Out of the ashes it rides...
One of my greatest modelling failures has passed through the flames to return as one of my greatest triumphs.
Yes, I know 'hellsteed' isn't an option in the codex. I have a very beastial theme running through my army (my talos is a converted WFB hydra, my lead beastmaster is a sort of centaur thing, my dracon-who-may-become-archon has a little dragonette familiar that counts as his pistol) so it seemed stupid that the person that trains these creatures would go into battle on a mechanical skyboard.
That, and I had this converted hellhorse thing that I was attempting to work out what I could use it for, and it was either attempt a rider or use it as a clawed fiend.
The model was done/revived for the annual Boxing Day sculpting contest at the local
GW store. I wasn't planning to enter at first since I had nothing really in progress except my hydra-talos and there was way too much work still to do on that, I'd just moved house, and I was going away on holiday on the 21st. The local redshirts were pretty insistant I see what I could do though since I won it last year and the box of random sprues I got was utterly amazing for my projects. So, went poking about in my bitz box, stumbled on the long dead and poorly thought out project and discarded it as hopeless still. It lurked about in my mind and I started randomly fiddling, hold bits together with blu-
tac and trying to mentally assemble it before I started cutting. I'm pleased how it managed to turn out even with random changes in direction and moments of '
wtf am I doing?'
Forgive the shoddy pictures, I wasn't intending to post these at all. They're just the somewhat bearable quality ones culled out of my personal reference shots from when I was playing with poses. In the following images most of the hacking together of plastic on the body is done and I was testing the positioning of the head, neck and horns. Note the lumps of blu-
tac.
The basic frame is made out of a generously hacked up wood elf horse, two skeletal horses that were pretty much rendered into their component parts (gluing ribs is fiddly), some carved sprue and the horns + ears from a chaos warhound. And much gluing and pinning.
I did a little more work on the plastic at this point, filing some things down and adjusting hooves, then attacked it with a lot of greenstuff. I don't have any photos of the horse at this point but planning on trying to take some later.
I'd kind of decided that a beastmaster riding it could be cool sometime during the greenstuffing but wasn't sure if I could pull it off in time. Getting something that could be a beastmaster would be cool but I'd setting for a display model. Cue lots of digging about in catalogues looking for models that would work as the base of a rider. Nothing seemed to really fit, so had to kitbash it. Again,
WIP poor quality photos only here since I was just showing a friend for rough pose and asking for advice. Better ones shall come sometime in mid January. The mount is actually complete in them though.
Under the previous codex I'd decided that all the properly eldar beastmasters would have the seadragon style scales somewhere (my secondary beastmaster was one of the ones from the hydra kit and had a scaled lower robe/tabard/loincloth thing). I had a mostly intact set of corsair sprues (I bought the box to use the weapons on my wych conversions) so could take a seadragon cloak from there. Hips and upper legs came from a old
DE warrior lower half that I'd previously hacked the boots off from and was pleased to discover were spread widely enough to sit on the mount (it's quite a bit wider than the standard horses since it has the protruding spine in the middle). Feet are corsair boots. Waist was scratch sculpted out of
GS. Arms were modified corsair shoulders pinned out from the body a little to get the right poses and gap filled. Hand holding the mount is either from a
DE warrior or a hacked dark elf crossbow arm (I think. Wonders of a bitz box.) Whip is from the tomb kings chariot kit. Head was really hard but settled on a heavily hacked up old
DE head with the excessively wild hair trimmed. Along with a lot of fiddling with pose.
I think I've managed to make it look sufficiently dark eldar instead of
WHFB despite the rider having so many corsair bits in it.
I... have no clue how I'm going to paint the horse. I have at least three rough schemes in mind but I'll ask for advice once final photos are up. (I asked for permission to submit the model unpainted since the contest was about the conversion work as much as the finished piece, and the last of the
GS was done a few hours before I flew out.)
