Hey everyone! Lots of updates!
Here is my finished Adepticon army. Thanks to all of those that followed and/or commented on my blog. I hope you like it!
It is inspired by Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poem has always been a favorite and has inspired a lot of my other work and tastes in art. I love all things nautical (even though I rarely see the ocean funnily enough
). Empire, cephalopods, old time imagery, movies, the trunk itself (a 100 year old family heirloom), and all things in, on, and around sailing ships have always been interesting to me, so they all come together to make an army that is very sentimental to me.
If anyone is interested in the process of building the display over the past month or so, please check out my blog thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/515905.page
Anyway, on to the pictures!
The display is built out of a 100 year old trunk, which belonged to a relative and was given to me a year or so ago. The lower section is 2x4s and hinged. It lowers for transport and locks into place. The box is a lot bigger than it looks in the images. It is almost an arms span across and as it sits there is 3 feet tall to the lip.
The boat itself is made of pink insulation foam for a form and then covered in hand cut plastic (not balsa!) strips. It took about 3 full days to cut and cover the boat in planking. The rivets are cut from stock rivet plastic, and all ralings and accessories are legitimate ship modelling accessories.
The wood grain is all freehand. 
The backside is done as well, 5 inches below water and what you see above.
The sail is made from duck cloth soaked in PVA for sturdiness. The rivets were punched in and strung to the dowels. The dowels were lightly stained and pinned and epoxied together.
The sail is removable as the black rigging is all elastic cord. The mast goes down into the ship where the Kraken leg wraps around.
This is
over two gallons of clear resin. The boat goes about 5 inches down into a second box with an enclosed bottom. The waves are honestly not as rough as they would be realistically, but sacrifices were made to be able to see all that hard work down below.
I was honestly incredibly lucky with the resin. There was NO shrinkage at any point, and I got hasty with .5-1" layers when I was advised (thanks penturners!!) to do much thinner layers. However as I found out this stuff is horrible smelling and it requires sunshine or above 70 degrees to cure, both of which were in short supply in the past couple weeks.
It still smells too... :(
Speaking of resin, other than the bodies of the artillery and the Birdmen wings, the entire army is resin as well!
The baby octopus is real, preserved in alcohol. I felt a bit bad but they were already dead and bought for eating...
The others were used to make similar "lures" and given out to friends and family.
My hack and slash, rewritten version of the Rime.
Im pretty happy with how it came out, as I am not really a writer.
The short version is, some random old man gave Kraal the Kraken lure. He, being Kraal himself, thought nothing of it, and did not tell his men and sailed out. They encountered and killed the Kraken after several days when the Batton Boys threw their favorite rum overboard and blew up the Kraken.
Van Der Kraal!
Wizard Lord
My version of the Sea Bride standard. The Manaans Blade's standard is a tall banner with the image of a mermaid, that screams and frightens its foes, especially when wet with sea water.
The mermaid is a Vampire Counts model and sculpted tail. The bearer is Marius Lietdorf and a Manaan lower body.
Our heros the Batten Boys! I needed a 4th cannon for symmetry so I stuck it in a unit
Some salty mercenary Greatswords. The crates were a HUGE pain to saw apart and line up. Some sort of really hard resin.
A note on the posing over the army - it was all done with hot water. I love resin!
Kraal's Salts. Kraal's personal guard and the only ones who knew what the crew was in for.
In the 20 kits of Manaan's Blades I purchased I somehow had enough of those heads for the whole unit. Thanks Forge World! The heads are all single sculpts, so I did a lot of resculpting and beard-adding.
They're on a boat! On a boat! In a box! In a box! One of my favorite models, sculpt and fluff wise it was an auto-include.
The cannons are part stock plastic, part steam tank cannon, part regular artillery bits. They are designed to be hydraulic. One lever pushes the cannon forward and returns it for reloading. The other fires it.
These are Birdmen of Catrazza wings on Manaan bodies. They really lock together...
What Lurks Below
Nurgle Kill Team
Wargames Con Charity Army and Studio Army Addition
Phew! I think thats it! Enjoy
To all of it. Amazing work.
