After my experience with creating custom chaos terminator bitz (here, and still ongoing as my main project right now) i decided to do something similar. And i decided on SoB. The models are old and all metal and their codex is outdated and not the best (as far as i know). So this is a good army for me who likes to sculpt and don't actually play. But this will only be a side project of mine.

So what are my goals of my SoB sculpting? I want to create a bunch of pieces with designs based on the current models but adding my own flavor to them. My goal are pieces that are fully interchangeable between each other yet have a distinct design. I'll go for legs, torso heads and arms seperated and designed so that they are compatible with current plastic weapons. They are supposed to have a similar scale and propotions as the metal models (although i tend to make my models a bit to large most of the time ...)

I'll try to create 4 different designs for legs. 5 Normal SoB, 5 heavy weapon ones(retributor/dominion squads) with reinforced leg armor for a better fireing stance, 5 running/jumping ones (seraphim) and 5 more ornate/antique looking ones inspired by the sister of silence artwork.
How many matching torsos, heads and arms i'll create i still don't know yet. (I also have to setup a basic torso so that i have a base that can be used on all legs.)
And i plan on doing a few random HQ models as well.

But as i said already this is a side project so you probably won't see that much updates.

And i have a few questions for you. Looking at the GW models they have a tabard and distinct shoulder designs. But i'm unsure if i should add them directly to the models or make them seperate. The shoulders would probably be doable. The'd be flimsy to work with but it can be done. The tabards on the other hand are hard to create interchangeable due to different poses and such. What would you do?
Also should i go so far and design stuff that isn't in the actual codex like real sisters of silence, sisters on bikes or stuff like my own HQ units? Or should i wait with something like that until GW actually does a new SoB codex in the far far future?


And as i can't leave you without some pretty pictures here are a few. They are very basic and early sculpts (or just the base armature)

So yeah, mind blown.

You only have legs done and dear god does it look great. Cant wait to see more

Only a small update, most of her is already in the other pictures. This is supposed to be my living saint. I'm currently thinking of building several different arm options that might also be used on other HQ models. But i have to see how it will turn out. By the way the head isn't attached and was my try a creating a base head for further work as well as a head-scale test.


(I need a better camera for macro-shots like that ...)

Wow. Absolutely stunning.

Wowee. Those are beautiful looking sculpts.

So, hum... when are you going to open your own business and sell both Chaos and SoB sculpts?

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
So, hum... when are you going to open your own business and sell both Chaos and SoB sculpts?

Yes exactly this. I saw a thread on /tg/ earlier that showed a fair bit of interest in them.

Wow, very awesome already!

Just go crazy with your own designs, GW will probably come up with some silly stuff anyways when they ever decide to do a codex, no matter what you'll do, there will always be some stuff that'll be outdated. Just come up with your own cool things.

Nice start, we'll see how it unfolds. Good luck with this!

Thanks for all the positive replies.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
So, hum... when are you going to open your own business and sell both Chaos and SoB sculpts?

Well to be honest i have thought about it but i don't think that it will happen soon - if at all. I'm at a stage where i actually agree that i could create something that would be good enough to be sold. But i don't have the casting experience and material to cast in in a decent quality. But i'm working on that.

The biggest problem for me is probably the business side of things.

Ah well, let's see how my possessed terminator project and this SoB one will look once finished and then i will think about selling again.


And i also have a small update for you. I added a bunch of heels, foots and upper legs to my models but nothing really worth a picture as of now. I also added a few more details on the living saint. And although those are only a few smaller things they give the model a more completed look. So i took a picture of it.

So these are going to be called "Space Nuns" eventually so that we can buy them off you, yes?

Looks very nice indeed - not that I am shocked having seen your other work

If you don't want to cast and sell yourself, I am sure you can get them licenced by another company.

Well a problem in that is GW. We all know how aggressive GW's legal department has been lately. And the closer i get to GW SoB models the bigger the problems.

And despite that i still have to solve the torso - hip joint problem.

The close you get to SoB models? What SoB models? All I see is a fantastic looking armored warrior Nun.

Looks fantastic so far

 btldoomhammer wrote:
Well a problem in that is GW. We all know how aggressive GW's legal department has been lately. And the closer i get to GW SoB models the bigger the problems.

And despite that i still have to solve the torso - hip joint problem.

The results of their latest lawsuit against chapterhouse opened some doors for every third party sculpter I believe. I.e. the underlying shape of SM shoulderpads is no longer a subject of claim.
My opinion: they really should start working harder instead of trying to claim every basic geometry/symbol they ever used

Maybe try to make it slightly more...I dunno...mechanic/twisted?


Look at this for example: http://www.kabukimodels.com/index.php?go=produkt&id=90

Subbed! These sculpts look nice man

You know, there's no need to do the casting yourself. Plenty of casting companies out there that will do the actual casting for you.

Thanks for the advice guys. But with this being only a side project and my reduced hobby time the decission what to do can wait for now.

And i only have a small update. A few more legs got worked on but nothing too fancy. I'll have to create a "group-shot" once they are in a presentable state. Sadly i had to replace a few legs as they turned out to large.
And i've also worked on my second torso prototype. The first one was to wide and looked somewhat off so i started a new one with a slightly smaller attachment area. My plan is to create a basic torso, cast it in resin and reshape it from there and add different type of decorations. As you can see i did something similar with the basic underlaying shape and added another layer for the torso armor on that. I hoep that i can cast the torso including the thin armor bit, file it down and add details on top. (But i need new mould silicone before i can do that.) And i'll probably use the basic already moulded underlaying shape to create a few more differently shaped armor outlines.

This is the current torso prototype. Once the GS is cured I'll gently remove the torso and hopefully will have a nice connection area.

I've removed the Torso prototype from the legs and used it to pressmold an new connection area on another set of legs. it looks decent and it might be my final solution. But before i can be sure i have to actually add details onto the legs and see how the joints works after those details are added.

I also repurposed a few legs that where originally ment to be for the heavy weapon SoB. But the feet i had already added to them didn't match with the concept i made. So I'll use the legs for basic SoB legs and make a few more for my heavy weapon girls.

And i have a question regarding leg details. The current SoB models all have those cloth tabards. I really like them and they are a part of what makes SoB SoB. But i don't know if i should make them part of the legs or seperate. This is especially important for creating the hip joint.
Both sides have their advantages.
Making them part of the legs is easier for designing the joint i'd imagine. And it would also make the cloth match the leg pose easier.
The other option would give more flexibility and would probably be better for casting them.

My current idea is to make them mostly seperate and only add them to the legs if the legpose makes it hard - or impossible - to allow for generic tabards. But i fear that this will be a problem for designing the hip joint ...
What is your take on this problem?

wow. the legs on the second model are amazing!
my problem with the gw sob is how bulky looking they are.
but you solve this problem perfectly!

Lookin' good Doom!
Your sculpting prowess never fails to impress

The only thing I can think to mention at this stage is to remember that corsets typically help to accentuate the 'hourglass' female body type. I get that what you're sculpting is power armour and not an actual corset but the shape is still relevant I believe.

as for the tabard, might I suggest a combination of the two methods?
If you sculpt a single cloth piece which you can use to cast from, and then attach each recast to their respective models using GS. This way you could have each cloth attach to the model in whichever way best suits the pose without also having to sculpt an entire cloth for each one.

So to simplify, The bottom clothy parts would be cast resin and the part which attaches to the armour would be GS.

This would also allow you to change it up with each model in terms of aesthetic with how you attach the cloths (not that this would be anything you couldn't handle either way )

Anyhow, hope my suggestions at least help get some ideas flowing.
Good luck

Really nice, i love seeing expert sculptors work. Always gets me in the mood to try (and fail) sculpting. Keep up the great work.

Thank you guys.

 Xendarc wrote:

The only thing I can think to mention at this stage is to remember that corsets typically help to accentuate the 'hourglass' female body type. I get that what you're sculpting is power armour and not an actual corset but the shape is still relevant I believe.

The torso still is a problem area. I know what you mean but it is somewhat difficult to create a interchangeable torso with female proptions. And i'm still not entirely happy but i created a blank "master" and pressmolded a few. Those are my first tries on working with those copies.

So to simplify, The bottom clothy parts would be cast resin and the part which attaches to the armour would be GS.

This would also allow you to change it up with each model in terms of aesthetic with how you attach the cloths (not that this would be anything you couldn't handle either way )

I'll probably do something like that. But to get a better feel for the size i'm planing on creating at lest two legs with tabard sculpted on. I will fancy them up and use them for HQ models and stuff like that. And then I'll go from there.

And this is one of the leg pairs i'll use for that. (The lower legs are looking a bit short but it's an illusion due to the pose and camera angle ... )

I haven't done much for my SoB. I created a few tabard prototypes and worked a bit on the torsos. (sadly the pictures where totally blurry and my camera is out of batteries) I have discarded a few torsos as i didn't like them. My current torsos look like that now:


And while taking a few pictures i realised how many legs i actually have right now. If i finish them all i'll have a good pool of options. And those doesn't even include the 5 sisters of silence ones i'm still planing to do.


Those are the seraphim legs. I still need to decide what design to go for. My idea was to add some small thrusters to the lower legs for addition flight control but i can't decide on a good design. I made a few sketches but nothing i really liked.


And those will turn into legs for heavy/special weapon girls. I plan on adding some reinforced structure around the legs. And while i have a decent sketch for how they are supposed to look i still need to start working on them.

Those look awesome man. I would bet that doomhammer finishes all of his sisters, opens his own business and starts selling them before GW gets around to doing sisters

Man she's got legs. and knows how to sculpt them

looking great

grimdark83 wrote:
Those look awesome man. I would bet that doomhammer finishes all of his sisters, opens his own business and starts selling them before GW gets around to doing sisters

I'm not so sure. I need a lot of time to actually finish my stuff once i loose inspiration. My forgeworld-style custom keeper of secrets is still not finished and it is now officially two years old. (But at least it only misses hair or something so it's "mostly finished")
Lets hope that i never loose my inspiration for those sculpts. But as there are a ton of SoB artwork out there i can draw ideas from them.

 Desubot wrote:
Man she's got legs. and knows how to sculpt them

looking great

Thanks.

I think you do stunning work dh, they will be fantastic when (if?) finished.

 Desubot wrote:
Man she's got legs. and knows how to sculpt them

looking great

She never begs, she knows how to choose 'em.

Those Seraphim legs look the business. Nice and angled with clean sharp lines, i'd buy a million of em if they were for sale.

 Xendarc wrote:

The only thing I can think to mention at this stage is to remember that corsets typically help to accentuate the 'hourglass' female body type. I get that what you're sculpting is power armour and not an actual corset but the shape is still relevant I believe.

You do understand how corsets function right?

Actual shaping corsets are only semi-rigid, not hardened ceramite, lol. Not that Sisters of Battle actually have any internal organs or musculature based on the typical artwork of them. But still.

The "corsets" on the Sisters is purely aesthetic. It's not even the armor from the typical artwork. Just a covering. Probably whichever original Ecclesiarch who signed the requisition form for the Sisters' modern armor had a bit of a fetish. Hey, if you're going to surround yourself with women, you might as well dress 'em up all hot, right?

For the seraphim leg thrusters there are three positions I can think of that might look good.

You could put thrusters on the side of their knees.
I can imagine small rockets/jets looking like they're attached to a pivot joint (maybe pointing slightly outward). Now I'm no physicist but this could give a dynamic feel to the models, especially ones with a knee pointing forward.

Second spot would essentially be the same thing but lower down on the outside of their calves.

Lastly (and probably my favourite one) you could give them 'high heel' thrusters.
I drew a real quick example of what I mean as I was having trouble describing what I was thinking.

This is just a basic concept as you can see but garnished with cables and more in keeping with the rustic aesthetic of 40k (maybe even beefed up a bit to compensate thrusters) it would be a plausible concept.

I also though about thrusters on the thigh though the jump pack thrusters on the GW sisters reach almost to that point so it seems like a bit of a waste.

Anyway, these are just a few ideas.
Hope that helps


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 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Xendarc wrote:

The only thing I can think to mention at this stage is to remember that corsets typically help to accentuate the 'hourglass' female body type. I get that what you're sculpting is power armour and not an actual corset but the shape is still relevant I believe.

You do understand how corsets function right?

Actual shaping corsets are only semi-rigid, not hardened ceramite, lol. Not that Sisters of Battle actually have any internal organs or musculature based on the typical artwork of them. But still.

The "corsets" on the Sisters is purely aesthetic. It's not even the armor from the typical artwork. Just a covering. Probably whichever original Ecclesiarch who signed the requisition form for the Sisters' modern armor had a bit of a fetish. Hey, if you're going to surround yourself with women, you might as well dress 'em up all hot, right?

Don't worry I know how they work. My partner owns several corsets and I'm usually the one to pull in and tighten the drawstrings

As you said, the SoB corset shape is simply for aesthetics. But then so is much of the military equipment the Imperium has at their disposal.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that the aesthetics kinda matter to each army (much like the impractical but distinguished Dark Angel robes).

Love the nuns baby! how about some Space nuns in terminator armour with some fembot weaponry?

These are really cool. I really hope I can buy some in the future.

I would do something like Iron Man thrusters or alternatively like the Eldar Titans, with thrusters around the sides and back of the calf.

It would actually be quite cool to see SoB with thruster gauntlets like Iron Man

If you want some inspiration take a look at the new clockwork angels from Warmachine, there are definitely some conversion options with those.

Personally I like the old SOB but the biggest problem is the almost cloned look of them all with their neat hair and identical faces, I'd like to see a load of alternate heads to create some individuality

 Xendarc wrote:

You could put thrusters on the side of their knees.
...
Second spot would essentially be the same thing but lower down on the outside of their calves.

Lastly (and probably my favourite one) you could give them 'high heel' thrusters.

My idea was somewhat of a combination of your last two ideas. A thruster on their lower calves for additional boost and smaller ones on the outside of their ankles for flight control. But i fear that the ankle ones will look off as it adds to much bulk to the feet. This is the same with your 'high heel' thrusters.
It comes down to aestetic vs. functionality. Because a thruster in or below the calves (similar to iron man) it in my opinion the best option aesteticwise. It doesn't work against the slender sister armor design and in combination with the sightly angled armor creates a forward momentum (i hope). But in my mind i see the seraphim not like an assault unit with only forward movement. I see them more like a fast "disruption" unit jumping in and out of combat and fireing their pistols while both assaulting and boosting backwards. For this i'd need a thruster that can create forward and backward thrust. But mounting them in the side of their legs will be either too small or offset the whole design. I haven't found a middle solution yet.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I would do something like Iron Man thrusters or alternatively like the Eldar Titans, with thrusters around the sides and back of the calf.

It would actually be quite cool to see SoB with thruster gauntlets like Iron Man

Like i said this was something i was going for. But i have to look at the eldar titan model. Maybe it as some more inspiration for me. And thruster gauntlets would be problematic for the pistols they carry. But maybe i'll design SoB power fists that way.

Thanks for all the replies.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Love the nuns baby! how about some Space nuns in terminator armour with some fembot weaponry?

Well fembot weapons would be silly (if you mean those breast mounted weapons) but creating heavy armored sisters ... hmmm ... it IS a cool idea. I might give it a try.

 SoulDrinker wrote:
If you want some inspiration take a look at the new clockwork angels from Warmachine, there are definitely some conversion options with those.

Personally I like the old SOB but the biggest problem is the almost cloned look of them all with their neat hair and identical faces, I'd like to see a load of alternate heads to create some individuality

I have to look at those models. I have seen them but never looked at them for conversion purposes. But i'll do this right now.
And i agree there are no really different poses for the sisters. GW just had only a few different models and just replaces the weapons but nothing else. This is why i started this project. I don't want to change the design, just add something to it to better distinguish between different unit types and mostly keep the old aestetic. But i also want to create modular models for avoiding the clone army look.

this is really really cool.
I've always like the SoB but the models were eh, despite the great potential.

What you have done so far looks super awesome, and I'm excited to see what else comes out of this.

 Smitty wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Man she's got legs. and knows how to sculpt them

looking great

She never begs, she knows how to choose 'em.

Im glad some one got that.

Loving this blog already!
Variation in the SOB is very much needed, and I can't wait to see how they turn out!

I have to agree and add my voice to the praise, these are awesome.

i would also second the thought that if you cast these I would hop in line to but some.

Thanks for all the praise. I intend to cast them but there is still a long way to go.

My biggest concern with them is scale in combination with beein multipart. I know that some legs are larger/smaller than others and i have already dropped to work on a few legs entirely.

I have calculated the needed propotions of the armature before starting but adding the actuall putty can offset those propotions. And i fear that my rework of the torso-hip joint might get me into problems with the leg-length. I have compared a dry fitted legs+torso next to a marine and it looks ok but without a good head and shoulders it might change.

My goal for this week is to finish at least the basic shape of the arms and rework the heads i already did so that i can actually make sure if i'm still on the right track or need to scrap/redo more pieces.

Another thing i have to think about is hands. If i want them to be compatible with GW weapons i somehow have to create flimsy hands that can hold onto those weapons.


And my mind is also a bit distracted from the idea of creating SoB "terminators". I just had to start working on a concept for that to ease my mind.
I have started to work on a complete new armor scheme for that. (The first legs where 2mm or so to long and i had to redo them.) The ideas is to keep most of the SoB style but bulk it up some more with addition layers of armor while still keep the exagerated female propotions of the SoB models. But i'm not entirely sure if i should create a new sister armor type - a heavy armored variant - or follow a more terminator style approach.
Personally i don't think that the clunky looking terminator armor fits into the SoB style but on the other side creating something entirely new isn't very grim-dark 40kish. (Although GW did the same with the SM walking boxes(aka Centurions)).
What is your take on that? rework Terminator armor or a new heavy armored SoB?

I've made a quick sketch that i can upload once i'm at home.

Can't wait to see your ideas!

I would say a new hvy armour

 btldoomhammer wrote:
SoB "terminators".

Feth yes.

So, now back at home time for the concept art i promised.



I kinda like it. But i might bulk it up some more. It also looks kinda anime mecha-like. But i think that fully defined breasts would look silly on a heavier suit of armor. And i need to make another sketch from the backside. My idea was to design/decorate the backside like a bulky fleur de lys and more round than the terminator armor. And the leg position is kinda off (you might notice the pencil lines in background where they where even more off. ) And i think that i'll don't build them with power fists and more medieval melee weapons like swords, hammers, and the like as i think that it is more fitting.


And another quick picture of the work i did for the heavy weapons legs. I plan in adding another support running alongside the leg. But before i can add them i want to finish the feet details and add the lower leg armor. The picture is a bit blurry but my zoom isn't sharp enough.

I like the concept, I think it really bulks up the SoB without making them not look like SoB. Maybe making the additional plates more angled with sharper edges, it might remove some of the anime feel. It'll be great to see the concept sculpted

Yes, please! A new looking armor for the SoB! Clunky terminators with Fleur-de-lis just isn't the SOB style!

 Desubot wrote:

 Smitty wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Man she's got legs. and knows how to sculpt them

looking great

She never begs, she knows how to choose 'em.

Im glad some one got that.

I've been listening to them for a few months now. I'm ashamed that I didn't start listening earlier!

 Hive Fleet Lazarus wrote:
I like the concept, I think it really bulks up the SoB without making them not look like SoB. Maybe making the additional plates more angled with sharper edges, it might remove some of the anime feel. It'll be great to see the concept sculpted

Yeah I would agree with this, sharper edges would make it look very cool and more SoB.


I'm really digging the concepts coming out of this!

I utterly adore that heavy armoured battle sister DH. I completely agree about not needing the more defined boob armour. I think the shoulder pads also suit it really well.

Two things i don't like about it.
1 - The calf armour. Looks waaay to muscled compared to the lower shin. It's more of a personal niggle rather than something wrong with the drawing.
2 - The heavy bolter. The way she's holding it looks really flimsy.

Other then that it's a great looking concept sketch.

Diggin' the concept art of the Termi Sob.
I like where you're going with the general design though personally I think the shapely:bulky ratio is a bit out. I imagine the leg and waist armour to be a bit more solid, like a halfway point between body-hugging SoB PA and TDA.
I like the Heavy Bolter on her arm too as it gives it a more unique feel as opposed to a Sister kitted out exactly like a SM terminator.
As for the melee weapons, slightly disappointed that you'd move away from PF's (are you intending to field them as count as Terminators?)
Either way, were you to reconsider them, definitely check out some IG designs.
OR...
You could use those spiky iron halo bits, clip out the middle/skull and use the curved, pointy end as a sort of holy brass-knuckles.

Either way, I'm loving this project.

Keep up the great work
Peace

Holy brass knuckles.

This is idea of the century.


Now i want to see some really butch SoB with knuckle dusters punching on with an ork warboss or something.

Another thought occurred, would it be possible for you to use scout hands/bolters as a way of saving yourself from scratch building new hands/weapons?

 Snrub wrote:

Holy brass knuckles.

This is idea of the century.


Now I want to see some really butch SoB with knuckle dusters punching on with an ork warboss or something.

Hahaha thanks, it's an idea that's been on my mind for a bit but I've not had the chance to give it a shot.
I figure if other people like it too and can actually make use of it there's no reason to keep it to myself

 Snrub wrote:

Two things i don't like about it.
1 - The calf armour. Looks waaay to muscled compared to the lower shin. It's more of a personal niggle rather than something wrong with the drawing.
2 - The heavy bolter. The way she's holding it looks really flimsy.

Other then that it's a great looking concept sketch.

Thanks for the reply.
I have to think about the calf/shin propotions and i may end up doing another more detailed leg sketch as i'm thinking of adding some techy details there.
And i know that the heavy bolter is kinda strange. While i really like the idea of her holding it like that it isn't in scale with the actual GW heavy bolter size. A real heavy bolter would be to large to be wielded like that. This is something i have to think about when i have a decent scaled sculpt to test it out with the actual weapon loadouts.

 Xendarc wrote:
Diggin' the concept art of the Termi Sob.
I like where you're going with the general design though personally I think the shapely:bulky ratio is a bit out. I imagine the leg and waist armour to be a bit more solid, like a halfway point between body-hugging SoB PA and TDA.
I like the Heavy Bolter on her arm too as it gives it a more unique feel as opposed to a Sister kitted out exactly like a SM terminator.
As for the melee weapons, slightly disappointed that you'd move away from PF's (are you intending to field them as count as Terminators?)
Either way, were you to reconsider them, definitely check out some IG designs.
OR...
You could use those spiky iron halo bits, clip out the middle/skull and use the curved, pointy end as a sort of holy brass-knuckles.

I agree that it needs to be bulked out on some areas. I might redo the sketch if i find the energy to do. And the decission to move away from the fists was mostly based on the fact that (as far as i know) current SoB models don't have the option to use them. And i thought it would be the same with the sisters "holy trinity" of bolter - flamer - melter, that SoB decided not to use them. But maybe GW was just to lazy to come up with a gool looking SoB power fist. You think that i should include some sort of power fist as well? I have to look for IG fists and see what i'll come up with.
And one of my chaos choise terminator has a brass-knuckle. Not too bad of an idea for sisters. I'll think about it.

 Xendarc wrote:
Another thought occurred, would it be possible for you to use scout hands/bolters as a way of saving yourself from scratch building new hands/weapons?

Are the hands of the scouts sculpted onto the bolters? Because i'd need melter and flamer too and the easiest way would be to not sculpt it on each weapon. This way i wouldn't get into trouble recasting GW weapons. (especially if i want to sell a few of those casts. )
But scout arms might be an idea. I only have scout sniper and they have arms and hands rather unflexible. I assume this is different with a normal scout box?

Stick with the "holy trinity" deal for ranged weaponry, I didn't think it affected their melee weapons though
As for the scout arms,

Here's the clearest image I could find. Most of them have a strap hanging from the handle to the grip/rest which looks nice.
I realise now that they might not suit your needs so much
You could still use them but you'd have to clip off the bolters flush from their hand and possibly pin the weapons to them.

peace


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lexicanum wrote:Wherever possible the Sisters of Battle use the holy trinity of weapons, that of the bolter, flamer, and melta. There are few exceptions to this rule, the most notable being melee weapons.

Lex seems okay with it; you should be fine to use PF if you wish and not violate any fluff

 Xendarc wrote:
Stick with the "holy trinity" deal for ranged weaponry, I didn't think it affected their melee weapons though

What i wanted to say with the melee weapon stuff is that i expected a reason described in the background why sisters limit their melee weapon options (as in excluding power fists) similar to their ranged weapons. (I'm not too experienced with all of SoB fluff) But the more i think about it it was probably just a design decission based on the limited model range of SoB. If IG has IG-sized power fists there should be no reason why sisters can't use them. They wear power armor so they definitely have the strength to use a decent sized power fist. And the idea of powered brass-knuckles is kinda growing on me. Might give it a try.

A slimed down "feminine" version of the power fist would suit a SoB termie much better then the standard astartes "LOOK-AT-MY-GIANT-FIST!power fist"

There is a rather nice power fist in the Cadian Command Squad kit which has quite a nice general shape and i think would work perfectly.

I haven't found a good picture of the mentioned IG power fist bit but i found a few artworks of both male and female inquisitors and IG officers with power fists.

And while i blue taced one sister together for a few shots i noticed a few things.
1. My camera is out of juice - again. (Blarg) My rechargebeable batteries are totaly crap it seems ...

2. The models are only tiny bit taller than the GW ones so the scale seems okay. But the legs might be a tiny bit to short if i overdo it with the neck and shoulder area. I have to be carefull.

3. The hips of the legs are to small and need improvement. This will get difficult as there is not much space to bulk them up without loosing the flexibility of the joint there. Maybe i have to carve all the torso joint side wider as well.

4. I need to sink the head joint deeper or change it entirely to a different style. The current heads are sitting to high.

5. There isn't much space left for a tabard. So i either have to sand them even thinner on the connection area or i have to carve away the armor on the crotch area to make room. But this would also mean that there won't be the option to assemble the legs without the tabards as they would lack of additional details then. I'll try to avoid sculpting the tabards onto the legs but maybe it is the best option remaining. But i'll try my best.




Edit: So batteries are recharged and photos taken. And i have a question for you as well.

But first the pictures:



This is the state i'm at (mostly). I have a few legs more or less ready for adding the final details like icons and stuff. I have a few wip torsos and started on working on the arms today. I know that the shoulders are to wide. But i can easily file them down once the armor is on. I just glues punched out plasticard circles on and added the wire to it. But even the thin plasticrad is too much and pushes the arms outwards. But as it is just for ease of working i can file them down no problem.

And the question i have is related to the quick mockup i made with blue tac. While i liked the idea at first to add additional stabilizers for the sisters fireing the really heavy guns looking at the mockup now i'm not so sure anymore. What do you think. Is it too much?



Edit 2:

I forgot to add this photo. It is the current try at creating the legs for my SoB "terminator". Even after filing down the legs i think they are still to thick. But you can at least see where i'm at.

As i looked at SoB models for reference on the shoulders i noticed that they have a power cable running over and not under the shoulder guard. If the shoulders should be seperate pieces it would be rather hard to recreate.

Should i make the shoulders part of the torso to add those cables or should i ignore those cables and do something else?

I'd say exposed cables like that are rather silly but what is your take on that?

Realistically exposed cables like that are silly, and going under makes more sense.

Maybe try one of each? Sometimes the exposed cables can look pretty cool and interesting, but if it causes problems in the seperate pieces, and is soemwhat unrealistic i'd say scratch it, and put them elsewhere.

Maybe with the supports for the heavy weapon legs have an additional piston/support connecting from above the ankle down to the back sides of the other support on the heel.
Also you could slightly elevate their heels a bit so they have the look of (not high) heels but the design retains a sense of practicality (that being for the pistons to cushion the recoil of firing a large gun)
If you think that might look good the design could also be repurposed to accommodate the thruster idea.

A quick update.

The shoulders are prototypes and to large but it gives a better feel for the model. And the shoulder is still to wide, haven't worked on this front either. But i wanted to see how everything assembles with head and shoulders. I'm not 100% happy. I fear that torso and legs still don't go together perfectly. Maybe my torsos are still to big even after the rework. Or i just got an odd posed leg...



And this is the current legs for the heavy armor. I also have started to layout the groundwork for the torso but the GS is still fresh.

Yeah man that heavy armour looks sweet.

Awesome work so far!

I don't know if anyone's offered yet, but I do pressure resin casting (same process as forge world). If you develop a group of models and want more for yourself or to offer "Nuns n' Gunz" for sale, I'd be happy to cast 'em up for you.

I prefer to make everything i can myself but if my model will actually reach a professional level a professional cast with a better setup than mine will be best. So thanks for the offer Jordan but i think a more lokal casting service might be better shipping and timewise. But might come back to your offer.


There is something off with my sculpts and the more i look at it the probelm gets more obvious. One thing i still need to fix up is the size of some of my torsos. Even a millimeter off can result in it looking to wide and large. Also the shoulders on the torsos are to broad and the hips are to thin. And some legs are still to long or thinner than the rest.
To fix this i've carved away even more material from my master and i will pressmold a new set of torsos to sculpt on. I also started to rework my legs with additional features as well as sanding them very carefully if necessary. This will only leave me with the hip problem. And it is a big problem. The problem is that the hip will get in the way of the torso joint. I might have toaccept that the torso can't be posed much. I have thought on hiding the problem zone with details like grenades and poches similar to GW SoB models but then they might get in the way of the tabards.

This still is my first approach of building an entire mutiposed model from scratch and i'm still learning but it gets frustrating to see that i might have to scrap half of my work - or even worst all of it if i can't find a way of fixing the hip. You might say that it can't be that bad based on the more recent pictures but i'm somewhat of a perfectionist - a lazy perfectionist to be precise. And as a perfectionist i want to avoid the flaws that my possessed terminator pieces have here and there in my SoB sculpts.

That doesn't mean that this project will end if the problems i see can't be fixed but it might be put aside for a while - or even restarted entirely - if i can't find a way to make it work with what i have.

On the plus side i think that the heavy armor variant is probably easier to fix and whatever happens i'll continue working on it. There is a slight hip issue too but the bulky armor has more room of hiding it as it was never intendet to follow a feminine propotion like my normal SoB models where.
I'l see what this weeks atempt at fixing will bring. Hope for the best.

Have you thought about instead of the two legs attached together at the groin having the groin as part of the torso and each leg attaching separately?
Kinda like:

I know it looks pretty goofy but it's just a way to get the concept across.

That way you could sculpt details to 'hang' over the gap where the legs attach to the torso, effectively hiding them no matter the angle the leg is at.
Obviously there would be some restrictions to the angle at which the leg could be attached due to the detail concealing the gap but I'd imagine there being a greater deal of flexibility than what you're currently dealing with.
I believe that this might also give more variance with leg posing, particularly with the Seraphim SoB.

As for the details to conceal the gap you could simply sculpt a lip/edge to their corset on which you could further attach pouches and grenades

btldoomhammer wrote:I prefer to make everything i can myself but if my model will actually reach a professional level a professional cast with a better setup than mine will be best. So thanks for the offer Jordan but i think a more lokal casting service might be better shipping and timewise. But might come back to your offer.

Absolutely. The set up I have isn't that expensive (actually, my set up cost almost a thousand US dollars, but I insisted on buying industrial equipment). All you need is an air compressor with a tank and a small "pressure pot", along with the attendant hoses, all of which are available at your local hardware store. After that, you're in business and casting just like the pros.

I can write up a more detailed guide if you're interested.

The ideas has it's advantages and it's disadvantages.

This would help in attaching the Torso properly to the body and would also make adding a tabard easier. The legpose would be harder to assemble but more flexible.

But then you wouldn't be able to assemble the model with a slightly twisted torso that easily.

But it got me thinking. How flexible actually are SoB power armor. Their armor looks like corsets and those aren't designed to be easy to move in. Some artwork shows sisters with twisted torsos but those are all looking like they are only wearing leather corsets and not power armor.
Maybe there actually is leather or thicker cloth on SoB armor but it's just bolted on top of the segmented power armor underneath.
This would explain why Sisters can actually move their torsos in something that looks like one solid piece of armor.
Or has the 40K universe a material unknown to me that proves as much protection as solid armor while still remain somewhat flexible?

Is there something on that in one of the GW sources or even the RPG sourcebooks?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jordan wrote:

Absolutely. The set up I have isn't that expensive (actually, my set up cost almost a thousand US dollars, but I insisted on buying industrial equipment). All you need is an air compressor with a tank and a small "pressure pot", along with the attendant hoses, all of which are available at your local hardware store. After that, you're in business and casting just like the pros.

I can write up a more detailed guide if you're interested.

I have briefly talked about something like that with my father, He is a modeltrain hobbyist and currently tries to build his own small cnc mill. He has a knack at improvising stuff like that. He would help me once he finishes the cnc mill (which migth be interesting for me too). But still it would be helpfull to know what has to be done. I can search for guides but if you have personal experience im interested in your experience - if you have no problem investing the time to write a guide.

And another update from me.

I have reworked the torsos and created the third generation. I think those are the scale i need.


I also have started to create a few heads. Those are all made from the same cast. This is just temporary. I'll create entire sculpts in the future. But those are more or less for testing how everything looks together.


And here is the first mockup of the heavy armor torso. The "hood" still needs some work. But this is just the basic shape. It will be bulked out with actuall details. And the arms are just for scale purpose. I'll create arms that are actually ment for those. And as you can see i used a normal head. My goal is to be able to use the same heads like my other SoB sculpts. I will probably create some helmet variants just for the heavy armor but i like to have the ability to use every head on those.


You might have noticed the fleur de lys design on the torso back. The "side wings" will be turned into vents and there will also be smaller vents below the main body of the "backpack" to complete the pattern. And i'll probably change the design of her butt armor. It looks kinda strange next to the other armor desin.

Look what i did today: Weapons.
Sadly i messed up the chain sword - the chains are in the wrong direction. But maybe i can do something else with it.




And also a bit mor work done on the heavy armor. It has basic arms now with - as always - shoulders that need to be reworked to not be so wide. But i really like where this is going.

Love the fleur concept... very nice.

The Heavy Armor is looking spot on!

 Sageheart wrote:
The Heavy Armor is looking spot on!

Yep agree with that.

And i like the armor as well, something that doesn't always happen with stuff i create. And i'm still refining the armor. It's a slow process as i can only add small details and then have to wait for it to cure. But i might have it finished next week or so. Then i just need to cast it and make variations based on that.

In the meantime i added a few details on the weapons.

I recently remembered that the GW immolator kit comes with a plastic sister model and so i ordered it together with a set of metal models as additional references.
I got the order today and i'm quite happy that the parts i sculpted are really close to the GW parts. Both torso and heads are nearly the same size as the parts on the immolator sprue. YAY. Now just get the final touches on the hip joints and i can start adding the details.

And i have a question for you. What should i put in the offhand of my living saint? i plan on building two weapon arms for her one with a twohander and one with a lance. It might be best to pair up the twohander with another empty hand but the lance could use another arm. I don't like the bird the original model carries. Now i need alternatives. A shield might look decent. One handed lance and a lancer shield would fit together. What is your take on that?


[imagine picture of a power lance]
(I didn't charged my batteries again and the recharger is missing ... )


You have seen the weapons i've worked on and i now have put one sword on a heavy armor arm. I put the melee weapon on the left arm as i think that the main hand should be the shooty option. SoB are a shooty army so the main weapon should be the gun.


[Imagine cool looking heavy armor with one sword carrying arm]

If this is what a single person can achive, how come gw with a whole team of profesional mini designers can't update the SoB ???

Because it took them over 10 years to do the Dark Eldar?

Absolutely amazing work, fairly new into 40k and SoB are by far my favourite army. Can't wait to see how these turn out and hopefully buy some one day.

My vote is for the Lance and the Lancer Shield

A lance would look good. Maybe a small buckler on the off hand?

I've decided to do both the twohanded sword and the lance and shield arms. Then i can use either and also use the arms on other models.

And now with batteries recharged the missing images:

How do you handle having that much talent? It must be bursting out of your ears.

The heavy sister looks bloody excellent and the lance is so S.o.Besque that it hurts to look at. (in the good way of course! )

 Snrub wrote:
How do you handle having that much talent? It must be bursting out of your ears.

The heavy sister looks bloody excellent and the lance is so S.o.Besque that it hurts to look at. (in the good way of course! )

There is a lot of space between my ears i can store my talents And there is also a lot of room for improvements to fill that space. And i'm at it for only 2 years now so there must be room for improvements. And if i can't covercome my unstructured way of working then i can at least build up a lot of sculpting-'instinct' to replace the planning.


Back to more seriousness. I still have to tackle the weapon loadout of the heavy armor. I want to add the holy trinity of bolter - melter - flamer to them. So stormbolters, combibolter(excluding plasma), heavy flamer, heavy bolter( and maybe multimelter?) The problem is how to mount them. I really like the underslung weapons like the autocannon but there are no underslung versions of most of those weapons. (Or am i missing something?) What would be nice is if i could build one arm where i can attach all the different underslung weapons. But that would mean that i have to build my own versions of those guns. But while i did this already for an underslung lascannon for my havocs and my own reaper autocannon for the possessed terminators it still feels a bit like stealing from GW. But i think it is a better solution than just blatantly recasting GW bits.

To make a long rant shot two questions regarding your opinion on the wargear. Should i include weapons like heavy bolter (replacing autocannon ?) and multimelter or stay true to a more classic terminator loadout? Also if i build the underslung weapon arm should i build underslung combi-/stormbolter as well or build them like traditional handheld weapons?

And additionally what is your take on a melee variant? I think of SoB as a shooty army and melee isn't the best in 6th. Woulda melee variant still fit into that?

your chain sword isn't a total waste. you can use it for a chainfist weapon based on the Bloodrayne style sword. i say based on as it would not look right being the same as the bloodrayne, the style wepon i'm imagining would only be a tad shorter than the forearm itself. Just make it so the teeth are pointing back from the hand, and build up the edges of the power gauntlet so that it appears as if the teeth of the sword actually rotate inside the gauntlet to emerge from the front of the fist. You would have to make the sword longer so that it runs the length of the forearm and then extends a bit past the hand. Doing this would make for a perfectly feasible weapon and at the same time also make for an interesting looking model.
for reference purposes:


BTW, when you get this project finished, if GW themselves have NOT produced anything new for sisters, i will also be one of those standing in line to buy casts off of you, to add into my current sisters army. also something else that might help with the terminator nun is the following pics. while i realize there are aspects of this model that do not in any way fit with SoB's, there is also quite a bit about it that does. Hope the suggestions and pics help.

Interesting idea for the chainsword. I don't know if this would fit into the standard SoB style. It would definitely work for repentias but currently there are no plans from me to do those too. But that might change in the future. I'll keep hold of the blade as a reminder that repentias also need some love.

And thanks for the images too. But i have seen them already and don't like the whole model. It just looks like a nun that has donned a big bulky terminator armor. That style totally clashes with the current stripped down power armor SoB are wearing.
But still i thought about getting one for maybe a HQ model of some sort but i don't like the massive propotions those models from hitechminiatures have.

Personally, I say you sling the heavy weapons under the firing arm of the heavy sister, and mount the lance in the other hand.

I think the new sterngaurd kit has a PA sized heavy flamer, maybe use that as the base grip for the underslung weapons. As for the bolters, perhaps attaching the bolter/stormbolters/combibolters like the grey knights, sort of sideways on the arm? This would also give the SoB either a free hand or two hands to grip a two-handed weapon.

The heavy armour is looking amazing and the detail on the lance is great

Wow that model looks sexy.

Lance looks really awesome, is it a bit small though? can't tell from the picture but it looks small.

Hey, speaking of SOB terminators, its being speculated that since GW is trying to cycle through all the codexes much more quickly than in the past, SOB might be pushed into the grey knight codex, much like Black Templars and Space Marines. If that does happen, Sister terminators will be great for anyone wanting a Sisters army while still using all the stuff from the Grey Knight side. Maybe next a pentient engine dreadknight?

WingEnvy wrote:
Hey, speaking of SOB terminators, its being speculated that since GW is trying to cycle through all the codexes much more quickly than in the past, SOB might be pushed into the grey knight codex, much like Black Templars and Space Marines.

Honestly, Since Grey Knights got their own codex, it would make more sense for Sisters and Inquisition to have a stand alone codex for themselves. of course that means that Sisters would need more units than what they currently have. It would also be disappointing for me if they were exclusive to the Grey Knights codex, i HATE space marines, i tolerate Imperial Guard(barely), and as such the only Imperium army that appeals to me is the Sisters. why, i don't know, they are Imperium, and every army i own besides them is Xenos. so the only thing i can figure is it must harken back to the days of "Macho Women with Guns" anyways, it would be nice to have GW sign off on Sister Terminators, Sisters Attack bikes, Sisters Flyers, etc., etc., but somehow i doubt they will and i predict i will be highly disappointed along with thousands of other Sisters players. that is until i create my own army list using other units that aren't currently allowed and play them against my friends.

I don't think that sisters will be pushed into grey knights. If they don't get their own codex is sounds much more reasonable to make a combined codex with other forces of the imperium like Arbites, Mechanicum and a wider array of assassins. (An ally codex of some sort) I hope that they get their own with new units and the like but that would require a lot of new kits and a redo of all existing models in pastic or finecast (the HQ). It will be an expensive step for GW and i don't know if they think it will be worth it.
I heard different rumors like existing plastic kits that where dropped due to quality issues, i heard of a possible release end of next year and also of an ally codex. But we can just speculate until it is time.
And i am prepared for useing them as counts as army (Space Marine codex?) should gw decide to drop sisters entirely. We just have to wait and see.

And should GW really drop them maybe the sisters players should band together and make an official inofficial new codex of their own.

Wow, nice sculpting doomhammer!
I really like the decorations on the weapons, and the 'hood' that the heavy armoured sister has.
Keep up the good work!

Thank you.

The progress on my girls have slowed down. But at least i got some work done since last update. I mostly worked on the living saints arms. This is her with the sword varation. Both arms aren't done but it looks good i'd say. The open hand is a tricky one and this is already the second try at creating it. But i think i got it this time. You can also see the lance and shield that will go on to an alternative armset that is still in a very rough shape.



And i also tried to create actuall gun arms for my normal sisters. The tricky part will be to create the left hand. I filled in the bolter handle to use the smooth surface to sculpt a hand onto. I'll try to either embed wires into this hand of use a underlaying ticker metal foil for better removal once it is cured. If i can create the open hand for my saint i will be able to do this easily.

Nothing too fancy but i completed the first set of bolter arms. I'm not totally happy as the wires i used where a bit to thick and got in the way of picking out the fingers. Next time i use thiner ones.

I've made a very drastic step yesterday. I cut the torso for the heavy armor sister in half. I cut away the front parts for better molding and now i have to fixup all the damage i did in the process as well as create a smooth connection area. But this also means that i'm closer to actually casting those parts. That means that i can continue on my plan and cast up multiples on which to add the different final details onto. If i can keep on track maybe i can cast the first copies of the master beginning of next week. But that means that i have to finish the arms as well.
What i decided on doing is continue with the underslung weapon arm idea for everything. I'll build up a few basic right arms without a hand and attach both weapon and hand into one pieces or on the smaller weapons into two pieces (weapon and hand)


And i have a question regarding my other nearly finished model - the living saint. I have most of the work on the arms finished now and i only need to add smaller details, the shoulders and the head. But i can't decide what head(s) to create for her. A helmeted one with a more medieval looking helmet? A head with open hair? Something different?
The way i plan on setting everything up should allow to use all of my sister heads on her but i would like tom create heads specific for this model. So what are your ideas?

how about long hair, ited make her stand out more among your other sob
edit: typo

Helmless but with nice laurels just above her ears.

I like the laurels idea. And i can try adding longer hair too. But that will be tricky to create removeable. But i'll try it.
And then i'll also create a helmeted head. This way i have two heads for her as well.

And i have another question. What should i put on the saints back? I'm not a fan of those cherub-baby things and now i need alternatives. An often used approach are wings. And while i like that i want to keep my options wide. A flowing cape? Some form of alternate backpack? A standard of some sort? Some more techy looking wings? Or something more like the band-style wings tyrael from diablo has? Any alternatives that you can think of or what do you prefer?

I've always been a fan of wings to be honest.

A hideously complex idea would be a flock of doves bearing her aloft- but probably unfeasible.

Beautiful work by the way- I'll be watching with interest.

Tyreal Wings would be awesome, but I can see them causing some problems.

I like the cape, it could be an epic cape

what about jump pack?

Or perhaps a backpack with stylized wings? almost like sanguinary guard but not so bulky?

i agree with Cadian, angel wings are what has always seemed best looking to me. I'm not a fan of the Tyreal wings though, and Master Azelle is correct that style of wings would be a real pain for us modelers. take it from me, the FW Shadow Spectres have lots of flowing ribbons on them and the material they use for their resin casts means the ribbons are very thin and very fragile, i have the feeling the if you tried to do Tyreal style wings they would be very fiddly and fragile in resin as well.

A cape is not a bad idea either but again as Master Azelle has stated it would have to be suitably impressive to fit Celestine stature as a living saint, something along the lines of Spawn's cape. Mechanical wings would not suit her, Celestine is a battle sister of the Ecclesiarchy not the Mechanicus.

When can I get some of these Sisters?

I agree sebastion I realize that they are not fangirls of the AM but just a thought, maybe a trimmed down version from the BA SG? Just throwing ideas around :(

Thanks for the suggestions. I have to look at spawns cape. And i agree that the cape must have something special for her.

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
When can I get some of these Sisters?

It will take some time knowing my working speed. And this is only a side project next to my chaos army. But depending on what is in the rumored digital sister codex i might get a bit of motivation from there. (But i expect it to just be a rerelease of the WD Codex with a bit of 6th edition changes on top.)

 Master Azalle wrote:
I agree sebastion I realize that they are not fangirls of the AM but just a thought, maybe a trimmed down version from the BA SG? Just throwing ideas around :(

Sorry Master, i didn't mean to sound like i was chastising you, i can see the mix up now after going back and re-reading my post. i just meant that mechanical wings would probly not work, please remember, i play xenos armies almost exclusively so BA's are something i know very little about.

having said that i have seen BA sanguinary wings and while nice looking, i think that style of metal wing would come out a bit too static for her, and Swooping Hawk wings, or warmachine's clockwork angels wings, or the maxmini/kromlech wings would just not fit who she is.

incorporating these two ideas is also a possibility, imagine the following but with the cape forming the suggestion of wings:


then there is this style of mechanical wings that would suit her and would not be so static or look like they were mechanicus issue:

I'm more in favour of realistic, feathery wings over metal, mechanical ones. I sorta feel that it suits the character better as a Living Saint.
In my mind they're kinda like an angel or angelic being resurrected though faith and continually fuelled by Emperor Mojo. Almost like the Imperial equivalent of a Daemon Prince.

I could be off though

I agree that more feathery wings would look better but I think it would be cool to see them in the same position as the mechanical ones above, though it might be a problem with the living saints pose at the moment

Yes the wings wouldn't fit. Both lance or sword would get in the way. But i could try a less curved approach. But in general angelic wings is the favorite of most of you. And while i like a jetpack wing combo this is planed for my seraphim backpacks. I don't like the current sister jetpacks and i will design my own.

Stupid 'catch falling parts with my legs' reflex. It reacted even to my knife ... It droped so stupidly that i managed to push it with the force of my right thight into my left one. I'd say it went in a cm or so. But as rapidly as the bleeding started it stoped again. So thankfully nothing serious.

And now the more nice part of the update. I fixed up the torso parts and put them away on my 'to cast' pile. If i have enough on it i will cast it.
I also reworked the legs a bit and they can be cast soon as well. But i'd like to create the arms as well as the shoulder plates so that i can cast them together. I plan on creating at least 5 variations. For that i'll use the first mold as a basis to add different details to the copies and mold them as well. (If the interest is high enough. Casting all of my possessed terminator parts cost me 25+ € just for the molds. So it is better if i can cast more copies from it to be cost efficient.)

And here is the living saint. I might have to fix the left arms as they might be to thick. Other than that they only miss shoulders and a few minor details.

Looking really great, I really love seeing it come together so nicely.

I'm not sure but to me the shoulder width seems to be slightly too much however I noticed you have some tac joining the shoulders and am wondering if that's all I'm seeing.
Also both of the arms seem a bit thick/big though you're right in that it is noticeably more so in the open-hand left arm.

Otherwise, looking great.
I particularly like the lance/shield combination.

Peace

No its not only the blue tac. The shoulders are to wide. I have to rework them.

And the thickness will hopefully not be too much of a problem. I can rework it somewhat on the upper arms (although it means redoing the straps.)

And the thickness problem is a reoccuring one. The arms and legs of my other sisters have that too. And it often is only noticeable once additional details are on and making the parts even wider. I have to learn to catch and correct those problems earlier.

Okay, i've reworked the arms a bit. But more isn't possible. I think that the other parts i did for my regular sisters will have similar problems so i'll change my approach a bit. Before i blast through more and more parts that might not fit together i'll do something similar to the living saint and build more special single models to get a better feel for the propotions before i tacle the models with more parts. I decided to create a sister dialogus (the GW model is horrible) and a sister mechanicus (something like a techmarine). Those will consist of a body, seperate arms and head. Although i might make the head of the mechanic one part of the body.

And i started to create a 3d model for the weapons on the heavy armored sister. If everything works out i let them be printed in 3d and cast them in resin. But it will take some time until i get the 3d models in a state i like. Currently the heavy bolter looks like this. I need to create an ammo feed from the ammo box to the gun itself and make the area where the arm connects to the weapon.
What do you think?

This is the 3d model as it stands right now.

i agree that the sister dialogous is garbage, can't wait to see what you do with these two!

And I am loving the look of the heavy bolter brother!

Well my idea of the dialogus is totally different from the one gw has. The Gw model looks more like a minor adept with some paper strapped on - a totally unimportant person.
But as far as i know the dialogus isn't just a minor order. I see the sister dialogus as a more noble looking model carrying scrolls and books but also technical utilities to help read, store and decipher all the various human and alien texts and stuff. But i want to keep at least some of the GW features so will keep the staff mounted speaker. And i'll also add a vision enhancing visor over one eye with integrated microphone.
I've started to create a sketch and once i've refined it i'll show it to you.

Loving the way this is going!
If you ever do mold these I would totally grab some from you, the work here is stunning.

Yo doomhammer quick question. how do you sculpt those power armor joints? the under accordion parts?

Edit: Thanks il have to give it a go.

 Sageheart wrote:
Loving the way this is going!
If you ever do mold these I would totally grab some from you, the work here is stunning.

Thanks.
My ultimate goal is to mold them. But the only model that is somewhat close to that is the living saint. It only misses it's head and something for the back. (Probably wings) The heavy armored ones still need some work on arms shoulders and heads. But legs and torso are rather close for being molded. My idea with them is to create one blank master and the cast it up a few times, repose it and decorate them differently. Then mold those various parts again if the interest is high enough.

The basic sisters will probably need some time. I made a few errors in plaining and some of the parts don't fit together due to varrying sizes ...

 Desubot wrote:
Yo doomhammer quick question. how do you sculpt those power armor joints? the under accordion parts?

Very simple. I use a sharp knife. I sculpt both sides of the armor plates and then add a bit of GS in between them smooth it out and grab a knife to cut the lines in.

I see the sister dialogus as a more noble looking model carrying scrolls and books but also technical utilities to help read, store and decipher all the various human and alien texts and stuff. But i want to keep at least some of the GW features so will keep the staff mounted speaker. And i'll also add a vision enhancing visor over one eye with integrated microphone.
I've started to create a sketch and once i've refined it i'll show it to you.

perhaps a wrist mounted datapad for the techie bits. might i also suggest if your going to keep the Laud Hailer staff to dress it up with some ornamentation to make it more suitable for being carried around by a person who serves and is served by the Noble Houses of the Imperium.

Interesting that you mentioned the wrist datapad. Because i had the same idea. And i agree that her staff needs some additional decorations. I'm still planing them out. I'll look at SoB decorations and see what i'll come up with.

And i started to work a bit on a tech sister. (Or a female tech adept if i decide to leave her without sob icons) This is how she currently looks. Not much but a start.


And a few heads. The one to the left is the one the sister dialogus will have once it's finished. And for the others i don't have a plan yet. Just nice to have a few options awailable and also to get my head sculpting skills up.


And i created this variant of the SoB helmet that might or might not be used for the heavy armored sisters.

The helmet on the right... soo much win

seriously doom, very well done.

Always love you're work, keep it coming. Had a chance to do anything else with the seraphim, besides those legs?

I haven't done work on my normal sisters. That includes the seraphim models as well. But i plan on sort everything through and look at what is useable and what parts align with each other. I expect a few more parts to be put to the side. And depending on the remainder i might change my approach and finish on or two sister models for casting and then use those cast parts as a basic shape for reposing and reworking the rest. The approach of sculpting everything from scratch was probably a bit too soon for my skills as i couldn't keep a uniform scale on all the parts. The work on the living saint showed me that.
And there is still the problem with the sisters hips that i need to finetune. Currently the hips are to small and everything looks a bit out of propotion because of that. I'll try to rework a few torsos and legs like already mentioned and see where this takes me.

And i have also an update on my female tech adept and my version of the sister dialogus. They both will get some more cloth/robes and other decorations. Because of that i left a few areas with less defined details as they will be invisible once the cloth is on. But they wont have as much robe as the GS models of that style normally have.

The tech sister looks the buisness man

Really cool! Looking forward to what those models become!

Really like the new helmets too, the one on the right is great!

You've got the mechanical aspects of the tech-ad. down really well. The components are all aligned and still fitting in with the body shape as opposed to aligned but angular or rigid.
Idk, I hope you understand. Rest assured that it looks really good.
I am especially fond of the cabling on her back
Again, really fits in with the body shape and her pose, well done!

Keep up the good work man!

Peace

I'm a little indecisive how much robe and/or cloth i should put on them. Both GW models (dialogus and tech adept) are covered in robes. But i don't want to cover up the extensive work on the bionics. But i don't know how they would look without a robe. And if i want to cast them i also have to factor that in. My current idea for the dialogus is a "cape" (or half a skirt) that starts below her corset and goes over the backside of her legs. But that would create a massive hole between her legs that i can never cast. So maybe adding a SoB style tabard on the front as well to fill in the leg gap. But i'm not sure it this will mix with the more normal looking boots and pants.

And the tech sister will most likely have a tabard but how much additional robe should i put on her?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I cast the first parts in resin. But don't get too overexcited. Those are only ment to be the base for reposing and further detailing of the rest of the heavy armored sisters. But it is a step in the right direction. I just have to create the arms and heads too as well as their weapons. But someone from the community steped up and will help me to make 3d models for 3d printing of the weapons.

And i briefly looked over the sisters legs and sorted them a bit. It's not as bad as i thought but i have to finally nail the hip-torso joint to continue further with the rest of the legs.

is 3D printing useful for model casting?

Great to see things coming along!

Well if i can print out a master i can rework and cast it.

Awesome! Nice to see hopefully the first cast of many!

I hope too.

I noticed a few things yesterday while loking at my sister parts. The legs mostly look okay but i have to redo the hip section. Also all my torsos are too round as a result of the round joint and me not thinking it through. So i have to redo all torsos. This is hopefully a chance of redesigning the master, making it a bit shorter and change the nech and chest area to a much better and flatter variation for me to better sculpt on. The pegs for the heads are mostly unified so i can hoepfully use existing heads and legs to create the master in between somehow.

Also the heads i currently have are all based on a sculpt that seemingly have no chin ... so i have to redu that too. But on the plusside this hoepfully motivates me to do a bunch of different heads with much more details and character.

I'm also thinking of creating another set of two sisters where torso and legs are one piece. I'll decorate them up to serve as sister superiors or other hq models. I'll do that before tackling the hip-torso problem to get a better feeling for how thick a torso has to be. I will use up two legs in the process but i hope that i can learn ebough from that to finally overcome that stupid hip-roadblock.


Also you you know of any model that has a similar size and scale as the SoB models and a seperate hip? Maybe i can get some of those models as a referece? I looked at GWs range a bit but the only models that might fit the bill are the new high elf models. The box is rather expensive just for getting one model as a reference. Especially if i don't even know if they are similar shaped than sisters.

If the hip section is giving you that much trouble, you could sculpt the legs and torso as one part in several poses for casting, making the arms and head poseable.

Also you you know of any model that has a similar size and scale as the SoB models and a seperate hip? Maybe i can get some of those models as a referece? I looked at GWs range a bit but the only models that might fit the bill are the new high elf models. The box is rather expensive just for getting one model as a reference. Especially if i don't even know if they are similar shaped than sisters.

you could try here to see if you can find what you need for references:

Blackdagger games (Ebay) single figure listings

40K single figure listings (Ebay again)

I've actually bought from Blackdagger, and Hoard-a-bits, and so i can vouch for them as a trusted site to buy from, can't say anything about Bits Boys as i have yet to buy from them. hope this helps.

Thanks for the links. While i don't think that i'll buy those it helped me realize that more fantasy kits had the oval hip joint than i thought. But i still plan on getting some. I have ordered from a local german fanatsy bitz shop on other occasions and they have fantastic prices on most parts. So that will be my source.




And thses will be my reference for the hip and torso propotions. While the shoulder area needs some more work obviously the rest looks great i'd say. And i think that i now know how to design the hip area better. My plan is to order a selection of fantasy legs and torsos from the already mentioned shop and using those as reference redesign my own models. That means recreating most torsos but i want them to be good.

And here is also the state of my female tech adept and the dialogus. Those will also serve as an experiment for the shoulder. I plan on making the shoulders part of the body and only the arms seperate. Depending on how well that works i might think of doing the same with my normal sisters.
Also what do you think of the laud hailer with the angels? It still needs some more work but it turned out better that i initially though.

I love the loud hailer and the axe! well done Doom!

And even though you'll be re-working some of the parts, those two WiPs are outsanding brother!

And those helmets you made and posted a little furthere up, also outstanding,. I feel that the one on the right fits in a little more with the artwork out

With the helmets i wanted to test out creating variants from the standard sister helmets for the heavy armored sisters. But i agree that the right one looks better.
One problem is that they are a tad to wide and i had a hard time fitting them into the hood of the torso. The head fits now but doesn't have much freedom. I'll probably sand the sides down a bit more on my next versions.

Delicious!!!

Looking great!

Looking great, as always. Apparently a lot more artwork will be coming out with the new digital codex on the 19th. Know you don't play, but are you planning on picking it up?

Definitely. While i never have played i still bought the current codex of my armys. I hope that there is enough new artwork in it that i haven't seen already. Also the increased fluff interests me for inspiration. And while i don't think that there will be something drastically new with the wargear it is nice to see how i can equip those models.

Edit.
Looking at the models as well as the artworks it looks to me that the shoulder plates of the sisters are rather static and mostl likely fixed to their armor with little to no flexibility. Whould you agree? Or is this just something born from the way the models where designed? I ask this because i started thinking how to tackle the shoulders. I could make them separate (very flimsy small parts...) part of the arms (Reposing the arms would also mean reposing the shoulders) or fixed to the torso(more glue-space for the arms but less flexibility in reposing the arms into non standard positions).

I think having them attached to the torso would be fine, considering their shape. I know that having them separate on the marines have allowed me to do some nice reposing, but sister shoulder plates aren't going to hide much of the work lines anyway.

 btldoomhammer wrote:
Looking at the models as well as the artworks it looks to me that the shoulder plates of the sisters are rather static and mostl likely fixed to their armor with little to no flexibility. Whould you agree? Or is this just something born from the way the models where designed? I ask this because i started thinking how to tackle the shoulders. I could make them separate (very flimsy small parts...) part of the arms (Reposing the arms would also mean reposing the shoulders) or fixed to the torso(more glue-space for the arms but less flexibility in reposing the arms into non standard positions).

Assuming that the shoulder pads are attached static to the torso you can maybe create a concave surface underneath a lip (the lip for the shoulder pad to attach to).
Then give a ball end to the shoulder appropriate in shape and size to the concave area under the lip.
Here's a concept drawing to help explain.


With this design the biggest issue I can see is shaping the underarm area on both the torso and arm to fit in nicely. I believe this might be made easier if the ball end is slightly off centre toward the torso from the rest of the arm. This way more of the ball can fit into the concave and allow for more movement as the details will be further away from the connection point.
As for the concave depression on the sides of the torso; taper the outer rims to prevent obstruction of monouverbility and sculpt some GS on the outside of the taper to hide the hole and give a detailed hard edge to the armour.

The whole idea of the ball joint is to maximise surface connection for gluing as well as provide a joint for which the arm may be angled up, down, left, right or even slightly rotated as opposed to the two flat SM arm connections which only allow for a small amount of movement in only two directions (without additional alteration)

If you give the lip over the depression on which the shoulder pad would sit a curved surface and the shoulder pads a similarly curved underside you could also stick on the pads at a rotation (not so much their angle however) dependant on the angle (yes, here are the angles) the arm has been posed at.
This would be purely aesthetic as the positioning of the shoulder pads should not interferer with the positioning of the the arms.
:edit:
This also means you can swap-out pads per model

What d'you reckon Doom
Anyone else kinda understand where I'm going with this?
Anyways, hope this helps you out a bit

Peace

I really like the balljount idea. A lot more poseability that way. It will be tricky for me to create though. I currently only had flat survaces in mind but i could give it a try. Now i only need to find a suiteable standin for the ball and a suiteable method of creating consistent holes for them.



Edit:

Oh and by the way i might have found a decent shape for an oval hip jount that at least will give me some poseability. But the way it works i probably can't use a master and scrap it down or i risk to add to much bulk. But i made a positive and negative coppy with instant mould so i'll hopefully be able to sculpt to torsos on top of that.

A quick progress update.

I tried my first experiments with the ball joint approach for the arms. I didn't drill too deep into the torso but i did create a more or less round recess to slot the arm in. I also used some plastic pearls and glued them to the tip of the wire to create my first prototypes. And I've added a small overhanging "shoulder" to the torso to increate the glue surface for both the actuall shoulder plates and the arm joint. I think this is a good middle ground. Not too hard to recreate with my limited tools but it gives enough reposition possibilites.

This is the prototype in action, held together with a bit of blue tac.



As you can see the scale of my models does look nice next to the current metal sisters. What i probably have to do is finetune my head sculpting. Seeing both models next to each other i think my heads are still a bit to wide in their propotions. Also i have to be very carefull for shoulder width as this is also a big problem of my other sculpts. I think it looks okay especially once i add those cloth details to the arms and the actuall shoulder. But i still need to be carefull.
I also learned in the process that the measurements i used for all of my arms are somewhat off. I have to shorten both lower and upper arm wire length by 1mm for them to be correct.
But overall i think it looks very promising.


And i have a few other progress shots with arms attached.





Both suffer from the already mentioned shoulder width problem - especially the right arm of the dialogus. But i think they are also looking decent overall. I just need to touchup the shoulders and remove a bit of bulk from the arms here and there.
One question that i still need to answer is what to put in the right arm of the tech priestess. I could just simply add a weapon but i like the idea more to mount all weapon options on the servo arms. One thing i kinda like is to add some form of reparing tool either into her hand or even replace her hand with it. What do you think? And do you have other ideas for her hand?

Maybe some kind of auspex?

(by the way, awesome GS skills!)

Leg and torso proportions are looking really good, dude
I'm really liking the progress you've made on the Sister Dialogus.
Do you plan on designing the Techmarine as standard or are we seeing the first Mistress(Master) of the Forge here?
If she's a MotF then I too like the idea of having the weapons joined to her servo arms.
You should sculpt her holding the wired cervical vertebrae of a de-activated Servo-skull. That way it is hanging limply from it's bony neck while being held.

I like both the auspex and the servo skull idea. Although the auspex would be the one easier to create and cast. So i'll probably go with that. But on the other hand if i design the wires of the skull as a more solid cluster the casting would probably doable ... decissions, decissions.

And i haven't done any decissions on what to add to the servo arm or if i even build a full servo harness. And she is not ment to be a real techmarine. She is much to small for that. So no MotF either. She should be more like a techpriest. As there is no real representation on tech personal for sisters i still haven't decided if i create her just as a regular priest or if i should bling her up with fleur de lys and other sister related stuff.

Those are such awesome updates!! Makes it worth checking this blog repetitively.

Thanks.

And i hope that i can find the time and motivation to finally tackle and finetune the hip joint problem. The latest iteration is nearly at a point where i like it but it could be a tiny bit flatter. I have ordered a few bitz of different legs from WH fantasy and maybe i can fixup my own version slightly to mach those. Hopefully the ordered bitz are shipped to me before the weekend.

The ball jointed arms are looking good and i think i will keep that approach. One thing that i really like about it is that the pearls not only allow for much more poseability but also help me have less scale errors on the arms. I can use the unified size of the pearls as a reminder of size to keep the sculpts unified much more easily.

Wow, these are really impressive!

The only criticism could be that they're looking ever so slightly too bulky, and you already know that...

Looking forward to seeing these improve even further

The progress is slow and i haven't done much work (as usual if i'm depressed). What i did was to start and recreate a few arms using the ball joint approach. One set is nearly finished and only needs the left hand to hold the weapon and a few further details on the gloves.
I also created a new batch of head shapes that might look better but i haven't utilized them further. And i did a prototype of a shoulderplate shape that will hopefully work for a seperate piece. But overall nothing really interesting got done.

I even wasn't motivated enough to actually get the digital codex ...

I think i have found a suiteable shape for my shoulders. They are still a bit too bulky but i planed for that and can sand them down to a good smooth surface to work with.
And i have to trimm down my arms even further. And my hands tend to be a bit too large too. She looks a lot more bulky due to blue tac but there is still a bit of rework needed to get the look right. The biggest problem i have is with the bent arms as they tend to be longer doe to how i bent them. And i probably have to sculpt the armor plates below the details even thinner.



And here is the progress on the dialogus and tech adept. I have to rework the neck part of the dialogus as the heads sits a bit awkwardly on the body. And the shoulder still need to be worked on but it looks a lot better on the tech adept on that front now.
What i'm still not sure is how to build the servo arms. I had originally planned to plug them into her back and not in a power pack like i did here. But there actually isn't much room on her back to securely build decent looking arms into.
What do you say? Backpack mounted like i did in the picture or smaller and more fragile arms on her back?



And as spearate backpacks for the sisters are hard to come by i started to work on my own versions. One is already on the adept and those are the others i cobbled together. Still work in progress but they look decent.




And a prototype i build is for the seraphim legs. I toned my initial idea down a bit as well as lining them up with the seraphim backpacks. The idea is some smaller jet exhausts similar to the backpack but more spread out in a wing shape for different directions. I will cover up the front of them with additional details so that they don't look out of place like they do on the prototype.
What do you think of the idea?



And finally i'll just throw my latest head experiemnts into the mix as well.

I'm throwing money at the screen but nothing is happening! :(

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
I'm throwing money at the screen but nothing is happening! :(

Well the problem with that is that money is so hard to sculpt with ... maybe throwing modelling supplies will bear better results?

On a more serious note i have a few problems both in my sculpting and in the scale and design of the models to overcome. And tackling them needs some time still. It is still a learning experience for me to build multipart models in the smaller scale of the sisters that follow a consistent assembly possibility. But i'd say i'm on my way.

Once i have the basic shape down it will take up speed as i plan on casting that and rework those cast masters for the rest of the models. But for that i need good matching unified joint and fitting scale.

Those seraphim legs doomhammer... very nice stuff, you get such clean angles!

I really like the idea of smaller exhausts on the legs to actually provide some realistic steering and agility to a jetpack. My only thought is perhaps that there is no obvious method of providing the thrust to them? The thrusters on the backpacks are attached to what looks like a beefy power supply, but nothing similar to the ones on the legs. I get that the power they require would be much less, but I still feel there should be something. Perhaps some sort of power "vein?" Food for thought anyway.

As for the backpacks themselves, they're looking promising too. If the bottom left is going to be braziers as I assume then that is going to be awesome. I've always loved the idea of a whole army with flames coming out their backpacks

I shudder to think of the difficulty of trying to get multi-part models to actually work with a home-casting system, but I salute you for persevering all the same.

Finally, the tech adept is looking very tasty as well. My preference would be too keep the servo arms on the backpack as opposed to actually built in. The explanation being that sisters don't really go in for too much augmentation and also that more delicate arms on a battlefield? I would have to question their usefulness and lifespan.

Unfortunately something about the dialogus isn't doing it for me. There's the neck as you mentioned, but something also looks off with her breast plates, too stretched out maybe? Bulking them outwards from the bottom up ala the tech adept might help this out. The pose as a whole might need a rethink too, I think its really contributing to the "flat" feel of the model. Its a combination of the right arm straight by her side, a fairly static upright pose and the forward-facing flat side of the staff.

I'd hate to sound too negative with you doing such great stuff; understand I can't do anywhere near this and think your work is really inspiring, just trying to help

Thanks for the indepth reply.

 PurpleSquig wrote:
Those seraphim legs doomhammer... very nice stuff, you get such clean angles!

I really like the idea of smaller exhausts on the legs to actually provide some realistic steering and agility to a jetpack. My only thought is perhaps that there is no obvious method of providing the thrust to them? The thrusters on the backpacks are attached to what looks like a beefy power supply, but nothing similar to the ones on the legs. I get that the power they require would be much less, but I still feel there should be something. Perhaps some sort of power "vein?" Food for thought anyway.

Well if you look at it with logic the powerpack provides energy to the whole armor including the legs. So that should be no problem assuming the jump packs are working based on energy and not fuel. But i know what you mean. Adding addition techy looking details will differentiate those legs further from basic sister armor. I additionally plan on adding armor plates on the front but i also could cut part of the legs backside away and add some cables and techy stuff. I was thinking of doing that myself but wanted to hear your oppinion on the wing exhaust idea first.
Now i just need to get a good idea what details to add to them.

As for the backpacks themselves, they're looking promising too. If the bottom left is going to be braziers as I assume then that is going to be awesome. I've always loved the idea of a whole army with flames coming out their backpacks

Yes i plan on doing a brazierlike exhaust there. Something similar to the one my converted biker champion has.

I shudder to think of the difficulty of trying to get multi-part models to actually work with a home-casting system, but I salute you for persevering all the same.

It is much more complicated than i initially thought. I had a few moments when i was close to abandoning the project. But i'm feeling close to solving these problems. I can't say how much time it will still need but i plan on finishing it. And i learned a lot on sculpting and miniature design during the whole process.

Unfortunately something about the dialogus isn't doing it for me. There's the neck as you mentioned, but something also looks off with her breast plates, too stretched out maybe? Bulking them outwards from the bottom up ala the tech adept might help this out. The pose as a whole might need a rethink too, I think its really contributing to the "flat" feel of the model. Its a combination of the right arm straight by her side, a fairly static upright pose and the forward-facing flat side of the staff.

I have to agree. It doesn't look right. I made one error with the torso propotions and tried to fix that. The body on it's own looked okay but now with both arms and a head attached i had to accept that it isn't okay. The head needs to move slightly forward, the shoulders aren't in a good position and the torso in itself is "off". I have since then removed the shoulder plates from the body and her breasts and every detail above them. I have shortened her torso a bit and added round jounts to her shoulders for more flexible arm poses. I have thought of rebuilding the model as a whole but i kinda like it even it it will look a bit static. I will get the head-shoulder-torso propotions in order and see what comed out of it. If i still am unsatisfied i will try another approach but i hope it won't be necessary.

I'd hate to sound too negative with you doing such great stuff; understand I can't do anywhere near this and think your work is really inspiring, just trying to help

Everyone learns from their mistakes. So pointing mine out for me is just helping to improve my work. Giving constructive critisism like that is something i really appreciate. So don't feel bad about it.

At 350 posts you know better than to put this picture here. Deleted, do not do it again.

totally subbed

Well I for one am loving your work! I'd certainly be interested in acquiring copies...

Do not quote inappropriate images.

totally subbed

Never expected to see a penis on a miniature wargame forum

Anyway your greenstuff skills are improving leaps and bounds.

 btldoomhammer wrote:


Well if you look at it with logic the powerpack provides energy to the whole armor including the legs. So that should be no problem assuming the jump packs are working based on energy and not fuel. But i know what you mean. Adding addition techy looking details will differentiate those legs further from basic sister armor. I additionally plan on adding armor plates on the front but i also could cut part of the legs backside away and add some cables and techy stuff. I was thinking of doing that myself but wanted to hear your opinion on the wing exhaust idea first.
Now i just need to get a good idea what details to add to them.

This sounds like a good idea to me. I think bulking out the front as you say will allow believable amounts of room for both legs and cables round the back. But please don't ruin the simple elegance of the legs as they are, I'd be terrified of messing something up if I got it looking that nice!

But you hit the nail on the head about the energy vs fuel thing, that's what was bothering me. My thinking goes that where there are flames (hence an exhaust needed) there will be fuel, not just the power. However, I guess I shouldn't forget this is sci-FI, cool is always more important than realistic For example they could totally be using compressed air or something...

Yes i plan on doing a brazierlike exhaust there. Something similar to the one my converted biker champion has.

Spoiler:

Aaah, as I suspected, can't wait to see that come together.

I have to agree. It doesn't look right. I made one error with the torso propotions and tried to fix that. The body on it's own looked okay but now with both arms and a head attached i had to accept that it isn't okay. The head needs to move slightly forward, the shoulders aren't in a good position and the torso in itself is "off". I have since then removed the shoulder plates from the body and her breasts and every detail above them. I have shortened her torso a bit and added round jounts to her shoulders for more flexible arm poses. I have thought of rebuilding the model as a whole but i kinda like it even if it will look a bit static. I will get the head-shoulder-torso propotions in order and see what comed out of it. If i still am unsatisfied i will try another approach but i hope it won't be necessary.

Never give up! Never surrender! Haha, this is what I like to see, sounds like she's getting quite the revamp

Everyone learns from their mistakes. So pointing mine out for me is just helping to improve my work. Giving constructive critisism like that is something i really appreciate. So don't feel bad about it.

Right then, if that's how you feel, next time will be even more brutal Only joking of course, looking forward to your next offering!

No real update again but a quick status report.

I have put a few feets on my seraphim legs and made the first experiments for additional leg details. Nothing fancy just jet but the groundwork is beeing laid right now.

And i made another small touchup on the hip joint. It is a bit flatter now resulting in more flexible positions and better rotations. I also cobbled together a basic torso shape including basic propotions as well as the shoulder and head joint holes. I think that it is good enough now to serve as a master for all of my torsos. Once i have finished the basic shape for the shoulders i will put both together on a mold to serve as my sculpting masters.


Also you other sororita followers have you seen this? http://natfka.blogspot.de/2013/10/revealing-future-of-40k-inquisition.html

It is a rather interesting reply from forgeworld regarding the rule that one of the FW chapters can ally with sisters if they include a inquisitor. (Which they can't even take in the current codex.)
They replied that this rule is indeed like it ment to be and we will see it in the future.

Does this mean we'll see an Inquisition codex soon-ish (either forgeworld or GW) that includes the adepta sororita?

The same site had this on it This November Codex: Inquisition will be released digitally

Yeah i've seen it already. We'll have to see what GW comes up with in their first allies codex

I am still alive but my sisters project is mostly halted. I won't abandon it but i currently don't have the time and motivation to do that much work on it.
That beeing said, i actually have made at least a small bit of progress. I have made 3 different shoulder armor shapes as well as a mastershape for my torsos. This means that i most likely have found a working hip joint shape. But due to lack of time and motivation i haven't molded them yet. I also did a test sculpt for a repentia. If i find the motivation i might take a few photos.

Well thats sort of sad to hear. But on the other side I can completely understand you, it really sucks when you loose motivation or just cant make yourself to finish it. Those figures usually go somewhere in closet or on a shelf and are patiently waiting for a muse to come . I have 6 CSM biker which need around 30 min. to be called done, but every time I try to finish them my brain easily find some distraction (at least I moved them after few months from the box to the working table, so estimated to time for finishing them is around 8-12 months)

Completely understand I have had the same issue with my models. So many armies I've started that just get put to the sidelines.

With my masters thesis now done and me starting to sculpt again I will continue on this project too.

I already started to fix up a few of the older parts. And I started moulding the basic torso shape. If everything works out I can use it to create unitform torsos and create the hip and arm joints. Wish me luck.

And to not go without pictures here are two of my old sculpts you probably haven't seen like this.
(I think it is even the first picture of the test repentia sculpt I started ...)

Good luck! The work is awesome already, and I'm exciting about funding your madness if at all possible.

The first casting was a miss. I have air bubbles in all joint-holes ...

But thankfully only in one half of the mould. The back side is fine So I'll try and redo the front.

Fantastic work here. I always wanted to try something similar but I never had the time and patience, well done to you!

No new pictures yet. But I cast a few template shoulder and torsos. With that I can finally continue working on more than just legs.

And aI cast a few of my heavy armored sisters too. So I can work on them as well.

Good news everyone!
It's like you know that I'm painting my sisters right now...

Oh yes... Painting ...

So little of my models are actually painted ... I just like to convert and sculpt but painting not so much ...

So I think it's time to share at least a few pictures of my progress.

First of those two. The main body is one piece. I plan on bling them all up, make HQ/ Character models out of them. And they are also an experiement how to best create the tabards.




Next is my heavy armored sister. I reworked the torso part a bit and cast up a few more legs to create varying poses and such. But I have to do a more I think. And I really should start and create more arms for them ... (Or arms and heads in general ...)




And my new torsos look really promising. When I'm finished with those I'll start reworking the leg side of the joint to actually be able to attach them. What do you think? (I had to zoom in quite a bit so the picture is a bit grainy ... )




And to close it all off: The seraphim legs I reworked. They are mostly done. Although I think I have to redo one of them as the legs are a bit to short I believe. I have too look into that later.

Man, if the GW SoB looked this good I'd probably have a small army of them.

Keep it up!

Hey doom, good to see you back in the action.
Details on the new torsos are looking good.

Do you plan on creating a custom helmet for the termi-sister or are your models all going to be bare-headed?

If I measured everything remotely correct the termi-sisters should have the same neck joint than my other torsos. So they can be swapped around.

I definitely will design armored helmets but I don't know if I will create terminator specific ones.

Okay. You have been totaly exalted on general principles for extraordinary awesomeness.
If you ever get these things out for sale, I'm starting a sisters army exclusively with your models.

Regarding your constant issues with the thickness of various appendages: Sisters aren't gene-bred, so I guess there is some natural variance there. Some may be a bit taller or a bit more round than others, so I think some variation is okay.

As for the Repentia WIP you posted - sorry, but at this stage she looks like a Catachan with a corset. Maybe it's just too early a WIP though.

Oh, and you've got PM...

Hi btl, great stuff, only just saw this blog now, subscribed, I work in 15mm, and plan on doing a 15mm SOB army, tghis will provide heaps of inspiration, thank.
http://gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/wip-orc-gun-trukk-and-nobz.html
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/454655.page

@Kosake:
Its the arms that gave me troubles on the repentia.(And still do)
The body itself looks okay, I'd say. But its just so hard to get a decent shot due to her more dynamic pose.


@Imperial Templari
I have never tried scales smaller than 28. And I probably better not start it. Knowing myself I'd try such fiddly details that even my hobby knife would be to thick to do them ... Sculpting skulls and feur de lys on boob-plates is hard enough in 28 mm. It would require ages forme to just finish one model.

Here's a quick update on my bad photo lighting skills. Oh and a model is in there too. As you can see the shoulders are present and the legs and torso are joined. I also decided to sculpt the tabards onto the legs. I loose a bit of posability that way, but I can create more dynamic tabards and it is a lot easier to sculpt them. Casing the running legs will also be easier if I can fill in the area between the legs. Now I need a few more torsos, heads and arms and decorate them. Oh and I need to amp up my photo skills to actually show them in good light ...

And I have to fix up all the legs. What do you guys think?

Very nice indeed! I think the inside right thigh is a little too flat, and perhaps a little bit of detailing on the outside thigh wouldn't go amiss. But, extraordinary work!

Well the tabard is still missing. It will add a bit of additional detail. And I plan on adding further stuff onto the hip and leg, like pouches, belts and relics/badges.

I made a lot of progress on my sororitas and some of the legs are nearly finished. But I currently have no access to the camera so I can take pictures only next week.

But I'd like to you your oppinion on the weapons for my heavy armored sisters. I like the idea of arming them with heavy weapons. But the question came up again what to put in their left hand. A melee weapon or a different ranged one? I like to stay in the theme of bolter, flamer, melter. But what is your oppinion. This is also a question what would benefit the army as a whole the most. What would you say?

I'd say you definitely need both hands to wield a heavy weapon. I'd say maybe one tossing a grenade or something, but for the rest I'm afraid using a heavy bolter one-handed will feel a bit too anime-ish...

meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas meltas (multi!)

Meltas and multimeltas that is

Well the models in question are sizewize between normal powerarmor and terminator armor. So I thought one handed could work. But maybe I should do a mockup with the parts I already have.

By the way, what are the smallest bits for multimelta, heavy bolter and heavy flamer? What's with the ones in the centurion kit? How do those scale up to regular heavy bolters?

Hey Doom.
I'm in favour of the traditional underslung heavy weapons that regular terminators have.
As for what to have in her other hand, that depends on what you want their loadout to be. iirc sob are not adverse to using any form of ccw in terms of fluff but I've never looked over their actual rules so wouldn't know what they usually have access to. Though personally my vote goes towards power sword/fist

Not sure about the centurion heavy bolters but the scout heavy bolters are fairly small.
Here's an example of one on a servitor conversion I did in the past.


hope that helps.

I like the underslung weapons too.
And I didn't thought about scouts. Looking at the pictures it seems that it has rourghly the same size as the heavy bolter that comes with the chaos marine box, just a bit shorter. Maybe I can use that as a reference and build my own variant.

I'm currently working on a right arm for the heavy armored ones. I'll try and assemble a prototype.

All I would say, in seriousness, is that for SoB players it's often about melta/mm spam. Flamer/Heavy flamer is popular also, although if I understand things correctly that's taken a bit of a knock in 7th. HB are by far the least used option for Dominion loadouts, and at the end of the day, a good chunk of your target market is SoB players hankering for different sculpts and builds.

Also melta melta melta

A bit later than I wanted, but here is the next update on my progress.

I assembled one sister using blue-tac. It was rather fiddley but I think the result is looking decent. Now I need more arms and heads and maybe a few more shoulder and torso variations.



The legs for my seraphims are mostly done. I only need to make the final details and slightly adjust the hips to get a better fit with the torsos.



And finally I also added a few more details to my armored sisters.

Looks great man, definitely looking forward to seeing more!

Okay. Now I'm sold on the legs magnificent, I want some

These are fantastic! As graven said, the legs are astounding. Also the jump-packs are such a nice shape, cant wait to see them all put together.

Keep up the amazing work!

Excellent work in here. I picked up Witch Hunters as my first army when i got back in to the hobby about 6 years ago. I've been eagerly awaiting plastic battrle sisters since then, and still GW keep me waiting...good to see someone who has the talent to do it for themselves. Keep up the good work!

D

Very nice Doom! Very nice indeed.
I hope all the pieces are as modular and interchangeable as you'd wanted them to be.

The torsos look like they have only a little bit of wiggle room connecting to the legs.
Are the arms and shoulder pads very positionable? they look like they come together well on the test model.

Looking forward to seeing more

The connection between torso and legs is rather inflexible. But I don't know how to do it better. There is so little room for errors and details as well. And I didn't want to change the torso armor aestetic ... That reduced the poseability even further.

I think it will mostly come down to conversions for reposition the torsos. I probably have to trim and resculpt details for largly different torso positions.

But I can't change that. My skills and tools are not high enough to create something better. I know now why GW avoided creating multipart sisters. And I don't know if we'll ever see them. Especially not as poseable as I tried to archive. We'll see.

Lovely work man, really hoping these come out so I can pick up a few before I remember I don't play 40k anymore Witch Hunters were my first love back in the day and remain so.

As to modeling/flexibility, have you tried putting the ball part of the joint on the torso instead of the legs? Do you think that would help? I don't have much experience with the sculpting side of production so I am very curious.

Sculpting such detail at this scale - I tip my hat to you,sir!

Waiting eagerly for final results!

Not much to show from me, other than this picture. I tried a different approach on a female/ Sororita terminator style armor.
I'm not perfectly happy with it. The hips are to wide and putting arms on it it rather problematic. Also the back looks a bit uneven.
What do you think?

I'm actually liking it's design more than your original termi armour.
It feels both much more 40k and SoB in aesthetic.
You're correct about the hips being much too wide however. I'd recommend slimming down the legs a little in general.
The back doesn't look too bad and I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle touching up
Not sure if you wanted to hear it looks better considering the work you've already put into the other termi armour but that's my opinion

Keep up the good stuff

I like the second one too. The problem is that creating mltipart ones is even harder. I might have to build the whole torso and legs as one piece. And I think you are right. The upper legs could be slimmed down to get a better hip area.

The torso itself is a lot less bulky than the normal Termie one and personally I like it that way. But I could get rid of those two cables over the shoulder and bulk it up some more. This way I have more room for heads. But I like the smaller design.


I'll probably finish this one as a prototype one piece model and use it as a reference for further tests.
And I think I'll keep on working on both designs.

I like the cables though they look like they might get in the way of shoulder pads?

I love the new termie more than the 1st one keep up the great work

I do like the design a lot, you do need to trim the legs.

I like her also, bit I do think the super boobs are a bit.much.

The problem I always have with sculpting boob plates is that I often misjudge how much larger they become after adding the details.

They looked fine in their basic shape. But I agree that they are a bit to large now. But that is what prototypes are for.

She didn't have a choice for a D Cup, she was just sculpted that way!

I really like the core design of it, but I think the general consensus of 'wide legs' is correct. But I imagine you could carve some of your fancy icons into them and kill two birds with one stone there.

 btldoomhammer wrote:
Not much to show from me, other than this picture. I tried a different approach on a female/ Sororita terminator style armor.
I'm not perfectly happy with it. The hips are to wide and putting arms on it it rather problematic. Also the back looks a bit uneven.
What do you think?

I like it, it was instantly recognizable as Terminator armor for me. I don't think it looks bad at all. Its supposed to be big armor. You want it to shrug off all the things that normal troops can't.

The terminator armour looks pretty nice! Never thought about female terminators...(terminatrix?terminatress? )
Maybe you can "lift" the torso section a little bit. I think, she looks a little bit stubby around the hips, because her breast armour is so close to her hips.

Anyways, this is great thread! Keep up the good work!

Great sculpting again - nice to see SOB getting some dynamic poses as the general style of them cries out for it.

Not sure I'm totally sold on the SOB terminators but it is nice to see some different unit styles for the,.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Dante

Awesome work as always Doom. The sister was instantly recognizable as a termi, but I have to agree that the hips do seem abit wide. What you might be able to do is thin out the thighs while leaving a large boots/greaves. This would give her the look of a stable base to hold up the top heavy termi suit. To compensate for the thinned out thighs you could run a external piston along the outside length of the thigh to give the feel of the extra support.

Also with a thinned out thigh the hip plates might look more like a "armored skirt" with the extra room. Termi + skirt x boob armor = Girly SoB termies, I'm pretty sure that's how math works. I should probably go to sleep. Anyway, hope that helps in some way, always love being able to check dakka and seem your amazing ideas take shape, serious talent, mad respect for you.

Thank you guys.

I haven't done much for my sisters lately. But once I'm done with my current chas projects I think the sisters are back on the list.

And I tried a second attempt at the terminator, but its really early. I somehow tried to keep up somewhat reaistic propotions but now the legs look really stubby. I think I have to do it like GW and create unrealistic terminator armor. Otherwise it won't look like propper termi armor.

imo I don't see a reason to make the terminators "girly" at all.
As long as they fit within the SoB aesthetic.
I mean, they are supposedly wearing tank-like armour.

Just remember man. It just has to look like someone is inside it controlling it. Then its totally armor.

The girly termies was a joke =P. Hey just do what feels right Doom, your sculpts are wonderful and I'm for one excited to see how you tackle the problem your having.

Haven't checked this thread in a while, the terminator looks awesome.

After staring at the sculpt i found what was putting me off, it's the Madonna titty twisters up front. They seem too much like they were bolted on, and remind me of medieval helmets.

I think the model would be better suited with more of a sculpted buxom. Y'know, more like a flowing, curved front plate hinting at the feminine form, rather than two pressure hatches for breast feeding.

Wow! Just wow.....

Hello,

Very nice blog in here, I quite like it ! I also long for new SoB models but I am not as skilled as you when dealing with GS ...

Thanks for all the marvels, I am looking forward to see more !

BTW, just to let you drool over some forthcoming good stuff !

Such plug

Much Shameless

WOW!


But really i think doom hammer could probably sculpt and cast these puppies out faster than RH

Yea, Doomhammer is likely to have his own company started by the time the TTG KS even finishes shipping, much less by the time the Sisters of Eternal Mercy KS is finished.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking at the termi armor again, two thinks occurred to me:

1: The helmet touching the top of the arc makes her neck/head look too long. If it was set down a bit so that the eyes look straight out and there is clearance there the distance between the breast cups and eyes won't look too long perhaps.

2: To add some length to the legs and avoid them looking too stubby, maybe add some lifts to the boots. That will allow for a reasonable hip and knee placement but longer legs in general. I did that with some true scale marines I was futzing around with for a while and it along with a spacer in the thigh seemed to be the best bet for length that didn't make them look like they had super model proportions, or like they were built like the AOL man.