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Good work man!

Not sure on the gluttons though - a bit ugly

Really enjoying the molding run through so far, it's not something I'll probably ever do but it's way cool to see the process. Also, your hawkman harpies/furies are quite excellent, even if not sculpted from scratch I'm always impressed by how nice plastic demonettes look with a proper pair of breasts added back on ...

- Salvage

wow look great

The Ex-Nilo bases run the risk of being a bit OTT and distracting from the models themselves. Fall of the Eldar bases sound great though.

I'd love to discuss the moulding process with you, you appear to use a hell of a lot more stuff then I do!

I'm also intreaged by the one part mould, I've always made mine in two sections!

I vote Eldar fall, simple, elegant and direct, the way this army is and should continue. I feel like all the rest would definetely detract from the models themselves which would be a crime, a CRIME I TELLS YA! Anyways, excellent, excellent work.

I'm no mold expert but I have done some. Always interested to learn more though. I have a couple of questions.

So I'm guessing you are going to slice the molds open with a razor to remove your masters? I'm not skilled enough to do this and keep a pristine parting line. How do you plan to keep the halves aligned when it comes time to cast?

Some of your risers from the "deep" part of the mold also intersect the mold higher up (some of your wings for example). Doesn't this allow casting material into your riser on the top side and potentially block bubbles from the deep end where you want them removed?

Wow, amazing work so far.

Beamo: Procreate comes in rectangular foil wrapped bars each about 3-inches long. If you by this stuff keep it in the freezer if it get to warm it will stike to the foil and be hard to cut up.

Delfabs: Thanks, I still have a bit more work to do on her.
Levi: Thanks man.

Karoline Dianne: Thanks! I'd still like to see your army though, I certain its gorgeous as well.

Gennadius: That sir is a brilliant idea! Shattered and fused soul stone strew about, daemonettes holding aloft freshly plucked gems. Hmmm... I don;t like dead bodies on bases by perhaps some crack or long abandoned eldar armor?

Mellon: Those are good points, especially about keeping a unified theme for the army. I'm strongly leaning toward the Eldar Fall idea...crumbling eldar ruins. I was thinking about making at least one daemon princess based of a fallen Eldar Seer anyway. Time to get writing some fluff.

Unite All Action: I'm glad you find this thread inspiring; I know so many hear and elsewehe and here have and continue to inspire and humble me. We'll be getting pretty deep into the casting thing, it really can be simple and relatively cheap to do!

Mohaniker: Well I do know of at least two armies using or planning to use the 7 deadly sins theme. Okay you've sold me, Fallen Eldar it is. I want it to be be unique and challenging and this should be I'm just torn on whether to do a Craftworld interior or a Maiden World setting.

Apone: Thanks!

Accolade: Thanks for the feedback. I'm posting my methods in the hope that it will save someone else from making the same costly mistakes I did. As they say its easy when you no how. So, please if you have any questions post them I'll do my best to answer them.

Namegoshere: Thanks, the gluttons are supposed to be ugly, it helps balance the more elegant daemonettes and princesses.

Boss_Salvage: It always amazes me how GW decied to go with the single breast, they would sell so many more if not for that. I love the new Daemonettes except for that and molded loincloths which make converting a pain..

Pcon426: Thanks man.

The Lost Hobbit: Yeah I suppose your right the Ex-nilo style bases would be to busy. I might still do it as a terrain piece though.

Druidic: I you have questions just ask I'll be happy to explain my process. You don't need all that gear but honestly is saves loads of time and effort. The single pour mold with the jewelers cut is far superior to the two part mold in my humble opinion. It simple to do, takes half the time and the parts come out with virtually no flash! not to worry I'll be demo how to do it soon.

Gamesandwatch: It seems "Eldar Fall" is the winner. I'll have to study my Eldar Codei as reference.

Asmith:

So I'm guessing you are going to slice the molds open with a razor to remove your masters? I'm not skilled enough to do this and keep a pristine parting line. How do you plan to keep the halves aligned when it comes time to cast?

I use a "worm key" and the jeweler cut technique on my molds. It provide lots of registration to align the mold halves together, the cuts are not uniform but a wave pattern. To keep the halves aligned just sandwich them between to pieces of foam core or styrene and rubberband them together.

Some of your risers from the "deep" part of the mold also intersect the mold higher up (some of your wings for example). Doesn't this allow casting material into your riser on the top side and potentially block bubbles from the deep end where you want them removed?

That is a good question. If I was just pouring resin I would only allow the riser to have a single point of contact. When, I've pressue cast the molds like this in the past I haven't had a problem, it probably helps that I inject the resin as well. But you've talked me into changing my venting scheme, these are going to be large models and I dare not waste resin it I can help it. Thanks for the input.

Ozymandias: Thanks.




Okay guys I'll be uploading some new design sketches for nearly all the units as well and some pose ideas. I also hope to get lots of casting done this weekend and to start a proper sculpting tutorial on my new Male KOS. More soon...

Interesting, I look forward to that!

I couldn't find a good description of "worm key" online, Id be interested in seeing some detail on both the worm key and the alignment features when you get that far in your molding. Some pictures or description as you are doing the slicing would be great as well.

Thanks alot for posting this process online, very interesting so far.

Progress!


cutting the Molds:

I'll be getting deep into this later as I've draw up diagrams and everything.

The tools:

A scalpel a #12 curved blade. Buy a box or two of non-sterile carbon blades they're much cheaper. The curved blade will make this technique super-easy and virtually fool proof.




Surgical retractors, got these new off ebay for $20, the name brand one can run as high as $200 or more!



Cutting stuff!





Here's a neat idea to held with the cutting. Push extra long stick pins thru the mold box until the graze the models surface. Make sure you take each pin with a dab of hot glue to that 1. they don't move, and 2. so silicon rubber doesn't leak out the mold box.





The Original cut out of the mold:




The mold:



The Pressure Pot:




A close up on eht lid of my heavily modded pressure pot. I'll explain this bad boy in detail later; but it started life as a $39.00 Harbor Freight paint pot.



The resin filled molds in the pot:





Resin Daemon Princess parts:















Resin Parts for Furies and Gorgons:

Wow... you make it look so simple! And the models are aboslutely gorgeous.

I would suggest on the gluttons to make them into the furies? take the torso and make it limbless, bloodlily limbless, then add those wings?

any chance that a few casts are up for sale?
amazing work, the moulds are great, the level of detail is possibly the best ive seen

Mellon:

It is when you know how! The trouble is finding the right information. I've fortunately met many wonderful and helpful people online and picked their brains about molding & casting. That's why I'm posting this, to share what I've learned. Got a question? I will do my best to answer it.


Nenya97:

Hmmm...Furies are pretty worthless anyway, I was only adding them for modeling and fluff sake. If they'fe in the list just for the models then they ought to be hot winged daemon chicks, I say.

JD21290:

I'll have to look into selling a few casts, I only need three, but it'd be a shame to just let the molds sit idle. Honestly, I never thought anyone would be interested in buying one. I have to get the heads and alternate arms done first anyway. But if anyone is interested PM me and let me know.

Ehehehe, as with everything else then :-)

At the moment my casting skills is ot the spot where I'm learning to do greenstuff moulds of small decorations. So this far I'm doing allright with what I can pick up from guides. But I'll keep you in mind when (rather than if) I start casting stuff properly and run into trouble.

Mellon:

Small one part molds huh? I can run through some info on that. I started out with a hand kneaded silicon rubber that you can get and Michaels and Hobby Lobby on the cheap. You can get very good results from it but you really need to cut the mold for the best results.

Okay I've got several small piles of wings, and 3 freshly minted daemon princesses. I also have my steeds and seeker mounts ready. So their will be many posts this weekend.

Anyway here are some design sketches:

For one of the Princesses:

I'm no going for them to be Chaos based. I want them to be more Eldar-ish. One might even be a corrupted Eldar Farseer, or Dark Eldar Lord for instance.



Here is the head that I finally decided on, it similar to the FW Keeper but different enough to be unique, I think. Any I want all of them to have unique heads. Maybe something in a long and cone shaped head???



Here is a possible armor idea. With, Slaanesh is all about the tounges afterall.



Here is a possible soul grinder upper torso.



The idea I had here is that sharks seem Slaaneshi; long, sleek, fast, and vicious. So the clamps that would hold the daemons torso to the mechanical body would be biting shark heads biting down into the legs and crotch... To sick? To tame? Let me know.

Now about those Soul Grinders mechanical parts, I've been holding off buying them because they're kinda ugly and generic looking. Since this army is now more Eldar-ish than Imperal I'm thinking about just scratch building one base on the Eldar design, i.e. long and slender legs, and smooth flowing curves. So, if their are any Eldar players following this thread I'd love some input please.


Further:

Any thoughts on having daemonettes leading around chained gluttons on chains with Hannibal Lector style muzzles?


More Later!

I think the shark idea is wonderful. It does fit perfectly. Too often I see Slaanesh players focusing on thesex bit and not on the sleek, fast and sensual sides.

This is an incredible thread, I have to echo others' comments that it's very inspiring. I want to sculpt a Slaaneshi Daemon prince/alternate Keeper of Secrets when I'm done with my current projects, and your Princesses are making me want to push my "main" army onto the back burner.

I do have to ask, why did you choose to cast single-piece moulds and then cut rather than using dummy moulds and casting in halves? You'd gain the advantage of being able to have mould keys, as well as not needing to cut perfectly down the middle of incredibly fine parts like the wings (which I know I'd screw up if I tried...). Admittedly, as someone without a pressure pot to cast in, I've ended up getting very stuck in my Japanese-style ways for casting.

GlauG wrote:
I do have to ask, why did you choose to cast single-piece moulds and then cut rather than using dummy moulds and casting in halves? You'd gain the advantage of being able to have mould keys, as well as not needing to cut perfectly down the middle of incredibly fine parts like the wings (which I know I'd screw up if I tried...). Admittedly, as someone without a pressure pot to cast in, I've ended up getting very stuck in my Japanese-style ways for casting.

There are several compelling reasons use single piece molds:

1. Its fast as you don't have to mix and pour the silicon rubber twice. If the rubber you use take 24 hours to cure as most of the quality stuff does, then a cut mold will save you a whole day.

2. A cut mold has far better registration, that is to say far, far more keys than a two part mold. When you cut the mold you don't simply cut a straight line down to the model; you cut down in layers and zig-zag the blade back and forth slightly. Done right when you put the mold back together it locks tight; you should even be able to tell its cut! If you want even more registration you can include a worm key.

3. A cut mold is far more accurate that a two part mold. When you build a clay wall you introduce errors to you cast. The clay bed is never completely smooth and so the to half never fit together precisely. Which is why two-part molds often have lots of flash on their casts. With a cut mold it goes back together so well, the first several or so cast have no flash, and on the later ones the flash is so fine you can blow it off.

4. Cutting is incredibly easy. Mind you the wings you see here were more difficult to cut than most models would be with this technique. You just start cutting at the sprues and follow the model. If you use retractors like I do its very easy to see where to cut, and perfect accuracy is not necessary anyway. With many models you might not even need to cut the mold completely in half to get the master out. If you can do that you'll get an even better reproduction.


I hope this helps.

Oh yeah, several people have asked what a worm key is.


A worm key is cut with a special curved blade you can by them special made like this (they're quite expensive by the way):



Or you can simply make your own from an x-acto or scalpel blade by heating it and bending it around a brass rod, fixed in a vise like this (cheap!):



You only use it to make your outer most cuts, like so:



After you make your worm cut you just do a zig-zag cut down until you reach the model.

Sersi wrote:(sniphelpfuladvice)
I hope this helps.

I'll have to give it a try again sometime soon then. Thanks!

Wow, just wow. I wish I had something more to say but I'm stunned.

Daemon Princess New Stuff!

Here are some shot of the fully assembled princess model. Its resin tinted gray...ooohhh. Since I don't want 3 identical models I'm currently hacking apart two of them to repose. They will also be separated by their armor, weapons, number of arms, number of breasts, and heads.

















More latter!

Okay here is my first altered pose.

Just a few words on techniques and materials. The best way to chop up plastic or resin minatures is to use a straight edge razor. You can get a box of a 100 for a $1-2. Just go to the paint section of Walmart a buy a holder, again it cost like $2. You can get beautifully clean guilotine-like cuts, that you could never get with an x-acto knife; without the hazardous resin dust that results from sawing. I prefer to use copper wire to pin as its strong and still flexible, again Walmart for under a dollar for 26ft. My putty of choice is Aves either classic Aves Sculpt or Fixit Sculpt tinted with Paine's Grey oil paint to taste. It's can do anything that green stuff or milliput can, and it far cheaper.

In case your wondering the fin on the back was from a quick mold off the steed of Slaneesh.



























Let me know me what how you like the pose. The right arm will be holding a sword or whip, not sure on that really.



More Later!

Just thought I'd throw up some scale comparison shots...and well cause group shots of monstrous creatures just look cool.


The Charlie's Angles Shot:



All the girls together:

So, I finally cast up all the wings that I need for my conversions, and got most of my Fury unit converted up, 8 down 4 more to go. I may still change up the poses a little and reposition the wings on a few of them.

Various cast wings:







Furies in Progress:

Blimey. I've just found this thread and caught up with it. This has got to be one of the most completely realised and well executed scratchbuild armies I've seen. Well done on the beautiful work!