

Also the Warmaster got a primer coat . . .

See Matt, he did get to see some paint

I've also made a start on the Predator themed table for the upcoming Aliens Vs Predator miniatures game by Prodos games.

To make these hill's I used cheap halloween Predator masks and high density polystyrene.

A wood putty was then spread across them to remove the smooth look of the masks and hide the sculpted details.

But this proved troublesome, and some cracking and flaking was evident on the areas not reinforced by the polystyrene. I can only attribute this to swelling/shrinking of the mask plastic material during heating and cooling in the sun on the back verandah.

Ah bugger

Next post will be about the rescuing and painting of more terrain. 

Thanks for looking.

The "great" devourer . . . and some more WIPS

Welcome back. 

As everyone who frequents this blog knows, I play Tyranids, Have for many many years, and I have been steadily working myself up to a fever pitch for the latest codex release. . . . what a let down!

After a day of reading the codex these are my initial impressions (the caveat that I have not actually played a game with the new rules should be applied though). All of these have been covered by other bloggers alot more extensively than I will, I'm just having a bitch.

The Bad:

Things that didn't need changing were changed for no apparent reason (Tervigon buffing nearby termagants, bonesword AP, scything talons), points costs were arbitrarily increased with no benefits incurred (hive guard +5pts/ea with -1 BS, tyranid prime +45pts!), and characters and units disappeared from the roster (Doom, Parasite, Pods, Ymgral stealers), exorbitant cost of most upgrades for monstrous creatures, instictive behavior (Wtf is it with random tables? Why eat/shoot each other?), Loss of access to biomancy.

The Good:

General decrease in points of previously overcosted units (Hive tyrant, Carnifex, Tyranofex, Lictors, Warriors Shrikes etc), Venomthropes giving shrouding, General increase in the effectiveness of the tyranids codex psychic powers.

Now I'm sure the codex is still playable, and Ill try my damnedest to do well with it, but it will be a hard slog, lucky I'm Australian and have a love for the underdog.

Enough whinging. Before the codex came out I had started working on an objective marker for games of the Relic. There isn't a prescribed size (that I can find) so I took an old model by my mate "The Hoff" did for our old FLGS themed game and gave it a lick of paint. 

The guts need a coat of "blood" once I figure out what colour to do it

As you can see the varnish went spotty on it :( 

Its supposed to represent an inteligence gathering or synaptic node beast, something not real combative, but having an important role. It is a frankensteins monster of pieces with bitz from the Warriors, Carnifex, Hormogaunt, and Genestealers sprues.

Next on the work bench I have a full brood of Carnifexes and a full brood of Hormogaunts on the go too for the army, and 8 cataphracti terminators for the Sons as well.

Finally I couldnt help but notice a combination of powers, wargear and warlord traits could give a Hivetyrant a 30 inch synapse bubble (Synaptic lynch pin = 18 Norn crown +6 Dominion psychic power +6 =30).  

I have several Tyrants lying around (who doesn't?) so I figured I'd try and be the first to model a Norn crown. The fluff description basically details it as a parasite that mounts the tyrants head and feeds on his brain. This wasn't enough for me, and I decided to make an actual crown of horns as well.

The horns were cultivated from all manner of places on the tyranid sprues, the tendrils of the parasite are greenstuff rolled out, laid in the correct place and then a extra thin liquid cement run under them to glue them to the head, the testicle like parasite is 2x genestealer toxin sacs from the upgrade head.

Thanks for looking.

Aliens Vs Predator: The minatures game

Ok guys, so today is a bit of a departure from the norm as this is a primarily 40k-centric blog, but recently I was made aware of the Kickstarter for the official licensed AvP miniatures game by Prodos games.

I don't know about you guys, but my love of this franchise predates even my introduction to 40k, and is probably one of the  reasons for my continued return to Tyranid armies.

After convincing a bunch of mates (6 at last count I think) to commit to backing the kickstarter I have been bitten by the inspiration bug. Since I can't buy, convert or paint any of the minis for this game yet, that leaves me with terrain.

I quickly scoured ebay for AvP related things, and ended up buying some cheap predator halloween masks. Which lead to this sketch:

Very rough concept

After that I though about iconic terrain from the franchise, clearly there would be jungle, so I would set my terrain in an alien jungle environment, but there needed to be more. Pyramids:

Please ignore the complete lack of scale and perspective

A simple stepped pyramid would look great, block LOS and be useful and playable, but I needed it to reflect the universe, so I began sculpting panels to use as relief on the sides of the pyramid. The panels ended up being 45mm square.

I started with a styilised predator (or Yautja as they are apparently called in the fluff) mask, the writing is from a predator language translator I found in the comments on kickstarter and is apparently the one the Prodos guys have used.

1st go at sculpting over a drawing

Coming together

Change the left dreads and added lenses

Finished panel: or is it after this I changed the shape of the forehead and added pred text to the helmet that says "Blooded"

The border says "The hunt begins". Which I thought was apt for the predators and is the name of the game after all :)

I couldn't just have a border of all pred masks, it would look a bit repetitive, and according to the movies and the xenopedia article on yautja they like to decorate their cities with alien statues and fresco's.

This is the result, a queen chestburster, in the classic Aliens 3 poster pose.

This is actually the second round of sculpting, I forgot to take pics of the first.

Finished panel

The text on the border of this panel says "Death serpents".

And this is where I'm up to currently, once I have cast the panels a million time to get enough for a pyramid, I can begin construction and will have another update later.