Two Monks - Experimenting with Object Source Lighting

 A quick post, this time. Ages ago I bought a load of Westwind figures off ebay, and I've been slowly painting them over the last year or two. I had four monks, each of them equipped with a torch and hand weapon. The models are decent enough but old-fashioned and have a lot of flash on them, so I thought that I'd use them as a chance to test out a new technique: object source lighting.

This is something that I find pretty hard. The main trick seems to be to paint the model as usual and then to drybrush on a dark yellow/ochre colour, to show where the light would catch on the miniature. Then, you paint on the OSL bits, using the drybrush as a guide. At least, in theory. It's quite cumbersome and I'd be interested to know if there's an easier way of doing it. It's also hard to work out where to finish the light effect, and of course painting over your earlier work is daunting.

Anyhow, here are the first two monks. I think they've come out fairly well, although I can't help but think that something is "missing". I'm not sure what, though.

Converting a Great Big Lizardman

 

"Across roaring rivers their warsong rang

'Skull, skull, skull, skull,' the Norsemen sang.

They looted Lustria, lizards they slew

Till the Slann sent soldiers to slice them in two.

The Norsemen fought fiercely but their gold-quest failed

When the thane Thag Thagssen on a tail was impaled."

- The Saga of Thag Thagssen.

Years ago - literally, it was at least a decade - I subscribed to the Kickstarter for the first wave of Reaper Bones models. This was, in retrospect, not my best purchase, as a lot of the models weren't much good. The bigger creatures were a little better, and among them was a "swamp troll". This thing looked weirdly like a stegosaurus, but with a troll's head.

I pulled this thing out of a long-forgotten box, washed off the dirt and fluff and decided to turn it into a kroxigor for the lizardmen warband I seem to be making (extremely slowly). I cut its head off and sculpted a new one, going for that slightly bovine, snake-shaped head that stegosaurs have.

I made a new tail, too. First, I made an rough armature out of a piece of twisted garden wire:

Then I sculpted over the tail, first in DAS clay to get the right shape, and then in green stuff for finer detail. I find it helps to put a thin layer of PVA glue over the clay once it's dried, to stop it flaking off onto the green stuff. 

I added tail-spikes from a wood elf plastic dryad and an ornamental tail-guard from a tyranid bit that was lying around. Other details were added from lizardmen leftovers, green stuff and random odds and ends.

Bright colours were called for, but I surprised myself by painting his skin a drab khaki. Still, blue armour and bright red back-plates set this off, along with gold ornaments. I added the skull of a conquistador to his base, along with a little snake made of green stuff. Invaders beware!

So that was my weekend (and most of my week)! All hail the serpent god!

Loads of Tyranids - zoats, zoanthropes and spore mines

 Hello again! It's time for a big post about tyranids.

I've been slowly working on a bunch of old tyranid models over the last couple of months. First up, I was able to acquire a second metal zoat fairly cheaply on ebay a while ago. This chap has a missile launcher. While he's a very detailed model, I found it quite hard to work out exactly what was what with his weapon. I suppose it's all "biological stuff", so that's not too much of an issue. I enjoyed painting this model a lot.

Here he is with his friend, about to hit the town.

Next up are three zoanthropes. These are floating psychic creatures that functioned in the game as tank-shooting artillery, a bit like lascannon teams. These models are the second iteration of the zoanthrope and were released around 2000: the first version was a four-limbed creature like a Tyranid warrior with a very big head, and looked a bit silly (like a lot of the very early Tyranids).

Originally, these guys had large helmet-like shields that went over their heads, and were usually painted like bone armour. However, these shields obscure their heads, and I think they they look better with their nasty little faces on display. They're identical models, although someone had trimmed the spikes off one of the miniatures. If you want to bulk out your army with a conga line of giant evil sperms, this is the unit for you.

Last of all, I've painted a unit of spore mines. Spore mines were Tyranid artillery, either fired by a creature called a biovore, or dropped in from on high and left to drift around the battlefield. They were essentially a mobile hazard, and were probably intended to slow down and confuse the enemy. They come in three varieties (frag, acid and krak), and were both plastic and metal. I bought some of these models as a bunch, and others came with various old tyranids. I collected them together until I had enough for a little unit.

Strange looking things, really (they remind me of Smarties), but they do fit the rather jolly colours of the rest of the army, and they're actually quite nice miniatures. They would make good weird little aliens, too. 

I'm not sure what I'll be painting next, but I think it will be some kind of fantasy creature. We shall see!

Retro Chaos Dreadnought

 Hello! I've had a busy week. I went to Glastonbury to relax for a couple of days, which was great, and then I injured my knee, which was less great. The damage isn't awful, but it does make sitting down to paint uncomfortable, and so I've been chipping away at little bits and bobs.

That said, I have been able to finish a model that I've been working on for a while. Hybrid Miniatures make a range of retro-styled miniatures, some of them quite reminiscent of 40k models from the good old days. They were having a sale of some of their old-school resin dreadnoughts, and I took the opportunity to get one of these.

The old dreadnought was the first dreadnought specifically made for Chaos, and can be seen in the blue Citadel catalogue. It had a very organic, Giger-ish look, with pipes and pincers, and an odd big skull for a head. It looked really cool to my mind and is my favourite version of the Chaos dread. Later versions were either blocky and awkward-looking (the 3rd ed version) or very fleshy (the Hellbrute). 

Anyhow, I went for a similar colour scheme to that which I used on a Necromunda Spyrer a while back. I highlighted the black with both grey and khaki. The weapons and pipes were painted quite brightly, for contrast and as a nod to the old version. I also painted a few pipes to look organic. Anyhow, here we are! It's 90% finished, but there are a couple of bits that I'd like to add to.

Zoidberg meets the Mekon

After the big project of the space marine multi-tank, I made a few more space weirdos. I'd bought a frame of Perry Miniatures Afghan tribesmen, from 1880 or so, and I thought it would be interesting to turn them into futuristic types.

The tribesmen are all wearing long robes, and either have boots or sandals. These would work for civilians and mystic monk-types, who probably wander about in flip flops, but less well for hardened soldiers. I then realised that by combining some of the alien heads, I could make some familiar characters. 

So, here are Dr Zoidberg from Futurama and the Mekon from Dan Dare. 

Both models have a head and arms from Stargrave miniatures, and an Afghan body. Zoidberg's claws were sculpted around some cut-off tyranid spikes, and the Mekon's saucer was a hubcap left from a toy car.

Then we have two ladies. The woman on the right has arms from the Frostgrave female barbarians sprue. I imagined that the two blades are something like light sabers, and painted them as such. She was given a white and orange paint scheme vaguely remeniscent of a Buddhist monk, to suggest mystic powers. The other woman has arms from a Frostgrave female wizard. She might be a psychic casting a spell, or maybe just someone normal running away.

Then I just made a couple of randoms. This man has an old Frostgrave soldier body (they do look quite basic compared to later North Star plastics) with a Ghost Archipelago head (I think) and a bionic arm made out of leftover Necron parts. His robot friend is just a Mantic robot that I've had lying about for ages. It's made from that nasty resin-plastic stuff that Mantic used to use (and might still do), which isn't very nice to work with.

These were fun to do, but as usual the pictures don't do them any sort of justice. Oh well. I'm used to that by now. More big things next time (maybe)!

EDIT: I've noticed that the pictures look better if you click on them to make them bigger.

Space Marine Whirlwind Conversion (and bonus rhino)

 Last time, I made a whopping great cannon to go on the roof of a space marine Rhino. I also promised further silliness. And I've been hard at work to do just that.

Back in the days, I purchased a plastic Empire hellsturm rocket launcher, a sort of multiple firework array on a cannon chassis. I put this onto a Rhino to make a very medieval Whirlwind tank.

The basis of the conversion is one of the plates that goes on the back of the Rhino. The Vindicator cannon lifts off, and I used the plate with a hole for a hatch in it. I put a Lego cog into the hole and stuck it in place with plasticard, to be the part that the launcher sits on. Here's a picture of a normal plate and my version.

The rocket launcher went on top. I added a piece that holds some extra rockets, in case the marines get excited and fire all their fireworks at once. 

It was painted in suitably jolly and heraldic colours, to match the overall scheme.

Whoosh!

Now, I thought it would be good to finish this project off by making a flat panel to go on the top, for when the marines just need nothing fancier than a Rhino. I found some doors and glued them together.

I wanted to decorate the doors, but I know my limits. There's no way that I could do the sort of freehand that wins modern competition. But I could draw as well as a medieval monk who's never left his cloiser, and so that's what I did. Hence this:

That looks suitably antiquated. Here it is on the tank.

That was fun!

Space Marine Vindicator Conversion

 It's a little tank with a great big gun!

Inspired by last week's comments, I decided to have another go at a conversion I did many years ago. It was gathering dust and slowly falling apart at the back of a cupboard, and I fished it out to see what I could do.

Before all that Primaris nonsense, space marine tanks were largely based on the Rhino APC chassis. The two main variants, the Vindicator and the Whirlwind, had a big cannon and a missile launcher, respectively. I must have realised that, if you could make the bits interchangeable, you could, er, interchange them.

So, I had bought a Rhino and got to work building a massive cannon to go on the roof. The "real" Vindicator has its cannon at the front, but this would be easier to swap out and would look more cool/ridiculous. I built the cannon out of a pipe from an old scenery kit, along with parts from various Empire buildings. When I fished it out last week, the tank looked like this:

Very dusty. I didn't really like the ram on the front, so I removed it. I also felt that the cannon looked a bit basic and front-heavy, so I made some hydraulics out of bits left over from a knight titan. Plasticard was used to attach them and space things out.

A bit better. Once painted it looked like this. I used a basic grey shaded up slightly and washed with thinned-down brown to represent dirt. It's nothing very fancy but it helps to bring out the details.

I also added some details from Empire kits and the spare parts from the original Rhino. Then it was time for paint!

Considering how a lot of my marines look, this is pretty low-key. Of course, it's very silly and I don't know how you'd load the gun, but it is sort-of-modular (ie the top falls off) and it fits the look I was going for (a bit like a castle). 

Incidentally, I discovered today that an official chapter called the Brazen Claws uses the same red-and-blue quartered design as my chaps, except all over their body armour. However, they don't sound as fun as my chapter. So there. And on the subject of fun, I think I'll repair the rocket launcher part of this tank, so it can also be a whirlwind - and that looks really silly...