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Nice work basing the marines. Always nice to see some dead 'nids.

While I understand your desire to keep the palette restricted, I feel the books blend in too much with the robes. Not sure what a good answer would be though. The execution on them is fine, it’s just hard to stand out when so close to the base colors.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Looks awesome, perhaps go for a purple for the books, that way they will stand out from the robes, but still keep the colour palette fairly limited.

Cheers for the feedback, everyone!

@ Lum: Aw, man, that is high praise indeed! Danke vielmals!

@ youwashock: Haha, cheers, mate! I am so glad the "revolver" impression works as intended -- I was really careful not to give him a single "normal" weapon, so you'd get the impression that his weapons were different in nature

@ Nevelon & cheiflibrarian: I agree completely, the books needed to change! Under normal circumstances, purple would indeed have been an excellent suggestion -- but then my plan is too keep the palette focused on the colours and hues appearing in the series of Wayne England illustrations that have inspired the project so far:



Now I am pretty sure that I won't be able to match this requirement 100% of the time, but even then, purple seemed a bit too strong a colour to introduce into the mix. So in the end, I went with a more neutral tone and repainted the books grey -- not an exciting choice, certainly, but it keeps the palette suitably narrow. Take a look:









I am not sure whether or not to repaint the cane in the same colour -- it would make for a tigther look, probably, but I also think the wood cane makes him look a bit more sophisticated, which I like

I've also made an eleventh-hour addition when I realised that there was an odd little gap at his belt that ended up looking slightly distracting, so I carefully added some additional keys to his belt.

As always, let me know what you think!

I think the grey looks good. If you are still concerned with them blending in you could go a shade or so lighter in some spots, but it works either way.

I second (third?) the grey, as you are drawn in rather than blown away by too many colours.

Just my two cents.

I think it is a really great translation into mini if that makes any sense

Probably a bit too late to really change anything, but if you want the books to stand out just a wee bit more but keep the palette reserved, you could do an in between of the blue of the robes and the red-brown of the cane. This would also help to tie the colour of the cane into the rest of the model.

However, I think it already looks great, so there's no real need to follow this suggestion.

Cheers, guys!

@ tarar2d2: The thing I actually didn't realise until I repainted the books was how much visual real estate they take up, so I think the neutral grey may actually be the best compromise. Otherwise, there would suddenly be this massive part of the model in a different colour. Does that make sense?!

So anyway, Orlant was only missing a base really, so I whipped something up yesterday: I used a piece from one of the 40k basing kits, mostly for the pretty cool relief:



The piece was cut down to fit a round base, the gaps were filled with GS. I also liberally stippled on Liquid GS for added texture and to counteract the very soft and artificial looking quality of the stock piece. Ironically enough, most of the relief actually ended up being covered by Orlant:



Oh well, if nothing else, it still provides some texture and structure, making the base look more like a part of some long-deserted Imperial archive.

So here's the finished model:

=][=

Redactor Tiberias Orlant
Ordo Scriptorum



A long serving member of the Ordo Scriptorum Terra, Inquisitor Orlant has discovered many ancient documents and hidden truths during his long years of trawling the bibliocathedra and sunken data vaults of Holy Terra. Moreover, his rank as a Redactor of the Ordo means that not only does he endeavour to find records from the Imperium's past, but he also gets to decide which truths are revealed to the masses and which are suppressed with every tool at the Holy Ordos' disposal.

Orlant has recently embarked upon a mission known only to himself, making his way to the Velsen Sector, situated far away from the Throneworld in the Ultima Segmentum. His colleagues consider this most recent endeavour a fool's errand at best, yet Orlant is not known as a soul given to flights of fancy -- what could he have discovered in the vaults of Terra to inspire his latest investigation?









I did end up making one last colour adjustment after all, repainting the wax of the purity seal in a slightly colder tone than before. It's really a small detail, but it ties back to Orlant's skin tone (see above) and it also doesn't use up much visual estate, so I think it's an improvement.

As you can see, I have decided to add two books to Orlant's base:



-- I wanted to hint at the fact that he probably spends most of his work scouring ancient vaults and sunken archives for lost data and hidden secrets. It's an idea I want to explore with the rest of the warband, albeit in slightly different ways. We'll see...

I also found out, by sheer coincidence, that Orlant has a nice kind of "Red Oni, Blue Oni" thing going with Inquisitor Arslan. Take a look:



In closing, here's a comparison shot putting Wayne England's illustration that inspired the model and Orlant himself next to each other:



Maybe not a perfect match, but I am reasonably happy with the resemblance, to tell you the truth.

As always, let me know what you think!

A fine homage.

Now you need to make an Inquisitor who wears black and yellow.

You say not a perfect match but I'm struggling to find any differences. He looks awesome.

Oh man, so many things going on here! Inquisitor Nabreus Arslan warband came out great, and it is nice to see a project's end when you followed it since the beginning! Also the Road Crew band is one of my favourites, for the characters of models and the paint scheme. Nice their little new toy! But maybe my fav so far is Redactor Tiberias Orlant, as i love non-warrior models, and he has that perfect grim feeling and the gloss black armour is perfect. I get your point about the books, have you considered a kind of skin.like colour?

Cheers for the feedback, guys!

@ youwashock: Haha, Sentai Inquisitors FTW!

@ cheiflibrarian: Thanknks, mate! That is very nice of you to say!

@: b-tone: Yeah, I may take years, occasionally, but I always get there in the end! As for the books, it turned out the main problem was that they are really big, so going with a brighter colour would have dominated the model. Which is why grey seems like a pretty sensible choice, in hindsight. Skin-coloured books would add another pretty creepy angle, though, so maybe it's something I can do on one of the other members of the retinue...


So working with Wayne England's excellent artwork for reference once again actually led to me frantically trawling the internet for more artwork of his from around the same time. Unfortunately, his work seems to be much less well documented than, say, John Blanche's, and many images are only available via that abominable hellpit called Pinterest It's also really hard to find out where many of those illustrations first appeared, particularly the ones mainly coloured in turquoise hues -- they could be from the Dark Heresy books, but I have no way to check. Can anyone corroborate that theory?

I also kept looking back at one piece of art in particular. This one:



It seems to portray an underhive ganger of some sort, and I really like the style of the character. So much so, in fact, that I started to create another conversion based on a Wayne England illustration earlier today:



Still a bit rough around the edges, certainly, but I think the resemblance should already be obvious. I think I'll be adding this character as a bureaucultist, a member of a clan of former Administratum scribes gone feral (and tribal) when their particular vault/bibliocathedra was sealed off from the world or forgotten by the Imperium of Man.

As always, let me know what you think!

Awesome stuff as always dude

Cheers, mate!

Just to give credit where credit is due, the Bureaucultist idea wasn't really mine, originally, but rather came from the excellent fan-made Dark Magenta supplement on Holy Terra as an adventurescape. I really love the concept, though: There's something incredibly grimdark about the thought of clerks and librarians going feral after their archives and bibliocathedra have been sealed off, forming gangs and fighting for their respective "section" of the archive, maybe for resources like electricity, memory units, clean paper or dry shelf space).

Anyway, after another round of tweaks and the addition of more messy GS fur, I think I can call the Bureaucultist ganger finished:





Here's a picture with Redactor Orlant for comparison. It also shows you the latest model in all its different colours, warts and all



As always, let me know what you think!

Very much has a savage element to him. Looking good so far.

Great work on Arslan's retinue, they look stunning, plus they really feel like the more uncompromising, unforgiving agents of the Inquisition you made them to be. Also nice work on Inquisitor Orlant. Seing him with inquisitor Arslan, they form an interesting duo, the intensity and ruthlessness of Arslan (mirrored on his red robes and burning sword) contrasting with the cold calculativeness of Orlant mirrored in his blue. They almost feel like Hellboy and Abe Sapien translated as Inquisitors, if that makes any sense
On a sidenote, for Orlant, although you have called him finished, have you considered a very light, almost white, grey for the covers of the books? One so light that it might make the pages inside look dark in comparison. I think it might look good and it could work well with the almost white skull on the breastplate.

Cheers for the feedback, guys!

@ Legio Ultra: Thanks a lot! Happy to hear you like Arslan and crew, as they really came together like a dream...erm, after I'd left them unpainted for years, that is

As for Orlant, the thing about those books is that they are actually pretty huge, and going with a very bright colour for them would introduce a pretty massive element to the model and throw the colour balance a bit out of whack -- which is why, ultimately, I feel that the grey I have on there right now is really the most robust choice, both for the model and the larger warband.


In other news, the bureaucultist ganger is just about finished:







The model was painted to match Redactor Orlant's palette, using a slightly grubbier, dirtier version of the colour scheme, as it were -- and as befits the character:



And of course I couldn't help myself and had to mock up a comparison with the model, the artwork that inspired it, and some tweaked colour settings:



As always, let me know what you think!

Awesome! The side by side really shows off your attention to detail.

Cheers for the feedback, mate! As it happens, I have another side-by-side for you to take a look at -- we'll be getting to that in a second

I am still working on Ordo Scriptorum related models, and my head is on fire with possible ideas, tidbitz of lore and possible narrative arcs. First of all, though, I've made some additional - small - tweaks to the bureaucultist:











Really just minor stuff, like tweaking the glow on the red areas a bit and cleaning up some minor mistakes.

Seeing how I've been taking so much inspiration from PDH's Ordo Scriptorum warband, and given the fact that we agreed ages ago that Peter's Inquisitor Inson had been Redactor Orlant's interrogator at one point, I really couldn't resist trying to build a younger version of Inson. Thanks to direct feedback from PDH, I think I've come up with a pretty cool younger version of his original model. Take a look:



On the left is Peter's original model for Inquisitor Inson, on the right is my take on Inson as an interrogator. Here's a closer look at the conversion:









As always, let me know what you think!

That totally works. Sweet idea. Reminds me of the 3-stage D&D sets that followed the character from novice to veteran.

Cheers, mate! It's good to see that there's one guy who keeps commenting, at least

Thanks a lot, Ynneadwraith! Building different versions of the same character during different moments in their life OR building models to resemble artwork can actually be pretty addictive

So let's look at something slightly different for today:

Last year, fellow hobbyist BubblesMcBub was amazingly generous enough to let me have most of the Death Guard models from the Dark Imperium boxed set, and as a way of paying him back for that great kindness, I promised to convert some models for him. I already sent him a converted Iron Warriors champ late last year (I think...?!), and Bubbles also wanted me to build him an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor.

Now it did take me a while to do this, both because I wanted to come up with something cool, but also because I couldn't quite decide which general approach I wanted to go with: A massive, towering monodominant Inquisitor of the "Suffer Not The Alien To Live!" school of thought? Or a rather more subtle, sneaky and shadowy Inquisitor who is not above using the odd Xenos artifact himself? Both are pretty cool angles, and I realised in the end that the only right way was to actually build both

So here are the - mostly finished - Inquisitors I built for Bubbles:

First up, the hulking monodominant Inquisitor:







Now this guy is actually a refurbished model of sorts: He began his existence as a champion for my old, kitbashed Legio Custodes army, but with official Custodes models now available, he wasn't likely to be used for his intended role anytime soon. I rather liked the kitbash, however, which is why I made some changes to him (adding a different sidearm, backpack and shoulder pad) to make him look even less Space Marine-y. And I think that, after a final round of minor cleanups, he should work as a fine puritan Inquisitor for Bubbles' collection.

The second guy, on the other hand, was built completely from the ground up, and represents the more subdued (and maybe ever so slightly radical) side of the Ordo Xenos. Take a look:







The Inquisitor uses a Genestealer Hybrid body, because I felt the retro-futuristic spaceman vibe of the suit fits the Ordo Xenos rather nicely (it is also heavily reminiscent of the kind of industrial design you see in the Alien films, which is another great match. I gave the Inquisitor an AdMech sword, because its very sleek, modernist look seemed like a good fit. And he's also wielding a Harlequin's kiss, to show how he's definitely not above making use of Xenos artifacts.

So here are both models:



I am pretty sure they would have a lot to discuss, should they meet during their work...

So I think I'll be shipping these off to Bubbles soon, and then their stories will be for him to tell. Until then, as always, let me know what you think!

What can I say. I'm a fan.

Sweet models, both. Love that gun. The GS models slot so well into anything =][= related. The contrast between the two in bearing and gear is great. And when I see hulking, all I can think is, "What are you gonna do, brother, when the Ordo Xenos runs wild over you?"

That's a fantastic pair of Inquisitors! Especially love the head on the radical, but great work all round.

That sneaky inquisitor is something else, realy love that head, are you going to be painting them or are you leaving that for the recipient?

Cheers for the feedback, everyone!

@ cheiflibrarian: I shall be leaving the painting to BubblesMcBub, so he gets to choose the look he wants for the models and has a better chance at making them match their future retinue(s).


Today I have two things I would like to share with you. First up is the mostly finished paintjob for Interrogator Klien Inson:







While the aim was not to perfectly match PDH's paintjob for the older version of Inson, I did take care to take some cues from his model (such as the general dark look, the metallic scales on the cape,...) and go for a similar overall look and feel. Here's a side by side with both PDH's and my treatment of the character:



At the same time, it was also clear that the younger Inson had to match the colour palette of his master, Inquisitor Orlant, to some degree, so I tried to stay within the parameters I had set for myself and use a similar palette:







The other thing I want to show you is a model I am pretty excited about -- and it has also been a bit of a pleasant surprise for myself, because I didn't expect to be able to tackle this particular project quite so soon:

Back when DexterKong and me came up with the Velsen Sector as an asventuredscape, I realised that I wanted a Banking House as one of the political players in the sector. The inspiration for this came from Joe Abercrombie's First Law series (and from his other books set in the same universe), where the banking house of Valint & Balk has a finger in each and every pie, and happens to be one of the most insidious influences present in the entire setting, always playing both sides, so the bank always wins. So I came up with House Mandelholtz, or The Mandelholtz House of Imperial Finance, to quote the full title, Velsen's own banking house. I see them as one of the sector's big movers and shakers, and like any good evil banking house from history's great dark hall of fame, they get to throw around their weight a lot. If you've seen the series Taboo and remember the way the East Indian Company gets protrayed in that series, THAT'S what I want House Mandelholtz to feel like

Anyway, the Mandelholtz board of directors is a shadowy assembly, and very few people in the sector actually know who holds a stake in the house's businesses. Which lends itself rather beautifully to all kinds of Inquisitorial dabblings. But I did want one character to serve as a chairman or speaker of the board for House Mandelholtz, and I realised pretty quickly that I wanted this character to be female. Dexter and me kept exchanging ideas on the matter, and he basically suggested to base the character on a grimdark version of Maggie Smith in her role in Downton Abbey:



Which seemed like a pretty brilliant idea to me. There was only one problem: I kept drawing blanks when it came to figuring out how to actually build a model for her -- especially given the lack of proper female modeling options in GW's catalogue. So the idea went back on the shelf.

However, when the Triumvirate of Ynnead was released, I knew I had my base model for the conversion: Yvraine. But picking up the entire boxed set just to get my hands on the model seemed a bit extreme, even for my standards.

But then fate intervened: Last week, I was given the chance to snap up an Yvraine model from ebay for a pretty okay price (much, much less than a Triumvirate of Ynnead would have cost me, in any case), and when the model arrived on my doorstep, I got to work right away.

Now the problem was that the model was in a really rough condition. Just take a look at the base Yvraine came on, and you can probably guess what I was looking at here:



That's right, the previous owner used LOTS of glue to assemble the model. At the same time, the different parts had been put together really poorly, and mould lines abounded -- but that's what explained the price, obviously. And if nothing else, the model's deplorable condition actually made it easier to start cutting. So I carefully sawed through all the glue and did my best to separate the parts once again. And when I was finished with that part, I got creative. And here's what I have now. Meet the Baroness Mandelholtz:













"Grimdark Maggie Smith" remained my basic design outline, although the character grew a bit more grotesque during the conversion process: I wanted to make her look like rejuvenat treatments had really taken her as far as possible, but had also taken their toll on her physiology. I don't even want to add too much to the model anymore, so as not to overclutter her. I think there'll be some subtle cabling here and there, in other to hint at her augmetics. I also want to add one or two syringes/plungers from the Dark Eldar Wracks to her hunched back, although I cannot seem to find the small bag with the bitz in the depths of my bitz repository...



Apart from that, it seems like she would really have personal retainers for all kinds of menial tasks, such as carrying ledgers and petitions -- this seems like such a cool angle for adding some further members of House Mandelholtz.



As always, let me know what you think!

That is pretty fabulous. She looks like she doesn't take to back talk from anybody. Also looks sort of like an extra classy Meg Mucklebones.

Great character, impressive job on her head, if you've put it together like I think you have. Excited to see how this one paints up, lots of details to give life to - ghoulish spine and all

- Salvage

Thanks a lot, guys! To be fair, it might be quite some time before I actually work up the courage to get the Baroness painted

For now, here's a small update: Interrogator Klien Inson, now with his finished base:









When it came to designing his base, I tried to channel the same "abandoned" library look I had already gone with for Inquisitor Orlant. I also experimented with some kitchen tissue paper, trying to create torn pages and parchments, something I would like to take even further on some of the future models for this retinue:



For now, here are Redactor Orlant and his interrogator again, and the beginnings of my Ordo Scriptorum warband so far. Enjoy!





And, as always, let me know what you think!

Awesome group shot. Surprisingly vivid characters given the subdued color scheme. You have those nice punches of red on each model to play off the blues. Looks great.

inspiring and amazing dude, please keep it up

These guys have a ton of character, I like the old woman. Will she get any ranged weapons?