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My my, it has been a long time since starting this thread…
Having revived my moddeling appitite, I recently (sort of) completed this squad, the building of course, they're not painted yet.
I just need to GS some stuff and I’m done. Then they’ll go on the waiting line for a layer of paint, which will most likely take me another year
I’ve blue tagged them together (with the white type by the way) for the benefit of the photo.
The sad thing is that apparently, according to the new rules (which I do not yet own) I cannot use this squad as is and will have to make it bigger… Oh well, give me another three years and I’ll have an army according to the present rules ;P.
As you'll be able to see, I've not improved much on taking pictures, one of my lightbox lamped died on me, that didn't help either. The general idea is clear though.
Well, not to keep you all in waiting, pictures:

Group photo:

A bit bigger, left side:

A bit bigger, right side:


Sarge, with custom right side:

Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro.../Sargeright.jpg
Left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...d/Sargeleft.jpg
Back:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...d/Sargeback.jpg

Mister Stumpy, learned the hard way not to play football with sporemines:

Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...Stumpyright.jpg
Left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro.../Stumpyleft.jpg

Plas marine, a bit wider than normal ones

Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...d/Plasright.jpg
Left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...nd/Plasleft.jpg

Las marine, only a bionic hand, the lascannon is probably some form of compensation:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...nd/Lasfront.jpg
Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...nd/Lasright.jpg
left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...und/Lasleft.jpg

Mister ‘what sarge can do, I can too’ Also missing most of one half of his body

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...ric1frontal.jpg
Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...neric1right.jpg
Left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...eneric1left.jpg

And last but not least, mister ‘Catch this’:

Right side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro.../Catchright.jpg
Left side:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/bro...bound/Catch.jpg

I greatly appreciate all manner of critisism, comments, ideas and anything else you can throw at me
They will most likely be coated this week.

Beork

I like them. The right shin-plate (our right, his left) on the last guy looks a bit wonky, but it might be the viewing angle.His arm is very cool, though.

Awesome, how long did it take you to create the bionics cause I was thinking of creating an army of robotic marines?

Excellent! Very nice work on making all of the greebly bits.

Splendid! I'm happy if I can get a square bit of plasticard, and you build whole limbs out of it.. Nicely done, I think they'll look striking when painted up!

I have trouble with the square bits as well, the trick is to make stuff where the actual shape is not too important, or cut it to size on the mini itself

The marines took me about 40 hours to build (in a spree, al bits together) but you can do it much faster if you forgo the wiring.

Beork

You should do a tutorial! They look great

Spectacular work! I'm guessing bionics are not available in the new SM Dex? Or, do you need a 10 man squad? I'd hate to see such wonderful models get no love on the battlefield.

I can't wait to see these painted up! Superlative work.

Those look fantastic, each model is the quality i would expect from an IC.

NICE!!!, are they going to be iron hands? they look like it

I like your style of bionics can't wait to see more!

Nice work man, Mr Stumpy looks a little like BobbaFett.

Nicely executed. I like how none of them really look alike. Awesome work and some great details in there.

Thank you for sharing, and I hope youll be able to work more on this army in the near future.

Fantastic. You make them this awesome to make me feel bad about my work, right?

Very good models!!!

Excellent. You have much more ambition in good conversions than I ever will.
Can't wait to see them painted up!

firstly....."Mister Stumpy, learned the hard way not to play football with sporemines:" made me laugh REALLY hard.
secondly....... OH MY GOD! i LOVE robo marines and yours take the cake my friend. sweet jesus you know how to make them robotic

10/10 by far some of the most effective conversions i have ever seen done.

this is by far in every way better then the GW marines.
yours have realistic proportion , subtle and believable conversions.

i really hope they get painted soon so i can add it to my miniatures photo folder xD

Thanks for the replies,
Well, painting will be done between today and next year ;P
Seriously, I don't like painting, but I plan to basecoat them black coming weekend. I also don't know for sure where I left the mix with which I painted the armour...
I'm starting work on a heavy flamer marine as well, since they are allowed nowadays.
Also I'm working on a bionic arm for a 54mm figure, I'll post the WIP pictures up tonight.

I still appreciate ideas and comments, especially about improvements or ideas.

Beork

Excellent work.

Those heads are some of the best I've ever seen, and your plasticard and GS work is extremely impressive.

Though I do admit I'd like to see more wiring connecting the bionics to their hosts. Just a little detail that could improve them a bit, I think.

what a awesome bionics you've made! how much time did you took to build them?

your bioniks rock my socks! dere great! there is ONE tiny problem though. in the new SM codex, you cannot take any form of heavy or special weapon unless there are 10 men in a squad. this means if you want to use this squad, then you need more men. this shouldn't bother you, i hope, as its just an exuse to make more!!

Yeah, these were made for the previous las/plas squads, but sadly I need to revise them. Not that this is a problem, I have a complete army to build yet

I thought about more wiring but there is pretty much already, although not to visible. All bones have a wire twisted round them or following them and sometimes there's one more.
I figured that one connection the thickness of a space maine finger should do it. I'l look how more wiring will look though... might take a few pictures.

One squad like this takes a few days to build, longest time gets into the drying of plasticglue and greenstuff.
Or, they cost you a bunch of money while I build them in a few weeks

Beork

Wow, very nice. Me rikey, to say the very least.

Ok, just a little side track,

I’ve received a request to build a bionic arm for 54mm gaming (Inquisitor of course) from Charax at Warseer.com.
He wanted a bionic arm in the style I use for my Ironbound Space Marines for a Adaptus Mechanicus Assassin. This of course was quite the challenge and I also received a small fee for building the arm.
Sadly I will have to work without the miniature for reference. Therefore I have printed the picture of the target miniature to scale and I’ll be using a 1:35 British soldier as a holder for the arm (1:35 is almost 54mm, just a bit smaller and more realistically scaled).
I will be posting step by steps of this build for as far as I can be bothered to take pictures during building.
I first needed to decide how to build the arm and where to attach it. As the miniature is not a Space marine, there are no convenient pieces of armour to attach the arm to.
A quick sketch to decide the basic direction:

Then I started building.
I diagonally cut of the shoulder of the Brit, embedding a 3mm magnet in his shoulder to hold the arm.
Then I searched my bits for a round bit and found one, which I filed flat at one side and also embedded a 3mm magnet in. I then carefully cut out a bit of the plastic to create the idea of the shoulder being a ball within a casing like most action figures do.
I then added the Humerus, which in this case is a 1,5mm rod I took from an old airplane kit.

After this I made an elbow piece from 5mm tube glued together at an angle, this is very similar to what space marines have as elbow protection and is just a tad bigger.
In this protection I added the elbow joint which consists of a 2mm rod cut to shape to fit the elbow guard and with lines scraped into them to replicate the idea of a movable joint.

I then glued in the Ulna (1mm metal rod, cut to size according to reference picture) in the correct position using the picture as a reference. I glued this bone immediately because it move the least of both bones when moving the arm and in this way it is a bit easier to replicate a humanlike moving arm.

I took a hand which is about the same size as the hand on my reference picture. The zombie hands turn out be about 54mm (on the large side actually).
In the wrist I drilled two holes for the Ulna and Radius, the elbow joint has two corresponding holes.

The Radius is cut to size and put into place without gluing it so I can decide on the pose I want. In this way it actually moves a bit like a human arm, creating the nice effect of the Radius going over the Ulna.



Once I had the desired pose I glued the Radius and the hand into place.

It still looks very thin and well, skeletal. But keep in mind that the tendons and wires still need to be added and I’ll probably add some little details as well. There will also be some small armour plates.
The arm with the reference picture:



I added the bicep muscles, tendons or whatever you'd like to call them, Using 0,5 mm plastic rod. I drilled a hole at each end and simple superglued them in.


Also added the tricep muscles, same style, but because of the slight rotations of the arm, the muscles are a bit turned.

Lets shake hands


I should do more work for money, I am very productive compared to normal.
Could even be better, if I had more time, oh well...

Anyway, started on the plating on the hand, alo added a wrist band:

Fingers get plated:

At this point I think the hand is growing to big. I'll need to go back to a smaller hand and beef that up, or make something from scratch (which is not too easy).
The main problem here is that I don't think I have open hand smaller than the zombie ones.
Alternatively I can take off one finger and shortem them, but I'd have a finger short.... Maybe add an extra thumb, that would be a real improvement over normal humans... thinking thinking.
In the meantime I'll finish this hand and throw it in as a replacement in case it's neccesary.

C&C appreciated

Beork

Holy hell, you're doing some great work here, nice attention to detail on your work!!!

Perhaps you could switch to a three digit hand ( 1 thumb, 2 fingers). I think it would add to that mechanical image without necessarily changing any of the functionality of the hand and depending how you model it could solve the plate sizing issue. Like your work so far.

Imperial wrote:I like your style of bionics can't wait to see more!

Understatement of the century!

My favourite single part has to be the grenade thrower's throwing hand. That's an awesomely intricate bionic hand.

I finally got some more work done.
I added armour plates to the lower arm.

This shows the armour plate before adding, it’s just a piece of 0,3 mm plasticard which was cut, drilled and filed to shape.

I was not happy with the placement of the old armour plate I already added to the elbow guard so I removed it (very carefully) and made a new one to put on the same place, but better placed. The wrist armour I deliberately turned compared to the elbow armour to enhance the effect of a turned arm. If I wouldn’t do this, it would just look like a static lower arm with a wrist that can turn around its axis. But now people will have to look a bit closer, first because it looks a bit weird, but (when the paintjob is reasonable) then they’ll see the inner workings with the turned bones and all. At least, that’s what I aim for

I also added a small twisted wire around the humerus and finished up the plating of the first hand. I haven’t had time to work on the other hands yet, but that will come either this weekend or next week somewhere. As I started building before payment, I’m way ahead of schedule. ;P

Just to be cute, I added a small ‘how to’ on my amazing small twisted cables.
First take a piece of electric wire which contains multiple metal wires (preferably not copper wire, but the silver sort as this is sturdier) like this computer connector thingy.


Strip the wire half way (for easier handling), making sure that you do not cut of the wires inside.

Start twisting the wire between your fingertips, (no pictures, I need my fingers to photograph) starting at the beginning and slowly, while twisting, moving to the tip. You have a lot of control here over how the cable will look at the end. Twisting it strongly will make a more dense cable, while twisting it lightly will make an almost spaced cable.
Seal the end with (thick) superglue
Remove the housing, seal and cut at the other end.
Cable done.

You can now use it for everything you need a small cable for but where a straight cable would look too boring (bionics, powerclaws/gloves/swords etc.). You can easily bend it and it is pretty sturdy. Of course, using more wires or thicker wire will make the cable stronger and thicker.
This also works with bigger wire for a larger than life effect (or dreads or something).

ideas, comments, flaming?

Beork