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Watching intently.....

I'm loving the new Genestealer models, but can't wait to see what you do with these.

Can't wait to see how these turn out

*Grabs popcorn*
*waits for more*

Glad you guys like them. They're going to take some work, but I like having more firing stance models. I mocked up another few last night but I will probably take a second look at them. Basically did one sprue using the parts from the models individually. May attack the second sprue by cutting off all the arms and weapons and then mixing them as works best. Which means the last guy will probably get a spare IGuard or hybrid arm or something when not everything works out, lol.

If you're curious about the changes, this guy:



Originally was this guy:

Much prefer yours bud.

Damn you games workshop, we all curse them and gripe on, but in reality they are quite brilliant. This silly game is going to get me walking into a store the end of the month.Damn those hybrids.

Cool, love your work.

Look forward to seeing what you do then ripping it off

 Camkierhi wrote:
Much prefer yours bud.

Damn you games workshop, we all curse them and gripe on, but in reality they are quite brilliant. This silly game is going to get me walking into a store the end of the month..

Well, they at least got me to EBay. I only picked up the Gen 3 & 4 models so far, but I'll eventually have the whole set. I just don't have any need for the Space Marines, and the game contents will be a dime a dozen in a couple months. But new Genestealer Cultists?

 JoeRugby wrote:
Cool, love your work.

Look forward to seeing what you do then ripping it off

Thanks. Please do. Everything you've made so far is spectacular. And painted.

Some clearer comparisons.

Darren Latham painted these guys up.


These are mine with the same exact base models:

Your poses definitely look more natural and realistic.

I definitely like these reposes more, as the originals look like their ready for war, where your's feel like their already in the heat of battle.

I look forward to seeing more of these.

Damn this Darren Latham chap, whoever he is. I'd planned to paint mine in traditional blue and purple colours, but now I want to do them in orange too. I don't have time to do one set, let alone two!

I like your reposes, but honestly, I like the models enough as they are that I probably won't bother. I think you improve them from 9/10 to 9.5/10, and if I had a choice between the originals and yours, I'd probably go for a mixture of each. That sounds a bit mean, so basically, well done for being less lazy than me, and doing something good!

 Fifty wrote:
Damn this Darren Latham chap, whoever he is.

Incidentally, he is the sculptor of these models :-D

So yeah, on behalf of my wallet: damn him!

 Fifty wrote:
That sounds a bit mean, so basically, well done for being less lazy than me, and doing something good!

Nothing to apologize for, lol. If GW's models weren't good as they are, nobody would buy them.

Wait, people buy those awful Space Wolves monstrosities like the Wulfen and the Wolf Chariot, so obviously that's not true.

So, if the models weren't good, significantly less people would buy them. I like the Genestealer Cult models the way they come. They're actually really gorgeous. I just think they can be more exciting. And since I rarely actually play any GW games, I have plenty of time to cut them apart. To me, the fun is taking the models and creating something new and unique out of it. And inspiring other people to do the same.

Speaking of inspiration:

Any good Genestealer Cult needs some Genestealers. I still have quite a bit more to do. I want to raise its head, and get its left foot oriented more forward, but I like the way this turned out. Obviously inspired by the old Genestealer art from Space Hulk/Rogue Trader era, which was in turn inspired by the wonderful cover art from Den Beauvais and the old 1989 Aliens Volume 2 comic series.

Your posing and positioning make the models feel a lot more alive / realist.

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” - H.P. Lovecraft

Necrons? This should be good.

Necrons are still on the workbench until I get some new parts for them. I just thought I'd give a little teaser about what's on the horizon. Never fear, these will be Oldcrons-inspired and as Lovecraftian as the models and my limited sculpting talent allows. I am going with all-Deathmark monocular heads because I think it makes them look more "alien" and thus far scarier.


However, the modeling bug definitely bit, and because I was going hiking early this morning and the ladyfriend is out of town, I had an afternoon free from weekend excess.

I finished up the rough mock-ups for the Genestealer Cultists. These guys are ready for gap-filling and any finishing touches bits. But I figured I'd show you what I did with them structurally. Each of the photos below has the identical base models next to one another. A few of them are more or less "off the sprue" (with head swaps and the head-pegs cut off) but that's because I figure I'll eventually have around 30-40 of these guys and some of the base poses are okay.




Then I whipped up 6 new Eldar Corsairs, including two with old Rogue Trader/2nd Edition era Eldar melta gun (now "fusion gun") and lasguns (when that used to be a things) that will count as lasblasters.



Some closer up detail on the lunging Dark Eldar with the flail. I really wanted to capture the essence of motion with his whole body pivoting into the flail motion.



Seems like a ridiculously unsafe weapon to use, but hey.


I put together a handful of Tau Fire Warriors and a Pathfinder who will be very scared of that Necron above once they are both finished, but they aren't very exciting.


Lost my heavier bladed knife temporarily, so I couldn't work on any of the Space Marine ideas, and a few Chaos Marines I have lying around. Chopping up 1-1.5mm card and Space Marine legs is just too tiring for an X-acto #1. Oh well.

I've waited 20 years for a new multi-part Genestealer Hybrid kit.

I'm still waiting, but in the mean time I'll make my own.


As you can tell by the sudden flurry of activity, Deathwatch Overkill, and the Genestealer Cult models more specifically, have me excited about the Warhammer 40K modeling hobby again. I haven’t actually played the game yet (I actually don’t even own the game), but these guys take me back to the halcyon days of Rogue Trader and 2nd Edition.

Unlike the 3/4 Gens, the 1st & 2nd Generation Hybrids are a lot easier to modify. I actually figured it would be the opposite, but I was wrong. Like the 3/4 Gen Brood Brothers, I kept the bodies intact, and removed the arms. On certain kits I kept maybe one of the arms in its original configuration, but otherwise I just cut them all off and made two rows. One of left arms and the other of right arms. Because of the way they join, many of the arms will need some gap fill as well (though they can be filed smooth in some places and look fine, but these models just look strikingly better when their arms aren’t jutting off at the kinds of unnatural angles that are necessitated by the molding process.




Two of the stock models for comparison



What you can get, for relatively low effort, is a bunch of unique models, rather than two sets of identical ones. It is a lot less painful than the Brood Brothers, too. A lot of these can simply have the hands cut free and rotated. Arms with partial sleeves can be clipped and rotated to get different angles, etc. The nice thing is, since they are all hideous mutants, there's really no limitation on the configuration. As long as at least one hand has an autopistol, you're pretty much set.


Intermixed with Brood Brothers and a Purestrain



So far, since the Genestealer Cult would likely be an urban phenomenon, and the models have mining/industrial clothing, I’ve wanted to give my Genestealers a hunched-over look to them like they had been trying to do a lot of sneaking around in human-sized areas, and were lurking. So none of the more common “arms wide open” looks for them.

Then, as usual, a size comparison with my True Scale Space Marines.



I picked up two sets of the Autogun Chaos Cultists too, who will fill out my Cult as Brood Brother thralls once they've had their Chaos symbols cleaned off. I like those models, but there isn't much you can do with them, modeling wise.

Now to get me some Aberrants and a Magus.

Are you using a Razor Saw to cut off the arms?
I Cannibalised an ebay purchase to give two old school guys some arms (also a chaos cultist arm used)
http://i.imgur.com/ngbwOLC.jpg
Link because the pic is huge and won't re-scale.

I love the models but having seen someone describe one of the 2nd gen as 'Waving to a m8' I'm now of a need to convert like you have

You manage to capture so much movement in your models! Excellent work.

EDC

Really great reposing Srg.

Good inspiration for when I pick up my copy of overkill

So, with no Genestealer Cult models left until I get my hands on the Magus and Aberrants, my attention wandered to Necrons whose bits finally came in. I'd had some fun ideas for Necrons for a while, but no interest in the army because, honestly, I find the Newcrons uninteresting. Giving them too much personality made them boring to me. I don't want to be in their heads. I don't want them to have humanlike ambitions. It's like all those crappy Predator novels. Don't put me in their heads. That takes away the mystery, the alien-ness.

Now, dark, Lovecraftian, menacing, alien Oldcrons? Those guys were awesome. The Necrons were a faction that were better the less we knew about them. They're old, their motives are unclear, but they're definitely cranky after waking up.

I had a small army of the original metal ones, but I wanted to go a new direction with my Oldcrons. First up, eyes. My Oldcrons are two things. First, they are old and alien. And second, they're in robot bodies, so there is no need for binocular vision. So I decided, to make my Oldcrons more ominous and alien (less human-like), they would have the Deathmark heads with their single eye lens. Not only are the Deathmark heads awesome, they really capture the inhuman look I want for these guys.

The second thing I wanted to do was the same thing I've done with many of my other armies, which is make their weaponry less heroic scaled. Not ever having been a huge fan of the green rods (why does the gun focus and contain the beam, only to focus and contain it a second time?), they were going to be the first thing to go. Which meant clipping the rods from the gauss blasters (which will get converted later) and then cutting them in half. The end of the barrel was then affixed. The result?

“Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity.” - H.P. Lovecraft





The random hoses may come off. I'll have to see if I like them that way or not. But the overall effect from the original, with it's bizarre vestigial ax head bayonet, to the new, shorter version is a huge improvement, at least to me.



I only have five of them right now, and I'm still fiddling with them, but I'm liking the early results. Going to have to get some plastic rod to extend their necks. Apparently Necrons aren't allowed to turn their heads left or right, lol.

 Melonfish wrote:
Are you using a Razor Saw to cut off the arms?
I Cannibalised an ebay purchase to give two old school guys some arms (also a chaos cultist arm used)
http://i.imgur.com/ngbwOLC.jpg
Link because the pic is huge and won't re-scale.

I love the models but having seen someone describe one of the 2nd gen as 'Waving to a m8' I'm now of a need to convert like you have

I like the old Brood Brothers models. And the new arms seems to fit them well. I just use a precision blade hobby knife and patience to cut the arms free.

Awesome work sir. Just takes the model to that next level.

Oh and this is your fault...


That was one time only. Your nuts!

They are a massive improvement. Great old crons are the way forward. That is not dead, which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die...

Great looking crons Srg.

Makes me want to start buying deathmark heads for when I do some crons

So instead of modeling yesterday morning, I spent about two hours condensing my bits collection. When I moved to the beach (from close to the beach, can you imagine how bad my miniatures buying problem would be if I lived somewhere with sensible housing costs?), I lost a lot of storage space when I gave up my big garage for a 1-car. It made no sense to have so much square footage in models. So I took to cutting about 60% of my bits off the sprues (some of these were dated back to 1998, lol), and separating them out by type so that I'd have a better idea of what I had. I've also started to figure out what I am never going to use and can probably be sold on EBay. I left anything that was at least 70% complete on the sprues for organizational purposes. It was just all those sprues that had a handful of components on them and were wasting space. I also had a lot of disorganized bits (multiple bags of heads, torsos, accessory bits, etc).

The verdict? I probably have more than enough Space Marine parts to finish my Battle Company, perhaps minus a few heavy weapons. I put together a bag of MK VI parts (heads, helmets, studded pads). Not sure what I am going to do with them. Might use them for Heresy if I ever get around to working on Betrayal at Calth. Then I have bags of Big Ammo Pouches, Little Ammo Pouches, Grenades, Mixed Pouches/Grenades, Knives, Flamers/Plasma, Melta, Pistols and Holstered Pistols, Misc Arms with weapons, skulls/trophies plus I'm sure a couple bags I've forgotten about while writing this. I then put together a Core Components bag with Mk VII legs, Mk VII/VIII torsos, MkVII heads, bare heads, backpacks, arms, bolters, shoulder pads. And a bag for Terminators and parts for Terminators. And a bag of Squats, lol. Then I did ones for IGuard, Eldar Corsairs (E & DE), Tau, Orks and Chaos. I don't have a bag for Necrons yet as the Necron collection is still small and most everything I haven't used is still on the sprue for organizational/inventory purposes while I work on them.

On the left is the box full of discarded sprues when I was done. Mind you, that's not all the sprues. It's just all the ones that are now empty.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Awesome work sir. Just takes the model to that next level.

Oh and this is your fault...

Spoiler:

Awesome. I like the belt feed to his ammo pack.

That was one time only. Your nuts!

Yeah, definitely. There's no rhyme or reason to this, other than I like looking at them when I'm done. My buddy over at SquadPainter has been badgering me to paint more of these guys long enough that I'll probably start having some "finished" models. It took forever for me to be happy enough with the results of the Space Marines that the only things I had painted were metal Guardsmen.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

I've been following your conversinos for a while now and...
MA GAD!

Yeah, this is why it's called plastic crack.

So I have nearly finished the Genestealer Cult. The only one left is the Magus, and mostly because I haven't decided exactly what I am going to with him yet.

The Aberrants were kind of a bummer. There isn't much to do with them, but I got rid of the "Hey buddy!" waving look to the ones with the picks, and I rotated the hammer heads on the sledgehammer ones to try to achieve a more natural angle rather than the one that fit easiest on the mold line, lol. I also cut the picks off and repositioned them to sit better. I also cut the skull out of one's hand, because it looked silly to have them both holding a skull for no reason. I might cut the skull out of the other one's hand, to be honest. It's just silly.



I put them on the 32mm bases (as opposed to the 1/2 Gens which I put on 25mm) because I felt like it would be more indicative of a large, out of control, oblivious monster "taking up more space". I don't much care for the 32mm bases under most circumstances, and I have plenty of 25mm laying around, but it seemed appropriate for these models.

The Primus had his arms swapped to give him an aiming pistol, rather than a pointing sword. I rotated the left arm just so it would have a better angle for that pose.



Next to a Space Marine for reference.



Hopefully soon I'll figure out what I want to do with that Magus. I kinda like it how it is, but I also kinda don't like his little pope-drapes on the front, and cutting them off would make the model look far more like the Rogue Trader-era models. Plus, pope-drapes are silly looking, and a little too reminiscent of modern priest garb, whereas I want creepy cult.


Next up will either be more Necrons, or shockingly, new Space Marines. I've decided I'm going to make stand-ins for all the Deathwatch Overkill Marines (since I already have half a dozen that work as-is). Also I am going to make a Boarding Action group to stand in for the Space Hulk Terminators, with las cutters, graviton guns, breaching charges, etc to make them look like they are equipped to enter a hostile ship.

Man, that Primus looks bad-ass. Impressive stuff sorting out your bits collection too...I've got bag of bits everywhere that I really should consolidate and organise...

EDC