Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was considering using some puppy heads for my truescalies for a while, but my love of Mk4 helmets and hate for snipers made me think otherwise before I even began considering it. The look's not bad, in fact, when kitted out with heavy enough armour and weaponry they can flat out badass, but it just doesn't feel right for me. Been tempted a few times though.

Loving the blog, as usual Sersi. You've become a regular poster to follow in my books, and every time I see your name pop up I start scrambling for the 'subscribe' button.

Looking forward to your 'biggerise'-ing of the space marine bikes. i'm currently starting to paint my bike army atm, hawk lords colour scheme essentially ( a hark back to pre-heresy emperor's children).

I wonder, will you be trying to sell these like you did some of your daemons? I'd be careful if that's your intention, as you could be infringing IP / copyright / be accused of passing off if you mass-produce these.

For personal purposes however I think the differentiation and extensive (and beautiful!) conversion work is enough to crank out moulds for mix-and matching within your own force.

Also, any news on the upscaling of vehicles?

Keep it up Sersi!

Keep the good stuff up!

I DEMAND MOAR!!!!!

The infantry is looking great but im very curious to see the vehicles. Theres been alot of attempts but it seems that the projects die before any vehicles are produced

sc0ttfree wrote:The infantry is looking great but im very curious to see the vehicles. Theres been alot of attempts but it seems that the projects die before any vehicles are produced

Yeah I've got to say that I'm keenly interested in seeing said vehicles come to life!

Sersi wrote:

plastictrees:


Thanks for the advice.


1. I've never really like the look of NMM honestly, so real metallics for these guys.

2. Do you suggest dry brushing the model instead or highlighting? I'm not sue what you meant by painting them like a tank.

3. On the shoulder pads: I primed everything black first and then base coated the in space wolf grey. Wouldn't it be easier just to prime them white and go from their instead?

4. On the highlights I'd been advised to highlight all the hard edges. But now that I look at them again I don't really like the effect, it looks really fake. Would it be possible to just paint the armor black and give it a coat of future. The gloss being contrasted by areas of bare metal, chip and scrapes. Kinda like the armor on these "Great Swords". I love how they have black lacquered armor, bare metal and, black leather; all on the same mini. Something like this is what I want really.





5. I'm not sure what you meant by textured areas?

I'll break out my fine scale modeler mags and look them over for applicable techniques.

1: Sounds good to me.

2: Drybrushing could be tricky, it's going to pick up any roughness in your sculpting and conversion work. I don't think you need to go that route.
By "like a tank" I mostly mean to just push you away from edging highlights. Good tank models use subtle highlighting and weathering to create an illusion of weight and scale.

3: It could just be the photos, but it looks like the white parts of the pads are just white. There doesn't seem to be any shading going on there.

4: I think that's an excellent idea. Get some weathering powders and go to town on the feet/lower greaves once you've done this, along with painting in chips and scrapes as you said.

5: Especially with the laquer effect idea you're going to want areas of detail that draw the eye and break up the plain black areas. This can be choice pieces of freehand, sculpted detail, whatever.

Some ambitious project going on here. I love character this army has, you've hit the spot on with the conversions.

Keep up the good work.

cant wait to see more!

loving thses always nice to see a true scale army keep up the good work

Northen:


Thank you. the goal is to have an army on individual heroes rather than to have a the 6 identical squads.


Sageheart:


Oh, there will definitely be more to come.


nurgles_warrior:


I doubt I'll ever own any normal GW marines again. I guess I'm a size queen... Once you go True Scale you can never go back to small marines. They're just not as satisfying



Updates:


Infantry:

I haven't posted in a few days as I was catching up on my Slaanesh Army, and work, and stuff... Anyway, I did get some work done:





So, this container has the parts for 40+ marines. That plus the 80+ that are assembled and the 60 or so still on spues put me just under 200 marines. Their quick and easy to make, that I kinda got carried away. I'm sure I'll find something to do with the extra 100 or so...




Transports:

I and a buddy at work messed around with auto-cad and produced some very nice templates for my upscaled rhinos, predators, etc. The deal with the laser cutter fell through so I'll be free handing the first one from styrene sheet. It's cool though, I still have my drafting tools from college. So I'm hoping to get on that this weekend.


Dreadnoughts:



I started converting a set of new legs for my dreads that have actual knees and actually look like they can move.



Custom Bits:


I've also started working on some additional bits to make them look more Templar-ish. After re-watching "Excalibur" and "Kingdom of Heaven" I sketched up some new armor Marks to convert up. I also made this bit from the front cover of the BT Codex.




Basing:

Oh and I sacrificed two tigers and panther tank to provide fodder for some Migsula style bases.









A Real Update soon!

looking goooood, are the marines used as actual tactical marines, or as something terminator-y?

bigmek35 wrote:YAY IT WORKED!!!!!!!!

yeah, but still Threadromancy isn't good. You didn't really perform proper threadromancy as the thread had been silent for less than a month, but still...

this is awesome!

true true. im the same i would love to do a scale army but i dont have the wonga. i find the normal models to look like a imperial guardsman wearing realitvly thin armour instead of the 8 foot muscle bound cereamite clad warrior of death. but i guess if i can get the hang of my modelling and moulding i could make my self a lot of them. but what im saying is i envy your work in a insperational sort of way lol

Rise from the Grave!


So...work has died down again for the moment, time to get back to the hobby.



I started work this morning warming up with an additional 60 true scale Marines and three dreadnoughts. I have to say that the casts are coming out so clean now, no air bubbles and very limited clean up...yes!!! So, now I have 120 TS marines.

I've also been experimenting with my airbrush, Les being my inspiration for that. Thanks Les! I've go so very small stencils made out of low tack masking tape, and a frisket to airbrush on white templar cross on the armor, and black one on the shoulder pads. So...cool. Anyway here are a couple of progress snaps of the this mornings work.









More today...for sure!

Liking the progress. Faster! Faster! Kill!!!

Thanks! I'm planning to get this lot assembled today. I'm drilling out like 60+ bolt pistol barrels at the moment. Which would ordinarily suck mightily...but with my new toy its so quick and easy.







I picked it up a whim off Amazon, its fast, light weight, and feels good in the hand. Seriously, I drilled pin holes for 120 or so arms in under 10 minutes. I ordered the one that takes dremel bits this morning, so awesome. The right tool for the right job.

always want to see moree!

YES!!!!!!! THERE ARE MOAR!!!!!!!!!!

Great to see that you are puching forward on this.

Amazing thread - I've just read all 6 pages. Awesome 'dark art' skills. Those are some original and great looking Black Templars.

What do you call the blue gun style dremel tool? I've never seen one like that before.

Small update:

I got all the close combat weapon arms conversions done. I went for variety here more than anything else. The bits used were primarily adapted from WF Warriors's of Chaos line.



First up: Flails & morning stars. I plan to have some of these draw back overhead preparing to strike, while other will be held across the body with both hands, or held casually to one side.




Next, bolters, bolt pistols, and a couple of lantern/mace? Perfect, for bringing the light of the Emperor to a Heretic...by knocking heads ofcourse. About 20 out of a hundred Templars will have bolters. I envision them as objective campers, I'll probably build two lascannons for sun with those squads.





Third big templar-esque swords, and various blunt force trama instuments.




And Glaives....taken from the WFB Chaos Knights. Perfect for a knightly theme... Hey it works for Grey Nights.






Can't have Space Marines without chainswords.





Various choppas...er...uh....axes.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

s.j.mccartney wrote:Amazing thread - I've just read all 6 pages. Awesome 'dark art' skills. Those are some original and great looking Black Templars.

What do you call the blue gun style dremel tool? I've never seen one like that before.

Its a: Tamiya Craft Tools - Electric Handy Drill. Its ridiculous how much time this thing saves. Be warned though technically a model kit that comes on a sprue, that you will have to assemble before using!

these look cool! any specialist weapons, like LCs or PFs or Thunder Hammers!

Okay, okay...time to stop messing around.


Dreadnoughts:

"They are the Emperor's immortal retinue, walking beside him down the long march of years, in the endless watches of the eternal night do these mighty brethern war and wait and war again. Dressed in furious Glory, in cleasing fire and fury do they praise him, by righteous death and destruction do the make high his name. May the heroes of legend, live on in righteousness to war forevermore in the Emperor's name!"

At first I was going to really bling these up, but honestly I like the cleaner look more. The feet are from forge world, with standard dread legs for now... The have been up-sized 2-3 mm in height, so far. I might add some spaces at the waste but I'm not sure on that. I'll be fashioning custom legs guards out of styrene sheet for a more forged heavy metal look than the GW ones. I think the silhouette problem with dreads is that the legs look to small relative to the bulk of the torso. I will also be decking them out with additional rivets, and chains.


other things:

- Get the bases blocked out, so I can chop the legs and repose them.
- Model new legs with actual working articulation: in the hip, knee, ankle, and, toe joints.



Honored Brother - Geoffrey:


"For his Grace and Glory!"



- Will be mounting the bell from the VC corpes cart.




Honored Brother - Borin:

"We are instruments of the Emperor, extension of his grace and fury. Our lives are solely his to command.






Honored Brother - Simon:

"Faith in the Emperor is all. He is the light that guides, the warmth that succors, and the fire that purges. None are spared the touch of his wrath! he is the light, the might and the way..."





Honored Brother - Letholdus:

"Pain is an illusion of the senses, dispair an illusion of the mind."






Honored Brother - Tancred:

" The sleeper has awoken, the clarion call sounded, the time has come to rouse for wrath and ruin, where there is chaos, fire and war, there shall Tankred be..."







Honored Brother - Tibalt:

Still in progess...






On to the initiates:



200+ TS battle brothers! If the Emperor is kind, the last of these will be assembled tomorrow. I built the parts is sub-assemblies, so now they basically just need the arms glued on and accessories/gear added to their belts. With that done we'll move on to sculpting the tabards, chain mail, banners and various cloth bits. The shoulder pads will be left off to be painted separately.


Vehicles:


Rhinos & Drop pods:


At the moment I'm focusing on the basic TS rhino and Dreadnought Drop pod at the moment. Once I get both consturcted out of Styrene they'll be empowered by the "Dark Arts". I'm currently building around to lists, a full mech force and full drop force.

Landspeeders:

I'm taking the easy way out on this one. I'll purchase 3x forge world LS Tempests, and call it a day.

Bikes:

Still in the design phase on these, but I'll be posting up some ideas on these soon.



And for giggles, here is a pic of our valiant Templars facing down a 60+ Seeker's of Slaanesh charge. Now, that's brave some of those battle-brothers don't even have arms, let alone weapons! Black knights indeed.... Oh, well the Emperor protects.




More later!

Thats... A LOT of Black Templars. o_O

Wow that is all i can say

I would very much be intrested in purchasing some of those bits and I totally love the work cus im a big Templar fan!

this is all very orderly and organised , makes my workbench look like Hell. ;-) i think you have achived the look and feel of the templers very well.

I gotta say man, this thread just makes my head hurt. Even thinking about painting 200+ awesome models like this makes me feel like I desperately need to be doing something else. :-P
The power armored horde looks great and terribly intimidating. Forcing myself to think about painting that many bodies, here is what I would suggest:

1: Don't use black except as a wash. As odd as it sounds starting with black and building up to highlight is much harder than is needed. Black leaves you no where to go to make it darker. When I did my chaos warriors and marauders I did the black armor in this fashion:
a: light grey primer
b: Vallejo Neutral Grey (sort of a medium dark grey)
c: highlight with White Grey (I don't use white either if I can)
d: Badab Black wash.
Very quick and dirty method to get quick highlights that blend nicely. If an area is too light you can apply more black wash as a glaze. This should also work with a black to light blue highlight, though I am not certain.

2: As to white shoulder pads, yea, getting there from black is miserable. If you have to do so, I would mix in some of the really pale foundation color (Adeptus battle grey?) with white for a base coat, and build from there accepting that the grey showing around the edges will help shade. Instead of going for pure white, get to a grey/white and you will be good to go.

3: As to whether it is better to put them together first or not, I don't know. I almost always put my stuff together because I can't resist seeing how the model will look. I tell you though, those warriors were a HUGE pain with their cloaks blocking the backs of their legs.

Looks great man, so long as I remind myself that I don't have to imagine painting it all myself!