Some Kind Of Alien Ostrich Monster

The older I get, the less the whole "grimdark" thing appeals to me. Not for any deep reason, but just because I find it rather dull: too much sepia, mud and inexplicable piles of skulls for my tastes. Of course, people can do what they like, but I find myself increasingly increasingly drawn to make brightly-coloured models of "some kind of robot" or "a space adventurer". Also, outside Warhammer, you don't have to deal with the endless people shouting "heresy!" at each other.

Anyhow, I was in Southampton last weekend, and I visited a Forbidden Planet shop for the first time since the pandemic. If you're wondering, FP is a chain that sells comics, sci-fi and related merchandise, some bits of it classier than others. On the discount shelf, I found several big art books going for almost nothing.

I bought Battle Milk 2 and 3, which seem to consist of design work by a group of film artists, ranging from the realistic to the cartoony and kitsch, and a lavish book called Alien Race, which appears to have been the basis for a film pitch about a "horse" race on another planet and features loads of cool beasts and their weird riders. In any event, it seems that nothing came of it, since all the books were from 2010 or so. I got them for £5: they should have cost £80. 

As an author, it strikes me as slightly sad that books with so much content should be going so cheaply. Anyhow, I found Alien Race quite inspiring, and put together a weird creature of my own.

I had a pair of legs from some kind of mech toy, and a head and neck that I'd used years ago in a failed conversion of the Jabberwock from the Alice books. The neck was from a dark elf hydra, and the head came from a much-chopped squig model. I must have hacked through a lot of metal to make these.

The trouble about toys is that they're often made out of wobbly plastic that isn't very nice to work with (and have dreadful mould lines). The best way to stick this thing together was to use a lot of glue and pinning, and to attach the legs in a sort of full-on sprinting pose, which suited the rather goofy head.

I gave it a bright paint job, influenced by racing cars. I'd had the base lying around for ages - I think it's from a Warmachine model, but I'm not sure how much it's been converted by its previous owner. 

That's me done for now!

From WW2 Armour Car to Moon Buggy

 I was in the local games shop last week, trying to find something fun to paint for less than £25. This is not easy. Of course, models are more costly than they used to be: that's inevitable. But the fact that they are usually either sold as squads or expensive special characters means that it's harder to go into a shop, see something that looks cool and get it to paint.

Anyhow, I ended up buying a Bolt Action WW2 armoured car. It's a British Humber Mk II/IV, which is one of the coolest looking military vehicles ever.

However, I looked at the sprue for about ten minutes before I decided to turn it into a moon buggy. Part of the reason for this is that Bolt Action models are a small 28mm scale and are "skinny" compared to the chunky proportions of GW and North Star miniatures.

I left the turret bits off - I could use that for something else. I assembled the basic model and added details from the bits box: some fuel tanks on one side, and some steps on the other. The roof got a big hatch from a Tau tank. I added some more detailing with strips of plasticard, just to change the look a little.

The paint job was very "civilian". I went for a light grey, heavily weathered with chips and dirt. I added some unnecessary hazard stripes to suggest an industrial function, and some bits of colour to make it more interesting to look at. Bonus points for getting the "Moon Unit" reference. 

I enjoyed painting and weathering this thing. The only aspect I don't really like is the windscreen. I attempted a green glow, but I don't think it really works that well.

And here are a couple of pictures of the buggy in action. As you can see, it's pretty small. If I actually played any games, it would make a nice little bit of terrain. As it is, I just enjoyed making it. Not sure what I'll do with those turrets, though.

A Few Lizardmen

 Here's another quick post. Many years ago, I had a lizardmen army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (I still do have it, packed away in various boxes and drawers). I bought a ton of miniatures, but I never really finished them all. So, for no good reason, I took out a bunch of old models, put them on nice bases made of slate, and painted them jolly colours. Here they are.

This guy is an old plastic skink scout:

This is a lizardman warrior. He's not got a shield but he's unconverted. Because they had to rank up and were pretty large for their original square bases, the lizardmen are very "closed" models who hold their shields tight across their bodies, obscuring a lot of detail. which is basically why he hasn't got one.

This lizardman has a head and body from the old plastic Temple Guard. He looks as if he should be in a carnival in Rio, which I suppose is sort of accurate.

And here's another old plastic skink (the other, in fact, because there were only two poses). I painted him to resemble a poison arrow frog.

As ever, I feel that the concept of the lizardmen is slightly cooler than the miniatures. Personally, had it been me designing them, I would have made them less iguana and more old-school velociraptor. But it wasn't me.

It occurs to me that I've almost got the correct colours to have the Harmonious Convocation of Telitubbi!

Space Villain with a Glowing Sword (an attempt at Object Source Lighting)

 Here's a model that I made out of various plastic bits that I found lying around. His body and arms come from a Frostgrave plastic demon. I used green stuff to give him boots, instead of the bare feet that the model originally had. 

His sword-blade came from an old skaven, I think, and his head is off some old plastic space Nazi. I really can't remember how I got either of those parts. I can only assume that they were part of a sale of random bits.

I painted him black and painted his blade to look like glowing metal, getting colder towards the end. I doubt that a melting sword would make a very effective weapon - at least not for long, but this is space and anything goes. 

Then I attempted to paint a glowing effect on his body, as thrown out by his sword. It was not easy, and I found it very hard to work out whether I'd got it right. I think it's broadly correct, but it's very hard to tell if I got it entirely right. Object Source Lighting isn't a technique that I use often, and I'm not planning to do it again in the near future. Still, it was an interesting challenge.

Veskit Executioner Mark 2 - a skaven hero for Mordheim

Time for  another mangy skaven! A while ago I made a conversion of a Mordheim character called Veskit the Executioner, who is a hero that the skaven can hire. Veskit is a bionic skaven, with a lot of mechanical adaptations, who is as close to the Terminator as a giant medieval rat can get.

I thought it would be cool to make a(nother) miniature of this horrid creature. I decided to base him on one of the Vyrkos Blood-Born models from the Warhammer Quest game, who is crouching ominously on a ruined pillar (which sounds like the sort of thing people do in Mordheim). The basic model looks like this:

I removed the whole right arm and the head. I replaced the head with a skaven one (unsurprisingly!) and his left arm with one from a Necron warrior. I had an arm from a plastic arco-flagellant, and replaced a chunk of Veskit's left leg with an ornate mechanical bit from the arm. I expect it's a piece that Veskit's bosses just wanted to improve.

His tail was a resin bit that I've had for ages, with a Chaos Warrior's spike on the tip. It balances the model out and reminds me of the Alien. Then I added a lot of extra bits and bobs, to represent his many bionic "improvements". He got a bionic eye, a tube on his back that contains fuel, a wire running from his head to his back, and a plasticard brace on his lower left leg. Any messes were covered with fur sculpted from green stuff.

Suitably manky, I think. I painted him in a similar way to last week's rat ogre, using a red basecoat for the flesh and thinned crimson and purple washes. The metal was painted to look rusty and old. I painted the container on his back to look as if it's a glass tube containing some kind of nasty liquid, which presumably fuels him.

That's enough raw flesh for now. I think something different is called for!

Mordheim Rat Ogre

 Here's an old skaven rat ogre model that was released for Mordheim, sometime in the early 2000s. It's technically a Clan Eshin rat ogre, Eshin being the wing of the ratmen who produce scouts and assassins and dress like ninjas. Clan Eshin, in the background, sent its minions into Mordheim - hence this chap.

While I like the idea of rat ogres, I find many of the models to be too weird and too beefy. My mental image of a vicious rat is something thin and scrawny, and most of the rat ogres look too hefty for that. Also, they have that tendency of recent skaven models to look like fleshy mutant things, rather than actual rats, with extra arms, bionic weapons and all sorts of odd additions.

This guy, on the other hand, looks like a gigantic rat-person who rips people apart with his hands. He's lean and nasty, with a superb face and some nice subtle details, like the scars on his back and the skulls around his neck (actually, those aren't very subtle). Anyhow, after some hassle with pinning and gluing, I painted him to look old and mean, with greying fur. I like models of this size - not too big, but full of interesting bits.

The skin was basecoated red for an unwholesome feel. I painted it normally after that, although I used strong tone and thin brown washes, as well as a glaze of Sigvald Burgundy, whatever that is. I'm really pleased with the end result (and the unusually good photos!).

Eldar War Walker

 Right then, back to "schedule"! I've been slowly building and painting an old metal Eldar war walker. These rather odd machines are basically walking artillery for the Eldar, like a souped-up version of the Imperial Guard's sentinel. They are strange, gangly and really quite hard to assemble.

This one came with a slightly broken right leg: the hoof had been cut off and the rear "claw" (it's quite hard to know how to describe these things) was missing entirely. I made a new one out of green stuff and plasticard.

A small nerdy point: this model is a mixture of parts from the first two incarnations of the war walker. The pilot is from the first release, as seen in the blue Citadel catalogue, but the guns are scatter lasers from the second version, as seen in the earliest Eldar codex. They are also some of the coolest weapons in the whole of Warhammer. Space elf rotary cannons. Yeah.

Anyhow, it got the standard Craftworld Zandros paint scheme (as made up by me), to match the other mechs and Guardians. 

Definitely a strange model, but one that I quite like at the end of the day - even if it was a pain to assemble!