Hi,

After years of lurking and being inspired by everyone's amazing projects I've finally decided to share what I've been working on. I was really in WH40k in high school (back in the 90s!) but I stopped when I went to College. About two years ago I bought some Death Company, Empire state troops, and Empire Flagellants, and I'm totally hooked on modeling again.

I've been a huge fan of the Inquisimunda style projects and so decided to start with a group of Imperial henchmen types. I couldn't think of any fresh angle on the Inquisition or Mechanicus but thought there was room in the background to explore the Navigators. I thought they were always a bit under-developed in the fluff, but could occupy an interesting position of power somewhat apart from the Imperium at large (like the Mechanicus, the Imperium would grind to a halt without them). So I decided to make my henchmen in the service of a powerful and as yet un-named Navigator household.

Although I will probably not start gaming again any time soon (I barely have enough time for modeling) it's still fun constructing this force within the limitations of a counts-as army list — as you might expect, a Coteaz-led GK army list.

I've got many more henchmen in various stages that I need to photograph, as well as two navigators that I'll post momentarily. Soon I'll post what I'm in the middle of building right now, an extremely converted counts-as dreadknight, and eventually I want to share my half-finished scratch-built drop ship (storm raven).

Sorry about the poor photos and the messy paint! I've always been more into converting ...

Sorry for all the edits — still getting used to the forum technology.

Instead of the traditional Navigator look (mostly gangly bald men in robes) I wanted something more mysterious.

I like to think of these Navigators as being incredibly wealthy, funded by millennia of lucrative shipping contracts and deals. A powerful Navigator house with particularly talented family members would be in great demand, and by offering their services to powerful members of the Imperium and Mechanicum, could preserve a degree of autonomy and independence. In addition to the wealth to hire any manner of exotic mercenary and household staff, they could easily possess priceless arceotech artifacts, retrofitted and repurposed remnants of the dark age of technology.

At the same time, I imagine them as being intensely paranoid, only leaving their palace-ships in entirely enclosing arceotech void suits. Is it to hide their hideously inhuman mutated forms? Or merely an abundance of caution, preserving their valuable lives at all costs.

Basically, that's my fluff explanation for building these count-as terminator armor suits for my navigators. They would count as Inquisitors in terminator armor (with divination powers; I know Navigators are not psychic in the usual sense, but it seems an appropriate way to represent their uncanny ability to peer directly into the warp) or even as solo Paladins.

Very cool, good idea to take something no-one else is doing and make it your own. Terminator Navigators, who'd have thought it?

My jaw dropped when I saw those suits. Your navigators are just lovely, but those suits .... They are inspired! Beautiful work.

Thanks! I love both of your stuff!

The suits took a long time to come together and the first one was actually built on top of an aborted attempt at a true-scale marine. I'll try to take some better photos this weekend and maybe host them somewhere else so they don't get so compressed.

And I still can't decide if the second navigator suit should be the same color or something else. Cosmonaut orange? Astronaut white? That may depend on the color of the "dreadknight", which will be my third navigator, piloting a much larger void suit ...

Great looking minis and have to agree with the others your navigators look awesome. Mysterious and intimidating.

I'm looking at this on my phone, never the best option but from what i can see the henchman are ace. I am looking forward to looking again on a computer

The navigators are unique and thats always a challenge. Nice idea, especially the helmets, and the painted one looks really good.

Wow! Absolutly MINDBLOWING! The big guys are pure madness! Love them very much!

What a fantastic idea for the navigators. They are really different in shape and size to everything else. Great painting on them all too!

Amazing conversions. Subscribed.

Interesting..very interesting Nice looking henchman, and great spin on the navigators.

Thanks everybody!

I managed to take some better photos. Still not perfect but you can at least see what's going on this time. The henchmen and Coteaz stand in (House Magister will be his title I think) were the first miniatures I'd painted in 12 or so years and I kept changing my mind about color schemes, so they ended up pretty caked in paint and sloppy. I also worked over a black undercoat, like I used to. I switched to white for the navigator which was a challenge at first but I think worked out much better. And I just got my hands on grey primer which I'm really excited to try soon.

Brilliantly looking gothic and wyrd. The suits are exceptional examples of jiggery pokery.

The new photos really show your work off. I'm in awe of your imagination, there are so many great ideas in these miniatures.

Beautiful!!

I'm so glad PDH pointed me towards this thread! Amazing work so far! The exo-suits are something truly original, and the henchmen have just the right amount of demented grimdark charm.
Also, don't beat yourself up over those paintjobs, because they are really great as well. These guys are completely 40k in their eclectic strangeness, but they are also quite special.

Instantly subscribed. Looking forward to your next update!

These are insanely brilliant! Great combinations of parts and some lovely painting too!

You are a kitbashing madman and I absolutely love it. Great work all around, and I really like the mad-scientist feel of the Navigator suits.

One of the coolest minis I've seen in a while. Great work!

Excellent stuff.

Really inspired work throughout. Those suits look phenomenal.

Brilliant stuff!

Outstanding!

Great imagination and bits box usage mate.

Wow, thanks everyone! I really appreciate it, especially coming from so many of you who inspired me in the first place.

I've got a few more unpainted conversions to share.

First, an old death cult assassin I built at the same time as the sniper, but never managed to quite finish. He's also built from an Empire state troop, which taxed my limited green-stuff abilities. The face would be painted as a death mask (it's the front of a space marine's bare face grafted onto a flagellant's head — the BA death masks were just too large for his small frame). Since then I've come up with a more interesting idea for death cultists — Abhuman Murder Cultists, who believe that their mutations are signs of sin, that can only be redeemed by killing in the name of the Emperor. So this cultist will probably end up as the base-line human overseer of a band of varied abhumans.

Then some newer conversions. A second servitor, this time with a non-standard pattern heavy plasma gun. I will probably try to sculpt a more traditional plasma barrel around the jetpack exhaust nozzle. And of course, add lots of wires. In time I may upgrade the first servitor's bolter to a matching heavy plasma gun.

And finally some Battlefield-Assistance Drones: esoteric and ancient pieces of technology that mount variable-field high-energy las weaponry. The household's Mechanicus liaison affirms that they are not heretical thinking machines, but driven by internal biological cogitator units and are merely glorified walking servo skulls, but the validity of this statement is unknown. The liaison now appears to include a number of similar drones in his personal coven. Counts-as Jokearoo of course. I have a lot of space marine torso back pieces so will probably make another of the Zentraedi pattern drone on the left.

Exciting lunacy! and I can't believe you're so dismissive of your painting skills, I'm certainly in awe.

subbing this man its awesome

Yes, glorious stuff. It captures the kind of medieval-meets-Mad-Max crazyawesome that was one of the best parts of the original Rogue Trader. And you took one of the lamest parts of RT, the idiot savant space monkeys, and made a great-looking and thematically appropriate counts-as.

What were the base models? I see you mentioned a lot of WHFB Empire troops, but I suspect there are many other things in the mix.

PS: abhumans atoning for their sin of being born by serving as suicide troops -- very grimdark. I've been toying with homebrew rules for exactly that, now in progress on my laptop.... I'll send you a link when I actually get it postable.

Awesome stuff. Those suits are fantastic - they look like the 40K equivalent of Titanfall suits! Exceptional converting.

Spoilered for size:

The suits would make great Thallax Cohort counts as. I might try building one...

EDIT: brillian stuff. I always loved navigators.

I really like the originality of your designs. These models look awesome. The Navigator suits are just stunning. Great job. Subbed!

Thanks everyone!

The base models for the henchmen are mostly mixes of Empire Hand-gunners and Flagellants, futured up with bits from the Death Company box. There are also assorted parts I got from the loose bits bin at a hobby store (tomb king shields, bretonian knight helms, old empire cannon crew i think).

The Navigator suits are built largely from Death Company jump-packs (cut up to make their chests, thighs, knees, and backs) and various Death Company and Sanguinary Guard pieces, as well as some Tau Stealth suit bits (mostly just their lower-shins and tabard armor).

And now for something new! I took some photos of my WIP Dreadknight conversion/stand-in, a Navigator Elder mounted in an arceotek Void-Runner Class Knight suit. It seems the new fluff for Imperial Knights is that they are combat modified versions of ancient work machines. Similarly, this Navigator’s suit is a retrofitted and rebuilt type of ancient scout exo-armor, perhaps built for open-void recovery and construction work.

I’ve always loved japanese robots and exo armor, and part of this project is my attempt to combine them with the grim-dark baroque excess of the Imperium.

I started this model a long time ago (before the Riptide and the fantastic Imperial Knight) and have worked on it very sporadically, but over the last few weeks I've finally locked down the pose and and hope to finish soon. The flight pack is very preliminary and only tacked in place. Next up I'll build some fingers or claws for the manipulator arm, and then add lots of additional detail. I’ve been hoarding decorative Imperial bits, and also want to add rivets to tie everything together, and lots of hoses and tubes (Katsuhiro Otomo style).

Let me know if you want any more construction details or crude WIP photos.

Whoa! And I thought the mini-mechs were cool!

That thing looks really amazing!

Fantastic work dude keep us updated!

Wow. Very creative use of different bits.
I find it fascinating to see how they melt together to one entity when the paint goes on.

Please give us more of this!

Love that exo knight!

SWEET JESUS ! I cant work out if you are clinically insane or a god dam genius

I only wish all Dreadknights looked like this then I would actually buy one

You're converting/scratch-building skills is just amazing, to take all the varying bits and use them in such a way is mind blowing.

On top of this the your paint scheme is none to shabby either, I like the way you use colour but still manage to keep a muted tone that in its self is a talent.

Subbed and amazed

Amazing stuff here

These are brilliant, very original... a perfect mix between the imperial look and a more exotic-type tech. A kind of Mezo-American Imperialis.

Keep it up!!

Thanks!

Hot off the presses, the start of a third Navigator Exosuit. I sat down intending to work on the Knight or finally start on my abhumans, but ended up with this.

I'm not sure about the horizontal angle of the helmet dome — it works well with the sarcophagus but may be too much of a departure from the other suits and Knight. I just might slice it off and remount it a slight angle. And I was fully intending to add a central eye-piece and fill in the visor-like gap beneath the shoulder pad with some ornamental plastic card work, but I have to admit the open visor is growing on me. Is it too much of a departure?

I'm also thinking of upping the nobility/ceremonial feeling by adding cloth of some sort on top of the armo; robes, furs, long priestly stoles. Maybe something like pteruges? I haven't had much luck sculpting cloth so far but this might be the time to figure it out. The old Vorlon ambassador from Babylon 5 comes to mind.

Oh, I like the new chap very much - very knightly. Perhaps though some cloth and scrollwork will bring him in line with overall aesthetic. My only concern, actually, is that he might start looking like a menoth warjack. Very cool, though.

I like it, maybe make him the leader of the squad?

Yeah, I like the open-slit visor. Very medieval-meets-Mad-Max, again. Sageheart's right, why not make this one the leader?

Yes, he does seem like the leader to me as well. In 40k these 3 could be fielded as a unit of Paladins, or as 3 separate Inquisitors in terminator armor, each surrounded by their own personal staff/henchmen.

I couldn't make up my mind about the visor-slit helmet vs optics helmet, so decided to cut off the shoulder-pad and mock-up a helmet that more closely matches the other two navigator suits. I'm happy with how it looks but it would be easy enough to back to the visor as well. What does Dakka say?

The parchment is tacked there to block out what a tabard would look there. I'm thinking of trying to sculpt a long tiger-pelt tabard there.

I am jealous of your skills! You're stuff is amazing and really helps me focus my efforts into improving my modelling and thinking outside the box. Good job!

As for the visor, I liked it but think that your second re-helmeted version fits nicely in with the other two without looking too similar! Keep it up! Subbed!

Both are good, but still digging the medieval helm vibe from the original version -- I think it makes him (her?) really distinctive while still fitting in with the others.

Very nice...I'm feeling the original open visor look....I'd say that each void-suit would be an indivudual build with variations.

Sweet theme Army, keep up the work !

Fantastic ideas very nicely executed. Becoming my favorite blog here.

Dang, these are some incredible conversions! I have no idea how you come up with the designs but keep at it. That dreadknight is beyond amazing!

this is so cool. Loving this log.

Thanks everyone! I'm going to go with the open visor. I'm liking the idea of having more variation in that type of detail which is actually making me rethink the eye-piece on the Dreadknight ...

I've been busy lately but managed to get photos of another group of conversions I did a while ago — Indentured Astartes.

Space marines turn rogue for many different reasons. Perhaps the rarest are the simple deserters — their psycho-conditioning never quite took, allowing them to turn their backs on their oaths. Some rogue astartes are the last survivors of their companies or even chapters, overcome with survivor’s guilt, convinced that the fact that they lived while their brothers died is a sign of cowardice. Others turn rouge as a result of the unpredictability of warp travel — single space marines are often requisitioned by the Inquisition or even powerful rogue traders, but after completing their service, are delayed by warp storms and find their chapter has been wiped out in the intervening centuries, or are simply unable to track down the chapter fleet ships in the vast galaxy.

A few rogue marines use their incredible abilities to set themselves up as petty tyrants, even ruling entire back-water planets. But space marines are psycho-conditioned and indoctrinated from childhood to do two things; kill, and follow orders, and are much more likely to end up as bodyguards and mercenaries. A space marine is powerful on his own, but needs artisans and technicians to repair and maintain his power armor, and adjust his biochemical implants. Although some Inquisitors may employ rogue space marines, most are highly suspicious of them, and would much sooner destroy them as heretics and traitors. The universe is a dangerous place for a single rogue space marine. So most rogue marines look for protection and employment from powerful forces that can protect them from Inquisitorial persecution while still giving them purpose and support.

Such is the nature of this small band of forgotten brethren, Indentured Astartes who have sworn their fealty to the Navigator Household **************. They do not reveal their origins or how they ended up alienated from their chapters, but whatever horrors they have put behind them, they now happily fight and kill for their new masters. In addition to protection they are handsomely rewarded with all manner of riches, and are given a much higher amount of personal freedom than any true Imperial Space Marine. And most importantly, they are equipped with customized suits of Terminator armor, fashioned by the household artisans from all manner of different armor pieces (relics, salvage, experimental prototypes alike) acquired over the centuries.

I always wanted to include a unit of rogue spare marines in this army, but wasn’t sure how to handle it. I love the baroque ornamentation and grim-dark medievaless of the current era of space marines, but also have fond memories of the more brutal Rogue Trader era marines. The types who were reprogrammed convicts, wrote KILL on their power gloves, and gathered in seedy cantinas. So I wanted to try to reference both ends of the marine spectrum. After seeing so many different ways of making incredible true-scale power armor, regular power armor marines didn’t seem like an option, but real true-scaling seemed daunting.

And then last Christmas my brother gave me a squad of the Deathwing terminators from Dark Vengeance, and I knew what to do. I’ve never really liked terminator armor — I just can’t get over the crazy proportions, with the shoulders higher than the head. The new grey knights are a bit better, but still have incredibly widely spaced legs. Instead of making true-scale power armor from my terminator parts, I decided to make these reproportioned Terminators. They are sort of halfway between true scale power armor and true terminator armor, so I suppose they could be fielded as either power armor grey knights or terminator ones, who luckily have the same equipment.

These aren’t quite done — I still need to use some greenstuff to sculpt necks and position the heads, and do a little cleanup. It may not make for the best results, but sometimes I like converting without using greenstuff — it’s much easier to start and stop without worrying about wasting putty. I also remember an ancient WD article that showcased John Blanche’s amazing chaos space marine conversions (one of the first times they showed his personal gaming conversions I think). He explained that he preferred to fill gaps with bits than with putty, and I’ve taken that attitude to heart. Why sculpt a seamless transition when you can disguise it with a skull or a scroll? Although I think Blanch in that period also filled gaps with sculpted fur patches, which always looks so cool ...

I like both models and background. If entire Chapters can turn to Chaos, why can't individual Marines go AWOL and end up as mercs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

weirdingway wrote:
Since then I've come up with a more interesting idea for death cultists — Abhuman Murder Cultists, who believe that their mutations are signs of sin, that can only be redeemed by killing in the name of the Emperor. So this cultist will probably end up as the base-line human overseer of a band of varied abhumans.....

We have rules for these now. I wrote up some Penitent Abhumans of various types, along with a bunch of Frateris Militia stuff; special rules include "Assisted Martyrdom," which means the rest of your army disdains you enough to shoot through your body if you're in the way...... Comments welcome.

I've been working a lot on my scratch-built dropship, but it's slow going and not ready to show yet. Soon, I hope!

In the meantime, after creating the newest Navigator Exo-Suit with the open visor helm, I've been thinking I may have been over dogmatically applying the single central eye motif. I want everything to fit together but don't want to overdo the system. So I've been thinking about giving the dreadknight a new helmet/optics design that can sit along side both the cyclops and the visor style exo-suits.

I had been doing some crude photoshop mockups of possible color schemes, so I used one of those and put together these rough alternate optics. I like how these are a bit more sinister than the previous single eye. The triangle is nicely symbolic of the navigator's third eye, the multiple eye one reminds me of an old diving suit, and there's just something appealing about the vertical line arrangements too. What do you guys think?

The three vertical in the lower half, and the multiple versions both do it for me....

'Pilot, your titan is ready'

scheme and model remind me of titan fall, thats not a bad thing though, it looks awesome.

I actually like the triangle one, though it does look a bit nurgle, maybe make the top most one bigger, or change its shape to a star or something?

I was going to say the exact same thing about the Titanfall reference, Sheep!

I like how you seems to have quite the varied colour palette, but it all ties together because of how muted and soft the highlights and shading are. That's sublime.

My favourite henchman is the elderly bearded gentlemen with one striped sleeve and the other armoured up. :

Thanks! I actually built most of the Knight last summer before I had ever seen any Titanfall designs. But I will take it as a compliment because I love what I've seen of Titanfall. I don't have a video game system but I was so blown away by the promo videos that I was very tempted to buy one just to play it!

Great blog mate , i love the navigators / legio cybernetica theme , the triangle eyes is my fave of your test batch .

gotta sya the exo suits reminded me of titan fall a little bit - no bad thing mind ! i like the classic sci fi aspect of early robots in the imperium.

Why have I not seen this thread before?!!? Truly inspirational stuff here, thank you for sharing, subbed and exalted.

Your kitbashing skills are spectacular, these are a real treat to look through, excellent work chief.

Weird, in the best way imaginable!
Great stuff!

Inspired kitbashing! A joy to see.
You manage to get that Blanchian eeriness to your models, great work!

These are some really awesome models. Fantastic conversions and kitbashes.

Thanks so much!

I've been having trouble making myself finish my dropship and knight and ended up starting a group of abhuman death cultists. It's always way too tempting to start kit bashing new models instead of finishing things. Anyway, I should have WIP pics of either the dropship or abhumans soon; whichever I manage to get presentable first!

I'm looking forward to the Abhumans.

Have you seen the new Imperial Guard Astra Militarum codex? It's got a heavily-armored Ogryn variant called the "Bullgryn" which might be inspirational.

PS: I've revised my homebrewed Penitent Abhumans (and other Frateris) here -- the Abhumans themselves aren't much different except for bringing them in line with the new Guard codex.

Finally, an update! Instead of finishing things I ended up starting something new, and put together a batch of abhuman death cultists. I’ve been wanting to build these since I first got my hands on the Sanguinary Guard death masks a while ago.

The idea is that this motley group of abhumans have been indoctrinated into a murder cult that teaches that any mutation is a sign of sin, and the best means of atoning for the sin is through holy murder in the name of the god emperor. When initiated into the cult members don perfect golden masks fashioned in the likeness of the emperor himself (humanity perfected or so the cult teaches). Their fanatical devotion and abnormal physiology make them sought after mercenaries, and this coven is fiercely loyal to Navigator household ******** because they consider Navigators to be truly blessed because they alone can truly see the astronomicon, and so gaze into the soul of the emperor himself.

These were inspired by a number of awesome death cultist and flagellant conversions making the rounds lately, including IzeColt’s arco eviscerators, Bad Buddha’s flagellants, and Fulgrim’s devolved Navigatorii. And another key reference was the old Rogue Trader Imperial Beastman model with the chainsword and breastplate who had a sense nobility that contrasted with his bestial form.

They're still WIP as you can see. I finally got some color shapers, and they are as amazing as everyone says! Instead of dreading it now I can’t wait mix up another batch of putty, and plan to add a lot more sculpting to these guys soon.

Can we get some close up shots?

The fluff alone blows my mind -- I love the masks, both as an idea and as you've implemented them on the models.

So where are the mask bits from?

And what rules do you plan to use for these guys on the table top? My homebrew Penitent Abhumans wouldn't fit, I think, but I'm not sure how your army would get access to Death Cult Assassins -- well, allying in an Inquisitor and fluffing him or her as something else...

I'll post some detail photos tonight.

I don't really play but rules-wise the idea is that the entire army is counts-as grey knights/inquisition, so the abhumans would play as death cult assassins.

The masks are all sanguinary guard masks except for the one on mr big arms (his abhuman breed are known as "grabbermen") who has a mask made from a death company face spliced onto a masked empire flagellant head.

Ok, here are some new detailed photos taken with a better camera.

note: these are looking pretty weirdly garbled and compressed but look good if you click on them for full size versions.

Creepy!!

What kind of a paint scheme are you thinking of?

They look really unsettling. Which is perfect given their fanatical, mutated nature. I like how you kept the variety of mutations on each of them inconsistent. It gives each one a unique flavor and character.

Not sure about color schemes. Probably tarnished gold masks and ornaments to tie in with the rest of the group.

Then one idea is doing various inhuman yet believable skin colors (grey, sallow yellow, pink, rusty orange, etc) tied together with pretty monochrome clothing (dark grey or black for the ninja look?).

Or maybe it would be creepier to give them very realistic human skin, and drive home the idea that they aren't aliens but mutants. I would give them all red clothing but don't have many pure reds in the rest of the army, tilting toward orange, brown or magenta instead, so I'm really not sure.

Love these guys. The fluff behind them is great, and as always the modeling is superb. Can't wait to see what you do with them next!

Wow, this is some great modelling, those hard suits are brilliant, I love me a good conversion. Now following.

These guys are almost too Grim-Dark. They remind me of John Blanche's art for 40k. Over-wrought to a grotesque degree but like the art of William Blake or Bosch the exaggerated qualities make them stand out. The models are really capturing that aesthetic of "Not meant for front line combat*. They lack the polished, sleek glory of space marines or storm troopers and they don't have the uniformity of the Imperial Guard. There's a derangement about them. With all their extraneous trappings and regalia though they look very much like emissaries of one of the more shadowed recesses of the Imperium.

I approve :3

That is serious kitbashing!

Thanks! I'm almost done adding finishing details to the abhumans and should have primed pictures soon, depending on the weather. Also got some new bits on the way that will hopefully lead to some crazier new members of the household.

More crazy = more awesome . We anticipate eagerly.

this is an amazing blog, wish I had seen it sooner! Your kit bashing and original concepts are about the best that I have ever seen. Keep up the amazing work!

Thanks so much!

Holy crap those cultists are amazing, love the Astartes too, background reminds me of a guy who I called the "Spacemarine Murderhobo" in a RT game I was running. Basically a guy who got seconded to a RT and kinda forgotten about and went native so to speak with the RT crew.

Wow, some kick ass conversions. cant wait to see them finished.

Thanks guys!

And now for something very different. I've finally gathered WIP photos of my scratch-built dropship. I haven't actually worked on it in a few weeks — I seem to work on it obsessively for a week every few months, and then get an idea for something new and work on that instead. This same pattern applies to everything I'm working on, which is why I haven't painted the abhumans, finished the hard-suited navigator elder or the dreadknight (or a half dozen more henchmen), and am instead currently in the middle of something new, weird and ambitious that I hope to share soon.

The household ******** is void-borne, plying the stars in a small fleet of richly appointed palace ships. These palace ships carry a variety of ferries, landing craft, and dropships of diverse origins. The Dropship Pentement / Merz / Lebbeus (name tbd) is a strange and ancient craft, the personal transport for the young and war-mad Nobilite cousins ***** and ******. A family heirloom of unknown original provenance, it has clearly been rebuilt and retro-fited countless times.

This ship was my first attempt at working with plastic card, and I started it maybe 2 years ago, before the dreadknight. I decided to try a somewhat unusual approach — instead of drawing up a plan or even crude sketch of what the ship would look like, I decided I wanted to build up the ship from collaged pieces, figuring out the design as I went. I have the most fun when I am working out what something is while making it, collaging from pieces and reacting to what's in front of me. So I started by making some random plastic forms and finding a bunch of objects in junk stores, my medicine cabinet and recycling bin, and on the street. Over many months of sporadic fiddling, I slowly pieced together the ship, at times completely changing the orientation or chopping big chunks off. This hasn't been the best way of working (somethings that should be in alignment are slightly off, I've spent way too much time on detail that's been covered up, etc) but it's a really fun and relaxing process that I hope results in forms that suggest things that I love, like the work of architect Lebbeus Woods, kitbashed movie spaceships of the 80s, or the layered aggregate architecture of old cities.

I have a lot of WIP photos I took as I was working to record particular configurations. I'm including them below in the spoiler tag because I'm not sure how interesting they are, but I always love to see other people's detailed WIP blogs so thought I'd include them.






And here is what the ship looks like today. I've finally decided on this position of the rocket nacelles, although they seem to be mounted on slightly different angles which I'll have to fix. It turns out an asymmetrical, collaged body makes symmetrical wings and engines very difficult! You can see the nacelles rotate to allow for VTOL, and could nicely represent when the flyer is in hover or zoom mode. I clearly have a lot more to add, more bulk on the wings, wing support struts, more weapons, a front assault ramp, rear doors, landing feet, more details, etc. One day long from now it should be a lot of fun to try to paint this thing!

Behold the power of TUUUUUBES

Oh, that's awesome. Quite possibly the most impressive thing I've seen in this thread so far, and that is saying a LOT. You really have captured the feel of the pre-CGI models used for special effects in movies like the original only three Star Wars movies.

Now this is some seriously awesome modelling here. Impressive build.

Very cool indeed.

And very much enjoyed the WIPs, it's always great to see the evolution of ideas...I'm a big fan of the last WIP version with the fins outside the nacelles partuicularly.

Thanks!

I've been learning how to use my clay shapers and get better with greenstuff, and have added another pass of detail to the abhumans. I think I'm pretty much done, barring an extra purity seal here and there. I also reworked the Navigator Elder a bit and gave him a tabard.



I also dusted off a psyker I put together ages ago and started building out his warp-resonating body harness.



And I realized I never posted this second crusader that I painted a while ago. He lost his weapon in a move and still needs a shield as well as some clean-up and basing. The idea here was that these two crusaders are father and son, proud members of a family that has been serving the household for generations.



I'm actually surprised they ended up so similar because the father was painted over a white undercoat and the son over a black one. I also messed up on the father and started with a winsor & newton teal wash which I thought would be fun, but proved to be a nightmare because it never truly sets and bleeds up through top coats. Still provided for an interesting texture on his robes.

Between working on the larger ongoing projects I keep fiddling with leftover bits, and came up with this new group of crusaders.



You can see that they're still mostly just "blue" tacked together, but you get the idea. I love the empire archer models, but they're so tiny that they're difficult to mix with other kits. I also had leftover blood angel torsos, which always seemed way too big to combine with regular human legs. I was pleasantly surprised to find the archer's legs are pretty easy to extend, which I think balances things out. The middle torso is also shaved down to be narrower, which also helps. I'll eventually use greenstuff to bulk up their feet and shins a bit. And of course turn their weapons into power weapons.

These guys are pretty tall and imposing, but still clearly not Marines. Maybe gene-treated warriors recruited from a savage world? I'm pretty happy with the combination of ornate armor, elegant coats/skirts, and barbarian-style heads. I'm not sure about the middle guy; he may lose his sideburns or mohawk or get a new head entirely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
... and here are some detail shots of the abhumans I forgot to include last night.






It's impossible to get a good photo of this one!

I love this thread so much.

Both Abhumans and Crusaders looking awesome. (You did get a fine pic of that one crouching Abbie,* too). Fluffwise, Crusaders can be big guys without genetic engineering -- give a lost colony 10,000 years on a savage world with lots of meat to eat (if it doesn't eat you first) and I bet good nutrition and natural selection will make the survivors pretty fething big.

* This is now my new derogatory for Abhumans, I've decided. I suppose "Abu" or "Abbo" make more sense but HOLY FETH REAL WORLD RACISM LET'S NOT GO THERE.

Thanks guys!

I love WH40k because of it's such a fun mix of different archetypes and references. Most often this mix takes the form of fantasy and historical archetypes rendered with sci-fi trappings, and of course made extremely dark. Sometimes it goes the other way — robots and spaceships turned into walking and flying cathedrals. As a kid I loved scifi and ancient-through-medieval history and art, and so wh40k was therefore impossible for me to resist.

I've been thinking that the astronaut archetype is under-represented in WH40k. The spaceman is so classic and iconic, from raygun fishbowl helmets to contemporary space-suits to Moebius' Samurai spacesuits from Alien. Some rogue trader figures wore bulky, almost space-suit like outfits. Jes Goodwin's awesome concepts for Naval crew wear sort of space suits, but are more like heavy welding suits. But the only direct spacemen references that I can think of are a few of John Blanche's drawings that include imperial figures in fishbowl helmets, including the great Navigator Kraut posted recently (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/510/439900.page):



Because Navigators are above all space farers, I've been trying to make my exosuits reminiscent of spacesuits, but I don't think it's really come through. So I've started doodling some wh40k style astronauts that could serve as henchmen in my household:


This guy ended up looking a lot like John Hurt in Alien, completely by accident.



I think these could make for fun miniatures, but I haven't been able to find a source for clear plastic bubbles small enough. Very frustrating. But in the meantime I decided to try making a astronaut with an opaque helm, and have the beginnings of a new henchmen, Major Tom:



I'm not sure what he'll become, but I'm excited so far. The helmet is a ball joint from the Dreadknight kit, and he will probably need big clunky moon boots. Right now he's posed as a psyker, but he could easily be a more conventional armsmen or a crusader instead.

You sketch well, too.

You're certainly something of a Renaissance man

 SisterSydney wrote:
You sketch well, too.

It's annoying no? I could accept the fact that you are an absolute master of scratch building but drawing as well? Now that's just not fair!

I just have to say that the ship you built on the last page is fantastic. Do you design stuff like this for a living? The ease at which you come up with these ideas is quite inspiring.

If you are looking for clear plastic bubbles, maybe check out the local dollar store. I'm sure there will be some useless item that is encased in the perfect shaped piece of plastic for your astronauts.

And then you can eat the delicious carcinogenic candy inside!

I like the idea of having the opaque helmet. It looks more mysterious.

 YourIntestines wrote:
I like the idea of having the opaque helmet. It looks more mysterious.

I agree.

Your sketches and Blanche's artwork do have the look of Grim dark, raggedy-ass Astronauts (Funnily enough there's a band that plays at a local bar where I am called the Poor Dirty Astronauts) which is great but translating them to actual models could be tricky. Having a few guys with translucent helmets could be cool but I would have at least one with an opaque helm. You could paint it up in a shimmering shade of gold like a solar shield or something else suitably cosmic or you could just go matte white or a creamy shade of alabaster with a little oxidation around the collar. Make a mystery of who... or what... is in there. What makes them so different? After all if you have a group of genuine weirdos 9 times out of 10 the one leading them is the weirdest of all.

Thanks everybody!

I don't design things like this for a living, but I do design things — book covers and interiors, with a focus on typography. But the principles are similar and I did study drawing, painting and some 3d stuff in art school before I specialized in graphic design.

You'd be surprised how large most plastic bubbles are! Useful for UFO model domes, but not 28mm man size figures, for the most part at least.

I do like the opaque helmet idea, and may try to make more of them. Much more mysterious. And I like both the gold and alabaster ideas.

Wonderful stuff Major Tom is excellent and the Astronaut motif is an excellent idea Hydra miniatures might be worth a look for this project as well.

 weirdingway wrote:


I do like the opaque helmet idea, and may try to make more of them. Much more mysterious. And I like both the gold and alabaster ideas.

>:3

i like the idea and now i'm thinking about grey knights codex to do some mercenary's i love your conversion work and your paint jobs there way better then my work.

Im not quite sure if this would work for the helmet to your space man, but worth a shot.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lego-crystal-ball

A great range of concepts in here - along with some really good looking models

 deadmeat85 wrote:
Im not quite sure if this would work for the helmet to your space man, but worth a shot.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lego-crystal-ball

Ooh that brings back the childhood memories! I can say for sure that this won't work though. The plastic is too thick and any face you placed underneath it would be magnified and look massively bloated.

I was a Lego pro before I moved on to 40K so I know my blocks!

I'm so impressed with all the work on this blog. Holy mackerel that flier.

Yeah that was the first thing that popped in my head for the fish bowl helmet you were looking for.

You Rang?


...I jest. I really like what's been going on so far. I'm always impressed when someone can sketch out their ideas, and then it takes such accurate shape so quickly in the third dimension. Killer work.

Plus that screen name is always a bonus.

Thanks so much!

For anyone else interested in bubble helmets, the guys at the Ammobunker / Inquisimunda forum had some great suggestions:

Whiskey Priest pointed out some perfect domes that are sold with these Naismith models: https://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=24

Bruticus suggested alternatively encasing a painted head in a spherical mould of resin or water effects. I like the idea of the distortions you'd get from solid resin, and might just give it a try.

 weirdingway wrote:


Whiskey Priest pointed out some perfect domes that are sold with these Naismith models: https://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=24

What a fantastic selection of funny little hats

Wow they have some great stuff on that site.

I actually started painting something!

I've gotten a good start on the abhumans. I usually try to paint things a little differently to keep things interesting and learn new techniques. This means that I normally hate the way the models look for most of the time I'm painting them, and keep reworking them until finally I figure out how to make them come together.

This time I started with a grey primer with a white zenithal top-spray, followed by a slective wash of a mix of inks to build up some quick tone and color. And here I discovered a big mistake — I forgot to scrub the models with soap and water before priming, even though I used a liberal amount of olive oil on my sculpting tools. That combined with a too-light primer coat made for some weird spots that looked primed but were too slick for paint, especially ink, to properly adhere to. So now I will always wash my greenstuff off when it's cured!



Sorry about the low quality photo. And after a few more hours of work, I'm currently at this stage.


I ended up going for a heavily tarnished bronze look on the masks, which I'm very happy with. I looked at a lot of verdigris covered bronze and copper statues, and realized that a fully tarnished statue will often have a blue/green surface almost everywhere except recesses and cracks, which remain a dark bronze. That's kind of the reverse of most verdigris you see on models (including the tarnished gold I've been doing). So instead of using the new verdigris technical paint, I first painted the masks with a few layers of turquoises (including shading and highlights) and then unevenly washed them with a mix of bronze paint and brown ink. The result looks great in real life, but I may still clean it up with a final pass of selective turquoise highlights.

The rest of the abhumans are kind of a mess. I still can't decide what color their outfits will be, and I'm very unsure of my skin-tone choices. I'll probably push all of the skin tones partially toward normal human tones with some dry brushes and washes. I'm liking the white scarves as a way of setting off the masks, but could also see them being orange/red or just a rich brown. Or maybe they should be white with overall freehand orange or blue pattern-work? Keffiyeh style is probably beyond my skill-set but could look good.

Awesome. If this is your idea of "kind of a mess...." -- ha!

Tarnished bronze masks are awesome. (I too have looked at many an ancient statue....). And the greyish skin where you've not quite finished (far right model) actually looks good as a contrast to the masks and the earthy-colored clothes & armor, actually better than the orangey tones on the 2nd and 4th models (counting from the left).

Excellent progress so far! Keep it up!

I like the verdigris on those masks

The colours on the abhumans look just right.

thanks!

You've definitely captured the feel of the more bizarre themes of the 40k setting perfectly throughout this thread.

I really love the colour choices you've gone with throughout, very unique and they show your conversions/scultping off really well.

My particular favourite colour choice has to be those abhuman masks. They tie a unit of otherwise very different mutants together brilliantly.

You've got some great kitbashing going on here. Every model is interesting and brings something cool to the table. Will be keeping an eye on this. Keep up the good work!!!

Real life has once again kept me from posting more updates, but I've managed to make lots of progress on a big new addition to the household.

Originally my plan was to never make any Navigators outside of fully enclosed suits — leaving the viewer to imagine their mysterious mutated state. But after having fun sketching the gothic astronauts I started thinking about what my navis nobilitie might look like under the armor. At first I was thinking of heavily mutated mugwump / eraserhead-baby types, but kind of preferred the more human mutants wearing cosmonaut caps:




In any case, neither direction seemed exciting enough to explore in model form (at 28mm with my skills at least). And then I remembered an idea I had years ago for a demon or alien model, before I got back into the hobby. I remembered one of the old Realm of Chaos mutation table results that resulted in the body of the mutant being replaced with a giant head, with legs emerging from the neck, etc, which reminded me of a favorite part of a movie I loved as a child — the giant-headed emissaries at the beginning of the Neverending Story (see below). I always liked that idea and thought it could be fun to build with a WHFB giant head or even a 54mm inquisitor head. Here is a terrible old sketch exploring the idea:



All of the sudden I knew what I had to make — the true head of the household, an ancient and inhumanly mutated Novator. The large head seems very fitting for a mutant engineered/bred over the millenia to not only look directly into the warp, but calculate the impossible trajectories and paths a warp-going vessel traverses. And the background supports the idea of navigators growing larger than normal when dueling for the office of Paternova.

Some of my inspiration:


(Neverending Story, Spirited Away, Lynch's Dune)

And some concept sketches:




The idea is the head had grown so large it is supported with mechanical implants and suspensors, and the novator either sits on a walking thrown or has extra mechanical legs attached to his cranium. I was really excited and ordered a WHFB giant head from ebay, eager to get started. But when I opened the package I was shocked at how small it was! Hardly a giant at all. At first I thought I could make it work, but it's just not what I was envisioning.


Just terrible! I'm sure it could work with more conversion, but it's not what I wanted to make.

So I decided to instead sculpt a head from scratch. More to come soon ...

Anyone who can mash-up Dune, Neverending Story, and Miyazaki deserves some kind of medal for crazyawesome.

Needs more of this:

Simply wonderful! I really love your sketches. Shows the creative mind at work.

I still think there is perhaps room for less advanced Navigators that follow your Cosmonaut Cap style. Perhaps from inferior or more stable bloodlines. If you could realise the guy on the left in the second sketch that would be epic.

Very much loving this new direction though.

Thanks! I suppose I could fashion some Feyd Rautha winged speedos with blood angel wing ornaments ...

For sculpting reference, I gathered some great monumental heads:

Constantine's head (Capitoline museum, Rome), various Olmec heads (Mexico), Daibutsu of Kamakura (Japan)

Sorry for the low quality of most of the following photos. I have to remember to take better wip shots.

I started by trying to make a rough skull in Apoxy sculpt, which I could then cover with green stuff musculature and skin. But my first skull was a total disaster. I kept mushing the parts I had finished, and ended up with this lopsided mess:


I scrapped that and started over, building only the front half of the head and sculpting against a solid plastic board. This made it much easier to control what I was doing. I also looked more closely at anatomical reference images which were helpful:


Much better! Next when it dried I went back and carved into the dried putty to give me room to add layers on top.


And then added some Apoxy eyeballs and a first layer of greenstuff:


And once that was dry, another pass of detail and form:


I'm really happy with how it's coming together, and the way the head sits next to the regular human figures:


I should give credit to my wife (who is an expert at drawing portraits and did some figure sculpture in college), for giving me some invaluable critiques along the way.

Tomorrow I'll post further face sculpting, as well body and gaskmask developments.

Wow. It's amazing you're working with such detail on such a small scale.

Very amazing work, loving the creative use of various bits to build a unique force :-)

Fantastic sculpting work there! And a great concept in the first place

Man, if only you could get your hands on some see through plastic bubbles...

You might be able to get some WW2 model kit turret pieces to act as a dome. I'm thinking B17 or Avro Lancaster.

Love the big head idea , your concept art is very evocative as is your sculpting , kinda reminds me of the face of bo.

"We didn't make the big giant head, we only made it big..."
- Third Rock From The Sun

Thanks everybody! Sculpting this head gives me so much respect for people who can sculpt regular size 28mm faces. Seems completely impossible!

I wasn't sure what to do for a body, and remembered seeing cool conversions built from the fantasy chaos shrine mutants (John Blanche and Dave Taylor have done great ones) so I ordered both of the mutants from a bits site. They're great, grossly mutated sculpts, and at first I thought one of them could work with my head:




But although they do look cool, they are too muscled and lumbering for the noble ancient I'm going for. At this stage I had also added more putty to the head, further developing the features, trying to get everything fairly symmetrical. Please ignore the wonky pupils I dabbed on with a pen. I thought they'd help me imagine it when painted but they just look stupid. Still, it will be fun to paint such big eyes!

Because I couldn't find any bodies that worked with the head in my bits box, I decided to try sculpting a body too. So I did some more sketches to figure out what to sculpt and ended up with an idea I like; a walking chair combined with cross-legged pose:



The idea is that the head is attached to and supported by the back of the chair, which also contains life-support functions; the organs within the Novator's small human body can't pump enough blood or oxygen to support the enormous head and brain on their own.

Very rough body in oven-bake clay:


poor sad navigator:




Then I started adding the fun details, building out a breathing mask and the start of a cosmonaut style hood:


Then I started sculpting the legs (at first I was going for a full lotus, but opted for a more relaxed cross legged pose):

There you can also see the beginnings of a throne cobbled from bits, as well as a test use for the giant head and the mutant body. That would represent a failed challenger to the Novator's throne — it seems Navigators settle challenges with warp-eye duels, and when this cousin and would-be usurper locked warp-eye with the Novator, his mind was hollowed out and he was left a drooling vegetable. Turned into a servitor, he functions as a constant reminder to other challengers, both from within and without the family. Or maybe I'll just use this head on a different body to represent a lesser Navigator and this fat body will become a simple servitor ...

I'm really excited about the pose because when combined with broad shoulder armor like this, it reminds me of a daimyo or shogun. And with the head, a daimyo-cosmonaut, which makes me happy.


The grooves on the mask were sloppy and uneven, so I decided to rebuild them with a plasticard understructure:

Since I took this photo yesterday I've added a new layer of putty on top of the plasticard and it looks much better.

How does this body and chair seem? The idea would be to add four legs and a large back / head-support, as well as lots more detail, technical gubbins, and of course gothic ornament. Maybe the body needs to be hunched forward more?

Thanks!

This
is
awesome!

Look at the big brain on Brad!

The start of the chair and pose look promising - if anything with that massive melon he needs to sit back into the chair - too far forward and he'll topple.

Hmm, for some reason I can't help but think of the Lizardmen Slann creatures when seeing this. Maybe you could use that kit as well?

The Slann parts probably wouldn't work, but they are certainly similar.

Floaty chair maybe?

Why wouldn't they work? Man, you could even have a navigator in a tank, the whole amphibian thing would then work even better!

A Slann-dune-navigator-tank-thingy would be quite cool.

It's just that with the way the Slann is made, converting it would be quite hard - The Slann itself comes as one piece, and the chair would look a bit out of place.

You truly have a creative mind and your thought process is astounding, I was impressed by the artwork alone but seeing this become a 3 dimensional model is just amazing.

Will you be adding any kind of support rigging for his head though, I only ask as it looks like his frail body would collapse under the sheer weight of his head.

O and this keeps springing to mind :

thanks everybody!

I thought about the Slaan model as a basis for this but couldn't find one for sale without the throne (which isn't quite the right style for my group) and was afraid the scale would be way off. Looking at the model again it is quite nice ... although decidedly fat. Something to consider for sure.

If you got the whole mage-priest set, and made a mould of just the Slann, you could sell the original set.

Excellent work!

Once you have the back of the throne built, and his head wired in, the pose as is will look just fine.

just stunning sculpting, you leave me feeling very jealous. great great work

I really like the big bastard with the Multii-Melta.

Yeah, the Navigator/servitor is additional awesome.

So many wonderful ideas. Thank you for sharing all the concepts along with the physical products - I love seeing the different avenues explored around a theme before the final result.

Man that is awesome looking. It's so weird but it just works perfectly. He looks almost god like. I think that's been the result of your inspiration images.

I'm really liking that big mutant/servitor on the side.

This is just pure brilliance!

I love the concept, and your realization - and sculpting skill - is simply stunning

It is a shame you covered up so much of the excellent face with a mask. Personally I would have gone down the route of replacing the entire back of the skull with cabling and interface units to further reinforce the idea of him being extremely old and frail. The current armour etc makes him look like a warrior with a big head rather than the withered yet much feared and respected head of an ancient household.

The chair is looking excellent so far though.

I'm a little sad to lose sight of that sculpting on the lower face, too, but the model's still WIP and I expect further awesome to occur once the mask is painted and the yoga-posed body is complete.

Thanks everyone!

I was always planning on the mask and just sculpted the mouth and nose because I though it would help work out the mask proportions, but it was hard to cover them up in the end. I'm glad I did though and am loving the mask now.

I've added a lot more detail to the head, which was so much fun. I'm excited about the additions and I think the tiny details will help sell the scale of the head and make it blend in with 28mm miniatures more. I still need to do some greenstuff clean up work on the head, and the back of the head will get a lot more mechanical doohickeys, wires, canisters, etc. I think this should help him look a bit more frail and less warrior-like too, especially once he's built into the chair's back.




I've also been thinking about arms, and mocked up some rough poses. My top idea right now is to tone down the Buddha pose of the legs by doing something different with the arms -- the idea is that they would be resting on arm-supports, ornate chair-arms that connect to the back of the throne. I'd love for the pose to be reminiscent of something like this:


Other options I'm considering:


(the one on the left would cradling some type of scepter or staff across the lap)

In 40k I've been thinking of the Novator as counting as Inquisitor Karamazov -- the orbital bombardment is perfect (calling down fire from his personal ship in orbit) and the multi-melta seems like a fair representation of a direct gaze from his warp-eye. That only leaves a master-crafted power sword, which leads me to the idea of including a second figure on the same base:


That's a very rough first stab at a Fencing Master, the Novator’s personal body-guard who never leaves his side. I'm really not sure about those bits and may need something fancier for the fencing master. The death korps senior officer looks great but seems to be OOP, so maybe something based on the scion commander w/ the coat?

And finally, here's the failed challenger with the start of a more esoteric weapon.

I wasn't sure about the Novator until now, but with the armour on the torso and shoulders, I think he looks a lot better, and the idea of a fencing master is a great one - I like the topknot on the helmet, very ornate.

The Fencing Master is awesome.

You are quite awesome. I'm a bit blown away, tbh.

"The start of a more esoteric weapon"

That phrase alone nearly perfectly conveys the very spirit of both this project and Navigators in general.

I love that you're using a Renaissance portrait as a reference. This is the classiest thread on Dakka.

(Click here for the pimpingest thread).

That detail is outstanding. Really sets it off.

Just need to pick my jaw off the floor.

Prefer the first pose shown as well.

EDIT: Although I think palms up would work best.

Thanks everyone! The feedback is really helpful to stay motivated on a big project like this. I can't wait to finish it so I can start painting but it's slow going.

I've added a back to the throne and done lots of painstaking greenstuff cleanup on the head, as well as reworked the crossed legs pose.

The fencing master has also been glued together and even gotten a pair of feet. Now to figure out some arms for him. A samurai-like pose about to draw a sword from a scabbard would be fun but may be too difficult to put together.

I'll try to get some new pics this weekend.

Hmm, try to draw some inspiration from the Swordmasters from Dune. Here some possible inspiration:


You might want to check out his 40k Fremen army here.

Nice! As you may be able to tell from my username and choice to focus on navigators, Dune is a big influence, and where I got the idea for a fencing master in the first place.

That Fremen army is amazing, and is also on Dakka:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Fremen_Army_Pt.1
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Fremen_Army_Pt.1

 Malika2 wrote:
Hmm, try to draw some inspiration from the Swordmasters from Dune. Here some possible inspiration:

Spoiler:

You might want to check out his 40k Fremen army here.

Some great pictures, especially the first -- where are they from?

brb Pouring out a 40 for Duncan Idaho, king of bros

This thread is amazing. I really gotta stop exalting every one of your posts!

Can't wait to see the dropship fully painted btw.

Again, some top notch stuff here, amazing ideas and conversions.

Really fantastic sculpt, very unique idea. And I like how you managed to have a big head that looks creepy and doesn't come off as cute X)

thanks!

Only time for a quick update today (in moody BW to disguise the poor photos). I've actually started building the throne's legs and arm-rests since I took these photos and hope to do a more thorough post soon.

Back support:


Eventually the back of the head will be hard-wired and supported by the back of the chair. The big question is wether I add mechanism that make it look like the head can swivel at all, or if I go the simpler route and have it locked in place, assuming the whole head and chair rotates together when the navigator turns.

And I spent a while resculpting the edge of the hood:


I also adjusted the front leg's position and I think it's working better.

 SisterSydney wrote:

 Malika2 wrote:
Hmm, try to draw some inspiration from the Swordmasters from Dune. Here some possible inspiration:

Spoiler:

You might want to check out his 40k Fremen army here.

Some great pictures, especially the first -- where are they from?

Type in 'Duncan Idaho' in the search thingie on DeviantArt and you'll find the pics.

The head looks stable enough not to need support.

Possibly some kind of motor assisted neck?

By the emperor! You've actually got the weird and wonderful 40k look down to a tee. The guys at GW should be coming to you for inspiration, cause I have never ever seen better minis than these!

Your sculpting and use of bits is incredible. I can defiantly see the dune influences (if not the lynchian version).
The lines on the Novator's head are perfect. Can't wait to see more.

Coming together nicely with the throne details and head gubbins.

I'd say his head should be held immobile and the whole shebang turns to his facing.

Yeah, no neck mobility = disturbing.

This is a really interesting blog. Awesome!

the throne walks!

I really love the nubby legs, very akin to the Big Dog robot.

So not only does the guy riding it have a big-ass head but his chair makes that creepy whirring sound.

Disturbing and brilliant. I love the obsessive detailing, even down to changing the feet on the guy next to the Navigator!

That looks great with the legs in place...top job

Creeeeeeeeepy.

The leg hiding behind the duelling master in the third picture looks somewhat unstable. Possibly bring it back somewhat?

Also, the chair might look good with some kind of weapon slung between the legs.

The rest is mind-blowing.

 YourIntestines wrote:


Also, the chair might look good with some kind of weapon slung between the legs.

Ehhh.... I disagree.

First off it would really look like a dick. I mean there's Eldar phallic and then there's actually slinging a weapon between something's legs.

Second the Novator, to me, isn't really the sort to actually *use* weapons. Why carry a gun or a knife or anything... hell why even ride on a chair with a gun... when you're that potent of a Psyker? He's surrounded be minions, all of whom are armed in some way or another, has a master swordsman right at his side, and is a spindly and frail thing to boot. He doesn't need a weapon of his own. He IS a weapon if he puts his mind to it... literally.

Good point. Possibly a tabard or something?

It looks a bit empty otherwise.

Psst, I think you might be interested in this...

Thanks!

The big dog robot was definitely one of my main reference points for the legs.

I don't think I'll be adding any actual weapons — the idea is the Novator's warp-gaze is so powerful he can kill with a stare, tearing open a fissure into the warp itself. In game terms, a direct gaze would count as a blast from a master crafted multi-melta. And in game terms he'd also be able to call down strikes and bombardments from his orbiting ship. I will probably include a lot of antennae and aerials on the back of the throne which will help suggest that ideas as well.

But a tabard between the legs could definitely work. I've been considering a similar idea that I'm not sure about — I could add robes or a cape/cloak that drape down from his shoulders. They could be long enough that they'd drape over the throne kind of like a horse's caparison, obscuring where the man ends and the throne begins. But my cloth sculpting skills are probably not up to the task, and it may be a mistake to obscure things anyway. At the very least, purity seals and wires will help bulk things out.

There isn't much room for a cloak.

Wires plugging him into the chair would look good.

@Malika: very nice!

So I've been distracted by work and life (and the world cup) but have been slowly making progress.

I've got a pile of half-finished henchmen that I occasionally return to as a break from larger projects. Here is the start of a servitor and the psyker from before:



The servitor uses the upper half of a faild crusader conversion, and his bionic face makes much more sense in this context. I'm not sure about the psyker's pose. Maybe his staff needs to be longer? I worry he looks like a drum major in a marching band.

But more importantly, I'm finally getting close to finishing the Novator!




I'm very happy with how his arms turned out, although I may need to resculpt his left hand to be properly gripping his throne. Next I need to add lots of rives, more tubes, and add detailing to his legs and feet. I'm also thinking about tassles or pendants on the ends of the cassocks. And he could use some furs but I'm not sure where they would make sense. The throne will also probably get more life-support and fuel canisters, ornamental wings, and ground-to-orbit antennae.

It's been so much work to get this far and I'm still not 100% sold on the giant head idea myself, but it's really exciting getting so close to finishing. This is when I normally lose interest in projects and start something new (ideas include a hover chimera, a counts-as-bastion landing craft, much needed female members of the household ...) but I'm determined to finish this model and start painting it! I can't wait to paint the skintones on the face. The size should allow for lots of fun detail and color variation.

Here is the current state of the fencing master:




I'm not sure if he's working. I love the mask and coat and sense of movement, but something seems off. Are his arms too long? Just the sword arm? Or maybe the sword is just too chunky for the pose and I should scratchbuild a simple rapier or katana? Or I could always leave the fencing master off this base and use the model as the basis of another psyker (the outstretched arm would be great with an open hand).

Thanks for looking!

Yikes! That thing is crazy! It looks amazing! Just insane.

I think the swordsman looks fine as is, but shouldn't go on the same base. The focus should be Egghead, not split between the two. Hick him on his own 25mm, make him a body guard. Maybe some others to go with him too. I could see a shield warrior and a bigger brute there as well.

The fencing master's sword needs a handle.

The fencing master needs sword handle, less clunker blade, and perhaps move his left hand a.tad bit back.

I love the sense of movement and the navigator is so cool!

That's fething sick man. Looks awesome. I very much like them sharing a base, looks great and helps to represent the actual unit.

Great models, all the way through this thread

As for the question on the swordmaster... I'd say give him his own base, and maybe use a smaller blade. Perhaps something like the Baneblade commander's sword?

 xeno99 wrote:
Great models, all the way through this thread

As for the question on the swordmaster... I'd say give him his own base, and maybe use a smaller blade. Perhaps something like the Baneblade commander's sword?

I think the fencer should stay attached. After all if this is going to be ran as Karamazov (which I'm assuming it is; not much else uses a 60mm base, involves a multi-melta or the equivalent thereof, and a snazzy sword to boot) he should be part of the same overall model.

Although I do agree that the Baneblade commander's sword would look better. While I love the swords and other stabby bits that come packaged in with Grey Knights they're very much scaled for Space Marine models. Not only that but the commander's saber feels much more like a fencer's weapon to me... something with a bit more finesse and delicacy rather than brute force.

I'm back! I haven't had much time for modeling but finally made some progress.

First off, I've added lots of detail, both in terms of GW bits and greenstuff work. I'm very close at this point; I think I'll only be adding a few rivets on the cosmonaut hood and some assorted clean-up. The newest addition is a pair of tufty old-man eyebrows made from old paintbrush bristles. I was worried they'd look silly but I'm pretty happy with them.





I've also been giving a lot of thought to the question of how to base the Novator. The crowd seems pretty split (both here and at the ammobunker) about whether it's better to base him by himself or with a henchmen. I also realized the fencing master just wasn't working and took him apart.

Instead, I've been considering using one of these as my Novator's bodyguard:



On the left, a lavish servo-drone, a type of super servo-skull built for close range combat. It could get a giant needle type weapon or perhaps an articulated talon or claw to represent the power weapon attack that Karamazov has.

And on the right, a new fencing master, more of a wandering swordsman type (Fencing Master Toshirus Mifunii perhaps). I like how transformed he is form the base necromancer body. He'd need to be 40k'd up with some technology; a gas mask, goggles, or some type of solid eye-covering (for a cyberpunk blind swordsman look).

Here's the new swordsman in context:





I think this new model works better with the Novator, but I'm still a little unsure about two figures on the same base.

Right now I'm much more excited about the servo drone:



I could even add a second one:


I worry it could be distracting that the drones and the chair use the same exact blood angel wing bit. But maybe that just shows how much the Novator insists on his artisans staying on brand and hammering home that motif .

If I do use the drone(s) then I would mount the fencing master on his own base as a crusader who will accompany the Novator.

And finally some assorted detail shots:







Thanks! I hope it won't be as long before my next update. I'm dying to prime this thing and will probably do that very soon.

New fencing master does look better on the base than the old one, but the drone(s) feel right. Having the same wings works to tie them together, no issues there.

Novator himself looks great, and eyebrows are a nice touch

Nice work on the eyebrows!

Agree that the new fencing master works better on the base than the last one... but my vote has to be for the servo-skull(s) as well.

Servo-skulls all the way. Each one carrying a hideous rotary-saw powersword or other weapon larger than itself....

Then definitely do the "cyberpunk blind swordsman" thing with the fencing master, on his own base.

Thanks!

I've decided to make the swordsman his own model and combine the servo-drones with the Novator.

So I've added a lot more detail to the masked drone, including more dangling cables and fiddly little claws. I'm pretty happy with the claws! They're made from the hooks at the end of chains that come with the talos, combined with tiny drug injectors from the talos. I was worried at first that the clawed legs made the drone look too cute (like a baby bird) but my wife has assured me it's not cute at all and is in fact scary and disgusting, which sounds good to me:



As you can see the drone is mounted on a stand-alone base. But don't worry, it's magnetized, and will be able to be used as both an individual model and as part of the novator:





I've tried to disguise the magnet join by having the cable curl back away from the Novator's shoulder, making it clear that the drone is not hard-wired, only circling, ready to strike should the need arise. I think paint will help make that more clear.

I'm finding myself much less excited about the second drone, and although I like the idea of framing the Novator, I am starting to think it's too much, and the composition might be better with just the Novator and the bird-mask drone.

---

And finally, some fluff. I've been thinking about the background of my household and its "head" Navigator. I can never decide on names, so these are very subject to change:

The house of Merz-Trismegistus is a wealthy but highly unusual household. Technically they are a splinter-house, who sheared off from the larger house Alcatani almost 200 standard years ago. The precise origin of the feud between this sub-branch and the larger family is unknown, but the increasingly erratic and monomaniacal attitude of Beacon-Scryer first class Constantine Camaqura Merz-Trismegistus was doubtless to blame. With his closest relatives, most loyal retainers, and a small fleet of voidships carrying a trove of valued techno artifacts and other wealth, Constantine turned and fled into the deep warp. Over the years his unique mutation, a result of controlled recursive inbreeding and (alleged) forbidden gene-hacking (and some would go so far as to allege warp-taint) has caused his already prodigious brain and head to grow beyond even typical monstrous Alcatani proportions. The enormous growth of his cerebral and aether-occhial tissue has given him unparalleled warp navigation abilities, and undoubtedly driven him mad.

For decades the new splinter-house behaved much as a typical wandering nomad house, earning lucrative contracts and recruiting a sizable military support staff. But Constantine has turned the household away from mundane warp-navigation, for he believes that his unique ability to decipher and predict the fractal tesselation of the warp-flow allows him to steer much more than ships through space-time; he aims to steer the fate of the galaxy itself. Dubbing himself Novator Omphalescent, Aether Prophet, Beacon-Scryer, Genetosire, and Supreme Tidal Maester, Constantine has recalled his progeny from their steersman contracts throughout the sectors, and now musters his family and their irregular forces for unknown purposes.

It is often thought that the character and temperament of a Navigator matriarch or patriarch will bleed across psychogenetic lines and influence their descendants. This seems to be the case with Merz-Trismegistus, as the Nobilite of the house turn ever more mysterious and hostile, donning their ancient protective void suits and arming themselves for war. Surely such an ancient and powerful patriarch must have a good reason to not only prepare for war, but to put himself and his family in harms-way and even step foot (or throne-foot in his case) on a planet’s surface.

I think your better of with just the one drone, he does seem better balanced that way. I really enjoyed the background as well, great stuff.

Really enjoyed the background.

I'd keep one drone only as well.

how I missed this thread is beyond me. The level of character in these models is fantastic. Not to mention that your Navigator is a one of a kind marvel! Fantastic work!

qoute " Constantine Camaqura Merz-Trismegistus" his name is almost as big as his head ;-)


This model is just amazing , such a great concept that you have pulled of with aplomb. i am glad you are putting the sword master on a separate base too , the navigator model needs little else on his base imo , having said that flying servo skull works well and its cool that its magnetised . you must be aching to paint it by now.

Thanks!

I figure navigators, like all nobility, would be obsessed with heritage and titles and have ridiculously long names. My two main inspirations were the massive head of Constantine in the Capitoline museum in Rome and the great Buddha at Kamakura, Japan, hence the name.

Merz is a reference to Kurt Schwitters, master collagist and a graphic designer, and Trismegistus is from Hermes Trismegistus (or thrice great in greek), a fusion of Hermes and Thoth that medieval Alchemists worshipped as the father of alchemy and esoteric knowledge.

You're right Neil, I am totally dying to paint it but it's 77% humidity and 83°F here in Chicago and I'm so afraid of having a primer disaster. The internet tells me that I need below 65% humidity to prime. It's supposed to be this humid for at least a week so I may have to try spray priming inside ...

Primed! I sprayed indoors in my basement and thankfully the primer worked perfectly. Grey with a light dusting of white from above.



It's so incredibly satisfying finally seeing all the disparate parts brought together. Some of the texture on the face is stronger than I intended it to be, but I think when painted I can sell it as craggy old gross skin.

Now to work out a color scheme. I'm not sure if I should try to play-up the idea that the navigator and his throne are one (by painting his body armor and facemask the same as the throne) or use the color scheme to make it more clear where the man ends and the throne begins. Hmm ...

Cara Delevingne called and wants her wicked eyebrows back

lolololol


But seriously, great, great sculpt and coonversion. That models oozes grimdark nastiness.

I've jumped right in and started painting, despite not having an overall plan for a color scheme. I've spent most of my time on the face, the part I was most excited about painting, and of course the most important focal point.

I'm happy with the skin so far and although the photo is pretty blown out there's already a lot of depth from green and red glazes. Next up will be some bluish purple glazing around the eyes I think.



I'm not sure where I'm going with the color of the throne and armor/mask. Right now it's just roughly washed and dry brushed as an under-painting. One option is to highlight the grayish color up to an astronaut style white. Or I may wash and glaze it with a light turquoise, pale green, or blue — something reminiscent of medical equipment. Or maybe I need more contrast between the skin and everything else and need to go with a much darker color. So many options!


One of these days I'll finish the abhumans. At least I finally managed a clearer picture of them.

I think a dark silver for the chair, and a lighter astronaut white for the body armour.

I reckon you gotta go bronze on the throne. Can't decide on the outfit but i imagine you'd want to tie it in to the other models' schemes, although the colours he has on him at the moment look a bit off. a lighter turquoise might be cool

I've had some free time this past week and have been furiously painting Constantine the Mad (still note sure about that name). It's been a while since I've painted and I forgot how fun it can be! And so much faster than scratch-building.

I've been trying some new approaches. As always, I've been working out the color scheme as I go, which has resulted in lots of overpainting, and the resulting unexpected variations which I like. Unfortunately I haven't documented the process much, only this crude snapshot a few days ago:



There you can see the beginnings of a turquoise armor color and some built-up skin.

Since then I've done a lot of work and now he looks like this:









I'm very happy with how he's coming together, although I regret a recent rust color wash that I applied a bit too liberally, killing some of the jewel-like luster I had going. In addition to lots of washes with ink and paint mixtures, I've been using tons of Lahmian Medium, my new favorite paint. For example, I realized I had gone overboard with dark washes on the skin, so did a series of glazes of Lahmian Medium with just a drop of white or bleached bone. This both smoothed out everything and created a really subtle depth like real skin has. Similarly I painted the chevrons on the hood while it was a mustard color, then followed that with glazes of medium tinted with a drop each of bleached bone and space wolf grey, resulting in the soft worn cloth feeling with lots of subtle variation.

My big question at this point is the relationship of his hood to his robe; are they clashing? I think both colors work with the armor, but maybe don't work with each other. I could tint the hood slightly green to make them match more, or I could just make it a bit darker instead. Or maybe the robe is the problem? I'm also thinking of adding a faded all-over print to the robe but am not sure of what type of pattern I can pull off. I'm also not sure about the patterns on the chair's shoulder-shields, and the drone is a total mess, randomly painted with leftover washes. It may get a white face-plate at the least.

Posting because I still want to see that Flyer painted.

Now that the Novator has a paint job he looks like a priceless piece of art, in 3d form. Amazing.

Truly, truly incredible, the face is just perfectly painted. I feel like a broken record when I see all the amazing stuff being produced lately, the bar is just raised higher each time.

There absolutely i wish i had even a little bit of the skill that has gone in to these guys.

Outstanding work, really nice to see a group shop with all of them painted up!

Wow. I know that's not particularly useful as painting advice, but, wow.

Fantastic stuff so far.

The hood is the biggest plain surface on the model, and, if being ultra critical it seems a little flat. I would say it maybe needs more depth of colour, or more detail.

Top stuff!

Oh boy, that is perfect! The hood reminds me of an old Russian cosmonaut's attire, very cool.

This giant walking head is the freakiest mini I have ever seen. It looks great.

Fething INSANE! In the most positive way

Thanks so much guys! So very encouraging.

I agree that the hood is flat and both it and the robes are too light and similar to the flesh. It’s a balancing act because I want the soft cloth parts of the model to clearly stand out from the armor and throne (I figure it’s such a confusing model I need the paint scheme to make it clear what’s going on).

The robes were kind of poorly sculpted to begin with so they're challenging to paint, but I think they're starting to work better.

And I've glazed the hood with turquoise and darkened it some, as well as adding more variation and detail with warm inks. Much better I think. Now it doesn’t blend in with the base color too much:




Next I think it's time for some broken blood vessels on the face and a big toe-nail. Still not sure if it will be manicured and painted or old, gross and grey.

That's looking beautiful with some paint on

The glazes you've added to the hood worked brilliantly, bringing it out from the flesh and tying it in with the armour whilst keeping it's soft feel.

I'm liking the new hood colour, it provides a better contrast to the face.

Looking ace.

Novator is an okay name, but if it was me I'd channel some Stan Lee and call him N.O.V.O.K.!


Oh, and great work here.

Awesome.

This whole project has just been 100% boss win.

Man I'm so jelly right now. Stunning work there man.

Thanks so much!

I think I'm officially done painting the head navigator now, and all that's left is gluing him to his base. I'll try to post some photos later.

I also put away my paints and infantry sized bits and set up for some vehicle-scale scratch-building. Stay tuned ...

Looking forward to your next project

The head of the household is complete!











Of course, the next time I have my paints out I may make a minor tweak or two. That base rim needs to be cleaned up at the least.

---

My brother (who was the one who introduced me to this hobby in the first place) has also started collecting and modeling after a very long hiatus, and has been buying up interesting things on ebay. He just gave me an ancient Captain Tycho model.

I remember loving the model when it came out, and it's a very important design, introducing the Blood Angel death mask, halo, and sculpted torso motifs (or maybe that classic painting of a pile of blood angels with a white chaplain and golden captain came first?). But viewed from a modern perspective, the model is pretty goofy (sorry oldhammer die-hards!). It has great details but poor the poor captain's head protudes directly from his sternum.

Due to rampant scale creep, poor Tycho is also tiny. I realized I could use his small stature to my advantage and use him into a regular human in power armor. So I took a dremel to Tycho and removed his enormous head and pauldrons, trying to preserve as much of the rest of the model as I could. I also narrowed his bell-bottom boots to try to move away from the SM silhouette a bit. I forgot what a pain it was to work with metal!

After a flurry of kitbashing last night I ended up with this:





I'm so happy with the result. It was fun working so quickly and finishing a model in two nights of work. I'm surprised how well the modern bits work with the old figure, and what a difference the higher head position makes. I see him as a grizzled and pragmatic mercenary captain, wearing the Household's gift of archaic power armor. I can't wait to paint him -- it should be interesting painting metal again.

I also realized this is the second version of this model I've beheaded. My primary army as a teenager was a home-brew blood angel successor chapter (that I called The Sons of Sanguinius), and when I made my own kit bashed chapter master, Tycho was demoted to a veteran sergeant and got a regular MK 7 helmet.

That's a stunning little conversion mate, great use of parts, the base figure is completely changed, I love it.

"Head of household" -- just got that. Heh.

Also gorgeous work as usual.

Thanks!
I just realized I should've included the unaltered Tycho model* for anyone under 30:


* or proto-Tycho to be more accurate; he was a generic Blood Angel Captain that was named Tycho for a classic Andy Chambers / Jervis Johnson battle report, IIRC.

I've been busy this week and have finally finished two models I started a while back.

First off, the failed challenger:



This model began as a way to use up the failed remains of my big headed Novator -- I ordered the giant head thinking it would be much larger, which led me to sculpt my own head. And then I ordered this mutant body before deciding I needed to sculpt something smaller and more noble. But the two rejected parts work great together.

In fluff terms, this represents a cousin of the Novator who challenged him for leadership of the household. Navigators resolve such challenges through warp-eye duels, and although the challenger was himself ancient and powerful, he was no match for the Novator and the pure blast of warp power seared his brain and left him a gibbering simpleton. As a further indignity, the Novator had the challenger converted into a Servitor, to serve as his personal bodyguard and a living warning to all future challengers.

A last minute touch I'm really exited about are the scraggly hairs around the back of his head, made the same way I did the Novator's eyebrows.

Next, I finished the fencing master. I actually sculpted a fancy helmet with a blast-shield type covering over the eyes, going for a blind samurai type thing. However when combined with the small body and youthful face, the whole model just looked too much like Luke sparring with the practice droid. So I pulled that head off (I'm sure it will be useful on a future model) and found this bearded head in my bits pile:



I think this really made the model, and added a lot of character -- much more of the mysterious wandering swordsman look I was going for. In fact, while working on the model I decided he may not just be the household's fencing master, but a secret Sensei, working in hiding as the Novator's swordsman and personal bodyguard, but with his own mysterious agenda. After all, the Novator claims that when he delves into the Astronomicon, he can see the soul of the emperor himself. The Sensei may not fully understand his origin on an off-world colony twelve centuries ago, but finds himself drawn to the light in the warp and those who promise to understand it.

So, my plan is to prime this batch and start painting them this weekend as the core of a new group of henchmen to accompany the Novator. Assuming I don't get distracted by a half-built psyker or Beaconite Preacher ...

Whoa, that failed Challenger is awesome!

Nice work on the failed challenger and swordsman! Both look great, and I'm liking the hidden sensei take on the latter.

Thanks guys!

I always struggle to completely finish models. There's always a gap that needs filling or some small detail that I need to sort out before I can actually start priming and painting, and it's always more exciting to play around with random bits and half-built components from my desk-pile.

So I'm very happy that I was able to finish the 5 new henchmen for my household and prime them over the weekend. I've just begun painting them with some very preliminary flesh tones. The Hidden Sensei is quite yellow but that's nothing a few layers of dry brushing and inking can't fix:





My current plan is pale green armor on the mercenary captain (similar to the robes on the Novator, including the reddish shadows), a variety of cool greys, blacks, and whites on the Hidden Sensei, and dirty, rusty turquoise armor and mechanics on the Failed Challenger (a dirtier version of the armor on the Novator). No idea on the drones, although I'm tempted to make one of them a very weathered pink. The type of pink you'd see in a 14th century fresco. We'll see!

Anyway, I also took some photos of a vehicle I've been working on for a while. I think I started it way back during the winter olympics, but set it aside so I could focus on finishing my dropship and giant robot. Neither of which are finished. I've been thinking I need some form of ground-transport to ferry henchmen around, a count-as-chimera in game terms. But a conventional tracked vehicle seems out of place in my army. So inspired by the classic deodorant hover tank, I decided old nasal spray bottles could make nice hover pontoon type things:







This was much more of a planned out construction than the drop ship. I even drew up templates in Illustrator for the main hull. I think the result is more in keeping with wh40k vehicle aesthetics but still seems suitably unusual and custom for my strange household. Still lots of work to do, especially around the back of the pontoons.

Do I need to obscure the fronts of the bottles more? I would at the very least add some armor plates, rivets, small details, etc. But I could also extend out some rectangular forms from the main hull to break up the shapes.

In any case, I'll probably be focusing on painting over the next few weeks before returning to the Hover chimera. Unless something else distracts me first.

i think on the chimera add some sort of intakes on the front of the bottles to help disguise them as they really stand out as bottles atm, appart from that it looks awesome i have followed your thread for a while now n always find it fuels my own builds

This is what 40K is all about. Truly brilliant conversions and I love what you've done with Tycho, sublime.

Thanks so much!

Absolutely phenomenal work in here mate. That navigator is just stunning. Really looking forward to updates mate.

Thanks!

I love seeing other people's half-finished ideas. I know my own projects go through many phases before they're complete, and many of them are never even finished. So I thought I'd share some rougher in-progress shots of some more henchmen.

But first, some long winded aesthetic theorizing. There's been a lot of interesting talk on the forum lately and it’s got me thinking.

My favorite part of the hobby is converting, particularly the joy that comes from playing with a pile of bits with no clear plan, and the random combinations and ideas that you stumble across (Brian Eno and his oblique strategy cards would approve). This is a similar feeling I sometimes get in my job as a graphic designer -- when I am designing a book cover I create a huge file filled with fragments of type, pattern, and imagery, and let unexpected combinations emerge. I focused on that process a lot in art school, where I made collages from scraps of paper. One of my key methods was never being precious with the piece I was working on; it's very easy to become attached to something early on, so I would force myself to slice finished collages down into smaller pieces and put them back together again in new configurations.

I've tried to take a similar approach to kit bashing. I'm very indecisive, so it's always tempting to tack things together without ever gluing them in place. So I try to make myself glue bits together when the inspiration strikes, with the understanding that I can always hack them up again, leading to more unexpected and layered conversions down the line.

While working on that last batch of henchmen I also did a bit more to some half-built pieces I've been working on for a while. Although I will most likely never play with this army/warband, I like using the framework of the rules as a guide. And it seems that my henchmen squads would be well served by psykers, weapons servitors, and battle priests. Here are rough versions of each of these archetypes:




The idea behind the servitor's dapper facial hair is that he is no regular servitor, but a former rogue trader or merchant captain who betrayed the household in some way, and has been captured and turned into a servitor as a punishment. He would join the head Novator's henchmen along-side the failed challenger. Grag managed to turn the same body into a far more evocative servitor, but this model is just a bit boring and lacks something special so it's shelved for the time being. Maybe he needs to get chopped in half.

Right now I'm considering recasting Major Tom (the astronaut) as a battle Priest. The idea is that all priests in my household would be members of a cult that worships the Astronomicon itself as the glowing soul of the Emperor. See below for more fluff. The idea behind such a long haft on his scepter is that it is actually the Novator's holy staff (and appropriately sized) but carried into battle by his priest. It also would suggest a standard bearer, an archetype I don't have in my army yet. But there's something stiff and boring here so I'm not sure.

And finally, a psyker. I made that torso with the plasticard armor for a crusader, and it's been repurposed many times, even acquiring some rough robes along the way. My favorite depiction of Psychic powers is in Akira (both the Anime and Manga) so I thought I should try for a Tetsuo-style levitation effect. The head is the one I sculpted for the Fencing Master, here repurposed as a psychic hood type focusing helm. I'm afraid I'm now getting Magneto overtones, but this is still my favorite of this bunch.

I stole the psykers staff and arm from this poor fellow:



Since I was also out of pointing or grasping psychic type left hands, I was forced to build him a bionic replacement, which led to his bionic eye. This made me think about Palmer Eldritch from the Philip K. Dick book, in which case he needs two bionic eyes and metal teeth. But again, I will probably end up chopping him down for bits eventually because he's missing that special something.

--

Anyway, the idea of an Astronomicon priest wearing ceremonial garb fashioned after an ancient void suit really appeals to me. So much so that I'm thinking of making some push-molds of that dome helmet, and making a set of Beaconite priests. But what to use as bodies?

One idea is to turn to the classics of the genre; the plastic models that have been so well converted by the elders of the forums (and others) so many times already. So far I've stayed away from them because I wanted to try to find my own new conversions, but now I'm excited about a sort of homage to the classics:



(crude from memory sketches of the corpsemaster from coven throne, nurgle lord, and chaos sorcerer)

This would also allow for a variety of priests, each with their own character, united by their fishbowl domes. I sort of hope sketching the idea and sharing it here will be enough to get it out of my mind so I can focus on finishing my existing projects, but something tells me I may end up buying some more plastic soon. Maybe instead of the Nurgle Lord I need to do a whole unit of Blightking-based astronaut priests ...

And finally, to finish off this long and rambling post, some fluff:

Beaconites believe that the Emperor's mortal body on Terra is only a cocoon or husk, and the true form of the god emperor is the shining light in the warp, the astronomicon. Patterns of Beaconite worship invariably include hourly prayer, during which the mendicant must always turn to face in the direction of terra and the astronomicon. Beaconites revere Navigators with an almost jealous intensity, for they believe only Navigators with their warp-eyes can truly see the face of god.

Beaconites are naturally drawn to the stars and the warp, and will do their best to find work in the Imperial fleets (and conversely, many voids men are natural converts to the cult). The most devout cultists become itinerant preachers or space pilgrims, shuffling from ship to ship, spreading the holy word. Many of these pilgrims seek out Navigator controlled ships and space stations. Although only a few Navigators are sanctified members of the cult (blind religious fanaticism does not always flourish in the minds of those who calculate infinitely complex math in the maw of total warp insanity), most Nobilite recognize the value of religious devotion, and will welcome space pilgrims into their entourages and courts.

A growing contingent of pilgrims are convinced that *Name TBD / Head Novator*, with his proclaimed supreme insight into the Holy beacon, is a type of Messiah, and is in direct contact with the God-Emperor. Pilgrim after pilgrim has sought out the household and sworn their service and devotion, and now rave and proselytize amongst the ranks of mercenaries and killers. The household sees the value in this devotion and has encouraged the spread of the cult within the staff.

You may be dissatisfied with these particular models (so far), but let me tell you your sketches and fluff are brilliant.

Please keep these dudes coming.

 Moltar wrote:
Please keep these dudes coming.

i second this

Thanks for the encouragement!

Most of my hobby time over the weekend went to moving all my stuff into a dedicated hobby room and setting up a new work-table, but I've also gotten some painting done on the latest batch of henchmen. I'll try to get some photos soon — the challenger is looking pretty good but I may need advice on the color schemes for the mercenary and fencing master.

 weirdingway wrote:

The guy in the middle has a distinctive Dark Souls feel. I can imagine him holding his sword aloft and shouting "PRIASE THE BEACON" after a long day of exploring the cosmos and confronting the horrors of the unknown.

I like everything about this thread.

Magnificent, weirdingway. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks guys!

Real life has once again demanded a lot of attention, so I haven't had time to post updates, but I have squeezed in some painting and modeling.

First off, some painting updates. These are all wip, although I've set them aside for the time-being so I can make models that I will never paint. Sorry for the photos; I can't get my lighting setup in my new hobby-room to work as well as it did in my old setup. I will be getting a new iphone in a few weeks which will no doubt help.



I'm happy with how the mechanical parts of the Failed Challenger are coming along, but I still want to do more work on the skin. More layers of color variation, more bruising, etc. It's tough painting such a large area of skin and haven't quite nailed it yet. The photos are unfortunately washing out a lot of skin detail.



I added lots of ports and sockets to the Challenger's flesh. The idea is that when he was a full-fledged Navigator he spent his life hard-wired into encounter suits or Navigation couches, and now they remain as sad reminders of his former life, weeping fluids. I'll play this up with more ink washes.





And there you see Mercenary Lt. Brahe. I'm still not sure how I'll paint his shoulder-pads and back canister, but the current plan is to leave his beard white. Obviously more cleanup and shading is needed but I'm pretty happy with his armor. I will probably also darken hi skin a bit; the last round of highlights went too far.



The Hidden Sensei is the roughest of the three. Still trying to work out a color scheme. The cloak is more green in person, but he may still need more green or blue on him to tie into the rest of household. I was planning on giving him freehand patterns on some of his robes but I'm not sure now.

I also started painting the drones:



I tried a new technique which was incredibly fast. So far they are just grey primer, white zenithal spray, two layers of very thin paint-based washes, sponge weathering, and a little wash with a diluted bronze. Clearly they need more detail work but I'm pretty happy with how they look after only a few minutes of work! The pink may be a little crazy but it looks a bit paler in real life, and some weathering washes will tone it down. I think this will be roughly how I approach the vehicles if I ever get to painting them.

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But I've been more focused on converting lately.



First, a new head for the psyker. It feels a bit cliche but it's just such a nice head. Maybe an icon or something over his eyes will help make him more unique. I also found a box of old figures from highschool that included some unpainted Gorkamorka orks (now that was a fun game!). With the news that Twin Peaks will be coming back after 25 years I decided to make an homage to the Little Man From Another Place ... leading to this dancing little person. I think I need a head that better matches the actor, with the wide set eyes and side-parted hair. Fluff-wise he could serve as a mysterious psyker with a gift for chrono-manipulation, seemingly always out-of-step with the surrounding time-stream, able to warp reality by rubbing his palms together or snapping his fingers while dancing, etc.



And I've started my first proper Beaconite Priest. I may raise the helmet and push it back on his shoulders a bit. Right now he's standing on a ledge of rubble with the front of his robes trailing down, but I may slice off more of the bottom of the robes so he sits flatter.

Finally, a sneak preview of the female henchmen. I'm very happy with them but have some anatomy issues to sort out before sharing more ...

The mercenary lieutenant and the hidden sensei both exude badassitude. The failed challenger exudes.... oozing stuff. He creeps me the feth out, so mission accomplished!

Do not move the head on the priest! He doesn't need it sitting up properly on his shoulders with perfect posture, that slightly hunched looking positioning is much better

It really is a joy to read this blog and the models and background really fire up my imagination for my own future projects so thank you for sharing.

The Sensei reaching for the sword is a great conversion, really liking him and the Beaconite Priest is just great, such a simple design but with so much character.

I think the pink on the drone is spot on. These are supposed to be incredibly rich families and the pink gives it that Renaissance/Rococo/Louis XIII period look that you see a lot in the 40K artwork - you should paint some little black hearts on it or something like that!

Great stuff!

Thanks so much!

Gogsnik: exactly right on the pink. It's such a common color in early christian frescos that I had to try to incorporate it here.

SisterSydney: just what I was going for! You will probably be interested in the following update with female henchmen btw.

Shuppet: I adjusted the head a bit but kept the hunch.

I've been thinking that my warband was lacking in diversity and needed some female henchmen. I know we're dealing with an authoritarian fascist space empire, but I like the idea that the Imperium's prejudice is so focused on aliens, mutants, psykers, and most of all heretics and free-thinkers, that modern-day prejudices wouldn't really be a factor. And I've been aiming for a diverse gang of individual crazies, so it doesn't make sense to stick to only male henchmen. But because my models have almost all been built from mixes of a limited number troop boxes I haven't had any female components to work with. But when I saw Nordicway's amazing female models, I decided to try making some of my own.

I ordered the witches from the Dark Elf Cauldron of Blood because I thought they'd be easier to make into less dynamic models (I've already got my abuman death cultists and didn't want female ninjas). It turns out they are incredibly tiny, delicate models. Such small hands and heads! Nice sculpts, and with little enough clothing that I figured I could sculpt my own on top.

I started with these two models, made from the top and bottom of a single witch elf:


The witch elf heads were too small to work with the non-elf parts I was using, but I discovered that there are some heads in the Empire Archer kit that I think are supposed to represent teenage boys. With a little shaving and in this context I thought it could work as a woman's face. And you'll see I spaced out the elf's hips, wanting to give her more human proportions.

This lead to this intermediate stage:


I toyed with a third simpler conversion (who would get dressed in robes or something) using only a head and foot swap, but it just was way off proportion wise. I've seen people (thistle among them of course!) use flagellant heads on daemonette bodies and liked the idea of a grizzled crone warrior, but that head on that body is ridiculous.

Then I ended up with:


Here the plasma gunner and crusader really take shape. At this stage I had adjusted their proportions with plasticard spacers and started green stuffing. And I felt like I was hitting two classic wh40k archetypes, but missing a sillier, raving lunatic type of character, so tried that flamer-nun type. She may have some promise with enough green-stuff but I'm just not as into her as the other two and have set her aside for now.

Which leads me to the almost final forms of the two henchwomen and the beacon priest:




I'm thrilled with how they're turning out. Just a bit more greenstuff to tidy things up I think. Maybe the crusader's purity seal is too big and needs to be replaced with a scratch-made one. And her shoulder pads could use some fancying up. I'm also considering some hair poking out from beneath their hats/helms, particularly on the plasma gunner, because she probably reads less clearly as female. I haven't sculpted hair before but my wife suggested two braids which I think may be both more sculptable and play up the valkyrie angle.

At some point I realized the Valkyrie Plasmagunner was inadvertently referencing John Blanche's masterpiece cover of the 2nd edition Sisters of Battle Codex. Not a problem at all!

Oh and finally, my new idea for how to paint the beacon priests' space helmets is to try some of this crazy Japanese stuff:

Hasegawa Mirror Gold

im glad you picked up on the john blancheness of them cause i was gonna say if the sisters looked anything as good as these i would start collecting them as always great models man i alwas get inspired looking at your blog

also that gold stuff looks god very curious to see how it turns out might be tricky to get it crinkle free over a sphere thou good luck with that

Love the female henchmen. They mesh very nicely with the rest of the force. Out of curiosity what is the base for the Beaconite priest?

Such beautiful work as always.

Can we assume the middle guy from the sketch (fatter one) is on the way with the release of the new Blightkings?

Thanks!

kencotter: yeah it may be impossible! I'd have to practice a lot I'm sure.

bronzefists42: the priest is based on the corspemaster (or some such) from the WHFB Coven Throne / Mortis Engine.

Medium of Death: The original plan was the classic Nurgle Chaos Lord, but yeah now I'm considering a Blightking (or 2) instead. I wanted to do an homage to all the great Inq28 Nurgle Lord conversions but the more dynamic poses of the blight kings are tempting. I really don't need a whole box of burgle bits though and the cheaper lord may win out in the end.

Ah yes, the ubiquitous nurgle lord. It'd be rude not to have him!

Perhaps a box of blightkings could be justified if you used them as a Terminator unit counts as?

Perhaps hardy ship crewmen/mutants that deal with the most radioactive elements of the ship. Bodies riddled with cancers and tumorous growths.

If not I'm sure you can snatch up one of the torso's off a bits site!

Looking forward to that sketch coming to life regardless.

Ha. Love the henchwomen. persons of hench.

Some great work



Mysterio is pleased!

Great blog mate! Your conversions look all brilliant and its awesome, how creative your kitbashs are. Keep up the great work

Great updates.
The females Are phenomenal.

amazing, having rec entry been working on female minis myself I take my hat off, you have achieved results that I could only dream of

Thanks guys!

I've got terrible hobby attention span and instead of finishing the female henchmen I've started some new models instead.

First up, a Squat! I've never really liked Squats. I've always the idea of divergent human evolution paralleling fantasy archetypes. Shadowrun kind of took that idea and ran with it in an interesting way, and Rick Priestley revisited some of the same ideas in the Gates of Antares project.

But although I liked the basic concept, the realization of Squats was just too silly for me, even in the diverse and crazy Rogue Trader universe (I must admit I'm also not much of a Dwarf fan). So back when squats were dropped I didn't mind, but I did start thinking about the challenge of how to reboot them. My idea was to make them an (ab)human counterpoint to the Imperium; hi-tech, rational, corporate, sci-fi miners, with anime-inspired technology. Here's a crude sketch I posted on my high-school 40k website along with my proposal for a Squat reboot. This was before the Tau were invented, so the anime-mecha visual space wasn't yet occupied.



Recently there've been some great modern reinterpretations of Squats. Spiky Rat Pack/izecolt's army is amazing (particularly the transport!) although the helms are a bit too fantasy norse for my taste. And Jeff Vader has made some great Squats using the bearded Space Wolf heads (something I am stealing):

http://spikyratpack.blogspot.com/search/label/Squats
http://convertorum.blogspot.com/2013/06/cyan-dwarf.html

So I've been thinking it would be fun to add a single squat to my henchmen, incorporating the new fluff that the squats were destroyed by the Tyranids. I like the idea of a grizzled old survivor, who is as far as he knows the last surviving Squat, a bedraggled and grim abhuman mercenary. Something that would fit in with my army.

So here's what I have so far:



I'm pretty happy with how he's coming together, especially the rogue trader style bionic foot, although the meltagun and his arms clearly need a lot of work. I like that although he's definitely shorter than a regular human, he's not that tiny and actually has thighs and knees. I will probably keep the bestial arms with the shoulder fur; it plays up the abhuman angle, and is not really much of a mutation after all. I may try to give him some tau-style tech to play up the hi-tech angle but we'll see.

Next, I've been thinking about using the other mutant from the WHFB chaos war shrine I have leftover from my Novator project. I think it could make a nice counterpoint to the Failed Challenger, acting as another monstrous bodyguard for the head of the household.




The idea is that this was once a normal human, but the household's Magos Biologos has been experimenting on him. I'd cover the body with drug dispenser vials and bionic implant type details. Which head do you prefer? The bearded one is more expressive and sad, but if I use the dapper facial hair head I could make him a rogue trader or other merchant who broke a deal with the household, and was duly punished with “life” as a living weapon. I suppose beardy scion-eyes could've once been a merchant, but I feel like he'd need different fluff.

I don't think it needs to be said at tthis point, but stunning stuff as always.

I think I prefer the beard/scion head as it doesn't jar the way that the pointy beard does but it still gets across the point that this poor chap has been mutated terribly.

yeah i think the second head also

I'm going to get a thesaurus out to come up with more words to describe how awesome all this stuff is as I'm quickly running out of words!

The latest creations are stunning as always. Really nice work on the female henchmen (women?), some excellent posing in all three of them.

The priest is just terrifying, he exudes menace with that long robe and staff.

Loving the new big mutant as well. The bearded face seems to work the best in my opinion. Have you considered having him holding a vat of chemicals in one arm? Perhaps it could be wired into him as some kind of life support-type liquid.

Keep up the great work!

Ooh, forgot about the squat! Very rugged looking, just how I imagine he should look.

Bearded head mutant! Bearded squat! Beards for everyone!

Man the stuff I built for my Navigators is really underwhelming compared to this awesomeness. probably one of the most original armies i have seen in a long time. Also FW made some HH rules for Navigators on their website. Thought you might be interested.

Thanks guys!

Bearded scion head it is. I like the idea of him carrying life support chemicals.

In the meantime I've been bad and started yet another new project; a scratch-built counts-as land raider! I'm not sure if it will ever materialize but I'm excited about it right now and if it goes according to plan I may have pictures in the new few days.

I'm looking forward to seeing that. If it's as original as your other vehicles then we are in for a treat!

Fantastic stuff! Really makes me miss my hobby crap from back in the good days.

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
....Also FW made some HH rules for Navigators on their website. Thought you might be interested.

Links please!

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/N/Navigator.pdf

Pretty meh in the power armored death fest that is HH (Oh how I love it!) but would be awesome in standard

WS:2 HQ with Instant Death template weapon that you only survive by making an Initiative check? Psychic powers that aren't technically psychic powers but make the unit count as a psyker? Cats and dogs, living together? That's a weird (and interesting) unit.

Thanks guys! Those HH Navigator rules are interesting. I like the idea of non-psychic power powers.

I've got some vehicle progress to share.

First off, I’ve added more detail to the hover chimera, including a servo-skull operated heavy bolter and a great rear hatch from the Taurox kit.




I have the Taurox kit because of my new vehicle project, a counts-as Land Raider I’m calling a Land Crawler. I recently was getting rid of a mouth-guard storage case and was inspired by the shape of it. The curves had a nice art deco feeling and it seemed about the right size for a vehicle.

First off, some inspiration material that I’ve been keeping vaguely in mind while building. I wanted to make something brutal and massive, but also with some deco style to it:


(the classic Capitol Imperialis, Starwars Sandcrwaler, Roberto Cirillo’s amazing train, HARDAC from Batman the Animated Series, the Harkonnen tram from Lynch’s Dune aka best model ever, Navigator tank, Harkonnen ship, and carry-all, all from Dune, Funiculars in Bergamo and Lisbon, and random deco people movers)

My next step was buying a Taurox. I think it’s gotten a pretty bad wrap, but actually has a lot going for it. There are some very strange design decisions, but the kind of nautical deisel-punk styling and all the details are just fantastic. So I’m chopping it up into bits and will try to do most of the detail work on this Crawler with Taurox parts to unify things.






Most everything is roughly tacked in place, and I’m afraid I need to redo the assault ramp because its looking a bit crooked. I’m still not sure how I will build out the top of the crawler (I need to build the assault cannons with enough clearance to make sense, without making the whole thing way too tall) and am debating making the top curved or sticking with angles. I also have an extra set of Taurox tracks and may do 6 total tracks; not sure yet on their arrangement. I do like the double wide sand crawler look. One question will be side hatches in front of or behind the guns. Behind makes so much more sense, but I have a feeling in front may look better. Obviously there’ still a lot do but I’m pretty happy so far! Just hope I keep the momentum up …

Damn! You just keep going from strength to strength, the direction and thought you put into every model is inspiring.

I agree with your assessment on the door placement, in front of the sponsons would look the best, though be completely impractical, but the what isn't in 40k?

Keep it up!

Cool vehicle. I'd vote for doubling the tracks, IMHO at the moment when viewed from the front the tracks look too narrow for the mass of the vehicle. Also, doors behind guns.

It's wonderful. Definitely think it needs more treads, although I'd say just one more pair, so that they are in a line. Perhaps 4 inner, 2 outer spread moving down the vehicle.

The hatch at the back of the Chimera counts as is brilliant too.

I love that you love Lynch's Dune. A train wreck of a movie that does severe injustice to the book, but great visuals.

Also the hatches definitely look better behind, I think if you lower the sponsons to be in line with the hatch it might tie in better. Although I think it's looking good as is.

If you are keen on putting the Taurox hatches to the front you could always put the regular land raider hatches behind the guns. More detail, maybe maintenance/ammo loading hatches but could also be practical escape hatches.

That looks damn good on with da Landship!

Both vehicles are coming along great, excellent choice of style and nice execution

Absolutely approve your sources too, nice aesthetics there!

As for the track arrangement, I'd go with three on each side, and maybe even one more, with a double-width for the rear assembly, if you can get a hold of a fourth set. And a curved top, too, to max out the deco look.

Cool!! I like the styling ideas a lot. ANd abig thumbs up for the Dune refs!

If you're looking for more inspiration, have a browse-through here.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/01/category-auto-concept-cars.html
That site is filled with the weird & wonderful.

And in general I agree with my comatriots, you should really try to widen the tracks. It will go a logn wat to convey the size and mass of the vehicle. Wider tracks mean less surface pressure. Right now that thing would just sink into any ground it rolls upon.

If you manage to give the entire thing the tauros' aesthetics, it would be amazing.

I'm feeling contrarian, so I say have the entire thing balance on one tiny wheel like a freight train on a unicycle. "Because of this thing about antigravity and inertia cancellation blah blah technobabble blah blah."

Looking great so far. I really like the rounded bulkiness of the crawler.

Thanks! The Lynch Dune certainly is an acquired taste but despite all it's flaws it's still a favorite of mine. I saw it when I was 14 and it just blew my mind wide open. Such amazing art direction and design. And there really are some amazing vehicles on Dark Roasted blend, thanks!

Working out the track arrangement is definitely going to be key; I'm leaning towards two double tracks at the front and rear but that may leave too much open space in the middle. The simplest solution is ditching the tracks and making it another hover vehicle! But I've got two sets of taurox tracks so I'm going to try to make them work.

In the meantime I've built an extension for the top of the hull. I was tempted to go the easy route and make it boxy, but instead built a curved structure using a plastic spoon divided into four quarters, and then built out with struts traced from the shapes of the spoon sections:

(there you can also see some extremely rough track tests)

I then wrapped very thin plastic card over the top. This was quite fiddly and didn't end up perfect, but with some putty and lots of sanding I think it will look great, especially when hidden behind bits and rivets!

i really like the staggered tracks on the front i think if yo uflipt it for the back onesaswell it would look cool

Reminds me of an old steam lorry (link 1, link 2, link 3). Perhaps some kind of engine unit with wheels/treads at the back as with the vehicle in the link 3 might work? You could use the double front tracks and it would turn from the rear axle, like forklift truck.

Spoons for the curved plastic top? Brilliant touch, and stored for future use, for sure.

I'd still think the three track line (with a double width set in the third line at the back) might work, two doubles - front and back - will not look bad at all either!

Coming along well!

Love all of this.
Subbed

Thanks guys! Plastic spoons are very useful! I used one of them to make the curved cockpit area of my Storm-raven stand-in. But I'm afraid I'm setting aside the land crawler for now.

I signed up for Adepticon! I haven't played WH40k in many years and editions, but would love to see the household in action, and thought it could be fun. I'm not ready for the competitive scene so signed up for the 40k friendly. This means that now I need to put together a 1,500 pt army by March. I was surprised to find out that if I were to finish everything i've already started I'd have easily over 2,000pts, and it will actually be hard to fit all of my favorite models into a single army. So now I need to focus on finishing things ...

First off, I've turned my attention to the Indentured Astartes. If I want to include my dread knight stand-in (which I most certainly do), I need some Grey Knight stand-ins (thanks to the splitting of Inquisition and GK codices after I started this project), so I'm happy I was already mostly done with these guys. I've switched out a few heads and gone over them with green stuff and a final pass of rivets and extra details. And while I was at it I threw in a fancy servo-skull, encased in a multi-sensor dome.






Next up I will probably work on finishing the Navigator in the Dreadknight suit. The big question is if I bring the Land Crawler or the Drop Ship. I won't have points for both and am leaning towards the dropship — it has lots of problems but I've already spent so much time on it and I think it may make more of an impact, and fit the theme of the army better (space-bound and all), even if the land-crawler may be a better fit aesthetically. Also the dropship would be a bit cheaper and allow me to include more henchmen and fun things. In any case I think it will be satisfying to finish, paint, and base more models, and having Adpeticon as a goal will help me stay on track and not get so distracted.

I especially love Space Jesus -- the one with the iron halo and power axe.

 SisterSydney wrote:
I especially love Space Jesus -- the one with the iron halo and power axe.

I SHALL WELEASE BWIAN!

Thanks. "Space jesus" is my favorite as well. His head is from the empire archer set and is really well sculpted. I'm also pretty sure Grag used the same head on his amazing Pontifex, but without the cap.

I can't stop making servo-skull things! I threw together another globe-based drone last night, and I'm very happy with it (shown here with a Beacon priest because I like how this sphere motif is working out).




It wasn't until this morning that I realized I inadvertently created a grimdark version of the new adorable soccer ball droid form the Star Wars trailer.

Well, there are also the Evil floating ball droids from the prequels (which got CGI'd into the original Star Wars as well).

I've been busy with work but finally have an update.

First off, I've added hair to one of female henchmen. It was pretty fiddly but I'm happy with the result. Now as soon as I scrub the olive oil off of the greenstuff I can prime the terminators, beacon priest, 2 servo-baubles, and the 2 henchwomen.



But I've mostly been working on the Navigator in the Void Knight suit. I finally decided on an optics set up and built that as well as adding lots of details everywhere. I've also turned the cannon into a regular gun instead of a flamer — that was mostly a concession to game-play, and now that pyscannons are worth using, I'm back to my original conception of the gun. Some type of energy cannon seems much more suited for void-combat than a giant flamer anyway. Anyway, I'm almost done! Next up I will add some chunky fingers on the manipulator arm, extra gubbins on the cannon (including a big power cable), random details, lots of rivets, and I think a magnetized shoulder cannon on the manipulator arm side. I would also build a sensor-pod type thing that can replace the shoulder gun on the magnet mount when I only want one gun.

More really awesome work since the last time I read through the thread

Does the walker have a giant .... knife-thing? Ouch.

Very cool as usual.

Thanks! Yes, that's a giant power-bayonet.

Great model, mate! The complete blog is such a great source of inspiration! Thanks for sharing this awesome stuff