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Introduction

So upon recently taking up WH40K again I decided I needed a new army. My Eldar were small and weak (both in physique and army list) and my Chaos weren't inspiring me. I wanted something fresh and new, something I hadn't seen before, and I wanted an army I had never played before, most importantly, I wanted a strong, competitive army list. After checking the new ropes of 5th edition I found I was in luck:

1. I had never played a mechanized army.
2. I had never played Imperial Guard.

So IG it was!

Now, the theme of the army? Well, having recently acquired a Vampire Knights Battleforce, I felt I wanted to some how incorporate that in to my army. OH NOES I said to my self though, Zombie Guard had been so over done that I would be more original making some random generic space marine chapter (no offence to those that have!). And then, HALO to the rescue! Although ODST IG has been done (albeit sparingly) and Zombie Guard had been done, it seemed no one was brave enough (or internet savvy enough) to do Halo Flood IG.

Inspiration

I did some google image searches (god bless google) and came across some concept art for my force:




Source: http://abouthalo.wordpress.com/the-flood/



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_(Halo)

Some figurines already made would also help me:





And finally some in game images are best:





Source: http://flood_master.webs.com/theflood.htm


Stage 1: First Contact

As you can see in the pictures, the Zombies and Cadians would make a perfect kit bash, with some swelling and added tentacles for extra floodishness. Luckily I have PLENTY of green stuff from forgetting I had some and buying more 3 times lol. I was also lucky enough to have bought a box of dryads (for adding foliage to my Path Finders in my Eldar force, pictures to be uploaded to Gallery soon).

Not wanting to over step my mark too soon, my first first attempts are all early stages of infection, no swelling, just a few tentacles and sensory organs, as well as the 'zombified' feel of them. Here's what I did:

1. Combine a Cadian chest with a Zombie legs, or vice versa.
2. Add arms from the Cadians, or use Zombie arm(s) replacing weapons with lasguns.
3. Glue either a Zombie or Skeleton Warrior head on at an awkward angle, sometimes leaving a space open.
4. Chop off some 'branches' from the Dryads sprue and glue them around the head area as 'Sensory Organs'.
5. Glue random 'branches' unto the body as 'tentacles'.
6. Roll some green stuff up in to a ball and attach to the head area, or the base of tentacles.
7. Green Stuff any gaps or mistakes I made in steps 1-6.
8. Put a dab of super glue on the end of the 'Sensory Organs' (or 'head branches') and dip in to some flock (or sand).

I think the first batch turned out alright:


The Sergeant


A Soldier





Several of the whole team



Next Episode

Next time I will show you my painting scheme, some more elaborate flood guard conversions or maybe the start of my mechanization

Love,

humans.

cool
i tried to do this a couple of months ago. did tn catachans and 5 carriers plus a bunch of infection forms before it ccrrashed and burned. still have em somewhere. i can post pic if you want

If you have the time I would love to see some examples!
Although I must admit you diminish my excitement about being the first :(

They're quite good but the pose looks too static: the legs are rigid with no movement, and the real flood run with flailing limbs and crazed movements, whereas these ones just stand there holding their weapons.

I think you should make more movement in the legs and make the pose just more crazed.

Valk

*shudders* Ugh, how I hate the flood in that video game! They're terrifying, imho... (yes, I have a low fear/terror tolerance )

It's a good idea for an army, it could look very intimidating and very cool

I am working on some more dynamic poses now, like I said, I didn't want to get too fancy with the first lot so I did mostly bland poses... just to get a feel for what I could do

It's the flood argh!

great start but you need some with oversized arms and more tentacles sticking out from the shoulders and back

RiTides wrote:*shudders* Ugh, how I hate the flood in that video game! They're terrifying, imho... (yes, I have a low fear/terror tolerance )

Agreed, walking (running) through the Pillar of Autumn in the final mission with flood leaping at you from darkened corners made me on edge for days. Maybe I shouldn't have played it at 1 in the morning in the dark...

Nice conversions, very floodlike. You should do a flood Pelican for a counts as Valkyrie.

Actually playing a halo level that's filled with flood in the dark is really fun. It gives you a ton of excitement. Anyways, these are looking good except for the the static poses of the marines. But as you said this is only the start and I cant wait to see the better conversions.

I didn't say it wasn't fun, just quite unnerving.

Wups! But I do agree with you.

wow, they look nice, if a bit stiff.
It's always good to see a converted guard army.

played 343 guitly sparks (is that the first flood level? so long ago now) at night, very scary but very awsome.
you have to make a guardsman called jekins (thats the guy from halo 1 right? from the video master chief watches)
time has dulled my memory

on well back on topic. cant wait to see MORE!!!

Yes, 343 Guilty Spark was the name of the first level that you met the flood. It's also the first time you meet that annoying little lightbulb.

i hated the monitor so much

I was yelling with joy.

hehe i remember i went to a mates house when halo first came out and did the flood missions for ages.... you dont get spooked when you got a mate with u, but yeah, they were unsettling.

Now on topic, you have captured that very well, it looks great. But i was wondering, why not flood up some other races, like in halo? you could count as some flooded orks or flooded kroot as penal legion, and....yeah just an idea

Are you using the Imperial Guard Codex?

Because if you wanted an army much truer to the Flood, then maybe use Tyranids.

Hormagaunts as Combat Forms, Rippers as Infection Forms, etc.

I have almost finished my next batch, some time in the next 48 hours will post pics.

I've started painting some and will post up results and the process I use.

Also, I am in the middle of converting some flood-elites to use as Catachan Devils

Finally, I considered using them as tyranids, mostly as termagaunts (since they do have guns) but my local store has like 5 million Nid players, and I've already played nids, so I just decided to use guards...

Anyway, I REALLY wanted to do some Leman Russ Scorpion Tank conversions!!!11!1!!1!1ONE!1!!

hey i hope this helps,
a while ago i found a site, its a halo UNSC guard army. check out the heavy secton, the person made a scropion tank.
http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/pillar_of_autumn/

actually just check out the whole army its pretty cool. like the weapons

Damn it!

I was going to upload all my recent work but Dakka keeps giving me this error page:

HTTP Status 500 -

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: 11
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:372)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:292)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:236)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
root cause

java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 11
org.apache.jsp.gallery_002dupload_jsp._jspService(gallery_002dupload_jsp.java:427)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:94)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:324)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:292)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:236)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/5.5 logs.

Apache Tomcat/5.5

Any ideas whats up?

Nice this could be an extremely cool army I hated the flood in that game lol everytime I fought them I almost craped myself.

Same here. What pissed me off the most was the all flood level in the first game. It was drk an your flash light had a limited battery. And they were everywher.

the big fat guys that explode are actually infected gaunts but wicked idea i like the thought of a flood army, someone should do a dead space nid army

Oh god...please don't remind me of dead space.It was so fun but really scary. I don't no how many times I was screaming from pleasure and fear. Hey, you know what's really fun? Play dead space at 1 a.m. You'll probably pee your pants.

haha I loved dead space, remember the ending i literally jumped out of my chair lol, i use to play it in my basement and i was like fck that and only played in the day haha that game is like the only one to really freak me out

Stage 2: The Infection Spreads

First up, I've got a small collection of WIP shots of my more... elaborate conversions:


A more tenacly and active flood, hasn't been green stuffed yet.


A sergeant struggling to fight off infection forms, still need to finish the infection form.


Some Flood Infection Forms to be added to random bases and such


Finally, a WIP shot of my Flood Elite. I used Kroot legs and arms, Fiend chest and head, Zombie fingers for the mouth, and a bit of green stuff. I don't think it's floodish enough yet though...

Thats it for now, I also uploaded some painting I've done, but I have to go to work now so I'll post one with comments when I get home from work... in about 12 hours :(

Very nice! I really like your latest models...except for the infection forms. I will always hate those nasty little gits!

Calmly loads shotgun, readies fragmentation grenades and fetches an overshield..

*insert halo theme*

pesky.. little.. critters..

Any chance we will see bloated Flood "transports"? you know, those mushroom-kamikaze-fellas? Oh, and a must have objective marker; Master Chief defending himself against numerous infection forms and combat forms!

Impressive work so far, keep it up!

Stage 2 Continued: The Infection Continues To Spread

The first things I think about when making an army is how viable it is competitively, and what kind of paint job to do. With armies that don't have many miniatures (like specialist Space Marines or Eldar armies) I like to think of ellaborate paint schemes with high attention to detail... but for more horde-like armies lik Tyranids or Guard (in this case) I like to focus on ease and continuity. While it would be great to have a whole horde army painted with inane amounts of detail, I know my limits. Besides, painting a horde army with a generic scheme makes them feel more... hordish

So I decided I was going to try out what is commonly refereed to as 'dipping' but rather I would simply be painting the 'dip' on to the models.

I did my research and the best product available in Australia is said to be Watyl Stain and Varnish, I will add a pic of the Jar I bought from my local Bunnings store later.

The next thing I had to do was experiment with colors. So one of my shabbily converted Plague Marines was to be the victim:

I think that Snakebite Leather and Bronzed Flesh turned out best for the browns, and Goblin Green and Jade Green for the greens. Blood Red was the obvious choice for red, and really like the effect Mithril Silver gave.

Next up I wanted to try a new basing technique. I'd read a lot of different suggestions/guides and I felt I really wanted to test the snow made using bicarb soda, PVA glue, glitter and a smidgen of very light blue (or rather bluish-white) paint. I did a couple tests, the best of which are displayed here:

You can't really see the glitter in those, but hopefully you will on latter pics. Also, I just want to mention I think snow is fitting, as I think in Halo 1 or 2 there was a huge snow part of a level with lots of flood and covenant that I really enjoyed!

So I had my colors and base decided, to work I went!

First up, a spray white undercoat:


Next I did a slightly watered down Snakebite Leather on fleshy parts and some parts of the armour:


Then Jade Green all over the armour. As a side note, the bluishness of the Jade green mixes well with the brown 'dip' to create a dark green, that is why I chose this over Goblin for the majority of the model:


Next I did patches of Bronzed Flesh and Goblin Green. I also did the Sensory Organs and any Guts in Blood Red, and any metallic items, such as the gun, in Mithril Silver:


The moment of Truth! I 'watered' down the 'dip' with some Methylated Spirits (about 1 parts spirits to 10 parts dip) to make it a little thinner, and easier to apply, and then covered the whole model:


I think picked out the details of the metal with some Mithril Silver, and dry brushed the Sensory Organs with Blood Red. I also did Sunburst Yellow mixed with Bronzed Flesh (50/50 mix) on the swollen 'flesh' at the base of the Sensory Organs, then a white highlight on that:


Finally I put some Clear Gloss on the Sensory Organs and their 'swollen' bases and base the model using the snow technique. I also sprayed on some red gore for effect:



Things I Learned

Firstly, MUST FILE OFF MOLD LINES! I always get so carried away with a new paint scheme I forget those pesky mold lines. Looks so unprofessional and generally ruins an otherwise fairly decent model to have these lines randomly creased along the model.

Next, I undercoated in white when my test model was black. The difference is usually minor, but when your apply such minimal layers of paint it can make a noticeable difference. I want to continue undercoating in white, but I might try applying a layer of heavily watered down black to the next batch of guys.

Finally, the snow bases, need some rocks. Snow alone is cool, but I think it will look much better with some scattered rocks to improve the 'scenic' nature of the bases.

As always, all critiques welcome! You can only improve if you know where you are lacking

One tip for your moldline problem is to always remove them as soon as you remove the part from the sprue, I always do it and you will never miss anything when doing so

This is a great start and I'm looking forward to more.