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Ive been working hard over the last few years on my SoB, IG and Alpha Legion Horus heresy army (shameless plug - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/418405.page, but as usual ive been distracted by another project:

What with all the commotion about The End Times of WFB going on I got it into my silly head that i should have a go at revamping my lizardman army. The army hasnt been out of its box for several years, but its my oldest army and WFB is definitely my first love when it comes to GW games.

Now that end times means you can go a bit nuts with character allowances and still have a legal army list i thought i could try an idea that has always been there at the back of my head. The massive T-Rex list. I worked out a list (2500pts) and set about buying some of the newer LIzardman models that i didnt have. The list looks basically like this:

Old blood on a carnosaur
Scar vet battle standard bearer on a carnosaur
Scar vet on a carnosaur
2 blocks of saurus warriors
2 bastiladons
An ancient stegadon.

So thats 6 big beasties, 3 of which are wannabe T-Rex!

I already had a metal carnosaur from way back so i pulled it apart in anticipation of my new models arriving. When the new plastic carnosaur arrived, i very quickly realised that the old metal one would be way to small to be as imposing as i wanted it to be on the board. Armed with a new pack of milliput and some bits from a slann mage priests dias i set about 'biggerising' the beast and turning it into my BSB scar vet's mount:


This pic shows all the monster (except another carnosaur thats on the way still) that'll be in the list

This is just the very basic fleshing out sculpting work so far. I still need to thicken its tail, and sort out the for arms, ankles and feet.
My problem then came when i got massively distracted(again) by the new plastic carnosaur.

Although its a fantastic model i wanted something a bit different and i wanted to change the one bit that i really didnt like, which is the muzzle of the dinosaur, its just too short. So after constructing the model by incorporating a few of the Troglodon parts in the box as well (the sail back and the twin tail end). I made busy with the razor saw, the pin vice and the green stuff. Here are the results:

The muzzle was and jaw were cut away carefully as i didnt fancy re-sculpting the very front of the face. I then added copper wire to extend it and covered it with green stuff.


I added more detail and cheek pouch things and holes for teeth. I then rolled out small spikes of green stuff and left them to harden.


The teeth bits were cut down and glued into position in the jaw, and then i added a sheet of green stuff over the top to make the scale layer and the outer gum.

I extended the sail on its back also to make it more imposed, but still allow the saddle and rider to fit:


Then i went to town on the saddle, i added greenstuff furs, and some tasty meat based snacks, here it is sitting on top of the Spinosaur-esque dino:


Ive started on the base too, using a 3mm lasre cut mdf slab as the base. The tree is from a forgotten/discarded project to make a massive unit filler for a bretonnian army. Its now a decaying swamp tree with brass etc vines and other plants around the base. Once its all painted ill add the swamp water resin to finish it off:


And here the model is finished prior to priming:


Ive already started putting some paint on so ill get some more pics up soon of the next bit.

C&C always welcome, and if anyone has any ideas of what i should end up modelling the BSB carnosaur or the 3rd yet to arrive carnosaur as im definitely open to suggestions.

looks good man...cant see what else you do...i have also been on a fantasy kick as of late.

Awesome spinosaurus!

@alabamaheretic - thanks! it feels good to be messing around with the WFB models again, its been such a long time since i last did any painting or modelling with them, i know ive progressed ability wise since i last did anything WFB related so will be nice to see what i can do.

@Ustrello - Thanks! The Spinosaurus is definitely the inspiration for this one. Not sure if im going to stay T-Rex style for the other two or not. Im thinking of maybe a very large Frill-necked lizard (or something similar) for one of them, probably the BSB. What you think?

 scrunty wrote:
@alabamaheretic - thanks! it feels good to be messing around with the WFB models again, its been such a long time since i last did any painting or modelling with them, i know ive progressed ability wise since i last did anything WFB related so will be nice to see what i can do.

@Ustrello - Thanks! The Spinosaurus is definitely the inspiration for this one. Not sure if im going to stay T-Rex style for the other two or not. Im thinking of maybe a very large Frill-necked lizard (or something similar) for one of them, probably the BSB. What you think?

You could do a carnotaurus, it sticks with the general shape and size of t. rex type dinosaurs, but it has horns growing out of its head.

ex) http://fc08.deviantart.net/images3/i/2004/128/3/b/carnotaurus.jpg

@ Ustrello - That is definitely an idea, i like the visual of the horns and it'll make the model look even more aggressive....ill have to see what looks best once i get the 3rd carno model.


I managed to get a decent amount of time to paint last night and ive finished off painting the Spinosaur now. Im pretty chuffed with it overall. The photos wash out some of the shading of the white areas and the highlights seem very harsh in places under the bright light and macro lens...but anyway enough of excuses!




As always suggestions on how to improve my painting is always welcome. Im not sure if the red/orange would benefit from a light wash of orangey-red now to finish it before the anti-shine spray coat?

Ive started on the Oldblood and Saddle as well, but there is still a way to go:


The idea with the furs on the saddle is to have the tan ones end up painted as jaguar skins, and the grey skins to be a panther skin and something like a sun bear pelt. Like i said a lot of work to go. Also i need to make the oldblood less "Barney", the idea is to have very faded/highlighted scales to add age to his skin.

I also dug the following out of a box. I had completely forgotten i started this conversion, but i remember being pretty damn happy with it. I think it still stands up to my painting standards now so im happy to get it finished and onto the table:

A little proto-purple sun forming in one hand and a blast of some other magic coming from the other, while staring in to the mid-distance. Hopefully it gives the impression that the Slann has better things on his mind, but is still capable of destroying everything around him if needs be! Also he needs his protection from the sun, hence the canopy!

very cool scrunty im digging it alot. seems right and proper that carno saur looks amazing man thumbs up and bravo

This is awesome! I'm glad you linked this from your 40k page. I can't wait to see how the beasties turn out.

Really nifty conversion work on the Spinosaur.

@alabamaheretic and Twillsey - Thanks! Always good to hear people like my painting as well as the conversion work

@ Freytag93 - Thanks! I thought my crafty cross system link might draw a bit of attention


More updates from a week or so's worth of work (possibly two weeks, cant quite remember)

Ive put more paint on the Spinosaur Oldblood. Hes finished now and the saddle is about 60% done, so should be all together soon. Although im having trouble with the base at the moment. I want to use some clear resin to look like swamp water but i cant seem to get the stuff to the right tint (mucky brown/green) and set properly, so if anyone has any advice it will be greatly received:



I also put the first colours onto my first bastiladon and my stegadon. Ive not done any conversion work to the dinosaurs of these, but im going to play around with the stuff that gets put on top instead, but at present im not entirely sure what to do with them yet....ideas on a postcard please:


My final carnosaur turned up in the post too. I bought it from ebay for pretty cheap (about 50% rrp) so it was already put together and someone had done their best in trying to paint it to resemble spiderman! The paint on it was nicely done, thin and drip free, so rather than faff about with stripping it i just went ahead and started adding extras on top. Im leaving this as a standard Carnosaur, but ive added all manner of decorations/trophies to the sides of him. Ill get it primed and then work out what scheme i want him in:



Ive not done any significant extra work on the sculpted carnosaur though, ive got to build up some courage to get properly into that one yet. Its very daunting as the amount of sculpting required is massively more than anything ive done on one model before. Hopefully ill be able to pull it off in the long term though.

Hope you enjoy

Excellent work, too bad I have way too much stuff already in progress to build a Lizardman Army!

@ Egregious - Thanks! I have a stupid amount of stuff in progress too. I dont think ive ever likely to finish a whole project!

I put on all army together that is to be revamped/renewed/added to. Here is what 2500pts of vicious cold-blooded close combat looks like at the moment:



6 Chariot sized bases and 60 25mm squares. Better get cracking with it now!

Love it! Bring on the beasties!

- Salvage

Ive now finished the painting on my first Carnosaur/Spinosaur. Ive got the resin/swamp effect to complete on the base, but im waiting for some new resin in the post. In general im pretty happy with this model, its very different from what ive been painting recently (it doesnt even have power armour!), so its been a bit of shock to the system getting back into painting skin/flesh types. Anyway here he is:



Details of the furs/skins on his saddle:


Details of the Oldblood himself (need to work out a name for him now):


Hope you like.

Holy cow!
This is phenomenal! Amazing work.

Thanks!!

Just a quick update as work and other stuff has meant i havent had much time to do a lot.

Ive just started putting paint on the bastiladons and stegadon. ive decided to go with different colours on all, but to tie them together by using black as a underlying colour. Hopefully this will show some variety in the army, but also give a bit of a unifying theme too:


The bastiladons are pretty funky at the moment, the colours almost look neon, these will be toned down and make more natural looking but keep the overall high contrast scheme


(Sorry about the very out of focus pic, i cant seem to take a decent photo of my stegadon!) Ive toned down the initial green/turquoise and then added black as the base skin colour and kept the green/blue as the scale colour. Hopefully the contract wont be too great but once all painted i want to give the look of ancient-ness by fading the skin tones and adding scars possibly...

Also ive primed my 2nd carnosaur, its good to have got rid of the spiderman colours!:


Hopefully ill get some time to paint and model this weekend coming, so a bigger more impressive update coming soon ....hopefully....maybe....

You should see if you can't try and do the new dinosaur from Jurassic world, the D-rex

I love the fantasy blogs! It's what I play more than anything. I've got some lizardmen on my painting table that I'm working on for a friend.

I really enjoy the pattern work you've got going through the army. The orange and white is striking and the work you've done on the pelts is amazing.

How did you do the markings on the bastiladons?

Neon Dinossaurs! That'd be freakin' awesome to see on the table top! They look really cool so far!

Thanks for all the praise!

@ EyeamRai - The markings on the bastiladons are made by painting rough sploges of white/ivory onto the black layer then once dry adding the colour on top. Its very simple, but using the white layer really makes the colour stand out from the black

Thanks for the tip, scrunty! I'm going to have to figure out what I want to try that out on.

 scrunty wrote:
Ive put more paint on the Spinosaur Oldblood. Hes finished now and the saddle is about 60% done, so should be all together soon. Although im having trouble with the base at the moment. I want to use some clear resin to look like swamp water but i cant seem to get the stuff to the right tint (mucky brown/green) and set properly, so if anyone has any advice it will be greatly received

I've no idea what you were using to tint your resin, but I've had success using Tamiya clear acrylic paint. The mix stays translucent and sets just fine, I've used it for water effects in scenery pieces I've built in the past. You'd probably want to look at some combination of orange/green, with maybe a bit of smoke.

Hope that helps.

Those are some quite nice looking lizards!

Wow, I've already missed so much in less than a month. Great work again man. Keep it up I'm hoping this thread will inspire my SO for her first skink models.

@twillsey - So far ive had some lovely failed attempts using GW washes to tint the resin, i think im going to try standard paint now. Hopefully ill have some results to show soon.

@EyeamRai - Hope it helps

@Warboss and Freytag -Thanks, ill try and keep up the pace and see if i can actually get this army finished at some point.

Ive managed to get a load of paint onto the second carnosaur. It is now almost finished, just bits of the trim and accessories to finish:



The basic colour was lamentors yellow glaze (GW) over an ivory (vallejo) base coat. I had to do two coats to get the colour to be consistent, but its ended as a nice vibrant colour.

Next step was to chose a pattern to paint on the yellow. I went for something a bit snake-y. Ive added enough black so that, hopefully, when next to the finished bastiladons (when they are finished) and steg it should tie in a bit better:



Im pretty happy with the skin/scale result, i may add a little top highlight of a very pale yellow, but ill wait and see if its needed when i finish painting the rest of it.

I finally worked out how to tint the clear resin i wanted to use for the swamp bases. After trying normal GW/vallejo paints and forming some foam-like resin substance. I used some Ak interactive weathering liquids, which are oil based. These tinted the resin nicely without making bubbles or ruining the whole look.

I did run into a issue of leakage though:



But after a bit of a messing clean up im happy with the end result:


I think for the next base i will sort out the leak problems and then make sure the resin is topped right up so the lip around the edge doesnt form.

Here is my first finished model for my newly re-vamped lizardmen:


Hopefully more to come soon

 scrunty wrote:

Quite like the neon colors so far

Rocking work on the dinos - and that base - keep it up!

- Salvage

Really liking the water effect on that base, the yellow snakey scheme looks great too

Thanks! Im happy with how the base came out, but it was my first time really playing around with resin/water effects, i know i get it better and more interesting. Hopefully i can show this on the next few models i do.

Very impressed with some of the ambitious conversions in this project, but most of all your paint jobs are very striking! I like a huge yellow 'Rex and a huge red one with different patterns, very cool

I didn't see what happened to the OOP carnosaur you were "biggerizing". Is that conversion still WIP, or is it done and I've just lost it amidst the other awesomeness?