Long time without updates, but here we go.

Tanks are going slow but basecoats are there. Most of the work has been covered with airbrush, which means The remaining work is mostly edge highlighting everything, and getting some details ready.
Currently they all went through a gloss varnish so my blacklining works much easier.
The extra parts add quite some work to the process, but after the airburshingits mostly a matter of pacience.



In other news, I got myself a guilliman model!
This is not the games workshop one, which I considered, but a bit of an experiment. I must say I am not 100% onboard with it, but I'll give it a try and see if it grows on me.




I modified the pose a bit since the original is quite meh. Some of the bits on the figure where broken and had to fix them, but overall the print quality is really good, with some details that are quite insane.
It is less decorated than the GW model, but I feel its a bit more balanced.
While putting the model together I tried other poses, including this one which felt quite meaning and "above you all", but ended up going for the sword forward since its more commanding.


Yesterday I managed to prime it, airbrush it with blue and quickly apply the basecoats.

Rapid progress on Guilliman! I kinda feel you on not being 100% onboard, something feels a bit off. Is he slightly less heroically proportioned maybe? Whatever it is, the paint job is making a good start

And finally my tanks are finished!

Some minis I paint because I love the look of them, or I made an interesting conversion, or need them for a game. In this case, I had these tanks since forever and I wanted to complete them and add them to my collection, despite not necessarily interested on using them anytime soon.

My idea with these was to have a fancy looking land raider and a rhino-razorback-predator-whirling set of tanks to fulfill any tabletop needs when it comes to first-born marines.
The project has taken quite some time since I 've gathered the pieces forever. 2 of these tanks are 15 years old, and the other might be even older since are ebay rescues, so Its great to see them done. I got the turrets from 3D printing etsy, converted some of the side weapons and added some decorations on the tanks.




Landraider

By far the most interesting model here.
Every space marine player wants to have at least one of these, and Im quite happy with what I ended up making here. My terminators will love to jump into battle on it!
I wanted to make my landraider more interesting so ended up converting and adding a bunch of decorations around the model. These will make people notice it across the room, but the biggest response would probably come from the plant patterns on the blues. This was an experiment which I ended up really proud off. Subtle but it gives the vehicle a sense of artistry and almost divine protection.
I could had magnetized a few more elements, and put more attention on certain areas, but overall a cool project to work on.









Rhinos

Glad to have these finally done. I did try to spice them up a bit with some decorations and it was nice to get the magnetization working perfectly, but at the end of the day it was a bit of a chore to go do the painting.
There are a few elements I could do better, and I missed the correct blue on some of the rhino top doors, but I could fix that later.
The 3D printed turrets look quite cool and all the elements go together really well.










Finally, as a curious note, the storage of all these is geometrically challenging, but ended up finding a solution that still uses the same methods I use on the rest of the army.
I also took the time to fix my dreadnoughts storage so now they are much more compact and safe.

The land raider looks great.

Amazing tanks, pumping me up to paint my long forgotten Land Raider.

Some more orky progress.

My meganobs are still under conversion progress, but the rest of the batch I started some months ago might be finished if I just put some time for them.
There are not that many steps left on these, and once done I'll have completed a few specialists squads on my army. Im looking foward to filed the stormboyz soon.

Marine stuff looks amazing, but the orks are just so beautiful, well done.

More ork specialist done!
I've been in a rush to finish these guys since I'll be needing some of them for a few matches this weekend.
Not the stars of the show, but the conversions on the models and the decent paintjob made them quite flashy on the tabletop. Particularly happy with the nobs of each squad, which are unique and made more recognizable than the other models on the unit.









Im quite happy with the stormboy. I most of the models from Max Mini miniatures and added the jumpacks, modify the poses and converted the models to make them into the flying counterparts of the normal boyz.
Each model is different and the detail was amazing to work with.






With this I managed to get my finished 10 man squads, thus half of these models are done (Need 5 more tankbustas and 4 stormboyz, simple easy conversion to do at some point.). This is clearly more for collection and completion rather than a more practical use within the army, but still fun to do though. The other half will probably wait for some time unless I want to field a ton of them.

Not doing too much hobby stuff lately, but got a quick update.

First of all, I participated on a tournament where I ended up 2/18 with 3 wins, playing orks and having a ton of fun in the process. I do not play much but its a great excuse to use some recently finished units.
My new ghaz was not on my list, but was watching and keeping the boyz hyped.

My next ork unit to be finished will be my meganobz. I really would like to play them and I've been doing conversion on them since forever.
I got 3 distinctly looking squads, and just finished the lastests, biggest thus best one.
I used obliterators as a base for most of the minis, and orkyfied them heavely. This guys are arguably too big for gameplay, but they are just right for orks.
I might end up using them as a 5 man unit, or as leaders of the smaller meganob squads.

Just started adding a basecoat of the main colors and they already are looking quite nice. I'll probably not work on them until I come back after christmas, so I'll see when I finish all 15 of them.

Those Obliteratorks are sick! Who cares if they’re bigger than the stock models, they’re awesome!

Using the new obliterators is a brilliant idea. Although, it seems like there's not that much obliterator left . Was there much work needed to hide/remove the chaos bits?

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Using the new obliterators is a brilliant idea. Although, it seems like there's not that much obliterator left . Was there much work needed to hide/remove the chaos bits?

Cheers!
Took a few sessions to modify them to a point I was happy. Its not an easy conversion, but I would encourage anyone to try it.

Your work brings a tear to the eye of an old mek! Much amazing work.

SO.... great to be back.
Been in holidays away from my hobby station, but Im back now.

Half painted ork units:

These guys I want to finish sooner than later. Most of them need to ge tthe basecoat finished with the metalics, and at least get the washes before I get distracted with any other project.
- 15 meganobs
- 10 stormboyz.
- 10 flashgitz




I do have 4 extra old meganobs that are not completely successul that I might either scrapt or re-convert to round up the numbers to 20.




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BUT...

If any of you have followed my updates, you know I have a tendency for getting distracted with new projects while I work in old ones.
During my time away I did some painting, but I also got a few ideas and inspiration for building stuff.

Cars!
Since I did my megatrakk scrapjets I knew I wanted to do at least 3 more ork buggies. Although I really enjoyed the building process and I am super proud of the results with those, I dont want to have a sea of fairly identical looking cars. Thust, my plan was to make 3 more buggies with my own designs, being intentionally not recognizable as any of the buggies so I can just play them as whatever I want them to be.

During my holidays I looked up a few conversions and images, and ended up doing some quick squetches for the designs:
1- Big front with a battering ram look, tiny back with a ork in a turret.
2- Big back with saw front to destroy enemies.Turret but probably grots around the vehicle.
3- dune-looking, heavely inspired on Jak 3 and Jak X PS2 games, with some jet engines and the gun inside the chassis.

I did buy 2 different ork buggies for the bits, and ordered the 3rd base on Ebay. When I arrived I looked into my bit box and started to plan out what would I do and how.
This process is being really fun, and I am really tempted to make another squig-themed 3 for a total of 9, but that will come whenever I free up time.
I'll update you on the progress soon





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Kans!

Before I left already knew I wanted to have 6 more kans on my army. Having "only" 6 limited some of my walker-themed lists, and these models are some of my favorite.
When I came back I already had a couple things ready (bits and base structures of the bodies), so ended up finishing these pretty quickly.
Despite having similar circumstances to my previous 6 kans (1 box of 3, yet needed to make 3 more from scratch), this time I focused on getting better poses and designs on most of them. Overall quite happy with them, specially the ones with grots or marching foward.







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TANKS!

Yet another grot vehicle batch, this time: grot tanks/artillery.
I found these tank toys for really cheap that are just the perfect base for grot tanks, and I couldnt hold myself from getting them to make some quick characterful conversions.
Ork tanks nowadays are super bad in the tabletop, and I didnt want to only have a display unit, thus I looked a bit into how to make them more useful on my games. The obvious choice was to double them up as grot artillery. I already have 3 mek gunz but those are quite old, so its a great chance to fill that gap on my collection and tabletop units.



A small problem I had with these models is that they are quite small. Perhaps good for ork tanks, but way to thin for mek gunz. I didnt want to gain a tabletop advantage because I could squeeze my units through gaps that they shouldnt, so I look up some measurements online and widen all the tanks to those specifications. That took some time since these models are not made of the same plastic we are used to, and the top part is metal, so it took a few hours just to cut them to be able to fit plasticard and needed extensions, close gaps and all. All worth to play fair on my games though.
On my stance away I bought a single box of mek gunz for bits for the weapons, the grots and references. I was really happy to confirm my measurements and effort where worth it, since I matched the size pretty much perfectly.

Now, the next challenge is weaponry:
On the one hand, mek gunz's weapons are quite big, so my models should look as powerful as they should be. On the other hand, grot tanks, despite having some stronger options., are generally equipped with fairly small weapons. Thus, I need to find a middle ground where the weapon is not too big, not too small, and looks well within the design and proportions of the tanks.
I'll need to scratch my head on this one. Probably end up sticking randon ranged-looking weapons that are a bit bigger than they should, and a co-axial or turret option with shootas or flamers.

Overall is going to be a fun time converting them. I've seen a few people using them and with just a few ork details these can look really cool. I'll try to go go a bit extra on them so they look great.



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Moar Cars!

Once started I couldnt stop working on these. This is the part of the hobby I generally enjoy the most, so far this is going great!
First thing was to get the basic shape of the chassis together, and get the structures for the wheels. This step is quite important since the models need to fit within the base and the height of my storage boxes, be strong enough to hold reasonable abuse, and look aesthetically pleasing.
I did play with different shapes, wheels sizes and angles on the cars to give them the best look I could manage.
Although individually I think they are looking awesome, Im a bit concerned of them looking too different in style so they dont look like a unit together. The original idea was to make them non-identifiable as any of the other buggies, but perhaps it would be a good idea to have some common elements between each other to make them work together well.
They are still quite barebones, so perhaps I end up having something that unifies them more. Or just leave them as individuals.

Here are some pics of the progress so far, with some of the bits I plan to use on them soon.








Pics of some of the details.
Is great to have the main elements of the model to be mechanically belieable, and some of these took some tinkering to get them just right.

Painting update

Been busy these evenings!
Got the ork infantry from above all base coated and washed, ready for highlithing. Really exited to get them rolling!

But, 2 small intermitions:

GUILLIMAN

The GW one is fine, but seems like everyone has exactly the same thing. I wanted something more unique for my ultras, so a few months ago I got a 3D printed model of him.
This 3D model was quite cheap and has a ton of detail on the sculpt, but I was not 100% sold on him. I managed to change the pose so it worked better, and recently I re-made the base so his even higher and the angle on the mini works better.

I did basecoat the model time ago, but in the last 2 days I got back to work on it and painted the head and the blues. Really happy with how its looking, specially happy with the head. Definitely the best face I have painted, in person it looks quite cool. I hope to finish it relatively quickly before continuing with the orks. Next the NMM golds!


Apothecary?
This guy was gitted to me painted a year ago, but the 2 times I have played with it (been playing much more orks lately), Im was not too hapy with this looks. The paintjob was good, but not up to my style and standards, so I took it for a quite re-paint and brought it to a place where I'll happier fielding him. I do not have a before/after photo, and the camera does not capture whites whell, so just trust me that it looks considerably better now, specillaly on edge highlights, golds, the whites and minor details.

I love those ork vehicles! Great wORK on them so far! Those marines are pretty, too.

Back with a bang killatores! The buggies and kanz are looking great, the level of character is top notch as usual!

GUILLIMAN

And my primarch is done!
I picked up this 3d print in etsy for fairly cheap. I was not 100% convinced on it, but I wanted to give it a try in case that some re-posing and decent paintjob would made it work.
Really proud of the painting, specially on the face, blues, golds and sword. Perhaps I'll do the definitive guilliman in the future, but this guy is going to be leading my ultras to battle.

Since last time I re-made the base, since it looked too boring and not hiving to the mini the importance it has. We all know the bigger the tactical rock, the better the model.
With the painting process, although I did an airbrush pass and painted the golds with metalics as a base... I pretty much ended up re-painting the whole thing by brush. With the blues you get much better control of the tones and blends with a brush, and the golds, being NMM, needed a non metalic base to work better everywhere.












Size comparisons.




Slowly loosing my mind doing the golds. Not really, dont know what thousand sonds players complaing about, I find it fairly relaxing as long as I have the pacience for it.
Admittedly I went for way to many passes and I could have been much more efficient and precise, but trying my best.
I took one photo at the completion of each pass just to see the differences. Too many of them!

Love the Guilluman, he's a bit big for my tastes but obviously that ship has sailed. Primarchs are apparently Hill Giant sized if not bigger.

'Dam, 'dat humie is BIG!

I do have a few projects going, both on painting and building... so how about another quick one?

After painting guilliman I had the urge to build some nobs! I,ve had the bits saved for some time and it was time to get them together.
Really happy with the look, dynamism and variety of the poses. I've already made a few of these before and I was aiming to not repeat any main aspects of the models.

So pretty. Brilliant work as usual. We'll done on making them all different. It is one of the great struggles. The monopose problem. You have made them all unique.

Would be nice to work on some nice ork boys.

Great job on Roboute, you’re rightly proud of the blues, they’re superb! The step by step on the golds is really cool, it’s interesting to see the process. More exciting conversions with the nobz too!

Ork batch painting coming back with a vengeance!

In the last few days I did some progress on the ork buggies (featured oin the backgound of this pics), but tried to do progress on painting some orks, which is what I wanted to do since the begging of the year. You cant play unpainted models! Or at least I dont want to.

So, managed to get the skin, bony colors and ground done on this mob. The skin took quite a while since some of these models are a bit complicated, but the results worked well.
Looking forward to do the reds and yellows next, since those always make the minis pop a lot, specially on those meganobs!

Im looking foward to do a army photo session once I finish a couple more things for my orks and marines. Last year I got so much stuff done, perhaps this year I manage to get close to a stage where I can finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe... Probably not, since Im a bit of a madman and always got ideas going on, but if I complete most of the units I would like to play on my lists, I'll be really proud of the collection.

That’s a mighty big batch of Orks! Good lookin ladz they’re turning in to

Yet another delay on my ork painting, but I'll continue them shortly.
I has gifted some terrain by a friend, and with the pieces I already had I felt it was a good moment to paint it all and have it ready for some home gaming from time to time.
Althouhg I did the base colours with the aribrush, picking up the details and getting the washes nicely took a while. I wanted to use the terrain in a modular way, so cleaning up the pieces and making them connect correctly was a must too.











Close look to the terrain, since in a lot of the other photos its hard to see how it actually looks like. It still looks bette rin person, but cant do better with my current phone.

Nice work on the terrain. I have found that an airbrush is quite a useful tool for getting it done at a reasonable pace. I particular like the church ruins. The colour gradients really stand out.

Really cool work on the terrain. Have you magnetised the ruins to give them full modularity? The red stuff looks like it just slots together?

 gobert wrote:
Really cool work on the terrain. Have you magnetised the ruins to give them full modularity? The red stuff looks like it just slots together?

Cheers
Didnt magnetize since there where too many options. What I ended up doing on the ruins is add extra base area so they hold up on their own. During the game, the paint and varnish makes them slot together alright as long as you dont shake them a lot.A solution to this could be to add magnets on the bottom, and set them in a base that has a metal sheet or magnet sheet underneath, while the surface is fairly flat.
The red bits slot together. They work amazinglt, but once painted they rub the pain off instantly, so had to file them down quite aggressively to make them fit correctly, and removed the paint on the contact areas.

And Im back!
15 meganobz, 10 flashgitz and 10 stormboyz, quite a troop to get done in a single batch! All of these models I wanted to get painted both for gaming and collection, so getting them finished is great.

Its been quite some time since the last update, just life getting in the way and having bit of a hard time keeping up with the painting.
It did felt that the amount of minis, density of the detail and not feeling 100% on the models did overwell me a bit, but managed to get back to it a few weeks ago and finish them. I honestly prefer painting medium to big vehicles than humanoids with tons of details.
Really happy with the final result. Although the initial look of the meganobz did not completely convinced me, the paintjob did unify them really nicely. Also, spending time with the 3 styles of meganobz I got made me like them more by the end of the process.








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Flashgitz
Despite being one of the most hated units on the tabletop due to the rules, these guys are some of my favorites on the ork range.
I do believe they are quite underrated, and I've managed to be somehow succesful with them by mounting them on squiggoths and charging away into my enemies while still shooting. The only thing I would change is the poses, since all of them look the same, but its a great kit and a prime example of what orks should be, with tons of modular bits. Its also easy to convert and get some big guns on nobs to get more value out of the box.

Anyway, I finished 10 more of these guys completing all my 20 guys. I believe I managed to get some good variety within the box model, and having more than 1/3 of them firing gives them a good energy. I must agree though that they are a bit of a pain to paint, since painting the ork and the gun separately does make them quite slower, and they do have a few details to individually pick up.
Happy to have this section of the army finished (I doubt I would ever add more flashgitz).










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Stomboyz
These guys are probably some of the MVP of orks right now. On the tabletop they do really well just by being orks with rockets attached, having a great role as utility ad minor damage dealers.
I never got into them since the GW models are both expensive and fairly borring, but I found some 3rd party models that with some conversion work they really made these models a joy to work with. Every models is a bit unique and I tried to give them a sense of motion in the poses.
I sitll got a few more to do, but so far these are some of my favorite infantry in my army, and having 10 more added to the bunch will make serve me well in the battles to come.








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Meganobz!

And finally the meganobz!
I've been working on and off on these guys for a long time and thus ended up with 3 styles. First would be mostly GW style, with acouple old custom models thrown in. Second a Age of Sigmar conversion, and third a much bigger chaos obliterator-based conversion.

This shot of all my finished meganob models is quite a sight. Probably could make a list only with +2 armour saves in the army!


First lets start with the GW-like models
Although the minis themselves are technically alright and the box has a good amount of bits, the posing and size kind of ruins it for me. I did try to add some dynamism of the poses, and some extra plates for variety, but I think meganobz should be much stronger than the current GW models. There are a bunch of thir party models that are considerably better ,but generally come at a premium,
In this little group you can see 2 custom models which I made almost 10 years ago and now I finally finished. There designs are a bit different and have some something quite nice going on, and although they are not as refined as my current work, Im happy to have them on my lines.











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Second group of meganobz are Age of Sigmar conversions.
Definitely a different style and aesthetics, more in line with beastsnagga models. I though those where cgoing to look less armoured than the regular ones, but that did not necessarily come to pass.
I really like the variety in each model and I would probably do another 5 of these if I ever need them. Really fun to work on and the end result is quite nice.











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Third group of meganobs is probably the most interesting one and my favorite so far.
I managed to get 4 easy-to-build chaos obliterators for cheap, and instantly though of converting them into meganobz.
With extensive conversion work I managed to get the poses varied enough, and the details orky so they feel right. The leaders an ambot conversion and is a bit bigger than the rest. Probably will use him as a warboss too.

These guys were really interesting projects from a conversion point of view, and the results are quite nice, having properly sized meganobz with armour that suits them.














Must say they they are quite bigger than regular nobs. Probably will use them for meganobz leaders when I field smaller amounts of these units.

These are amazing!

What an explosion of colour, great army!!

Great Meganob conversions, great paint schemes for the whole army, just awesome, great job.

What an amazing come back! The whole bunch are superb as ever. The Obliterator Nobz came out really well. Their origin is well hidden, as is the Ambot

Grot tanks/Artillery!


Despite the size of my ork collection, there are certain areas that both for completion and gameplay I still want to fill. One big lacking one was some grot artillery, which on the tabletop is generally a good option. I had just 3 10 year old scratchbuild models, but felt the need to modernize them and have a few more to play better in my games.

Some time ago I got some extremely cheap toy tanks that where just the perfect base for this project. What I had in mind was to use these both as grot tanks and as Mek gunz, so I had a couple of problems to solve before start converting.
First, the size of the toys and the models did not match. I didnt want to win an advantage on the game, so I took my time to size them correctly, making the toys wider to match the mek gunz sizes.
Second, the armament on the models needed to feel believable. Grot artillery have some big weapons, whereas grot tanks use minor weapons such as a big shoota.
Thus I found a middle ground, trying to have an mid-size gun on the turret, and some secondary weapons somewhere else on the models. I looked to make all the models different, some some of them are energy based, others have more classic tank cannons of different calibers.

After fixing those 2 issues, I spent the weekend converting and adding all the details, making them both believable and interesting to look at. Really fun one and looking foward to paint them
I do have some other building projects either in WIP or already planned in my mind. I'll figure out what I'll do next, since I want to be ready for start playing 10th edition soon both with ultramarines and orks

They are adorable! I can't wait to see how they look painted up.

About a year ago I did a quick 3d concept for a wagon/kill tank model, and finally got got inspired to work on it.

This is where I left it, barely jus the base. I already had some of the bits I knew I wanted to use for it.


Now most of the core structure is there, and many of the important elements are readable in one way or another. I like the idea of having this massive gun sanwitched between the bottom of a tank and the top of a truck, so I'll try to continue along those lines.
I feel I still need to add a few more base things before focusing on populating it with details, but so far quite happy with the progress, specially after getting stuck for over a year.


Getting the kannon in place.


It always surprises me how bit the killtank is, but this models is going to be used mainly as a wagon kannon variant. I'll consider adding some magnets and extensions to fit the right size for a kill tank, but so far this is not a primary concern.

Buggies

Some more ork building, this time finishing the buggies I started some time ago. These look a bit different astheticaly but that;s on purpose, so they are not distinctly any particular buggie, in contrast with the clear dakkaJets I did before. I'll bring the squads together later one with some more to have 3x3 distinc groups, potentially more in a far future, either a squad of squigbuggies or jumpadragstas.

The building process was really creative and got a decent amount of different elements there, perhaps only missing a bit on the overall size, making them one too 10% small and another 10% too big.
Happy though ,and will see how the painting goes.

Very very cool, great job on the gun wagon, main gun looks suitably ridiculous so completely perfect. Really like these new buggies as well, great how your managing to give each one a different feel but still have them linked a s a unit.
Great stuff man

While Im waiting for some crafting materials to arrive I started painting some marines, 10 hellblasters, 10 devastators and a few vanguard veterans, potentially using them in the first games of 10th.
As its common on my painting, something got in the way.

There is a small painting competition I entered but I did not had any valid model for one of the categories Im not aiming to win anything, but is fun to share paintjobs with other people and have some motivation to get some models finished. Thus, this was the perfect time to re-paint and old favorite of mine, a metal chaplain with jumpack.
This guy has been with me for 15 years and It was my favorite at the time. I didnt gave him an award-winning paintjob, but I did brought it back to 2023 with a decent update to his look.

Awesome conversions killatores, so much character in all of them! The massive gun on the tank is nuts and very suitably orky!

The old chaplain scrubs up well too, good luck in the comp

Dam, great jump Chaplin, also just accidentally clicked on the first page of the blog, wow.
Inspired conversion on those blade guard, going to have to go through the whole blog now
Awesome

BarryScott wrote:
Dam, great jump Chaplin, also just accidentally clicked on the first page of the blog, wow.
Inspired conversion on those blade guard, going to have to go through the whole blog now
Awesome

Glad to hear you like them, enjoy


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Had 4 10th editions games this weekend, two 500p and two 1000p. won 3 out of 4, loosing only due to a dumb tactical mistalke.
First impressions are positive, although some polish and a few balancing tweaks would be appreciated.
Grots where amazing, Ghaz is a beast and flashgitz dakka is really killy.

Wanted to share some of the pics from the matches

The boyz ran over the guardsmen and they keept respawning. Warboss got a bit confused after seeing the same guy 3 times going down to his klaw, but happy to have more boddies to swing at.



Terminators and landraiders are tough, but ghaz managed to kill them both!



The dakka on the flashgitz is insane. The 20 flashgitz +kaptain+mek+battlewagon is an expensive one, but against the right targets it melts anything infront of it.

Painting update!
Currently working on 20 marines to add to my ranks: 10 hellblasters and 10 devastators.
Progress has been fairly decent recently, and not needing to paint the blue with wet blending really speeds up the process dramatically. Golds, details, edge highlighting is next, so they should look considerably better soon.
I'll be using them as Infernus and desolators if needed.
As a next thing I was planning to do my vanguard veterans and some inceptors, but the new rules will probably push me to paint some grot artillery and nobs instead, since I will be needing them on my games.

Beautiful battle pics! Looks like the lads had a krumpin good time!
The devs and hellblasters look great. The red and white shoulder pads look great on them too

 gobert wrote:
Beautiful battle pics! Looks like the lads had a krumpin good time!
The devs and hellblasters look great. The red and white shoulder pads look great on them too

Cheers! Yeah, I normally go blue and white on my shoulderpads, but for special or heavy weapon guys I went red so further differenciate them from the bolter guys. Makes them a bit more visible in the table and has that military marking idea behind it

Still knocking it out the park I see.

And another batch done!

This is a small one, but really needed it for my games. 10 devastators/desolators and 10 hellblasters/infernus. No, Im not going to buy, build and paint an identical set of miniatures with just a weapon swap.
I believe the primaris bodies with devastator weapons look just perfect, whereas with the classic marines the weapon always felt way too big, specially with plasma cannons.
The hellblasters have the "correct" bits, using the heavy cables and backpacks to make them distinct from just intercessors with plasmas

Painting marine infantry does feel a bit daunting since all of them are relatively elite-looking, but since they are so similar they all need to gave the same painting standard. I am really happy to see that a marine painted 2 years ago with wet-blending and a marine airbrushed have really similar looks, managing to keep the consistency but speeding up the painting process considerably. I optimized some of the elements on the golds too, so painting these guys its faster and less demanding pacience-whise.
Really liking the plasma glows. Really easy to do and they look like they are actually hot, standing out on a crowed battlefield.






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And with these guys completed I do not have that much left on my pile of shame.
Definitely will adquire some more in the near furure though, those new terminatos look great, waiting for the non-monopose box and the assault ones, a couple of leviathan dreads and more converted characters for sure.

I must say I have not played with my marines for some time, trying to change that soon, and my true love currently are my orks.
I have been starting so many project with the greenskins that my "to do" list on marines have been left behind, and some times I need to pause my orky excitement just to get some more ultras finished.

Here are all my unfinished marines. Its easy to see why most of these have not yet been done compared to my ork projects, and a few I just got for free years ago and still need to decide what to do with them: looking at you, 11 ancient bikes. the attack bikes I really like in-game and managed to get them for free as well, so might jump on those soon?
The devastators wold be cool to have 4 of each, but they will not add much in terms of gameplay, since I can always just proxy the ones I got and I'll rarely use more than 10.
Incursors/infiltrators would be userfull for my games, but I would find them a bit dull to paint. Mostly blue armour and a lot of bluetag-bits.
The flying gravis models could be cool, and I was really excited to finish my vanguard veterans (conversion). I even started painting it with the previous batch, but after seeing the new rules I put them in the shelf, since they are nowhere near as cool as they used to be.
For the characters I need to do some conversions. The indomitus gravis captain is alright, but there are much better alternatives, so might convert this one into a sargent and instead make some cool alternatives. The lieutenant is useless in its state, so will look into converting him, perhaps into an ancient. I do have a distinct lack of banners and flags on my army, so maybe I'll make a couple somehow.

That said though, its not that much work left and if I focused on it I could finish it in a few months. Orks will get on the way though. A lot.
I want to make some photos of the whole army, since last time there have been a lot of additions.

Man! That plasma glow is phenomenal! Looks like it’s an LED in there.

Sometimes half of the battle in this hobby is deciding what to do next. Seems you have plenty of choice for the Marines and I guess for the Orkses too

Despite my marine and ork backlog I decided to follow my instinct and further feed my creative side rather than following a checklist.
These on-going projects are in different stages (creating the idea, ordering some models, modifying existing ones, planning the painting...), and are motivated both by inspiration and tabletop needs.

First, I had some battlewagons designed some time ago, and just got started on them. Today I did some progress on the deffroller version. Now, the kannon and this one are in a similar state of progress, aka "base structure and, supports and proportions done, in need of tweaks and will follow up with more crucial elements before detailing".

I was a bit concerned about not being able to hit the complex front idea of the original design. Its not quite there yet and that 3D model its just a reference, but the progress on the front section has been key for the desired look.

Awesome stuff mate. Really, really good. Inspirational in fact. One day I will paint this good, this consistently.


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And great conversion work too

New stuff!
I have a few smaller conversions comming, and this is the first one.
In 9th and earlier editions it felt that having more versions of the same character model was mostly for collection, since having a captain or warboss in bigger or smaller armour was not that relevant.
With 10th edition giving more importance to characters and even emphasising the use of multiple of them, I saw an oportunity to get a few more ideas.

This time I went for another ork warboss. I had one of each up until now, but wanted to try another one.
The base model is the age of sigmar khorgorath. Im am a bit confused on why more people dont use this for ork conversions, sure it did require some sculpting and scratchbuilding, but feels like the body is a perfect fit for a huge and chunky ork. If you know of any other warboss conversions of this model let me know.

When I saw the model in ebay I instantly felt in love with the conversion idea. Had a lot of fun working on it and it did not require that much work. Taking all the chaos out of it and re-sculpting some areas was a bit tricky, but managed to get the right size, specially compared with other warbosses. He is considerably thicker but not visually that much larger than my current warboss, and stays smaller than ghaz, even if I placed him at a similar height.

Ouuuhhh yess, I want to see that painted, magnificent beast you have there.

That converted warboss is great, really imposing and bulky

Very cool

The warboss looks dead 'ard. Keen to see it painted up!

Another quick update!
Glad to see you likking the warboss, will be painting him and some other characters soon.
But first, trying to finish some building projects... quickly started another one.

I've been trying to get 2 more wagons finished, but seeing the legends rules I got inspired to build a bigger and shooty tank to represent some of those. One of the wagons has a proper big gun, but the vehicle itself is not big enough to use as a kill tank or battlefortress.
While thinking about this I crossed a toy shop that had a 2ww model on big sale, and just got right into it. It was so funny to see that this model is the same one I bought years ago for my first scratchbuild which I never finished, so comming full circle.
Still work needed but its a good base to start adding detail. The design is heavily based on the Kill krusha model, although I felt 2 kannons looked more orky than one.

orktastic, great work

Some updates for this weekend.
First, I played a tournament with my ultramarines, featuring a vehicle-heavy list with some fun character-killing snipers thrown in the mix.
Won all 3 matches and scored decently to place first and winning the event.
Mostly tabled my opponents and had not major casualties by turn 4, having control of the mid objective and a secured back and flanks.
Too much armour, anti-infantry and anti-vehicle for my opponents to deal with, and just enough control of objectives to score consistently.
There are minor improvements that could be done and my play was not perfect (lost some oath against sisters in 2 turns).
Snipers with telion actually killed anyone on their sights, giving me plenty of assassin points and un-doing character combos everywhere while not being targetable.


This is the list. A lot of proxis but in our locals we are really inviting of these, as long as they have similar sizes to the actual models
1500p
Sniper scouts (10) + telion
Infiltrator squad (5)
Incursor squad (5)
redemptor dreadnoughts (2, gattling)
Repulsor executioner (plasma)
Gladiator lancer (2)
Primaris Techmarine (2)











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To commemorate the vicotries I finished 4 characters.
These are a judiciar, which I want to play with my bladeguard veterans (that fight first feels really strong) and 3 banners, which I would use as lieutenant, ancients or other characters.
All Age of Sigmar conversions with some custom bits. It took some time to get all the orders delivered, but once ready putting them together and making the adjustments was fairly easy.
The veterans in my army all follow the stormcast asthetic, so this fit right in with them. Quite happy with the results and looking forward to paint them.

One of the wagons finished!

The end results is quite close to the original idea, looking foward to paint it.

Great stuff! Loving the viciousness of the Deffrolla and of course, gotta love those rivets as well (so tedious to apply but so rewarding on the finished model) great stuff

Had a couple free evenings and decided to quickly aribrush and drybrush a good group of minis.
I feel like base-layering all these and then focus on finish the characters first.

With this I should get all my remaining space marine models really close to completion. I already know I'll be doing a couple more additions soon, but reducing that space marine left count to 0 would be great.
On the ork side, I got a few characters and half a table of small vehicles. small vehicles have been some of the most fun I had painting, specially since there are all unique conversions.

My painting table looks like a battlefield!






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On a negative note, one of my turrets actually exploded!

I finished my marine vehicles almost a year ago, and when I went to pick up the models for a few games last weekend, one of the turrets has open and had leaked resin all over the box.
The turret itself is lost due to the damage, but the rest can be salvaged with some repairs.

These are 3D printed buys I did over a year ago, and apparently they had liquid resin inside them. That resin releases fumes and those build pressure until this happend. On close inspection to the other 2 turrets I saw they where cracked too, so I've done some repairs and will get them back and running soon, hopefully.
I contacted the artist that sold them to me and he will be sending me replacements, with fixes to the model to allow the resin to drain correctly.

And that's why the bottom of all my printed tanks have giant holes in them. I've heard a few horror stories myself.

I've seen a few people turn their ruptured tanks into some cool tank wrecks for terrain.

That sucks that the tanks split open, I do like Mr Nobody’s suggestion of turning them in to wrecks. They kinda look like they’ve been sliced open by some kind of blade or a lascannon.

Your earlier conversion posts are imaginative as ever. The new Warboss looks like a great mini in the offing

Painting update:
Been busy lately but the hobby time has been focused on a few games and painting the marines I had on the table.
They are fairly close to completion, with a few more highlight passes on certain colors its just mostly edge highlighting and golds left to do.
I did some progress since the photo, specifically lenses, faces, leaders done, and first pass on golds.

And another batch completed!

about 3 weeks ago I jumped to my airbrush to base prime and give a first base layer to most of my remaining marines, and today I can call that batch finished! really pleased with the quality and models: definitely was needing some of those on my games!
A big win on these is how much faster I managed to get the blues thanks to the airbrush, yet keeping the same look on the minis. The golds still take a long time to do to get them smooth, but the results are worth it.


"Vanguard veterans"
Long time ago I wanted to convert a jumpack smash captain, but most of the models I saw where... small. Instead, I got myself some second hand inceptors and ended up converting all of them up. I thought that by getting 3 more I could complete a 5man unit and still have a captain to lead them, and today is the day this achieved.
Now, we all know flying assault primaris are comming at some point, but having my own versions makes me happy. The models on the tabletop are terrible and lost all their options, but still a nice conversion project.




More flying boys
To continue with the flying primaris, got some supressors done. I got these for free a long time ago, and did them for completion. The bases are magnetized both on the floor and their ass, and did a simple gradient with the barnish to get those transparent stands a bit of a better look.
Still got 6 more inceptors to do. Someday.




The banners!

Jumping to something more interesting, got some more Age of Sigmar conversions to create some characters. My army lacks decent primaris banners, so decided to make some, potentially playing them as ancients, lieutenants, or even sergeants or other minor models. The guy holding the glowing artifact is a judiciar, and looking at it I realize I forgot to add text on the "clock".
That aside, Loving the look of these, and despite keeping a lot from the base model, and 2 of them being identical original minis, they look like proper space marines







More tactical bodies
Incursors and infiltrators have become insta-pics in some of my lasts lists (wining a couple tournaments with them), but I didnt had the finished models and instead played with proxies.
Now I can actually field them with easier to recognize models, and paintjob on these is really nice despite the lack of decoration on the models themselves. Compared to the my intercessors I decided to keep them much cleaner, staying more on the tactical theme rather than overwhelming them with text and skulls.
As a small detail, really happy with the lenses. All the guns have 3 of them, plus the eyes and other extras. This time I tried a different approach and despite the look is just a bit different from my previous ones, is more consistent, faster and easier to do, specially i nthe eyes.




And finally, a phobos character
I must say it looks better in person than in the pics, but will make a good addition to my lines anyway. Im not heavy on supporting my phobos infantry but perhaps I find a use for it.

Amazing paint jobs!! Great use on the Stormcast to Marine kitbashes, sometimes they are a bit obvious and kind of "out of place" but yours are outstanding.

Yeah, I second that, great job on the Stormcast kitbashing!

That’s some seriously quick painting! All mightily impressive too

Despite my many ork projects awayting paint, I am really trying to finish my ultramarine minis.

Yesterday I spent the whole day priming and airbrushing anything I could get my hand to, making loads of progress towards getting most models ready for the brush.
On the left side of the ring we got my last marine models:
- 6 erradicators
- 5 assault marines (with jump packs)
- 1 executioner
- Tanks turrets and rhino
- 6 inceptors
These are the only remaining marines I have left to paint, and after finishing them I will get a good session of full army photos at last. Really looking foward to that. Despite the fact I have had a full tabletop army for years now, this will mark a great victory against the un-ending pile of shame.
Firstly I will take care of the tanks, with the 4 new turrets replacing the ones that exploded a couple months ago, repairing the damaged rhino and painting the executioner, which is a new addition due to a quick co-worker sale. If I have the time I might be able to get this done in a week.
Second, I got 17 more infantry models to go. Chunky ones though. These are not models I often play in the tabletop, but got hem for super cheap and do serve a purpose on some games, as well as adding to the collection.

Once this is finished, I'll likely move into ork projects for some time. This wouldnt mean the end of ultramarine projects, since there are a few models I have my eye on, such as the new terminators and a couple leviathan dreadnoughts.




On the right hand of the ring we got some orky priming, thus nothing interesting to look at here.|
As a side note, got 4 more grot tanks/artillery to add up to a total of 16 for gaming, and I did forgot to share the finished buggies, which are now also primed alongside the deffrolla battlewagon.
Despite liking the look of the buggies, might take me some time to paint them since they are currently pretty bad in-game. I do have too many units I want to finish to play them that they have really tough competition to get in queue atm.

And just a few days later I finished the tanks and turrets.
Nothing really special here, just getting them done and getting the reward of a decent fleet of armoured vehicles for my armies.
Re-doing all the turrets due to the previous ones exploding was quite an annoyance, but the seller sent the replacements for free, and 4 of them rather than 3, so ended up with with all my chassis with a turret available for use. I did manage to save some of the bits but had to repaint them completely.
Unless I go super try-hard I doubt I could fit more in a single list thanks to using them as proxis between first-born and primaris.









Next? Probably those last remaining marines!

My gosh that's impressive- both for quantity and individual item quality. Rock on!

An impressive array of Armour killatores. Powering through it really well. The buggies and grot tanks are looking sweet too

Those last remaining marines got their base layer and soon will be doing some black-lining on them. Goal feels really close but depending on time availability I might need a couple free weekends more.

Orks were victorious today once more!
Brought an armour heavy ork list to a first round in a local tournament we are doing at work, and fought against khrone daemons. Great brawl!

For this list I just wanted to have some mega-armoured fun, so I broughr 6x3 meganobz, with 2 meks and ghaz leading them. Also I had a barbaque wagon, bringing 10x2 burnas. Additionally, 3 dreads and 3 small meks, with 2 grot units to play objectives.

My opponent had 3 big deamons (1 of them be-lakor), a couple units of dogs, 3 of bloodletters and a big unit of cavallary.



TURN 1: The set up
Khorne stared and barelymoved from deployement to prevent any of my charges. He really wanted to go second, so he just prepared to teleport some units, while scording some secondaries and touching an objective close to my wagon.

I moved my orks foward taking space, while keeping the back safe. I did bait deamons into bad fights, so if he went all in turn 2, he would just kill a couple models while being in range of my full waaargh!
I did use my wagon ful of burnas to kill a unit of bloodletters on the far objective. My opponent got quite scared of it and planned his vengance.




TURN 2: WAAARGH!
Khorne teleported and tried to strike my flanks, leaving the center really empty for the taking.
He did charge me meganobs close to my deployement, killing everyone but the mek, so with 1 less wound I would have been able to revive meganobz out of that fight. Hard boys stratagem did a huge difference for 1CP here.
A bloodthirster charged my wagon and took 15 wounds of it, leaving it with 1 remaining. Even if he killed it though, I the wagon would have served its purpose.

Orks turn 2 was fun. I counter charged both sides and took the center with burnas, dreads and the barely alive wagon.
Ghaz alone killed the bloodthirster in one charge, and the meganobz + dread killed the cavary on the side. Two dreads charged one of the big deamon characters, and although they did good damage, he did 49 wounds in return.
The strat here was not to kill him, but hold him until my turn 3 so I could charge with Ghaz again.





TURN 3: Who is left?

Khorn didnt had much to do turn 3. He did tried to charge in the center with be'lakor but he just didnt had any juicy target, so wasted most of his attacks on a 45p mek. Some smaller deamons tried to charge too, but I overwatched them with burnas.
The other big deamon did 51 woudns to the other dreadnough, but now he was whide open for ghaz and his boyz.
The remaining deamons on the close flank did try to charge the mek that didnt had a unit left, but my meganobs heroicly interniended whipping them out for good, taking that flank as well.

On the start of this turn my opponent resigned, since the battle was trully done.
Ghaz and the boyz would have killed another big deamon, and be-lakor had nothing to do but wait for his turn too. All objectives where mine by the end of turn 3 and scored strong on secondaries thanks to assassinate and all fronts, scoring 50-90 for the orks.



CONCLUSIONS:
Although my opponent was not an usual mix of ranged and melee, my army worked exactly as intended.
Burnas did clean every single light unit that they fired at with ease (both from the inside of the wagon, on foot and on overwatch), while meganobz and ghaz did the heavy lifting, specially on whaaagh. Dreads are great to bait and do decent damage against strong units, so they cant be ignored for how userfull they are.
The army is really defensive as well, able to use hard boyz on meganobz + revives + heals, as well as repairs with the meks on vehicles.
I did play my charges really well with baits, screening and counter-charging, so by the end of the battle I just lost a unit of meganobz, the wagon and a couple burnas while taking the board and killing all deamons.

Blue updates.
Managed to finish pretty much everything but the blues, so currently I'm halfway though the first level of edge highlighting, which is generally to longest one.
After this though is quite straight foward on the finishing touches and a couple remaining edge highlights,so I could have these boys done pretty soon!
Im off the hobbie desk for the rest of the week so I will not get them done by the end of the week, but Im getting really close to finishing all my current ultramarines.

Well, pushed through and managed to finish this last batch early.
Looking at the dates looks like I got this one done in no time, in part thanks to the less complicated models and most of the work dont by the airbrush. Turns out I can get things done quickly when they are not covered in non-metalic golds!
With this I have finished all my marines! Stay tuned for some family photos. I will flood the floor with minis and have no space to walk for an evening, but will get some shots of them when I get the time for it.



Assault Marines

I started these a long time ago planning to play them as assault marines or assault intercessors. With the obvious incomin jetpack primaris I already converted them, and now by the time they are done I could actually get the oficial models.
Honestly I find these work just fine, although I might get 5 more to suit some assault list in the future.
Must say the poses are great and really dinamic.



Banner guy

I got this gent as a secret santa present and despite having a decent paintjob, it was not matching my colors and style. Thus, I gave it some touch-ups to bring it back to the rest of the army.



Erradicators

I have been avoiding these guys bacause In 9th everyone used them as their default anti-tank unit for the army, and for a long time they were so dominant that I saw them everywhere.
I do like chunky marines, but I preferred aggressors, and for anti-tank I liked my attack bikes instead.
BUT I managed to get these for nothing from a co-worker. He already had them builded and half painted (thus the similar posing), so I ended up re-painting them as a cheap addition to my ranks, and if I can use them in some fun lists, the'll play their roll.
Heavy intercessors I always saw them as worse guns on the same models though, so it will take some more convincing to get some of those.




Inceptors

Finally, flying boys.
I sort of never trully liked these guys on the tabletop, but ended getting a bunch for my vanguard primaris conversions.
I need to play a few of them in some games to see if Im completely wrong about them, but at the very least they are alright additions to the chunky marine collection, so if I end up playing a terminator/gravis list only these could help out with movement.

Great stuff killatores! As ever I love the plasma glows, they look great! The spikey boi is a lot better than the stuff I ever got in a secret Santa and retouched he looks to match your force really well. Looking forward to you not being able to walk through your room and the awesome Army pics

Brothers, here is my complete collection of ultramarines.
I came back to the hobbies 4 years ago thanks to a escalation league at work, and since I have been building up this army. With the last batch I managed to have every model built and painted, thus reducing the marines pile of shame to 0.
To celebrate this Im bringing some family photos to share the results. Despite the lack of a proper background, lighting and camera, hope you enjoy the pics!

This army is about 9-10k points. Since I use plenty of proxying and conversions, many of the models have several uses on the tabletop.



















Here is the very first model I painted after comming back to the hobbie.


Here a model from my first batch and another form the very last one. About 4 years between these models, and despite a slitght difference on the darkest blues, Im really happy with the consistency of the paintjob.


Such a range of sizes


All this collection fits neatly in a few boxes. All magnetized and ready for transport

No better time to share some orky army than this month.
My current collection stands at 12k points, 5k still awaiting paint. Started my orks around 3 years ago and I;ve been working on it on and off both building scratchbuilds and conversions as well as painting models for the tabletop.
I've had some of my most fun working on these guys, specially with custom building a bunch of the bigger ones.








This is the yet to be painted sections.


All this collections fits into these boxes, magnetized and padded for transport.

Wowsers! 2 absolutely amazing Armies Killatores! It’s been a pleasure to watch them come together with some amazing creativity and cracking paint jobs. Seeing the whole ultramarines army together really is awesome, especially the OSL on the power weapons and plasma, they really look to be glowing. I must look back to check the recipes. Can’t wait to see what you do next, still plenty of Orks to do which gets a big in my book!

 gobert wrote:
Wowsers! 2 absolutely amazing Armies Killatores! It’s been a pleasure to watch them come together with some amazing creativity and cracking paint jobs. Seeing the whole ultramarines army together really is awesome, especially the OSL on the power weapons and plasma, they really look to be glowing. I must look back to check the recipes. Can’t wait to see what you do next, still plenty of Orks to do which gets a big in my book!

Love seeing your comments, you've trully followed this journey closely


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I've had a few things going on my life, taking a lot of time out of my hobbie.

Despite that though, I recently won a painting competition with my landraider, awarding me a Stormraven Gunship as the 1rst price.


This is a model I have not planned for my ultramarines, and found myself debating whether or not build it as intended and join the forces for some airdrops on the tabletop... or loot it for ork parts.
My orky side won, so started experimenting with it.
My objective was getting ideas to start a couple projects I really wanted to start for a while: A Stompa and a Gorkanout.
For the Gorkanout I do like the overall design of the GW model, but I just wanted to make my own, more agressive and more orky.
For the Stompa Im aiming for something completely different to the official model, since I really dont like its design and I'll rather come up with something more suiting my style.

I put together some parts of the hull, not at all following the instructions, and came up with this shapes. At some point I'll come back to it and figure out exactly the overall design:




I found this smaller section of the front of the gunship could be a great upper torso for the gorkanout



I did not document too well how I started the main shapes since all went down quite chaotically, since I needed to get certain things done before being able to pose the model correctly.
I got most of the lower body section main shapes together, made 90% of the legs, upper body base and just now finishing the main gun.
Im really happy about the articulation I got on the hips and head, allowing the model to "pose" a bit really easely.
Legs feel really mechanical and articulated, yet armoured and solid.

There is tons to be done in this model still, but really happy with the overall look. Now the main focus is to clean up some of the gaps on the current parts, come up with the melee arm, tidy up the shoulders and torso and finish up with smaller details and addind rivets everywhere.
I will have a couple grots on the top and back of the model, so keep an eye out for them!











Main gun is such a fun part of the model so far.

You’ve really followed the rule of enough dakka=n+1 there! Looking great. The stormraven bits work well, and even better that it was free(congrats on winning the painting comp!)!

When the orky side wins, everyone wins!! Fatastic kitbash, looking forward for the next steps!

Wow, very impressive work on your Ultras. Your non-metal painting looks great.

About to leave to spain for Christmas, just wanted to give a quick update on my hobbie stuff.
I've been really busy with stuff happening, so not that much time to make and paint models. I did though started a gift, which is Howl's moving castle. I didnt find any that I could buy so asked a friend to 3D print a model I found. I really want to get myself a 3D printer when I get space for it!

The model is relatively complex due to the amount of parts, but the end result will be amazing to have in display.





As for the Gorkanout, got some more parts done, , more importantly the melee arm.
Due to the magnets on the head and hips the model can be pose either shooting at the enemies, or advancing with the melee arm raised. Really happy with the look so far, looking proper chunky, robotic and over-the-top orky with cool designs.
I did run into a bit of an issue making the melee weapon, where I made it way too big and had to cut it after it was pretty much completed when it comes to the main shapes. I did manage to fix it and now it looks much better in proportion to the rest of the model. Making mistakes is alright as long as you have the patience to fix them
Really excited to get this boy finished. Now that all the main parts are in place, its all about completing the look by filling it with details.

Too big, an ork weapon? SCOFF.

Nice progress on the 'naut, good luck with the castle! That is a large lad as well!

I've been busy but wanted to do a quick update.

One of the models missing from my collection is the Shokk attack gun.
I've always though the concept of the model was awesome, the rules on the tabletop sometimes useful, but the miniature it is quite bad. Not horrible, but clearly not up to standards. Its also a model that was renewed relatively recently, inexplicably almost identical to the old one, so its not going to be better for a long time.
Yet, orks are the faction to create a conversion on this type, and on the weekend I finally got my bits together and did a model I'm happy with.

The base is an ogre from bloodbowl, and the main body of the gun comes from some leviathan dreadnought arms.










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In addition, here is some progress on the Howl's moving castle model

Great progress on the 'naut, can't wait to see it painted up. Love the shokk attack gun also

That’s the best SAG model I’ve ever seen, you definitely captured the spirit of it

The mechanic is brutal, looking forward to see it painted up.

That Shock Attack Gun is mega! As ever you’ve made an individual mini look like a diorama!

Long time without posting!
I've been busy with stuff, and although I have been working on a few projects , I lost momentum on documenting the work.

Last model I showed was a custom shokk attack gun, which I actually painted in a weekend in need for a game that same week.
Really fun and quick to paint, added some glow and electric effects, great addition to my meks!






I'll be posting what I've been working on (both big and small), so stay tunned for more!

As mentioned above, the same week I finished the Shokk attack gun I had a game, fully mechanicez list vs imperial fist!



The game was an intence back and forth in each turn, getting shot to bits in my opponent's turn, but a few good charges gave me the center, winning by points at the end.







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NEW ARMY

So far I've amassed a decent army or ultramarines and orks. I've been wanting to do something new, and I had my eyes on a few different armies.
Deathguard ended up second on my list, since the potential for the conversions was really attractive, but the painting would be more marines and green, things I have done enough.
Tyranids is an army I have been interested on for a while, since in gameplay it does allow for different builds, the conversions can be really interesting, and the painting could suit my style. The new models for 10th also where a big call, so I got some models and started testing a few ideas.

Although my painting style is quite cartoony, I wanted my tyranids to look a bit more scary, and the art from the 3rd edition codex looked perfect. Luckly for me, Trovarion miniatures released a video with this exact paint scheme, and has been a huge influence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UFIH6BKejg

Following the video loosely, I ended up with something Im happy with. The idea for this army is not necessarily win any painting competition, but to have something visually interesting and effective to the tabletop, with a mid level of conversions and some fun proxies here and there.



When it came to the basing, I wanted to look as an already conquered planet, with a fleshy rocky ground. I achieved this by mixing superglue and white glue, giving a mix that has a few minutes of working time and can be modeled with organic results.
It is also possible to make bubbles and other effects, making the bases much different from what I've done before.

But to be able to play with tyranids, first I need to have enough painted to do so!
I started as everyone did it in 10th, with ebay half tyranids lots for cheap, and got a few more awaiting paint, which would come later.
Not before long, I built and painted my first batch.



Tyranid Prime:
Although I really dislike the vanilla model, I see the potential of the miniature. I have done 2 conversions making it miles better than its original pose. Overall the painted version has everything I envisioned for this army: A simple yet effective conversion that accentuates the character of the model, an effective and eye catching paintjob, and an interesting base.





Psychophage

Probably one of the best models of the started box is this one. Without conversions it already looks great, meaning that any duplicates of this model will be hard to match the great original pose.
One thing I've sometimes disliked about tyranid armies is that they can be a bit hard to read, looking like a mesh of 2 colors, rather than separating elements visually. The chosen color scheme for the army helps read the models, visually distinguishin weapons, flesh, armour and effects. This way, just by looking at the model, I can tell if it is more melee (firy red), ranged (plasma green), armoured (turquoise) or squishy (flesh).
For my first one I did some slight modifications, mostly giving it a big rock on the back to exaggerate the angle of the monster even more, or perhaps showing that its climbing down from it.
The big base also allowed me to play more with the fleshy textures, alien eggs and victims of the tyranid swarm. As I get more practice, I'll try more ambitious ideas.





Von Ryan’s Leapers

Although the previous is probably the best model of the box, my favorite are the leapers. Really easy to make small bit swaps, dynamic poses and much stronger than expected considering how thin the plastic is at places.
Cant wait to paint a next batch to have at least 6 in my starting army.






Termagants

Nothing spectacular about this guys. A bit of a pain to build 80 of them in a row, fairly relaxing to paint as long as you dont try to get them perfect. Great opportunities to experiment with the bases, sometimes getting gems like bubbles inside bubbles.
For the ripper swarms I went for some 3d printed versions with small conversions. I do not have pictures of the final ones for some reason, but you get the idea.




And those are my painted Tyranids so far, let me know your thoughs! Any feedback is greally appreciated, starting an army is always a mush of desicion making and experimenting.

Terminators!
I got the my first tyranid models from a 10th edition starter box, and I had my eye on the terminators.
I do have 20 of them, plus characters, but all of them are the old models. The new ones look much bigger and imposing, and I just need to update my collection with them.



Terminator captain with thunder hammer
The first model of the group is a Grabriel 3d print, from Dawn of war 3. Great model ,did some minor modifications, and the painting was fun with the golds and a freehand on the back.
I do hate my camera, it gives a harsh posterize effect to all photos, specially when zoomed in, and ruins the look of the model in the pictures. I am not the smoothest painter, but it really annoys me how bad it looks upclose with this camera.








Captain
Probably the best model of the box is the terminator captain. I did no conversion on it since I really like the vanilla one, but if I end up with another one I'll modify it properly.
I did removed the tyranid head since it didn't quite match the rest of my army bases, and wanted to keep it a bit cleaner.
Something I learned with this model is how much more black can I keep in certain areas, specially with the cape, which in person looks quite striking.





Terminators
Some conversions and minor adjustments, trying to hit poses I was vibing with, as well as that banner.
Im really happy to see how much better my work is compared to the first terminators I painted. Both the model and the paintjob look so much better, as a combination of better tech (airbrush, decals, detail brush) and skills. This group of terminators was also much faster to do compared to the old ones, so is great to have a side by side comparison to appreciate your hobby progress.

More green!
Just this last weekend I managed to finish another batch of orks, adding a ton of much needed nobz, and a few fun custom characters to my army.




Nobz
I've been wokring on these guys on and off for a long time, and Im glad to see them finished.
Most of them are a conversion from Bloodbowl black orks, which body I really like, with AoS orruks thrown in the mix as well. Comming up with the poses and a personalized look for each one was a fun modeling challenge, and the painting hopefully makes them justice.
When it comes to the tabletop this is a huge help to be able to run plenty of nobz, and even wreckaz (melee tank bustas) if needed.







Acompaning them I have a nob with Waargh banner, who I might just run as a regular nob in the squad. I believe it must be a really old conversion from when I was a kid, I have had this guy for ages.




Weirdboys!
These are another 2 old conversions, and although probably I'll do better versions in the future, I though they where going to be a nice addition. I made them as a kid, when I couldnt get any models or bits, so I made them with whatever I had laying around. The body of the orks comes from bikers, and the arms from chaos mutants I believe. The standing ork didnt had any legs, I smashed some WC paper in superglue with a torso on top.
Overall not the best models of the army, but somehow effective.




Warboss!
And from old conversions we move to new ones.
Overall, my army only has 1 regular warboss. This made sense a few editions ago, but nowadays you want to have multiples. In any case, you dont need much to convince me to make another warboss, is always a good opportunity to come up with something cool.
I saw a second hand AoS khorgorath model for sale I and I just felt in love with the overall body of this thing as a base for a warboss. It did require quite a lot of conversion and modeling work, but the finished paintjob works great. Might be one of my favorites so far.





Warboss in mega armour
Another nice one, quite a conversion on the combat patrol warboss in mega armour, with added squig, zapp-like kannon and mechanical arm.





And finishing the bach up with a 3D printed model.
I really like the pose, although the density of detail in the model is a bit low. Its supposed to be an alternative Ghaz model, but I'll run it as a regular warboss in mega armour or a deff dread.

Wow! You’ve been busy killatores! Fantastic updates of some brilliant models. The Tyranid scheme is really great and the look glorious all together. The lightning/fire glow on the Shock Attack Gun and wierdboy is a real highlight for me.

Man those orks look spicyyyy!! Excellent paint job, it really pops with so much saturated reds and yellows over the green skin. Kitbashes are amazing too!

I figured I'd drop in and my mind was immediately blown by that Shokk Attack Gun, followed by those absolutely slam dunkin Tyranids. Very nice painting on them and with some cool basing too.

I'll like to share with you a project I worked on a few months ago.
I've had in mind doing a big diorama, a snapshot of 2 armies about to collide. The astra militarum are defending a position from an ork attack, and the greenskins launch a charge. In the last moment, a squad of space marines arrive to save the day.
After a couple sketches and polishing the idea, I got the models and put them quickly together.
This project is the most complext one I have tackled yet, where every model has been converted and adjusted to match the original idea.





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All models where de-atachable for painting. All poses converted or tweaked to fit the idea I had in mind, with the right motion and expression for the scene:











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The battleground was made with cheap easy to work materials, but the end result is quite sturdy and clean looking.
The backplate can be unscrewed for painting, and the front has a small hidden magnet to attack a plate of some sort.




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And with some last detail pics I'll leave the modeling part of the project posted. Keep posted to see it painted, I just need to get some pictures sorted.

This is epic! Can't wait to see the painted version !

That’s one jam packed diorama! Cant wait to see it all painted up!

Your marines look awesome, but the kit bashing on the ork and the shokk attack gun is amazing. It brings back memories of the original metal model, just without the whirly gubbins!

Painted diorama!

Here I bring you some photos of the painted and finished diorama. This project was such as blast to work on. Lots of planning went into it and its a shame my camera is so bad at capturing it.In person it is quite a sight, and is now displayed behind glass, soon to be properly illuminated inside of the cabinet.
The painting process was fairly straight forward, painting all the miniatures fully (even when some angles where barely visible), and taking into account the position on the scene, angle to lighting effects and how bright the surroundings are. In the future I will plan out the lighting and light intencity better, since I think the diorama could have done with much darker areas to emphasize the lighting effects, and a better integration of the background lighting on the scene, adding more yellow and orange rim lights. A learning experience, but a fun one.

The backplate background was made painting it by hand on wood plank. I've never really done this kind of effect, but after a quick test I used some of the ground and terrain elements of the diorama to create an illusion of depth, showing a bigger scene far away.
Originally I didnt know if I was going to paint it digitally and print it instead, but I had good idea of the colors and style of the picture I wanted to make. I though the hand-made approach was more charming.



Minis and terrain separated. Now everything is glued in place, but during building and painting, having all the pins on the models was really userful. The diorama is currently on a glass cabinet, which will have lighting to better show the piece.





Scene by scene
The battle
Though it would be fun to showcase the diorama by framing the different scenes and interactions between the models.
I approached the piece as plenty of smaller scenes, and hopefully the images will showcase it.

The diorama is a segment of a battle, a flank of the front lines where orks are just about to overwelm the astra militarum defenders. Just in time, a squad of space marines reinforce to prevent this crucial objective to fall, and the pieces freeze-frames right before the impact.







Heavy bolter
Despite the odds, a heavy bolter team keeps firing the charging orks. All this dakka attracts the attention of a kunnin greenskin, which sneaks under cover to deliver a frantic squigbomb, whom is instants away from taking down the heavy weapon team.




Deffdread
What is worse than seeing an ork charging towards you? A huge mecanized machine covered in klaws, spikes, horns and saws, of course. A deffdread charges straight through fortified position, terrifying the guardsman fighting within it.
I the machine reaches the command position past the trench, killing the officer and cutting the comunications, the flank will fall, so a brave specialist operator gets out of cover to have a better shot against the vehicle, perhaps the emperor aids his aim in reward for his bravery.







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The duel
Dispite all the chaos, 2 opponents lock eyes and charge eachother in the center of the scene. A guardsman witnesses the impact between the angel and the demon.





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The bigger picture

Above I mention this scene is a flank of a bigger battle. This battle can be seen in the background backplate, where 2 much bigger forces are in the middle of an engagement.
Around them, the destruction and smoking cities darken a sunset before a long night.








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Green tide

Despite being individual entities, orks can behave as a conglomerate green mass of violence.





Fallen warrior

Once a great servant of the emperor, the dreadnought lies in the mud, crawling with gretchin looking for scrap and a vantage point to take out some humies.
Somehow I didnt take enough in-focus pictures of this scene





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And finally, each of the miniatures.
Although they are not golden demon winners by any strech of the imagination, I am really happy with the standard of painting, considering how many models there where involved.
I am also pleased with the guardsmen expressions and eyes looking the right direction even though you can only see them from certain angles up-close, which is a small detail but in my opinion a game changer when it comes to selling the scene.

Maaaaaaaan what an spectacle!! To paint such enormous diorama at that level! My hat is down to you.

That is friggin’ EPIC! Unpainted it looked good and absolutely stunning fully painted. Clearly a labour of love! You also surprised me by picking slightly different colours to your Ork and Ultramarine armies, you pulled it off really well. Have an exalt!

 gobert wrote:
That is friggin’ EPIC! Unpainted it looked good and absolutely stunning fully painted. Clearly a labour of love! You also surprised me by picking slightly different colours to your Ork and Ultramarine armies, you pulled it off really well. Have an exalt!

Glad you guys are liking it
There are a few reason why I went for yellow orks rather than red, mostly to keep the color palette a bit more cohesive with the background.
Due to some projects Im working on now, I think you'll remember your comment and think "aaah, that's why".

In this blog I make updates about my personal hobbie projects. Today Im incredible excited to be able to share what I've been working on my professional life: TOTAL WAR 40k
Link for the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsAZajeYLTI


I cant wait to be able to say more about the project, but for now all I can speak of it is what is publicly online. There is going to be more information soon.
What I can say though is that I am a senior character animator, loving bringing to life this universe, and that is no coincidence that a few months ago I made a big diorama featuring bad moon orks in it, even though my personal army are evil sunz.
This diorama is now sitting in a display cabinet next to our studio armies at the Creative Assembly office where I work, and featured the smallest of hints about game being announced (you can spot a "CA" in the banner, top right corner").
I'll love to hear your comments about what has been seen so far

Oh, lots of nice source lighting going on there.

That diorama is something special. Dynamic and so well painted. I love the ork and marine leaping toward each other over the trench, and also the rokkits spiralling everywhere. Oh, and the bomm squig Lovely stuff.

also optimistic over the game aspect as well. Good to see hardcore hobbyists in the development team, and hopefully not too many compromise have needed to be made on the character and feel of the different factions.

Hot damn, that is a tasty diorama. While the explosive effects might have benefitted from a bit more debris and mud flying around, I love the way you've incorporated these dynamic little scenes into the bigger picture. The dread, the duel, the HB gunner and the rest, all lively little moments in the chaos.

Hope you weren't crunching too badly with the TW development