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Hello everyone!

Inspired by my recent acquisition of and subsequent completion of Starcraft 2 (the first two games, at least), I have decided to create a small force of zerg as a modelling project!

I intend for this force to be small (mostly a few samples of each zerg model), but who knows where it could go aha

I have already ordered a number of parts and models for my Swarm, so far I have:

Zerglings:
-Termagant body.
-genestealer scything talon arms, positioned upwards (originally considered Hormagaunt arms, but the genestealer ones looked smaller and more accurate)
-Termagant head, greenstuffed horns. (the head was difficult for me, but I eventually settled on this and greenstuff horns).
-Undecided if i want to do wings, as I have 16 zerglings-to-be and wings would perhaps be too hard on such a scale







Hydralisks:
-Warrior body
-No legs, use greenstuff to expand and thicken the tail
-scything talon arms
-place head lower on torso, add greenstuff to expand neck and crest.






Scourges: I have always loved scourges
-winged rippers from FW
-got them relatively cheap from ebay, woop!





they aren't an exact match, but the opportunity was a good one and I couldn't pass it up


The sporocyst will also make a lovely Hatchery, don't you think?




As for other things I am not sure about:

Roaches:
-I have seen a nice conversion done with a carnifex carapace, but i am undecided on exactly the components that will make up the legs and head

Ultralisk:
-conventional wisdom says something to do with a carnifex, but ultralisks are wayyy bigger than that. perhaps a base of one of those new nid monsters?

Mutalisks:
-several options, i think
-Gargoyles are too small (maybe)
-Lizardman terradons/ripperdactyls perhaps? bent/moulded so that the tails hang underneath?

Infestors:
-not sure model-wise
-rules-wise, a tervigon perhaps? spawning infested marines/guardsmen?

Overseers:
-no idea. Hive tyrants sound right, but overseers are far more useless in combat than hive tyrants.

Broodlords:
-harpies, perhaps?
-harpy body, no head, weird mouth modelled in its place?

I am open to suggestions Once my parts arrive i will begin assembly and have some pictures for you all!

Update: I have found my mutalisks!

https://privateerpress.com/hordes/gallery/legion-of-everblight/warbeasts/afflictor

Completely perfect!

None of your pics are currently loading.

Edit: All good now.

Pics aren't showing :(

EDC

Thanks Fixed it as you posted!

Nice one. Should be a cool project, looking forward to see how this develops.

EDC

Thanks

As someone who loves both Zerg and Tyranids... this is an awesome idea and I will be following progress

Zerglings, I'd flag the wings, but the genestealer scything talons is a good call and would look much better than the hormagaunt ones.

Ultralisk... I personally think the the Maleceptor model with some alterations could be good size and shape for what you need.

Sporocyst is perfect hatchery.

At this point I think the tricky one is the overseer. They are rather bulbous flaying creatures, one model that could be remodeled potentially would be a tyrannocyte, put it on its side and have tentacles coming out of side instead of end and add the mucolid top as a head and do some green stuff work?

My 2c anyway

Update! My warriors and flying rippers arrived!

Now I can assemble my Hydralisks and scourges.

First off, the hydralisks

Some assembled pieces, the ones I will need for this first model. I already started greenstuffing the tale a little before I remembered the photo.




Next, I applied some more greenstuff to the tail, thickening it to provide a proper base for the lisk




Then I used cut off rending claw fingers to line the tail with spines.






Next up was attaching the head to the body, with a long neck of greenstuff






I am not done yet with the neck and such- i need to add more greenstuff to it, thicken it, fuse it into the chest some more, and expand the head crest some more.


Just some pics of what it looks like with the scythes attached (blue tac)






Thoughts?
What changes (if any) do you think I should make?

Mad.. wrote:
As someone who loves both Zerg and Tyranids... this is an awesome idea and I will be following progress

Zerglings, I'd flag the wings, but the genestealer scything talons is a good call and would look much better than the hormagaunt ones.

thanks

Ultralisk... I personally think the the Maleceptor model with some alterations could be good size and shape for what you need.

it was definitely something i am considering too

and rules-wise, I am thinking a trygon would be a good fit

Sporocyst is perfect hatchery.

At this point I think the tricky one is the overseer. They are rather bulbous flaying creatures, one model that could be remodeled potentially would be a tyrannocyte, put it on its side and have tentacles coming out of side instead of end and add the mucolid top as a head and do some green stuff work?

My 2c anyway

thanks again

yeah that would work! thanks
still need to find rules for it aha

The Hydralisk is looking excellent!

Thanks

Although I feel like the talons are too long- but I cannot be bothered buying hormagaunt or genestealer ones, I am too excited. I can always replace them later.

Update!

Done some more work on my first hydralisk.

I wanted to give him more bulk around his chest, shoulders, and tail. I also decided to use a pair of chopped-up boneswords as the back-spines.

As a test, I used blue-tac to practice ad prototype the exact additions i wanted to make-something I should have done the first time around, but oh well.







I also decided that I wanted to change the position of the head, and make it shoot spines. This is mostly because I am still not entirely happy with the way it turned out, and this covers up the difference some if I decide to do the next two differently.

The near-finished product with greenstuff:










Other than the clean-up, paintjob and scything talon arms, Hydralisk Uno is finished

As a Starcraft fan myself, I'm liking where this is going. Looking forward to seeing more models completed and painted, so consider me subbed!

Thanks


I've been having more thoughts about what can be what.

I saw a very interesting and cool conversion done with a carnifex and a seed pod, to be a swarm host, on this very site in fact. NOT MINE





^NOT MINE^

The blog had some other cool conversions that I can draw inspiration from, as well

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/539276.page


I was thinking that I could roughly copy it (it works brilliantly) and use it rules-wise as a tervigon, or perhaps an exocrine (as the short-lived locusts hatch, deal some damage, and then die).

Hydralisk is looking good, although I'd say the head needs to tilt back a little more because currently it looks like it is staring at the ground.

Awesome conversion idea on the swarmhost, that's a nice find

I was thinking about that- but it doesn't work too well angled back up, and hydralisks lower their heads when attacking anyway.

Update!

My Zerglings arrived!

Well, most of the parts for them.




I immediately began experimenting. I decided that simply gluing the arms normally and facing them upwards wasn't going to cut it- it didn't look right at all. Zergling shoulder-claws bend forwards, not backwards like raised arms do. And the carapace got in the way of putting them directly upwards too. So I knew I needed to do two things- convert the arms so that they were jointed in the opposite direction, and cut some nice holes in the carapace.




Here is what they look like when fitted into the carapace slots!



The bottom one I didn't fix the arms of- I decided that the arms were straight enough that they could pass without any modification. The more bent ones though definitely needed fixing. So some greenstuff later, and you have the top two.

I have begun mass-producing the arms for the other 13 zerglings

The heads haven't arrived yet, but you can see that they are going to look great when finished!




And also, I changed the back spikes on the hydralisk, as a review of the pictures revealed only a single row of spines, instead of two rows.

Ta-da! the finished hydralisk #1

Update!


My zergling heads arrived As did my mutalisks!



In the meantime, I assembled and based about 8 zerglings. Now I can put heads onto them and see what works.

This is my prototype:









first, I cut the torso's neck off, because with the neck on it raised the head too high- zerglings have a head that is in line with the slope of their back.
Then, I used greenstuff to attach the head directly to the body, and sculpted the little zergling horns you see.

Do you think they should be bigger, perhaps? The next test will have bigger horns, just to see what they look like.


I also made some progress with my second hydralisk.





Just some rough, still-wet greenstuffing going on. I am doing this one if multiple stages- for instance I did the head, torso and tail separately for the most part another day before greenstuffing them together as you see here.

If you notice, I also expanded the warrior headcrest a significant amount to better mimic the large crest of hydras:



There you have it, my growing swarm!

Those zerglings look great, looking forward to seeing them and the hydralisks painted!

Zerglings looking good!

Update time

My sporocyst arrived! Time to begin assembling the hatchery

But first, my developing zergling swarm




I added some spines to the haunches of the original prototype, and the second zergling with slightly larger horns. I'm also considering using some heat to bend their tails too, to get the wavy zergling tail effect.








Both of my babies, side by side





And my second completed hydralisk!







Finally, images of my hatchery-to-be! To avoid wasted pieces, I just ordered the necessary components from Horde o Bits.




This is it assembled in a rough formation on its future base- the only things permanantly stuck so far are the ring of spikes gracing its ugly mouth.

Brilliant. The Zerglings look wicked.

Edc

Hey everyone, sorry for the big break

RL got really busy when uni started back up again so I was unable to work as much on this project as I would have liked. but I have been working, and here are some pics for you!

My first completed, and fully painted Hydralisk!





Apologies for the crappy image quality, hopefully you can get a good enough idea of what it looks like

My paint scheme is as follows:

1: Abaddon black undercoat
2: Basecoat of Xereus Purple for the skin and Snakebite Leather
3: a wash of Nuln Oil all over
4: a wash of agrax earthshade on the carapace, and on the lower part of the tail
5: A drybrush of Baneblade Brown to finish off the carapace
6: some nice Ushabti Bone for the claws, Blazing Orange for the eyes and mixed Evil Sunz Scarlet/Agrax Earthjshade for the tongue, and a dash of watered down Warpstone Glow for the trails of the shooting spines

Voila! A finished Hydralisk


Here is the second Hydra, along with a Zergling, both only basecoated in these pics





Once again, sorry for the quality (or lack thereof)

And here is them with the two washes! amazing how dark and textured a wash or two can make an otherwise bright and cartoony paintjob, eh?



Thats all for now, stay tuned for another update (hopefully) pretty soon!