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Ok, I am leaving London for a few days on business/pleasure in New York, this will have a definite impact on my ability to post updates. I have however taken some Greenstuff, some plastic sprues, and my sculpting tools, I am determined to get some arms / legs done. I invariably wake up very early in the morning while in New York, due to the time shift, so I will try and get some sculpting done in the mornings, with any luck I will have some pictures to show you guys when I get back

I could however do with some input from you, I have made a "todo" list of things I want to sculpt, if you can think of anything Steel Legion relevant I am missing please post it!

Female Torso: -
Need to sculpt female torso, add braces & aquila buttons.
After reproducing need to add ammo packs, rebreather.

Male Torso: -
Need to sculpt another male torso, add braces & aquila buttons.
After reproducing need to add ammo packs (3 this time), rebreather.
Also after reproducing create officer variant with lanyard, medals, gorget, etc.

Head: -
Need to hollow the new helmet I sculpted, clean out the inside, and make a loose helmet for diorama / hanging on webbing / belt.
Need to add Googles onto helmet
Need to do seperate Goggles for belt / neck hanging
Need to add gasmask detatched and on webbing / belt
Need to do gasmask lowered from face at neck region (for officers)
Need to do Company Commander heads, with drop sided helms and skull gas masks.

Arms: -
Finish converting all Cadian arms to Steel Legion (glove work mainly)
Make a small press mould to quickly do the Steel Legion lightning emblem on the sleeves.
Look and see if it is possible to use a socket arrangement for gloves and arms, to reduce hand/glove sculpting (possibly magnetised ?).

Legs: -
Need to look at Deathkorps / Elysian legs for possible alternate leg positions.
Need to look at adding any variant postures from Catachan legs.
Reproduce boots, possibly look at a socket arrangement for ease of use.
Need to do longer coat for company commanders .. with fancy edging?

Weapons: -
Do the stock wire folding stuff (check diameter, maybe use etch folding plates to get the bends)
Create a gun without the stock on it ... so can add the folding stock too it.

If you can think of anything I am missing which is steel legion relevant, please post it!

I am in the process of making a one-off SL guy of my own, your blog has been a great inspiration

P.S. The Sergeanty person reminds me of Colonel von Stauffenburg

You could use the new cadian command box set for any new legs you are planning on converting. Also steel legion missile launchers, you know the ones that look like rpg's?
That is if you want missile launchers

Damn the look bitchin. how long to make the prototype piece?

They look great , really doing the Steel Legion justice i think. looks far better than the originals i think, they seem to be too squtty and rubbish for my tastes haha.

As always your project looks very good. You might want to craft a few female faces/heads, unless you want all your guardswomen to wear gasmasks.

Just woken up on the second day of my New York trip, I have a day off today so I am going to visit a friend over in New Jersey, and do a bit of shopping in a local wargaming shop, and head over to an excellent wargaming club called "HQ the Club", over in New Jersey. I have been there before and they are a very nice bunch of guys, with a great club.

I also managed to grab 10mins in the The Compleat Strategist a games store in New York, I bought some of Procreates sculpting putty to give a try, supposedly its less sticky than green stuff, longer working time, and can hold a harder line/edge, we will see! As I have all my tools with me and there is a room to put aside for making / painting your army at HQ the Club, I will make some time to do some sculpting there I think.

Should be an interesting day!

Am I jealous....no. But its not easy. Although my town doesn't even have a hobby shop, at least people don't shoot eachother here.

Ok, I ended up getting a box of Cadian command in Time Warp Comics (NJ), and having a thoroughly enjoyable 6-7 hours sculpting and chatting at HQ the club. They were a great bunch of guys who made me feel very welcome, whilst I was there I managed to get two sets of gloves sculpted and put on the 3rd layer of green stuff on a pair of legs. I tried doing the gloves using ProCreate and it took me a while to become used to the differences but they turned out ok, an important note was the fact I managed to complete the gloves in one go, where normally with Green Stuff I have to do two stages. So certainly so far there appears to be a time saving with some items due to the nature of ProCreate.

Unfortunately I don't have my camera with my to take some pictures of the work done, however I will obviously have a bunch of pictures to show you on Monday, with more stuff added if I get a chance to do some sculpting today. I took along to the HQ my finished steel legion work, and was delighted to find that in real life it got an excellent reception, there is always a concern that people looking at something online can only see the good things that you show them, while in real life they get a good look all over the model. However in this case my work was scrutinized and got a very good response, so I can stop worrying about that now!

On a final note, I would like to thank Joe, Lou, Billy bob, Scott & the rest of the guys for a chance to talk about games and relax in a great environment for a very pleasurable few hours.

His Masters Voice uses ProCreate I believe for most of his sculpting projects to good effect. Would you say it's a more favorable medium for those starting out? Or would some GS experience be beneficial?

It's always fun to check out other shops when you're out and about like that. It's like different side of the hobby everywhere you go!

Yes it is always interesting going shopping when abroad, and there are always fascinating new people to meet!

I would say procreate could indeed save some time for me on simple things like gloves, possibly boots. I would imagine that it would also be beneficial for new sculptors, as it is somewhat simpler than green stuff in most ways. For me however it is a process of unlearning GS habits, so I am not sure personally yet about a change over.

Must. Flogg. Self. For. Feeling. Good. About. Own. Work.

Well, now I at least have another source of inspiration here on dakka.

@ Paul Atreides : I hope you will be inspired, its one of the reasons I am putting so much work into this. I want people to step up and do things I am inspired by!

I finally got some pictures taken last night to show progress: -

New arms, the laspistol arm requires a lightning strike insignia, which to be honest I am trying to find a quicker way to do. I am considering using small circle of thin plasticard, with the lighting strike done in green stuff, or a GS press mould. If you can think of a different method please mention it.



The penultimate stage on the next set of legs is done, only the trim round the edge is left to do. This stage was the addition of folds to the coat to give it some life.




Finally here is a picture of some components just after they were made, as you can see there is still some flash to clean, and the fault in the hand is starting to annoy me, I need to create an additional feed to clean that up. I thought it would be interesting for people to see that no matter what the method of creation there is always cleanup.

Awesome as always. I'm inspired. It may take me awhile but I may have to do something similar to produce my IG army.

You sir know what your doing, it looks great.

Very good work, sir.

I specially like the MP40 stock you've got on your lascarbines. Very nice, fits the Steel Legion very well.

Keep it up!

I'm with grey_death on this one. The lanyard looked cool. Reminded me a lot of the cords that the U.S. infantry wear with their Class As.

I was up in Milton Keynes today, and popped into a Games Workshop store, and left with two sentinels and a Basilisk box. Over the weekend, I had planned to spend some time working on how to make my Basilisk/Medusa/Griffon which is Enclosed/Open, using magnets and I suspect some plasticard!

In a weird twist of fate I also received the next part of my Forgeworld Order today, funnily enough the enclosed Medusa model, fate was obviously taking a hand here and pushing towards working on the Basilisk/etc. Sadly I was once again slightly disappointed as the Medusa components are again deformed, but unlike the Vanaheim pattern shield they are not broken, merely warped. Interestingly the replacement for the Vanaheim pattern shield arrived too, in good condition this time. Now with all the components arrived I am going to enjoy working out how to make it all swappable with magnets.

In a first step towards painting I undercoated some Cadians and my Steel Legion in black primer, I plan to practice to get the colours I want on the Cadians, and when happy start on a test Steel Legion trooper. Its an interesting time branching out from the sculpting into other areas, I am concerned that I might lose focus, but I know that I need to see a finished/painted Steel Legion Trooper soon, to give me some feeling of moving forward.

Some pictures of the new stuff arrived and the undercoated troops tomorrow, bed time now as Mrs Argos calls!

I was going to do something similar for my guard... and by similar I meant put pigiron heads on cadians..... You sir have made my plan look feeble in comparison. Can't wait to see it all come together!


P.S. Your Sculpts better than GW.
Nuff said.

No, my sculpting sucks compared to Gw, however it was a nice compliment and thank you

Ok here are the pictures from last night showing the warped medusa enclosure, now I know that its simply a matter of using a hair dryer or hot water, with careful bending to restore those peices, I have done it a fair few times, but looking at the way they are distorted shows they almost certainly were compressed by stacking with other items, either at the people who produced them (FW cast using other companies around the world depending on the load on their own resources) and sent them to Forgeworld, or by storing them poorly in the FW warehouse before distribution. Both of those reasons can be fixed with simple procedures, either placing the item into a stacking tray that keeps them all seperate, or boxing them at source to ensure they don't compress. Obviously this might cost more, however given the amount of products that Forgeworld have to replace due to these issues, that cost might well be recouped significantly. Anyway rant over, here are the pictures: -





Finally here is a shot of a Cadian & Steel Legion trooper side by side, primed and ready for painting, tonight's post will cover how I determine the colours I will be using, especially as I am basing my colours on the inspirational image that started this whole idea going for me: -



Inspirational artwork, showing the colours I wish to use, tonight we will use some techno wizardy and a small program I wrote to determine the colours to use: -



Your welcome to suggest a paint scheme to achieve the above colours, will be interesting to compare

Stunning work man. I've always been a fan of the Steel Legion, and these conversions really do the artwork and fluff justice!

As for the colourscheme, are you limited in only using GW colours or do you use other brands as well?
Spikyjames did some DKoK with the Steel Legion style colourscheme, they look great and the recipe seams easy enough to pull off right!
Basically, this is how he did the scheme.. Literally quoted from Warseer..

the trenchcoats are bubonic brown with gryphonne sepia wash followed by highlighting with bubonic brown and then mixed with bleached bone for further highlights.

Hope this helps a bit. I'm looking forward to see something painted!

Great casting work. I'm not surprised by your FW experience, it seems most people have a positive one, but I'll be surprised if your replacement part ever arrives based on my experience.

I am happy to use any brand of paint and do so frequently

I wanted to work out which three colours (dark,medium,light) would get me closest to the Inspirational artwork shown above. Now obviously I could guess fairly well, there are few enough colours in the GW range to have a good chance of getting it right. However if one is prepared to use the closest colour from any range of paints, that is quite a bit harder. Well it might have been if I hadn't already spent a good few months programming a tool to do just that, my Space Marine painter. Now I know your thinking how on earth is that going to help finding a colour match ? perhaps Argos has written one for the Imperial Guard ? ... well not yet, I have a few (Chaos marines, Sisters, Terminators, Orks and even Tau) done but not Imperial Guard, although I might do one soon.

The latest beta version of the Space Marine Painter includes a colour matching program to tell you which paints you would need to use to get the colours you want on the model you painter. Now by simply opening the steel legion artwork in Photoshop (or other painting software), I can see the colours as Web-hex colour codes easily enough, and put them straight into the painter program. So first thing is to open the artwork and select three areas for light, dark, and medium shades of the colours I want, I could do more, but for the purposes of this demonstration three is enough: -


A: #bc8c42
B: #ad772d
C: #9b570c

Now I have those colours, I can simply paint some areas on the space marine painter: -



Once that is done, I then select the +++Finalise+++ button to see the closest paints to the colours I have chosen.



Interestingly, there are some colours in other paint ranges which are closer than the GW Paints!

The number under each paint represents a "Colour Distance" between the paint and my ideal colour, derived from a three dimensional colour space, the math to do that is horrendous, however I did all the heavy math lifting for you already (for those interested here is a site with the math - http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?Math.html )

For the lightest shade as we can see Coat d'arms Military Leather Brown (2.13) is the nearest colour, with Iyanden Darksun (2.159) very close behind, but with such little difference I could use either.

For the midrange colour GW Snakebite Leather is the clear winner (2.971)

For the darkest base colour however Foundry Paints Tan (1.79) is much closer than GW Bestial Brown (5.54) and will mean an order being placed on Foundry in the morning

I think I will add a couple of more data points (a very light shade, and very dark one) before finalising the colours, but I can do that tomorrow.

Hopefully this was an interesting example how a painter can use artwork with some online tools to derive a colour scheme for his army.

I am working in Wimbledon tomorrow at a Theater Lighting company, so might not get a chance to add something in the morning.

Wow, I wish I put that much thought into color, might make me a better painter.

It's all about putting effort in, whether it's colour choice, or sculpting or just collecting

Well after a relaxing day with Mrs Argos, and a nice meal out, I got back to working on my Steel Legion this evening. The project is currently branching in numerous directions, first off there is continued sculpting to do, I also need to settle on a paint scheme and test it out a couple of times, and finally as the Armageddon pattern medusa arrived I want to start work on the swappable basilisk / medusa / griffon model I wish to make. As it was already dark by the time I got to do some work, and I like painting during daylight, the decision was between sculpting and making tanks, guess which won!

You guessed right, making tanks any time!

As usual I made the tank sufficiently complex to hold my interest by making the decision to create one vehicle capable of being three different ones, to add some more complexity the same vehicle must be capable of adding any of the options in the rulebook, which means the following: -

Swappable heavy flamer / heavy bolter
Enclosed Crew Compartment (The Armageddon pattern gives me that innately, however I wanted to be able to field my Steel Legion in other conflicts without enclosed cabins too)
Pintle mounted storm bolter / heavy stubber
Hunter Killer Missile
Dozer blade
Extra Armour
Camo netting

Now as any of these might or might not be taken, it was important to be able to add or remove them as required. Lets take a look at possible solutions: -

Swappable heavy flamer / heavy bolter - simple enough, swappable with magnets.
Enclosed Crew Compartment - I had purchased the vanaheim pattern gun shield as the alternate to the armageddon, but I had a flash of inspiration more about this later on
Pintle mounted storm bolter / heavy stubber - simple enough, swappable with magnets, might need to create my own pintle mount and cast it.
Hunter Killer Missile - simple enough, swappable with magnets.
Dozer blade - not looked around the net for this one, but I am assuming someone else must have magnetised one of these somewhere!
Extra Armour - Going to simulate this with track guards I think, held on with magnets again.
Camo netting - not done this before, but sounds interesting and I had seen some things about it in one of the Osprey Panzer modelling series, so some research here
Basilisk gun / Medusa gun / Griffon mortar - Use heavy magnets to be able to add or remove the gun into the gun mount, need to buy them, want 3mm diameter, with 4mm depth, giving a support weight of about 0.4kg, more than sufficient for the task (the deeper the magnet, the stronger normally).

In addition, I wanted the back door to be able to be open or closable, Crewmen to be attachable or removable, and working lights (ok I am just kidding about this one, but wouldn't it be cool!)

So first up, I needed to fix the terrible warping of the resin in the crew compartment, I borrowed Mrs Argos hair dryer and with some careful application of heat, reset the warped panels on all the items I had, some took a couple of times as I tested fit and adjusted, but in the end all was straight and the way it should be. While testing for fit, I carefully removed the Resin feeds, filed the surfaces flat, and looked for faults. The glaring problem I soon found was the corner positions of the cabin had not cast properly and big bubbles underneath the armour plate existed, visible as A & B in the next picture: -



It is however noticeable that the warping has been fixed in the main, I will just have to fill the cavities with greenstuff / greystuff. Next up is a picture of the cabin while being test fitted, during this stage I make sure the components fit well together and think about how I will join them, do they need pinning for instance, where to glue for the best hold, etc. During this stage and while thinking about the model generally I started looking how I was going to swap between the Armageddon Pattern and the Vanaheim pattern. I came to the conclusion with some careful cutting work the top of the Armageddon pattern could be made to look like the Vanaheim pattern, and as I was growing attracted to the cool flooring and walls in the Armageddon pattern, I resolved to get another crew compartment top and cut it back to look like the vanaheim pattern. This would allow me to keep the cool back door, lower compartment with photo-etched floor, and gun fittings for all three variants (I would later live to regret this descision somewhat as it made things much more interesting). Here is the cabin during the dry fit stage: -



To make my plan work I would have to be able to swap the top of the cabin with the open top cut back version, so some solution of connectivity was necessary, the answer obviously was magnetism. I have been a bit favourite of magnets for some time, they enable me to be flexible when making models, and if done right are not noticeable. So I started to think about the locations for magnets and the size of magnets I could use there, I wanted something that would hold the top on reasonably well, but could be removed to swap the gun or change to the vanaheim pattern easily. Here are the locations I decided on marked on the next picture: -



Positions A & B show the larger 1.6mm magnets in use, these give about 0.12kg of pull each and are placed to pull the top part onto the bottom part for a snug fit, Magnets C & D are smaller 1mm magnets and pull the sides of the cabin in to create a tighter fit also, they have a pull of about 0.08kg each. All together they let me hold pick up the cabin by the top and the bottom doesn't separate. With the magnets working I started to think about the way to cut the upper cabin to create the effect of the vanaheim pattern. Here is a mock up of the effect I am looking for done in photoshop.



All was going well, when trouble struck and the door hinges, which were poorly cast, broke off. So building new door hinges will be added to the list above, here is a picture showing the damage: -



Well its 2am and my eyes are complaining, so time for bed. More tomorrow as we look at the gun arrangement, and a sinking feeling about it.

I have yet to say this but your stuff is awesome keep it up it all looks good it will great painted.

Thanks, it helps keep me on track when I get supportive comments

This morning I got started early, first on my list after test fitting the crew compartment components was to assemble them and test fit the entire comparment into the framework of the Basilisk vehicle body.
The following two images show this being done: -





I had to trim the "guide rails" on the inside of the Basilisk body to get the fit I wanted, but in the end it was a nice tight fit. Once I was happy with the fit I moved on to dealing with the bubble holes shown in the last post I got one done, and am waiting for it to dry completely before doing the other. I suspect I will need to do it in two stages to get the nice sharp edges that armour needs to look right, with some filing inbetween. Here is a picture showing the first stage of the bubble repair work: -



One of the reasons I am going to the trouble of making my own version of the Vanaheim pattern shield using the Armageddon pattern components is the wonderfully detailed interior, once I had assembled it and had a good look, I realised how cool looking it really was and knew at that point I wanted to have it for the inside permanently. Here is a picture showing the interior, with the photo-etched flooring and the shells underneath that: -



The two reinforced plates half way along the flooring are where the support posts for the gun go, smaller than the normal Basilisk support posts and as I was to discover to my cost a tighter fit by about 1.5mm. My plan with these would be to reinforce them into the floor panels with 1mm wire and glue them with superglue. I wanted a good fit because they would have two 3mm magnets with a pull strength of approximately 0.4kg each to support whichever gun/mortar was fitted.

Taking a break for lunch now, will show the posts in position and discuss the issues with the gun/mortar after the break

Ok, first off the second bubbled area on the crew compartment has been filled (stage 1), and the final hard edge been added to the previously shown bubble, in a few hours they will be set and I can file the hard edge to finish it and add a hard edge to the second area. Here is a picture to show the work done on both bubbled areas, the one on your left is at the hard edge stage, while the other is setting and still soft edged, hopefully this is visible in the picture:-



Putting this to one side to set, I looked next at the flooring, I really like the photo-etch and the rounds below it, however the middle had a tendency to sag as it was unsupported, to counteract this problem I added some supports in positions along the middle which should be impossible to see on the final model. Along the center I used brass 1mm rod cut to the right height, and at the end I used Resin sprue. In this picture you can see the lovely detail in the lower ammo bay under the floor and the supports used: -



After this was done I moved onto a test fit for the posts and the guns, I have the old style Griffon Mortar in metal from long ago, however it looks minuscule next to the Basilisk and Medusa, so I spent some time researching in the Imperial Armour volumes from Forgeworld and found that the Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar was basically the Griffon Mortar mounted on a carriage. Five Minutes later I had bid on and won a Death Korps of Krieg Heavy Mortar on ebay, it was unmade and was £2 cheaper than Forgeworld, and would be quicker than the delay waiting for Forgeworld (sometimes two weeks or more). Moving on I then tried the gun posts in position, here is a picture showing them.



First up was the medusa gun, it was a perfect fit when in place, and with the compartment on it had full movement, so far so good



Next up was the Earthshaker cannon from the Basilisk, and suddenly things were going wrong, first up the gun was too wide for the posts by about 1.5mm, so after some careful filing and using the micrometer to check accuracy I reduced the width of the Earthshaker by 1.5mm and tried the fit again, it worked: -



Next came the compartment test fit with the earthshaker, and suddenly I realised the plastic Basilisk gun was not going to work, I hopped over to the Forgeworld site to check the cannon used in their Armageddon Pattern basilisk and to my horror saw it was a custom version made to just fit. Damn ... I was faced with two options, one cut down the existing plastic basilisk and modify it in a similar way to the one on the forgeworld site, or spend another £50 and buy the forgeworld one and a whole new cockpit. Not a good choice really, one involved a time delay and added more work to the project, the other cost a significant amount of money.



Mrs Argos often thinks I choose the path of most resistance in some way to prove myself, I was starting to wonder if she was right.

So what do you think I chose to do next ?