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Okay, here goes; apologies for shanghai-ing your blog mate

Only packs I had were BA ones, so needed iconography removed and section trimmed out:


Here you can see it alongside the wings:


GS with a higher than normal amount of vaseline was moulded in and pressed to fit:




The imperfections in the metal are really apparent from this; having loving smoothed the gs with newly-acquired paint-shapers, it's now all bumpy from being impressed:


For casting purposes, they are now separate. Yes, this makes for seriously chunky jump packs but, hey, this is grimdark, and the sanguinary guard ones are hardly more sensible! C&C folks?

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Hmm... pictures not loading...

[edit] fixed

They seem pretty massive, any chance of a pic on-marine?
May be better if just the wings got used, rather then the swirly carapace thingy.

Actually I was thinking that you'd just mount the lower half of the engines into the wings, as if the rest of the jump packs were being hidden by the wing structure... that would keep them close to the body at least.



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Dang it graven... now I need to go find a copy of those wings... you got me thinking of all kinds of things. There goes my productivity for the day. I'm thinking that it might work better to deconstruct a set of Chapterhouse's pre-herasy packs as they're round in cross-section already. Then hollow out the wings to accomodate the barrel-shaped jets *or* trim the jets to about 3/4 round and mount in the deep "shoulders" of the wings. If the wings are still too bulky, cut off the actual "wings" and just mount the elytra with the jets... that would harken back to an idea Whalemusic had months ago...

(apologies for the stream of consciousness)

Waiting for gs to cure...

I agree, they're vast, but no more so than Sanguinary wings. To remove the swirly-ness would be complex and messy, though certainly doable with patience and a jeweller's saw; I'd rather leave that option open to Gitsplitta. Still, your point is valid, and much appreciated! A further idea is to shift the pack section so it's more vertical, thereby making it protrude less, though that could be tricky.

Another possible source for wings might be:

Fairly sure I've got one somewhere...


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Oh - you don't need to find a copy of the wings. I'll just send you mine. I don't plan on making a army any time soon.

Might be worth making a copy ala resin, cutting the wings off, and trying to put em on the Sang Guard packs in lieu of the angel wings*. Ive had good luck with 1 piece molding so far, I'll have a go at some more things and move on to 2 piece. I can shoot you the site and recommended products for it git.

*note: Dibs on the extra wings

Further stream of consciousness: you absolutely could mount the bottom half of a jet pack flush to them. This I also can provide (be filthy angels though).


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I second the dibs!

Hmmm... problem with my elytra idea is that it'll look like a chaos jump pack. Hmmm... I wonder if you could mount the understructure of a chaos pack to it with less angle contrast. It wouldn't be so obvious that it was chaos as much would be hidden beneath the wing structure... but it might work. The chaos packs are very insect looking to begin with.

Heretic! No, wait, that's what everyone else thinks of them...

Let me clarify... I'm talking about the Chaos Lord jump pack...



Further Edit... Chaos Raptor jump pack... I know it's risky fluff-wise, but with a little trimming of that lower ledge on the wings, I bet they would fit in very well.


Actually, the more I look at them, the more I'm convinced that if you were going to develop a two engine jump pack rather than a single engine as Blackhand is doing, the raptor pack would be the place to start. They just... fit. I could definitely see these as hero's packs... hold overs from ages past. Still using the ancient constructs that existed from ages past.

BLACKHAND wrote:So in between frantically submitting an online paper I realized was due today and putting my 2 year old to bed I had a go at the insectoid mantis head...and ended up with a fly rather than a mantis



I thin the problem was trying to keep the grill rather than go full tilt and making the wedge shaped face that a mantis has, once the GS dries I am going to go over the whole thing with extra GS and try and save it.

here is the side on shot of the "guyver" helm I promised days ago it show s the silhouette that I am looking for.




And just because no update is complete without a creepy video check out this page (scroll down about half way down) this is probably the weirdest thing I have seen all week

http://www.animalwebguide.com/Praying-Mantis.htm


C&C is welcome as always

Cheers

BLACKHAND

that fly head is amazing!! i love it sooooooooooooooooooooooo much!


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those wings are awesome too!

@ Blackhand - love the head spike!

Here's an alternate set of wings, from the Rackham Maeri fig, side by side with that chopped up jump pack:


My temptation would be cut in half and mount them on the jets. What does the assembled wisdom of Dakka think?

nice work on your chapter , paticularly like the chainsaws and custom helmets pure genius, the chain link shoulder pad is a good idea as well . btw almost forgot all about the mantis chapter , that takes me back to my youth :-)

I think those would work best split in half and mounted to the Sang Guard packs.

Hey graven, I just ordered like... 5 of the sang gd packs for Blackhand, don't think he'd mind too much if I split one off & sent it to you for experimental purposes.

No worries , the more minds working on this the better

hAhahah. this is becoming even more awesome!

Anyone thought of these?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Conversion-Bitz-Dragonfly-Wings-10-Warhammer-/250579119019?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a57adebab

I've seen them, a little butterfly-like for me..I wass thinking of something longer, leaner and with more angular ends..just me though!

Think dragonfly wings...

have you thought of elsewhere where other conversions could be made, such as dreds or tanks?

and this may be hard to do but do you have (either earlier in this thread or in person) of the full army so far!

Do I have what of the full army?

a picture

sorry

As far as the re-painted army is concerned, there is hardly anything to photograph. 4 sternguard & 2 dreads is it. If you want to see my functional army, look at my battle report a few pages back.

Those Rackham wings might work, but I think they need to be a bit chunkier than they are ATM.

OK guys, need some fluff advice... precipitated by Ice asking me for a name for the guy I'm doing for him.


I've always named my marines with Romanized names as that was the universal style when I began playing. Goto however, has made the MW's a Japanese oriented chapter. I must admit, a preying mantis is very Asian in it's feel. Question is... where to go. I do not feel the least bit bound by Goto, however... I think the Asian thing is a good fit, so how to I transition & explain it?

Here are my thoughts: The Mantis Warrior homeworld, like our own world is not populated by a single uniform race of humans, but many races, and many hybrids thereof. The two largest populations are Caucasians who traditionally follow a "Romanized" martial structure, and Asians who follow a code of Bushido. The followers of each philosophy were not strictly limited by race, but did tend to fall along those lines simply due to tradition and exposure. Before the Badab war, Roman tradition dominated the Mantis Warriors and even brothers of Asian decent tended to adopt Roman names within the chapter. With the disgrace of the Badab War and the execution of the Roman chapter master... the Bushido wing of the chapter gained prominence, and now members are much more likely to retain their Asian names instead of adopting a Roman one.

This allows me to exercise a little discretion in naming while at least giving a nod to the written stories.

After the B-war, didnt the traitor-turned-untraitor chapters loose their homeworlds (had to give em up)? Sounds like a totally reasonable transition point to me.

Agreed, it could be that upon their defeat in the rebellion many of the mantis warriors became deeply spiritual and reflective. To represent this many brethren changed the names in recognition of their spiritual rebirth.

Stolen from the wiki:
The Badab War

The Mantis Legion was one of the three Chapters of Space Marines that joined the Astral Claws Space Marines in rebelling against the Imperium during the Badab Uprising. However they later rejoined the Imperial forces and joined the attack on the Traitor Huron Blackheart and the Astral Claws. At the end of the rebellion, the Mantis Warriors were granted the Emperor's forgiveness for their rebellion, and as their penance they were required to undertake a hundred-year Crusade against all of the Imperium's enemies without the possibility of recruiting new members of the Chapter until the penance was completed. The Mantis Legion's homeworld was forfeited to the Loyalist Space Sharks.

So the older marines with the roman names could be the vets from the old homeworld. The new Asian names could be from where ever they are getting new recruits. The fluff is almost asking you to change naming schemes.

A friend told me that this was a great thread. And I agree! The Mantis Warriors look fantastic and BLACKHAND's helmets look brilliant.

Keep up the good work Gitsplitta, BLACKHAND and inmygravenimage!

Looking forwards to more updates.

I for one would love to see some new finished minis. I guess I will have to wait patiently! the converted heads look great - are you converting the entire armour or just the head?