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Well, finally started getting some time to get back on this project. A Samurai themed Space Marine and Grey Knight Army.
Rhino WIP. The white area in the front sides will have Kanji showing the Vehicles name. The Kanji on the Rhino hatch is the symbol for Katana (sword) and Emperor. One flag is symboled "Emperor and Protect" and the other says "Faith and Rock". The flags will be removable to show Hull Points lost durring the game.
Question on the Knight...Each Knight has a unique Kanji character on the knee, right shoulder, and banner. Should I redo the right shoulder in white to match the vehicles, or keep them red?





A very WIP Dreadnought. I plan to magnetise the arms. Flags also used to show HPs.



As always, C&C is appreciated.

http://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?products_id=2324

useful?

Great idea. I really like what I see so far.
In answer to your question, I like the idea of a white shoulder pad with kanji on it. This will provide a nice contrast.
The banners are a great idea. As individual samurai and bushi would often carry their own heraldry into battle, this could provide even more contrast and variety by giving different units different colored banners. Just a thought.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing your progress on this army.

Thanks for the link. For now I'm using the
kromlech heads, packs, and flags for my marine models. I did get 2 sets of Ninja from Perry though...They will be my Death Cult Assassins.
The vehicle banners (nobori) I'm handcrafting from very thin plasticard and 1/16th rod sections.

Interesting…. Keep up the work !!!! and don’t forget to post more pictures.

In an old white dwarf, (I think 299) there was a Samurai themed space marine army, if you found the article you might be able to use some of the ideas.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's also in How to paint space marines.

An update. Got more done on the Rhino and got pretty far on a Razorback (each vehicle can swap out parts to be either a Rhino or a Razor). Also got a Land Raider partially built and primed. The sponsons and doors will be magnetized to swap out between types.
The Rhino. Blended in some red-orange and highlighted with the old Blazing Orange.
The Kanji on the front are the symbols for Katana (sword) and Emperor. The side characters are "Armor" and the number "6." Tank#6.




The 2nd vehicle in Razorback gear (the guns are not mounted yet). I had some bits from the Wargames Factory Samurai kit; the Katanas on the front and the doors and the little fan on the front.



More to follow and as always, C&C appreciated.

I think you probably want to redo the Kanji.

That looks nothing like 刀 (katana) and more like the symbol for pi.

皇 is only used in compounds, with the specific one you'll be going for being 皇帝 (koutei, emperor.) You could try 帝, but that's specifically the Japanese Emperor.

And 甲六 doesn't mean Tank 6, it's the name of a character in Princess Mononoke and a river in Nagano/Yamagata prectures. 機甲 is tank, so you'd want 機甲六番 for a better approximation of tank 6. But I'm having difficulty finding information on the actual numbering schemes for Japanese tanks, and I suspect they just write the number rather than writing tank every time. I mean, it's not like it's hard to see that it's a tank.

Thanks. I'm pretty new to the writing style and am using a translator to find rough translations of what I'm trying to write. I see what you mean by the pi-katana character...I need to clip off the left end of the top line and flatten the hook. The symbol I used for tank was the character that came up for armor. As you can see, their is limited space to get anything clearly written on the vehicle (you should see me trying to put a character on a marines kneepad...yikes!!!).
The numbers I found in another translation as the old numbers 1-10. I know today the Japanese use western numbers...but I'm trying to avoid those.
Thanks again for pointing these out. Ultimately, I'm trying to get specific characters that have a 40K theme, but nothing random that may accidently convey an insult or porno to someone who actually knows the language.
Of course this wouldn't be a problem if I knew someone local who could write Japanese...doh.

dkellyj wrote:
Of course this wouldn't be a problem if I knew someone local who could write Japanese...doh.

Windows IME has true-type Japanese fonts that, combined with printable transfer paper, could save you a lot of headaches.

I figured that might be the case.

刀 is written in two strokes, first across the top curving down on the right and then the second stroke curving slightly right.

If you're wanting a single character for Emperor, you'll want to use 帝 (mikado). It's specifically the Japanese Emperor, but probably not unreasonable to assume that the 40K Emperor would take on the same titles.

As for the numbers, both are used. When writing left to right generally the western characters, while when writing top to bottom the kanji are used exclusively. I'd drop the armour character and just write 六, as you don't really need to write tank on a tank. Alternatives would be 六番 and 第六, which both mean "number 6", although I'm not sure if there are differences in connotations.

EDIT: I'd also reverse the characters on the top hatch, as there's no real Japanese way I can think of to say "Swords of the Emperor" as opposed to "The Emperor's Swords". So you'd be better off with 帝(の)刀 rather than 刀帝. The の indicates ownership, and is the thing before owns the thing after it. If you're only writing Kanji you can leave it out, but its presence is implied.

Thanks again. I like the idea of using just the numbers on the sides. Allows for a larger symbol while not crowding the area where it will be placed, but keeps with the theme.

I think that'd be the way to go. I'd just stay away from using 四 (shi/yon, four) due to a bit of superstition. Specifically the pronunciation shi is the same as the pronunciation for death, and I suspect painting it on your tank would be considered inviting it rather than offering it.

LOL...the way my dice roll i may as well rename my Army The Army of 'four.'

Ok then, Thanks to some C&C from Chrysis I've done some scraping and repainting, and a new design for the banners (paper instead of trying to do a waterslide decal over melted plastic) and some hand-made waterslide decals.
Rhino:


Rhino banners. As it works out the vehicles have 3 Hull Points...so as each HP is lost I remove 1 banner. The 3rd HP kils the vehicle.


New banners (yes, the bottom right has only 3 mounting points along the side...it was an initial test befor going to 4 for looks and strength). The decorations are Chysathemum, Mount Fuji, Koi, Tiger, and Cherry Tree. Each member of a specific squad will have matching symbology as squad markings to go along with each vehicle.

As always C&C is welcome.

Pretty banners, I like it. nice touch with the built-in counting system also!

That's looking much nicer and tidier now. Banners look good too. Nice idea using them for Hull Points.

Hahaha, Kelly, I can't believe you're making a Samurai Grey Knight army, too! That is so funny.

Your's looks great! I really, really like the banners, might have to steal some ideas!

I will paint mine different colors as I was actually going to go with a really similar paint scheme.

Great work though, this is awesome. I look forward to facing off when both ours are done in a Samurai Showdown!

Chrysis wrote:


皇 is only used in compounds, with the specific one you'll be going for being 皇帝 (koutei, emperor.) You could try 帝, but that's specifically the Japanese Emperor.

koutei is almost never used when referring to the Japanese Emperor. Instead, tenno- 天皇 is used almost exclusively.

OP, if you want to put something interesting and true to fluff on your tanks that will display their reverence for the Emperor, you can try 天皇陛下萬歳 (basically translates to "For the Emperor!")

Which is, admittedly, really hard to freehand.

Also, 帝の刀 doesn't make any sense... の is almost never placed in proper names like this. They would come up with a way to make it all kanji, most likely a three or four kanji word. I'm trying to think of something that would be appropriate... there are any number of ultra-right wing nationalist groups in Japan that you could draw inspiration from as they still write in the old Imperial style and have weird names having to do with the Emperor... I would not advise you to name your army after any of them, however. See this wikipedia article for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyoku_dantai

Actually, 皇刀 read as ko-to- could work... people would understand what you were going for... or, maybe 帝刀 teito- (roughly translating to Imperial Swords) would be better. Or perhaps 帝剣 teiken (also meaning Imperial Swords) would be better. (Oddly enough, 帝拳, translating directly to "Imperial Fist" totally makes sense in Japanese)

Come to think of it, I think you are best using 帝 (Imperial) rather than 皇 (Emperor). It gets the same point across and makes more sense. I think 帝刀 is probably the best way to write what you have in mind.

Practice writing it on paper a lot before you paint it on your tanks!

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Also, strictly speaking, you were correct in writing it as 刀帝 at first, as horizontal writing was also done from right to left prior to the war. (An example is the expression 必勝 which was written 勝必 during the war)

Hey Reece, great minds think alike. I've been thinking of doing a regular Codex Chapter in the same theme (then I could use the vehicles for both armies). My daughter would then get my purple marines because she wants to start playing too (can't wait for her to win so we can laugh at the poor schmuck who got beat by an 8 year old girl).
Xeno-Maniac, thanks for the further tips. I already sealed the model though so I will end up keeping things the way they stand. For those that can read Kanji they should be able to see what I'm doing without making random "Kanji-ish" markings that may end up actually spelling out an insult.
For those who can't read Kanji, they would see the characters as being very thematic with the army itself...so it works either way.
As for the 4 character sayings...I've been considering that for the large blank spots on the top of my Land Raiders.
Thanks again for the C&C.

Hey nice to see your work, I'm also doing a samurai army. I got to say your paint job's nice and crisp. I'll definitely be watching how this progresses. GL man.

Was the idea for this army perhaps born in a painting thread on /tg/? I remember discussing this with someone there.

there is a custom chapter on /tg/ called the Rising Sons.
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Rising_Sons
however their livery is quite different:

The idea came to me in the hotel room at a tourny i went to in 2011. We were watching "Ninja warrior" on a local channel and talking about putting together a GK army...but that I didn't want to have ANOTHER shade of grey army on the table. The idea of a samurai based army was staring at us from the TV set.
Spent about 8 months working out a list, buying models, planning the conversions, experimenting with color schemes, and finally getting down to building the actual army.
Between work and 3 kids (2 in elementary school...lots of time spent going over homework too) its going slower than I want, but getting their.

No Space-Marine type Army is ever complete without the Land Raider. In this case a Redeemer. I magnetized this one so I could have a variety of options.
Still a WIP and I'm not too keen on the job I did with the blending and highlighting.
C&C is, as usual, appreciated and desired.
Side view.


Front view


3/4 view


Top


Flamestorm Cannon. I did the heat effect by painting the entire end section Bolgun metal. The a Black wash to tone it down. A drybrush of the old Tin Bitz color from the front to about 2/3 back. Another heavier drybrush of black covering the front completely and to about 1/3 back. Picked out details with Boltgun Metal.


Rear view, Only 2 flags despite 4HPs. I've been thinking of filing off the detail between the sets of exaust stacks and adding a third banner.


Magnetization.
Each side opening has a large magnet glued into it. I plated the inside of the opening with a strip of card stock. This gave enough depth that the magnet does not interfear with the placement of the Sponsons. The doors and Sponsons have a 3/4"x3/4" piece of sheet metal glued to the inner side. This also lets me get away with not having to worry about polarity issues in the future. The Frag Launchers were done with a 1/2 in magnet glued to the underside of the tread and another glued to the underside of the Launcher bit (polarity is important in this case). I went with 2 magnets due to the thickness of the plastic used for the tread. Everything holds tight. The glue I used for the magnets and sheet metal is a product from your home improvement store (Home Despot, Lowes, etc) called "Liquid Nails." It is construction grade adhesive, comes in a good size tube for only a few dollars, is really thick so it stays exactly where you put it (and you don't need alot), and holds far better that GS or CA.

Hey mate,
really like the idea of your army and how its progressing.
I was wondering what your HQ is, could i recommend a conversion of Kor'sarro Khan as a brotherhood champion or a Crowe replacement.
Keep up the good work.

Land Raider is finished. Waiting for a new batch of heads to get back to work on guys.
Front

Rear

Side


Flamestorm and door closeup

Quarter view

Melta Gunner. I'm not to happy with the OSL from the eyes...kinda makes him look like an Ork in this shot.

Great stuff. This is a really neat idea for an army and im glad you've pulled it off.

These are some bits I've had in a bag for quite some time...just waiting to assemble. A kitbashed Marneus Calgar in Power Armor.
I'll probably go with Tokugawa Ieyasu for a name however...keeping with the theme. Waiting for the heads to get in the mail so I can finish him...although I think replacing the sword with a hero-scale Katana would be a better touch.
You can also just see the hole I drilled into the top of the back pack so I can mount his Sashimono (banner).
Front in full sunlight:

Front in shade:

Back in sunlight:

Back in shade:


C&C always appreciated.

A Lightning Claw Terminator WIP. Couldn't really fit an aftermarkey themed head in their so I left them pretty much stock. The pics may be bad quality...my camera broke and She Who Must Be Obeyed has a "new" cell phone with worse pic quality than the old one.
(EDIT) Used her old phone as a stand-alone camera with better results. New pics attahed (and now She is POed at Apple...thinking the hype meant better quality).





So, other than needing a new camera (friday is payday) C&C always desired.