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Some realy nice looking mini's in this blog!!

Torsos are coming along nicely. I'm ready to see them bulked out and fully equipped.

Now that the torsos have their base down, it's time to start fleshing them out. There actually isn't a whole lot more structural work that needs to be done with this (torsos are relatively easy, I guess), so I started by doing a mix of detail and structural work. Really, the only terribly complicated thing, now that all of the "sides" of the torso are done is to figure out how to do the tops and bottoms.

I decided to take it from the top, beginning with something that I've been looking forward to this entire project - spiky bitz! One of the few things I KNEW I'd want is to have a trophy rack coming out of the top of this model, but moreso than the way terminators have it. As such, the idea was to put a pair of terminator spikes on, and then put on an extra rack of vehicle-sized spikes to really drive in the spikiness.

To start with, I took my first vehicle rack spiky bitz and cut them off the sprue. Then I divided them out into groups of three. It wound up that this was too wide for my torsos, so I had to cut out some of the plastic between the spikes. This, however, wound up being impossible to just glue back together, so I mounted it onto a small piece of plasticard which I then cut to shape.



The tricky part would be how to mount this to the torso. Eventually I decided that the spikes would go on as far forward as they could, having the back of the spikes mount flush with the end of the highest point of the torso before it began to taper. This would mean mounting these spikes to thin air, though, so I decided that I'd provide the backing for the head in a single stroke.

I cut a piece of plasticard to the right length, cut out some notches (so that it wouldn't bump into the angled part of the torso), and glued it on to the mount, covering the hack job I'd done on the spikes themselves. From the front, everything would look nice and clean.



Then it was just mounting it on with a couple little blobs of GS to fill in the triangle-shaped gap between the bottom of the spikes and the angled side of the torso.

Because this was putting the head so far forward, this meant that most of the torso was now in the back of the model. This meant I felt that the torso extended far enough back, so I pulled out my secret weapon for the backs of these models. More bitz off the sprue. I don't know where they go on a chaos rhino, perhaps they're hatches or something? Doesn't matter - makes great backing.



As you will notice, I also stopped up the gap in the top of the torso with GS. No, I did not literally stuff GS into the gap until the torso was full. Instead, I made a thin piece of GS, cut it vaguely into shape, put down just a touch of glue, and then carefully laid it across the gap, sort of like laying a tarp across a tiger trap. All I needed to do was to have the edges smoothed out.

Of course, the GS sank into the huge gap underneath it somewhat and generally looks like crap, but that's going to be fixed in the next stage. All it needs right now is to be structural later.

Once the basics of the top were done. It was time to focus on the bottom. This started with me doing this same GS method (which for some reason, I want to call "bearding", but I don't know why. Is there a woodworking term like this or something?) to cover over the yawning gap. Once Again, I just needed something there that I could work with later.

As for the front, this was once again one of the few things I'd planned out well in advance. I wanted these guys to have belts, or at least belt buckles, just like their smaller berzerker buddies.

To start this, I cut out some sections of a medium diameter aluminum tubing I just so happened to have lying around (about the width of the flash suppressor of an autocannon), and packed it with GS. I actually pushed it down into a thin film first, sort of like cutting sugar cookies with a cookie cutter. Then, I packed the rest of it with GS from behind. When it was cured, it peeled off nicely, presenting a round, flat surface.



Once they were cleaned up a bit, all I needed to do was apply a little applique sculpting. I decided to go for two khorne symbols, and two skull motifs, one of which was put in an arrow to make up for the fact that the skull-in-arrow on the legs is practically invisible due to posing.



Once cured, I cleaned up the edges a little bit, and got ready to put them on.

Now, at this point, I still don't know what the fur is going to look like on the torsos. As such, I can't assume that you will necessarily be unable to see the gap between the belt and the torso.

I start with the front bottom of the torso:



and then do my cover thing that I was just doing before, and then jam in some small segments of guitar wire:



and then put a wad of GS on the back of the buckle, dab on a little glue, and then jam it in there:



Now, it turned out that I needed to push the guitar wire WAY up into the torso to get this to fit in. This was mostly because the buckle couldn't rest on top of the wire, because the buckle is way too thick (though the thinnest cross-section of tubing I could cut without warping it). In the end, the buckles still stick way too far out. I was going to have them flush, or slightly recessed, like they are on berzerkers. As it is, they actually stick out past the torso. As there's basically no way I'm going to be able to fix this, I decide to just run with it. Once the fur goes on, how far it's sticking out will become much less noticeable.

The end result is some dapper soon-to-be tech-monsters:



With the torso now structurally complete, it's going to be a matter of putting on the remaining coarse details and finishing it off as much as I can before I need the arms on to continue.

This means putting on the power generator intakes, and outfitting these guys with heads. I'm also going to put down the bottom fur, and get the torsos prepped so that those parts which won't have fur will have something else on them, at least some edging or rivets or something.

This should all go pretty quickly, once I can decide what I want to do about the fur. I'm thinking that I might just get lazy and use the same basic design for the berzerkers. A fur poncho of sorts, but that leaves a stripe of armor showing. I'm just having a hard time visualizing how I'd pull off something furrier, while my mission statement at the beginning of this project explicitly forbids me from going light on the fur. We'll just have to see where it takes me...

Fan-bloody tastic! these guys rock! you are making some exeptional progress with them so far, I love the poses and the execution of your ideas, they certainly will be something different and eye catching as they tear up the battlefield! i'm really excoted as i see them take shape, as for the fur, I reckon you should decide how little or much once you've worked on the arms, you might decide they look sharp for a night out with just a stole around the shoulders or if it's chilly perhaps a full coat of waist length jacket? depends on how warm their pistons need to be! ;-)

They are looking stunning. I cant wait to see what you will do for thier heads. They are true Giants

You sure know how to captivate an audience with your talent! This is absolutely brilliant! One of the best blogs out there no doubt. Thank you for sharing! Exalted and subbed!

Also, that MR hobgobblin remark wouldnt happen to be a hint at a certain Metalhammer podcast episode, would it?

Just WOW!

Subscribed a LOT!

I think the hooves are fine. They actually "tie in" with the rest of the model / models you've done fur on, and the paint is truly what will define the hoof and make it distinctly different from the fur.

Ailaors once again you have blown me a way with your creativity and skill. These oblitorators are turning out absolutly amazing. I can't wait till you get the army done and hopefully put up some of your amazing bat. reps. The commentary always gave me a good laugh.

This just gets better and better. Keep on truckin' Ailaros!

Thatguy91 wrote:Also, that MR hobgobblin remark wouldnt happen to be a hint at a certain Metalhammer podcast episode, would it?

Heh, no, I don't listen to any podcasts. Well, ones that aren't Market Fool Money.

DeadGaurd wrote: I can't wait till you get the army done and hopefully put up some of your amazing bat. reps. The commentary always gave me a good laugh.

We'll see. I already know that the leader is going to be named Blingus with a variety of epithets (such as Blingus the Recklessly Malfeasant and Blingus the Indescribably Violent), or perhaps just Blingus Khan...

Anyways, on to the work. As mentioned, one of the few things I knew I was going to want was power pack intakes, just like regular power armor. I went through several frustrating tries to get the "arms" of the intake to look right. I had one design that was too big, one that was too big, one that was too big, one that was too big, and one that was just right. And you wonder why I've made it a rule not to make these guys too big...

In the end, I finally settled on the dimensions I wanted. I'm not very good working with plasticard, and this stuff was going to show, unlike my armature stuff. As such, even though I want a thicker strut, I'm making it out of two pieces of much easier to cut thinner plastic, which I'll then glue together.



Of course, I had to make sure to lightly file down the corners which flare out when you cut the plastic. Then it was just gluing them together and sticking on the intake. I could have just put a ball on the end and worked with that, but I had something more fancy in mind. To the vehicle accessory sprue!



And then gluing them on.



It wasn't flush, though, so I had to smush it into the triangular gap with some GS. Knowing how I wanted these after the fact, I could have cut the plasticard for the torsos rather differently to make this all a bit easier. I guess I'll know for the non-existant next time.

Because this time, I have a lot of gaps to clean up, some of which required two layers of GS - one to fill the gap, and a second to make it flush. I had to make the top flush, with proper lines between the intake arm and the back of the torso. I also had to fill that triangle-shaped gap on the sides where the intake arms went in.

Once that was done, it was time to start with the details. In this case, it's the struts on the arms. I went to the hardware store and picked up some brass rods for this. On the one hand, the hardware store didn't have plasticard rod. On the other, brass cuts like plasticard (well, like tubing). It's tougher, but I actually like that. It's harder to make mistakes because you actually have to put some work into the cuts, rather than chopping through in a single swipe.



This actually nearly finishes off the top torso detail. All I'm going to do now is to throw on some rivets and a bit of guitar wire tubing. The rest is only going to happen when I start putting the arms on.

Which leaves basically the fur as far as the torso is concerned. To start on this, I put down my usual fur armature of a flat piece of greentuff cut to shape and then glued on with the wrinkles that I wanted. I had this idea of first putting down GS strips and then putting the underskirt on top of that, but it wound up that freestanding strips were too effected by gravity. With the mutual support of a single piece, and a little bit of superglue draped on, I got a pretty sturdy piece of GS.



The next step will be finishing the fur, and the parts of the torso that aren't fur, and get things ready to put down the head.

Looking good and aggressive!

Man, this is amazing, they're looking so good! I still can't fathom how good you are doing these guys it's so fiddly and yet you are doing a superb job of making them look so cool, i can't wait to see you finish them up and of course pop some paint on them, I'm intrigued to see how you approach the arms?

Nerdfest09

Rivets for the Rivet God

I like the way you are doing the fur 'skirt' its a nice idea.

amazing stuff!

There is a game company out there that should hire you for design / master work. It's in England I believe.

Stunning as always. I'm always impressed with how you take putty, plastic, and metal to make a miniature that equals (or rivals) current production of the same model.

I imagine because of the size difference you're planning on sculpting the helm and arms / weapons as well?

So firstly, I've got to note a correction to my previous post. I wanted to go with GS strips that I put a GS skirt over. This wound up being really dumb, and instead I wound up going for my usual method of doing fur with a solid under-layer.

nerdfest09 wrote: I'm intrigued to see how you approach the arms?

In much the same way I'm going to do the legs. Aluminum tubing will go down with special concern for structural integrity at where the tube meets the shoulder at the torso. While the ungainly hip joint will be covered over with fur, the shoulder will be hidden by a shoulderpad.

Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:There is a game company out there that should hire you for design / master work. It's in England I believe.

lol. You put in a good word for me and we'll see.

It's kind of a moot point, though, as GW does all of its design in 3D computer drafting and then use 3D printers to get the base model that they then cast. Nearly gone are the days when GW has people pick up a blade or color shaper and break out the tubes of GS. If I really wanted to get a job at GW, I'd learn 3DS Max, or Blender, or something.

Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:I imagine because of the size difference you're planning on sculpting the helm and arms / weapons as well?

I'm going to try and make the heads the same size (no cheating to make the model look bigger by making the heads smaller like they do on terminators), but don't have any helmets, so that will be scratch done. Also, I don't have any arms, so they'll be scratch as well. Going into this project, I knew that these would be sculpts with bitz glued on, not a kitbash. It will be interesting once I get back to doing conversion work (instead of scratchbuilding).

Anyways, on to the work.

With the skirts and intakes on, top and bottom of the torso were nearly done. On the top, I'd just need to finish off the part behind the spikes, and on the bottom, I'd need to throw down the fur and get the bottom edging where the torso fur wouldn't be to look nice.

I started on the top. The first part was to get my open-ended tubes closed off. These would close off in rectangular prisms, which means ideally I'd use plasticard for nice, crisp lines. Unfortunately, there's alll these tubes in the way, which means GS. I guess I'd just have to do a lot of extra work to prevent these from mellowing into blobtangular prisms. Once these were down, I thew some rivets on. Hopefully the detail will make the unterparts less noticeable.



I then started going back and forth over how I was going to do the tubing on this thing. In the end, I decided that I wanted something coming up the middle from the power back itself, so I chopped off some guitar wire and mounted it on.



Then I spent bored hours in a waiting room looking at the backs of these guys trying to figure out how I wanted the tubing. Then it struck me - I don't have to do that part now. Nothing is going to sit in front of the backpack, so I can always add those details on later once I know what the rest of the model looks like. That meant that, apart from the tubing, everything was now done.

Over the previous few days, I'd gotten an idea into my head. The original idea was to make these models with an ubercannon on one arm, and just a power fist on the other. I started to think that perhaps I'd want to mount one of my guns on the other arm so that it would have something a little more to do (and I'd have more modelling options). Of all of the weapons, the least similar ones are the flamers, so I decided to mount a flamer underneath the powerfist, and leave the plasmas, meltas, and lascannon on the big arm.

One of the other reasons for this is that I wanted to put a guard flamer fuel tank on them. Originally, I was thinking about taking one of these tanks with the big "toxic" logo on it and make it something connected to a respirator (so they breathe in toxic fumes to stay alive and keep powered). There wasn't any way I could figure out to make this obvious, especially once I'd mounted on the intake arms the way I had. This way, I still get to use the bit, even if it's not for the original intention.

There isn't going to be the space for a full pair of tanks, so I started by cleaning them up (and getting rid of superfluous pieces) and chopping them in half.



How do I have all these extra flamer bits around? Well, I think this can best be explained in a flowchart:



Which is a slight variant on my Creme De Menthe flowchart:



Anybody who has ever purchased a bottle of Creme De Menthe will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Anyways, once this was chopped down, I had to chop away some of the skirt in the back to get them to fit, but after that it just went right in.



And with that, the back/top of the torso is now done. Sans tubing, of course. This just left the bottom.

With the skirt down, it was a matter of adding the fur. Realising that I hadn't yet described all that well how I do this, I thought I'd take a moment to explain in more detail.

Firstly, I mix the greenstuff, and then flatten it down between my fingers to the right thickness. Too thick, and the blade is going to sink in too far, leaving not only too deep of recesses, but, most importantly, it's going to drag the ends of the fur too far down, making something that looks more like splint mail than like layers of fur. Too thin, of course, and there won't be enough material to work with. The desired thickness for me is roughly the same thickness as my thin plasticard, if not a little thicker.

Once this is done, I apply it to the model, just putting it over exactly where the skirt is. If you need to cut off parts of it or put strange-angled pieces somewhere else, that's fine. It just needs to end smooth. Make sure that you sort of push the GS into the waves and curves of its armature a little bit to make it nice and snug (and the proper thickness).

Once I do this, I break out an x-acto knife. For this, I actually use dull ones with the tips broken off. Too sharp and the knife will cut the GS, rather than shaping it, and too pointy and I'm going to have problems both with depth control, and with being able to push little pieces of GS around. Knife in hand, the first thing I do is make a bunch of impressions in the GS. Starting from the top and going down, I make little columns in a staggered ^ shape, slanting one impression one way and the next the other. Make sure that they stay staggered along both dimensions or it will look strange later.

In the end, you get something that looks a little like a strawberry:



This picture is a little inaccurate, though, as I usually do the little divots much closer together. This was the first one I was doing in this set and forgot that, much to my mild inconvenience later.

Once this is done, I go through and make more divots to connect the indentations together. I usually try to alternate back and forth on this as well, so as not to make the fur too even. Once they go from divots to trenches, you have a bunch of partially-connected ^ and V shaped bits of GS raised up.

After this, it's going around and seperating the little pieces of raised GS into single fibers. I sort of have a set thickness and length that I like to keep them at (and that need to be to be consistent with the rest of the fur in this case). Basically I just go around and look at every little joint and separate it.

The one key thing to remember with this is to not overwork it. If you cut the GS upraised parts too thin, there is very little you can do to recover. Likewise if you have gaps between fur pieces, or if the end of a fur piece goes down instead of flaring out (a big problem if the GS was put on too thick). Keep it gentle, keep it brief. You just want to get in, make the corrections, and get out.

Once this is done, I just go over the edges again (especially at the bottom), to make sure there aren't any big blobs or trenches.

With a pelt as big as these obliterators, I knew I couldn't do this all in one go. There was no way I'd be able to prevent myself from smushing my own GS. As such, I decided to do it in sections. Because of how the model sat, some of them were done in three sections and some in two (although the two's did have some frustrating finger-smushing moments - they probably could have been threes).

I was originally concerned that the fur between the parts might not line up right and there would be a seam (which I was actually willing to accept for aesthetic reasons), but it turned out that you couldn't really notice, and that was with me just going along normally, without making much specific accommodation for the seam.

In the end, it was a lot of work, but it was straightforward, and, given how much fur I've already done, actually rather easy.



From here, of course, my next step is to finish the fur on the rest of them. I'll post pictures when this gets done.

Looking at what I have so far, I'd say I'm now about 2/3ds of the way through this project. The remainder will be broken down into three main groups. The first part will be to detail the last bit of torso left not done and to do the head. The second part will be to put down the armature for the arms, and connect up all the tubing. The third part will be do to the detailing on the arms, and put on the shoulderpads.

Once that's done, I'll actually be done. Most of the detailing has already been done. It's kind of strange, I've actually had to break most of my scratchbuilding axioms at one point or another. Usually it's bottom to top, in to out (underparts to overparts and center to extremities), and coarse before fine (detail). The sheer size and complexity of this has wound up with me needing to break these (and other) rules at some point.

But enough chatting, it's time to start finishing off the fur...

Liking the strawberry skirt.

This blog is pretty inspirational on the scratchbuilding side.

Can't wait to see how they end up!

The obliterators are coming along really fantastically.

And yes, I do have flamer and grenade launcher bitz, and I don't know where they came from And with your advice, I won't be buying any creme de menthe.

They are looking great. The only problem i have with them, is that they are starting to look like the cookie monster. the fury loin cloth gives it that look. seems a little puffy to me. But they still look great. you need to get some pics up after you paint them. maybe one of them hiding next to a rhino, just so we can see if you can get cover with them.

lol. COOKIES FOR THE COOKIE GOD!!!

It's one of the strange things about scratchbuilding is that as you put stuff on, it changes the profile of the model. For example, once the torsos and spikes were put on, the models looked super tall and thin, and then when the skirts get added on, the "gravity" of the model sinks "down" a bit. You're right, that they currently look sort of pear-shaped, but once the arms go on, they'll look a lot different.

It's actually one of the challenging things with scratchbuilding - not looking too hard at the incomplete model so that you miss the overall plan (which is made more complicated when you don't have one).

Anyways, I got the next one done:

Lookin good, you have a great ability to depict motion in your models. Can't wait to see 'em done.

I think my dad still has the same bottle of creme de menthe that he had when i was growing up - soon it will be his grandkids stealing swigs!

Thanks!

So, here are the last two done:

They're really coming along nicely. How are you going to adorn the torsos?

Thanks. So far I have them planned to look a lot like my berzerkers - a little bit of armor showing at the bottom, but mostly covered with fur.

Crème de menthe is great in chocolate milkshake, so I don’t have a bottle left. But saying that I do not play guard and i do have flamer canisters

You are a very talented sculptor, I'm impressed. Especially like the captioned photos

Can't wait to see these complete.
It's a very nice and original army, my compliments!

M0rdain wrote:Crème de menthe is great in chocolate milkshake, so I don’t have a bottle left.

So, it's been awhile since I've updated. Part of it is due to burnout that comes from working on fine detail, but a part of it has been the detail itself. The only thing left to do was to do the heads, which is something that takes a great deal of creativity. Moreover, since the arms will be more or less the same, this is my last real artwork on these models before it slides out to the end in something more like engineering.

But before I could put on the heads, I needed to finish off the rest of the non-fur part of the torso. To do the liner on the bottom of the torso armor, I put down GS as usual.



But then, unlike the rest of the liners, I just let it cure like this, as-is, and then cut it once it cured. This made it come out slightly less like how I'd have liked, but it also came out with 100% crisp lines with no mellowing, which was what I was going for. Throw on some rivets, and this part was done.

Then it was finally time to go on to the head. In order to keep up the tech-monster motif, I wanted to make sure that there would be plenty of tubing, so I decided that all four of them would have four tubes coming out of the back of the armor and connect some way into the head. Once that was decided, it was cutting and bending the guitar wire, and then smushing them into a ball of GS to be the armature for the head.



... with a little superglue to keep the wires in place (on both sides) while the GS cured. The one thing I wanted to make sure I did here was to not skimp on head size (the opposite of the problem I've been having with the rest of the model). These models already have the nuts-on-nipples problem, but I don't need to exacerbate it even further with a teeny tiny head (like the real obliteratos). As such, I was careful to make these models with heads that were at least as big as a regular CSM. Once they were done, I found I'd got it basically spot-on (if a little big...)

Once I got here, it was like putting any old head together. The first part would be the top part of the head, with the second part being the bottom third of the head, and details.

Of course, instead of a regular old head, I was trying to make skull-masked tech monsters, so a great deal of liberty was taken...

After the first stage:



... and complete:



I swear this guy looks a LOT creepier in real life. In fact, I'm really rather pleased. The gross excess of tubing and metal eye sockets gets across the tech, and the jawless, vacant-eyed skull mask gets across the monster part.

For those of you who don't see it, it will make more sense with the paint on it.

After this, it was just doing some much-overdue cleanup, and finishing off the backpack a little bit more.

All that's left is to finish up the other three heads, and it will be time to finally put the arms on.