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Alright, back on the job!
I've started painting the demon prince. He's going to be a big job.
Here's how he looks with a few coats of paint.

and

I should stress this is very much painting in progress. I have more layering and toning to do for both the metal and the demon/flesh areas. But I did want to block out the major colors so that I could get a feel for the visual composition.

In general, I like the palatte, but I think things need to look a little less pink. And of course, the various veins, sinews, cables, wires, guts and gore all need to be picked out in various shades, so that they contrast more with each other.

Then the detailing begins....

Meanwhile, I'm beginning to scheme up the next projects in the army. I'm starting to tinker with possibilities for the horrors. I'll probably start another demon prince somewhere along the line, desecrating another sentinel to do so.

What do you suppose a 40K "chariot" would look like?

An amazing job thus far. Keep it up!

I'm still loving this project. Looking good so far.

Add some chains and hooks to get some Hellraiser feeling.

It looks good! Keep up the good work.

Many thanks for all of the encouragement. It really helps motivate me to continue.
Progress has been frequently interrupted lately with various real-life obligations, but I have staggered forward.
First, I made a few purchases...

The ghouls will become conversion fodder for horrors (if they work out the way I hope they might *fiendish cackle*).
The sentinel will give me a machine skeleton for another demon prince.
And the soul grinder will become (ahem) a soul grinder. (I like the model very much, particularly the demon torso and head, though I anticipate tinkering quite a bit with the carriage/legs.)

I decided to start with the horrors. I tried fiddling with various combinations of ghoul- and Cadian- and FW renegade bitz. But the ghouls really are creatures and models unto themselves, what with their posture and bitz breakdown. Any combination with 40K stuff made them look unnatural -- in a bad way. The prototype that worked best, I thought, was this one:

That's ghoul, legs, torso, and arms, with an IG lasgun and a head from Pig Iron. This version is still very rough: he has mould lines, of course, and needs greenstuffing to smooth out the joins, and probably some 40K touches here and there (maybe some cabling). But I like the posture and feel of the creature.
He has kind of a Hellboy vibe.

He's supposed to represent a basic Imperial Guardsman, infected with warp energies, corrupted into a foul denizen of demon lands, and sent back to the Materium to slaughter his former comerades.

I will work up a squad of horrors along these lines.
And meanwhile, continue painting the demon prince.

In the meantime, suggestions, comments, and critique are warmly welcomed.

Ohhhh, I love the Horror. It's quite sweet.

Side note: What isn't to like about 3 S4 shots per model?

The ghouls with spooky gas mask heads look really great. You ain't kidding about the Hellboy / BPRD vibe, quite nice. I personally dislike the lasgun and see them more slinging ethereal fire (ala Dawn of War, or horrors in general) rather than blazing away with the most cracked out lasguns ever. Would require some sculpting of fire here and there, but not a big thing. But if you're doing the lasguns as a fluff thing, and not related to the actual attak mode of the critters, than I can deal with that

- Salvage

For the lasgun idea id replace the barrels with some sort of learing face, or use the flamer hands like you used for the DP,

Im stealing the idea too, they'd make nice conscripts!!

Keep up the Great work

LL

Boss_Salvage wrote:The I personally dislike the lasgun and see them more slinging ethereal fire (ala Dawn of War, or horrors in general) rather than blazing away with the most cracked out lasguns ever. Would require some sculpting of fire here and there, but not a big thing. But if you're doing the lasguns as a fluff thing, and not related to the actual attak mode of the critters, than I can deal with that

I hear what you're saying here, actually, and I tend to agree (with you and with Lord L, who makes the same basic point). Which is why my lack of posting lately hasn't been for lack of fiddling and tinkering. I've been fussing with the "horrors" (ghouled up guardsmen), but I'm not yet sure I've come up with a solution that entirely satisfies me.

First, I assembled head/torso/legs for 6 of them:


So far so good. But having them simply hold their lasguns did not produce satisfying results. Partly because the ghoul arms didn't line up properly, even after bending and cutting/re-fixing. But also because a simple lasgun didn't really suggest warpfire to me.

So I've been trying some alternatives.
One way to go would be to afix some of a lasgun (minus the stock, the handle, the trigger, probably also the tip of the barrel itself) to an arm, then greenstuff in demonic ligature to suggest an unholy fusing of man and gun -- as if daemonic possession had grafted the two into a single, unholy, warp-animanted weapon.
Something like:

Here's a pair of closer detail shots:

(Since taking this photo, I've clipped out the handle and trigger apparatus.)
Here's another look:


If I go this route, maybe I'll try sculpting miniature mouths or at least tounges for the mouths of the gun-barrels. (But then, they might be too small to sculpt convincingly.)

I'm not sure, frankly. I think I'll have to press forward with this plan (so, more green-stuffing to come) on at least one test model, or probably two, then paint them up, then decide whether it works or not.

So I make this log entry not in an excited "see what I've done! Isn't it cool?!" tone. The mood here is "hmmm. Is this going to work, or not?"

Well, I'm much more convinced with the gribbly GS on there. I actually thought it was fire at first, wreathing the firing arm and gun, and thought that was an excellent idea. Now I see the gun is all merged into the arm, and I still think it's an excellent idea

I don't personally need mouths and tongues on all the guns, though a few in each squad would work, tie them in with the big sentinel demon thing's imperial gun + demonic mouths / flesh. But again, merging the lasguns into the body of the things works fine for me

- Salvage

Some progress over the weekend on painting the demon prince. I've been playing a bit with tones and palette, lightening the look up a bit (going a bit more orangely), picking out details, and so on.
I still want to do some more, but the creature is starting to come into three-color focus (in the comic book sense of the term):

and from one side:

and the other

As you can see, I decided to paint the flamer-mouth-tongues blue, to create a few points of contrast:

Here's a look at some base detail: demon prince prey:

Here he is noticing you looking at him:

And here he is from up top


He's still at the stage where I pick up the model, peer closely, turning slowly. Wonder if I should change things. Put him down. Pick him up again....

That Demon Prince is amazing, and I love the Horrors. I think that the fusion of human-weapon is a cool concept, and it looks freaky.

I just noticed the Space Marine on the DP's base. Hilarious!

I can see poeple scream and run away from that beast.

Progress lately has been sporadic, but the project has inched forward. I've spent some time fiddling with various greenstuff experiments on various horror prototypes. These ones are my favorites:


Some details:

and

and


This weekend I should be able to start painting up a few of these guys.

Next I think I want to try modeling another demon prince, using a few ideas I couldn't mash into the last one.

In the meantime, comments, criticisms, suggestions and critique would be very welcome.

Very cool. For some reason I am hoping to see some converted Obliterators in there, but I have to remind myself that it's a Demon Army, not CSM!

Aside from that I really like it. Are there any eyes on the Demon Prince?

VermGho5t wrote:Aside from that I really like it. Are there any eyes on the Demon Prince?

Damn, that's, like, psychic! One of the things I want to try is eyes (mostly from the spawn sprues) emerging from fissures in the sentinel body.
And you sensed that? I definitely detect the distant hand of Tzeench at work here.

edit: This avatar (of Schepp himself) helped stir up the idea.

Don't know where the picture's from. But it's creepy.

Just a thought, as I am also thinking Ghoul/Guard etc..

How about throwing a couple of Termagant Fleshborer armsets into this, those guns look organic and flamer-ish..

I think the picture is from the cover of a Tool album. I want to say AEnima?

porkuslime wrote:Just a thought, as I am also thinking Ghoul/Guard etc..

How about throwing a couple of Termagant Fleshborer armsets into this, those guns look organic and flamer-ish..

Good idea. The trick would be modifying the arms so they lost that very distinctive nid look to them.
Hmm, your suggestion makes me realize how much that xeno-zoology has unconsciously shaped my approach to converting the ghouls!

I've finished (well, 90% finished) modeling the first batch of nine horrors.

and

For the horror wielding a bolt of change, I decided to "mutate" a flamer:

I should be able to start painting them bit by bit (how else?) this week.

Oh lord. Amazing job! So great, I think I'm gonna go throw up. Sick man... sick. Your walker turret reminds me of those black tentacle things from Princess Mononoke, if anyone's seen that before.

Excellent first squad of gribblies, damn fine work Tin. The flamer is nice touch.

I too hope for bigger mutated gun monsters, but not sure what you have in store for us ...

- Salvage

Alright, the humidity here (northeastern U.S.) finally died down enough for me to prime the horrors last night. How exciting. I'm sure you all have lots to say about my black blobs at this point:


Anyone? No?

Well, I will post a progress report anyway, this time to solicit suggestions for a Lord of Change. I'm casting about for ideas here.
The LOC is ridiculously costly in terms of points, and so maybe not the most sensible army selection. But since I'm undertaking this project mainly for narrative and modeling reasons, I'm making one anyway.
The model has to be big (60 mm base). Has to be freaky and scary. Has to suggest Tzeentchish shooty powers, as well as flight.
And, to fit in with the theme of the army, he also has to somehow suggest "haunted, possessed IG."
Plus, I'm thinking about trying something with a C'thullu flavor.
So.

One idea I have is to take and rework a project I started a year or so ago. Never finished it, but took it this far:





Some things I'm thinking of doing to it:
Taking it apart again;
Making it bigger by a factor of 2 or so;
Making the overall lines of the piece spiral and curl more, so that it'd look like a spiral or a twisting tornado, instead of a pillar;
Splicing/grafting in IG elements (cables; imperial and guard debris, caught up in the tornado; horrified faces, trapped inside);
and then, re-coloring it to match other elements of the new army (see demon prince no. 1, above).

Does this sound as though it would work? Any other thoughts?
If I took this route, how would you recommend proceeding? My ideas are boiling over, but frankly I don't know how I'd go about making such an ambitious beast.

I really really really like those ghoul troopers. Kick ass idea.

How about this?
http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/02838

Got one of those ear-marked for a generic great demon myself

I like the concept Tin, and your ideas for making it better are good. Reminds me of Hammer's freaky green lord of change from his 1k Sons army, don't know if you remember seeing it before. Not on his pbase account, so I'll look around and post a link when I can find it.

EDIT --> THE HORROR (recall that greater demons used to possess marines, hence the dude in there)

- Salvage

Oh my. That's an amazing mini -- thanks for the link, Boss.
And for your suggestion as well, Foda B. I'm sticking with GW models as base material (not because I play in fancy GW tournaments, but just for the challenge of the restriction). Still, this is all grist for the mill, stirring up inspirations and ideas. Very helpful, at this stage of the process.

This army looks like it came from Silent Hill. Nicely done!

You've captured the sci-fi "demon" feeling that Games Workshop rather ignored when they released bright and spiky little daemons that, while cool looking in their own right, failed to connect with the demons from "Doom" or "Quake" that so characterize military Sci-Fi.

This is a step in the right direction. Your horrors and ghouls especially.

What are you planning for your HQ?

Arise! I summon thee, spirits! Return, return from the Earth and arise!

Well, after a long hiatus (full of real-life stuff and very little 40k, I'm afraid), I'm resuming work on this project.
See?


Actually, over the last few weeks I've made piecemeal progress on various fronts.

First, I'm putting together another small batch of horrors:

Up closer:


Then, I started up another corrupted-sentinel-demon-prince beastie.
Those humble beginnings:

The plan here is to use more of the sentinel, more intact than before -- but definitely beginning to crawl with C'thullian nastiness. Lots of eyes erupting on the hull of thing (this will probably stand in as a Tzeenchian demon prince). And inside the cabin, the driver more or less plastered to the interior of the vehicle (something like the wretched creature encased in the Forgeworld chaos warhound titan -- one of my favorite GW/FW pieces of modeling ever. (As you can see here, I'm starting with the corpse impaled on the lance from the WHFB corpse cart kit -- an amazing source of bitz.)
Here's another angle:


And then, I made the first, sketchy start on a Lord of Change. Here, I decided to try to model up my initial vision: a whirlwind of Tzeenchian demonic madness, cables and Imperial wreckage, the trapped faces of devoured souls....
I really and truly have no idea how this is going to turn out.
But here's how it's started:

and

and


Obviously I have a long way to go with these last two projects -- and honestly, no clear idea of how to get there.
The Gods will guide me, I suppose.
Or not.

Responses, suggestions, feedback of any kind is most warmly welcomed.

Well I'm really liking the start on the LoC, twin-headed flamer tornado that it's looking to become!

And I'm reminded how nifty your horrors are. Great stuff.

- Salvage