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Ive got a suggestion for a name, how about Gigantes, its the greek for giant, that would match up well with Collosus.

You know when some people deal with a mid-life crisis they buy a new car... Brother Argos buys forgeworld.

aka_mythos wrote:You know when some people deal with a mid-life crisis they buy a new car... Brother Argos buys forgeworld.

Nice.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

my own custom mobile Thudd Gun on its own chimera

make sure to build an ammo cart to all that artillery

Hippogriff is most probably my favourite name so far from all the people who commented.

So far the Forgeworld purchases are still less than I can earn in a day ... so its not quite mid-life crisis yet !

I managed to get some more Sculpting done today, some simple things and working on a couple of the almost finished tasks.

First up, a number of prepared items, with the areas to be worked on stripped down using a scalpel: -



In this case, the shoulder of the powerfist and the wrist of the bolt pistol arm.

I then proceeded to fill in a few more holes on the flag, I tend to use left over mixed green stuff for this rather than throw it away: -



As you can see only a couple more holes to fill in, but they are large, I might cut and fill them in with plasticard to reinforce them before adding green stuff.

Moving along I managed for the first time to finish a glove in one sitting, something I have only managed using pro-create before: -



After that I added the hard edge (stage 3) onto the set of legs I have been working on: -



All that remains now will be the other side which should be doable in one sitting.

Obviously things were going quite well so I decided to work on the bare head with gas mask: -



I have cut a hole into the green stuff on the back of the head to fit a buckle to hold it all together, and add a strap leading to the top of the head.

As a final treat I did some work on the female tank commander torso: -



I added the webbing on her right hand side, and in addition removed the bottom parting of the coat (it was on her right also) and recreated a central parting.

Quite a busy day ... but I have a good green stuff vibe going on!

Ummm, hippogriph might be confused with the entry on the brettonian army list, but ahh well.

Only if your mixing Fantasy with 40k ... a rare day!

Well yes, but still an easy mistake, i suggest you search "mythological creatures" into google, the first result is wikipedia, it has a large list of creatures, have a look, i just think that hippogriph sounds a bit weak.

Now I tend to disagree, with its relationship to the Griffon Mortar and the fact that both guns share the same carriages it makes sense

As a start, awesome blog so far-your work is very inspiring!

Mythological name-wise I like Cerberus not sure if it's already by other IG tanks :].

Keep up the great work!

You have allot of You Beautiful and inspiring work in this thread BrotherArgos. I have no suggestions on your sculpting or casting technique, both are very well done. But since you mentioned photo-etch and the Micro-mark kit in particular. Its a good starter kit; but its over priced and most of the items in their kit can be had in greater quantities and sizes at your local electronics and computer store.

The biggest problem with the kit is that the etching tank and laminator are to small and will limit the size of your projects and waste etching fluid. Here's an economy etching kit designed for fabricating prototype circuit boards http://www.frys.com/product/3456583?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG. You can get: a large 5 liter heavy duty polyethylene etching tank, Air pump and tubing, Sparging unit, Bag of vinyl gloves, and Complete instructions for $38.29. A pro-level kit with a huge 7 liter tanks runs about http://www.alliedelec.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?SKU=6610320&MPN=416-E runs around $168.85. Also the Ferric Chloride etching material can also be had for far less in bulk, around $25-28 / gal.

I only mention this because I was going to purchase that kit, but was advised against it by, by members of the Fine-scale Modeler Forum. I got the Economy etching kit mentioned above instead, and have a have a letter-sized laminator on order from e-bay. I've been designing parts in Adobe illustrator and I have to tell you that this is the coolest thing. If your interested i'll be sure to let you know how its goes.


Anyway, wonderful work

Thanks for the advice, when I ordered the kit it was as purely as something to experiment with, a starter kit as you said.

But it is something I would love to know more about, so yes please do tell me how it all goes, I would appreciate a chance to talk to someone who has done it already.

Great work! I am inspired. I should Make some of these bad boys.

BrotherArgos wrote:Death Korps ? ... got a good few packs of them, with snapped off gun barrels, resin weak and snaps ... expensive ... like the look though.

Amen to that. Just got a bunch of them in the mail today. Gorgeous models. Brittle as hell.

Well I have missed a day of posting, but the good news is that I sculpted that day, just didn't get time to post. Its a bank holiday weekend in England , so I was out in the garden tidying up the cherry blossom and getting the garden ready for summer, I also cooked my first barbecue of the year in the lovely weather. Just so you know, I will be out visiting various locations around southern England if the weather holds, taking my daughters to see cool stuff like leeds castle! This of course means less sculpting / modelling / painting etc as I will be spending time with my family.

Anyway back to the Steel Legion! The sculpting enthusiasm is still continuing, and a number items have been finished and are now awaiting reproduction. However as usual I will start with the early stage work first. Here are the items that have been whittled down in preparation for green stuff work: -



Of note is the preparation of the officers coat, the boots cut back and the trousers tidied ready for green stuff and the Steel legion boot style. The first arm is the grenade arm, the cadian shoulderpad removed and some extra clothing wrinkles added. Lastly the gun holding hand, which is a lot more work than it looks, the Cadian weapon holding hands start off attached to the gun and not the hand, therefore the gun needs to be cut up and the hand slowly worked at till the gun portion is removed, whereupon it is re-attached to the arm awaiting the Steel Legion glove to be sculpted. Its a fiddly process at best and normally I managed to cut the fingers off of one hand before getting it right.

Next up is the 3rd set of legs I am working on, the static guard pose legs from the Tank sprue, over the past few weeks, any spare green stuff has been smoothed onto this pair of legs to build up the coat ready for the time where detail will be added. Well today as the second set of legs nears completion I decided to start to add detail and put in the overlap at the front of the coat, and cut out the gap at the back: -



Nothing special with this, but it is pleasing to have almost finished the running/jogging legs, which is a segue to a picture of the almost complete second set of legs: -



The hard edge at the bottom of the coat is now complete, with a slight upward flick, this lightens the bottom of the coat somewhat and adds to the feeling of movement. In addition one of the boots has almost been completed. I am looking forward to completing this set of legs as it will add much needed variation to my current small selection of Steel Legion components.

Work continues on the gas masked head with no helmet, a small brass ring was added at the back and the "elastic" parts of the gas mask have been tied back into it, well 2 out of 3 have been so far: -



Once the mid strand of gas mask on the right hand side is done and another ring added at the top, I will have finished the gas mask head and it will be ready for reproduction.

In a sudden rush of understanding, the optimal path for completing the Steel Legion gloves finally clicked. Often when I am working on things I will try and seek the best way to do something, and after a while I find something in my head clicks and I find myself able to do things efficiently and well. Well it finally happened with the Gloves, when I switched from my normal Wax Carver #5 tool, over to a Clay Shaper, the Cup Chisel size 0 - Extra Firm, in case anyone is interested, the shape of the tool lets me smooth and build the glove shape really quickly and let me get three arms finished: -



There is a little tidying to do on them I suspect, but the speed at which they were done was a significant improvement!

Lastly the most pleasing finished item was the female torso. After some research I had started adding the webbing to the torso and wanted it to be in the currect shape given the different anatomy. I am quite pleased now she is finished, with a mix of plasitcard webbing on the back, and green stuff on the front. This torso is now going to be reproduced at this stage, to enable a number of variants to be produced with different amounts of ammo packs in different locations on the webbing, and also the aquila buttons to add the final steel legion feeling!



I think the next post (most probably tomorrow at this rate) will be about the sculpting tools I use on a regular basis, and why / how I use them. Till then I hope you try some sculpting yourself!

The attention to detail here is very impressive. Well done!

I just love the modeling job you've done on these, they've really got a great style and have captured the Steel Legion look.

I think it is true to say when one practices something that one usually improves, well with regard to sculpting I find that to apply doubly so. So over the last five weeks since I began this blog and yes that is all it is although it seems longer, I have been doing more sculpting than ever before.

Initially there is the confidence that repeating things brings, with minor variations to add a small problem, the gloves represent this improvement nicely, basically the same shape with a little twist depending on the position of the arm and hand. As a method to improve ones skills I suggest a minor modification to your troops like this, for instance five weeks ago, this took me about an hour to get the glove into the shape I wanted, and often I needed to add a second stage to get the edge correct. Now after eight or nine other gloves made and finding a better tool for the job the time it takes to reproduce the glove has fallen to around 15 - 20 minutes, and hopefully with no added stages.

Moving on to more complex work, I find myself confronted with the problems of folds in cloth, all kinds of issues arise such as where should the be, where do they start and end, and how shallow or deep should they be. This is in addition to the issue of thinking about how the folds will appear when painted. To be honest it is all a bit too complex and often results in choosing the simplest path rather than best one. However with this kind of problem we have the answers in front of us, Games Workshop (and lots of other figure manufacturers) produce hundreds of figures in a variety of poses and clothing styles which give us all the clues we need. In my particular case there are a number of Steel Legion troopers all with the same clothing in a variety of poses, so when I am considering adding some folds to a coat, I look amongst the Steel Legion troops I have and see if there is anything similar to take inspiration from.

Finally however one has to actually create something that one doesn't have an example for which means understanding how cloth and folds work. It is at such times that I turn to an excellent book by Burne Hogarth, which explains how and why folds and wrinkles in cloth come into being. This book is a bit much for someone starting sculpting, however I recommend downloading a copy from Sribd ( Here ). It won't help much to start with, but if you spend time sculpting it will act as a good guide later on. It goes without saying that the further works of Burne Hogarth are helpful also, so if you see them download them also. You might not use them immediately, but later on they give some fascinating insights.

Another important area for people wishing to sculpt is which tool (or tools) should they be using. It is safe to say that it can be summed up simply, whichever tool you are comfortable with and that makes the right impression on the sculpting material of choice is the right tool for you. A slightly glib answer possibly, but at the core of it there is a definite truth that cannot be ignored. Sculpting at its simplest is using your hands or an implement to make a mark upon a surface. Some people do some excellent work using scalpel blades, needles, toothpicks and home made tools. Every single tool on that list is appropriate as long as the sculptor achieved the result they wanted. Basically anything that works for you is the right tool.

Personally I use a small variety of tools that I am comfortable with, I mainly sculpt with green stuff, therefore I tend to keep my tools "wet" at all times, and use saliva to do so (yuck but it works well).

My primary sculpting tool is a Wax Carver #5, initially recommended to my by a sculptor at Games Workshop during a chat, it proved to be hard to find. However it is stocked by Tiranti's in London under the name "Dental Tool SG", now you can see why it took an age to find originally, the only clue was the text on the tool said "Wax Carver #5", and it doesn't even say that any more so new people have NO hope of finding it. This tool is wonderful for a sculptor, here take a look at it close up: -





One would think the first picture showed the end of choice, but actually its shown in the second picture. The small pointed spatula (for want of a better description) is excellent at smoothing, tidying up edges, pressing things down and burnishing them and all round sculpting. I do 80% of all sculpting with that end of the Wax Carver #5, and the other end lets me do score or cut lines with both the internal and external curved "blade". Beyond those two the thin necks of either end let my roll out and smooth green stuff in preparation for placing it onto the figure also. I tend to use my thumbnail as a pallet to store the Green stuff while I am sculpting (thanks to Mike Anderson at GW for the tip), it reminds me often to use small amounts of Green stuff rather than waste big lumps. I cannot recommend this tool highly enough!

The next tools of choice are Clay Shapers, these tools come in a variety of sizes and hardnesses, I use the smallest and hardest ones, and they are often helpful to get a smooth surface with green stuff. The one big advantage they have is that being made of silicon rubber, the green stuff will not adhere to them, so no need to spit on them all the time! Here you can see the entire range, I recommend getting them once you have become comfortable with the Wax Carver #5.



The next set of tools are quite expensive and rather specialised, but can help you with a number of small fiddly pieces of sculpting. I ordered them (and they are all hand made) some time ago, and they were made and sent to me. They are amazingly tiny as the following pictures show: -



Here is a closeup of the ends with a ruler for scale: -



You do NOT need these tools until you can use the ones above, and they are VERY expensive at $120 a set. However they are made by Perfect Touch at http://www.perfect-touch.com if your interested.

Lastly is a double ended dental pick, which is great for making small holes or occasionally clearing bits of Green stuff out of small holes.



Which you can see with in the picture above with the Wax Carver #5

Hopefully this was an interesting insight into how some of the sculpting with my Steel Legion was and is done.

Its very interesting to see the tools you're using. I think its helpful, I don't think too many sculptors when they're discussing sculpting have gone beyond the basic tool. I do a lot of sculpting myself and I've been wanting to take it to "the next level" but I find myself a bit limited by my tools so this was very informative.

I know you listed a couple sources for some of the tools you use, do you have one for the clay shapers? Someone recommended those to me a little while ago, but I haven't been able to find any in stores around me. A reliable online source would be very appreciated.

Here is a link to a USA based site: -

http://sculpt.com/catalog_98/CLAYTOOLS/clayshapers.htm


Well back to work after a few days off with my Family!

To ease me back into the Steel Legion after a quiet time I resumed work on my Artillery project - the Medusa / Basilisk / Griffon / Hippogriff (the chosen name for the Mounted Quad cannon). One of the side developments of this project is the ability to use the same weapons (magnetised) on a gun platform. I have always liked the cruciform shaped gun platform used by forgeworld as it reminds of the gun platform for the 88mm flak 36 as seen here used extensively by the German forces in World War II. The gun platform can mount the Hydra turret and Manticore turret, which obviously when combined with the ability to field the Earthshaker cannon and the Medusa it becomes an attractive option. I had put a little work into the gun platform previously (which uses a basilisk base plate) and last night I continued to work on it.



To accomodate the more detailed Armageddon pattern gun mounts I had to cut into the base plate and rebuild it using plasticard, once this was done I had to add some detail such as rivets to make feel the changes fit with the rest of the base plate. You will also note the use of "Brass etch" rivets, more on them later!



Here is the base plate with the gun mounts in place and one of the magnetised weapons fitted. If this all works out I will be able to swap weapons between either the Medusa / Basilisk and here.

Obviously the Basilisk base plate comes with a Basilisk Gun shield (the large curved bit at the front), which I must say I dislike as a modeller for a couple of reasons, firstly on the front the winged skull is poorly sculpted, while the rear of the shield has NO detail at all and looks incongruous because of it. On a personal level I also dislike it because in the Armageddon ash waste where my Steel Legion is "based" a high gun shield in a desert-like environment gives away position. Strangely this was also true for the above mentioned German 88mm flak, and they either removed or altered the shield to something lower. So I decided to lower the shield in some way and add more detail. Looking at the forgeworld site I saw the Medusa had a lower shield ( Here ) and looked quite nice, but having bought a bit too much Forgeworld at the moment I decided to make my own instead.

Firstly I cut down the normal shield to the required height which was just enough to cover the gun mount and weapon, and then started adding detail to the front, similar to the above linked Medusa shield.



I used the rivet maker for most of the rivets, especially the large hex ones at the top. The rest was built up from plasticard after I had removed most of the centre section. In keeping with forgeworlds Medusa shield I trimmed the corners of the shield using a modellers small set square to get an accurate 45 degrees. I then switched to the rear to work on the lack of detail and try to bring it to life.



Using some plastic strip I created a reinforcing structure behind the armour plate, and then added a number of small rivets made from Brass etch. The photo is over exposed a little and makes it hard to see the rivets at the bottom of the plastic strip, however trust me they are there.

In addition to make the support frame more realistic I added some hex nuts to the points where the gun shield attaches to the basilisk base as can be seen here: -



and with more detail here: -



I am quite pleased with the final outcome, however after looking at the pictures above, I have decided to add a small brass eagle at the bottom of the front of the gun shield to give it that final touch.

This just keeps getting better
genious work so far.
nothing quite says die! like a 40 foot long plasma weapon



I also think you should start casting "trench troopers" as your own little name
DKoK stand ins that look amazing
and with casting prices im pretty sure you could put FW out of buisness with your models

QFT

Definatly amazing

Gahh, im would really love to start sculpting, i want to turn Lizard men Skinks into fish men.

Anyone got any good online tutorials?

So, Brother Argos, are those brass etched rivets from a stock sheet, or the first of your brass creations?

Looking good mate!

Cheers
Dave

I can under stand why you like the German gunshield better than the GW one.

Keep up the good work

davetaylor wrote:So, Brother Argos, are those brass etched rivets from a stock sheet, or the first of your brass creations?

Looking good mate!

Cheers
Dave

I think Argos did them himself, although you are quite right you can also get ones on sheets from companies such as Lion Roar.

I'm gonna guess you will be putting hex nuts on the other side as well, yes?

And will you also create small weld-lines since those hex screws would most likely snap in two if they were the only thing holding that shield together when the gun fires?

great job so far, keep it up!

Truly inspiring work Brother Argos. Fine-scale 40K, indeed.

For you guys looking for cheap clay shapers try this link: http://www.jerrysartarama.com/discount-art-supplies/Brushes-and-Palette-Knives/Colour-Shapers/Clay-Shaper-Sets.htm You can get a complete set of 5 size 0 shapers for $20!!! Heck I bought two sets and with shipping it was a mere $50.

I buy all my art supplies there cheap and reliable.

It was a quiet night last night, only got a couple of things done involving the Earthshaker cannon. I was tidying up the Earthshaker barrel and the breech, it was the second time I had worked on this the first being a rough fill which I had allowed to harden and act as a base for this second layer: -



I am unhappy with the breech mechanism in look / style and have considered creating some form of interrupted screw to make a more realistic breech. I will have to see how time goes as its low down on my priorities and would take a fair amount of effort. More information can be found ( Here ).

Just to clarify, I was using some nicely made Brass etch hex bolt heads on the gunshield, they were from Mig Productions and are very finely detailed, however a little thin in my opinion. for those that thought I had got my own Brass Etch stuff going, I am sad to say I still haven't received my Etching system yet, although I have plenty of things to try out when it does, I will keep you informed!

Here is a picture of the Mig Productions Brass Etch, both round and hex, notably without connectors which is much easier : -



Placing them can be a bother however, I tend to extract one on the tip of my scalpel and place it about 2-3 mm from the place I wish to glue it to. I then dip the tip of a Dental pick shown here (the sharp pointy one): -



Into one of my home made glue trays, I made these years ago, so I could add a droplet of glue into one and keep dipping in and out of it while still active. The left hand "dip" is for superglue, the right hand one for polystyrene cement: -



I then transfer the small droplet of glue to the desired location on the model, and then using my scalpel slide the brass etch nut into it and press down slightly. Finally I use a lint free cloth to quickly dab away any excess superglue.

I am looking forward to the weekend, and hope to get some more painting done (unusual for me).

I was worried about the connectors you'd have at that size of nut, but no connectors! I am pleasantly surprised and will have to look further into those sheets.

Have fun this weekend!

Cheers
Dave