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Hey all, this is my first post here.
I recently was inspired by star wars armies that people had converted and I had seen on the internet. That, in combination with the fact that I am reading through all of the star wars books that my father owns (quite a few), led me to attempt to make a jedi to lead my IG army. I figured he'd play as a primaris psyker (force lightning!) and his force weapon would obviously have to be a lightsaber. With the idea in mind, i set out.

Being as this was my first real conversion, and that my painting skill is pretty low, I decided to keep it simple... aka find a model that had a jedi feel to it, and work off from there. After doing some more research to find what others made jedi's look like, I cam upon a revelation: flat colored lightsabers dont do the weapon justice. I really wanted a cool model with a cool weapon, so I decided to try to add some led's to my model and make the saber glow. I used this model http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1080155&rootCatGameStyle= for a couple of reasons.
1) i needed one hand to be somewhere near some large(ish) amount of pewter in order to "hide" the base of the led and wires. This model didnt have the book hand connected, which enabled me to add a new hand and a handle big enough for an led to fit in.
2) the second hand was stretched out, in a nice pose if manipulating the force. well it was if i ripped off the pistol that is. I ended up not having any right hands in my bits box that werent in a fist, so I stuck with his fisted hand.

First step was to drill a hole through his cloak at an angle with where i was going to make the handle. I went with a tiny drill bit because i'd only run the ground wire through there, and snake it down the cloak and into the base. After the hole, i added a hand from my IG sets, and positioned it ready to hold the saber. The handle of the saber turned out to be tricky, as it needed to be wide enough to hold the led inside it. It looks a little bit silly if you look closely cause its pretty big, but i was hoping the eye would look at the glowy saber rather than the hand holding it. After glueing the led into the handle, i ran two wires to it, one through the hole, one snaking off to the side (i needed the positive wire accessable so i could attach it when i wanted it on, a switch would have been too bulky). Then i glued the handle in. Next up was to buy a watch battery, hollow out the guys base, tape the ground wire on it, tape the battery into the base, and paint. My painting isnt anything to yell about, but I think it came out pretty well, and whenever i want to turn it on I slip the wire underneath the base and tape, and there we go. Last thing was to take a 2mm diameter, 1.5 inch length (approx) piece of fiber optic filiment, sand the edges so it would light up the sides, not just the tip, and attack it to the inside of the handle. The light intensity came out very well, but since its just one led, in broad daylight or a well lit room, the effect isnt nearly as cool.

EDIT: the handle was made of a playing card (3 of diamonds), wrapped once, then painted. Also, the tape was coming off when i took the pictures. I retaped it with better electrical tape since then so you dont see the flaps coming off the sides.


Hope you enjoy the pictures and if anyone gets inspired by this, let me know what you created!
also I apologize if this has been done before, I'm somewhat new to dakka.

With it off

On, but lots of lights

Darkness

Normal gaming lighting (is there such a thing? hah!)

Shadows

Shadows side

Cool effect esp. with lights off. Do dawn of war game 1st round night fight and actually turn off the lights.

Wow, talk about a cut above. Most folks would've simply used one of the green rods from a Necron Sprue. The fact that you made one that actually lights up is just... wow. Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the sabre curve on the blade also looks kind of neat. You should leave it as it is. The paintjob on the mini could use some sprucing up, but that conversion is really, really cool. Especially at that scale. Not a lot of LED Infantry out there.

thanks guys!

the curve was actually natural from the filiment, i didnt realize how unflexible it was going to be. In fact, i thought it might have been a problem if it drooped, but the piece i got had that slight curve to it so i just said hell with it and glued it in.

as for the painting, ill eventually get back to him and fix it up, but ive started painting a blood angels army with intents to play it in a campaign which launches really soon, so im up to my chin with stuff to do. not to mention find a job now that im out of school...

Now that is a FORCE weapon

COOL!!!!

thanks!

Yeah man, that stuff's effin' cool. Definitely an awesome conversion. Keep up the good work! Any chance your blood angels will have some LED improvements?

That's hot. I am amazed that you were able to rig something so small with electricity. What's that fuzzy stuff on the blade, though?

Lol, very cool

I might add some running lights or neons for a rhino, but i havent decided yet, going to try to get them painted first

solog, electricity is very small! the fuzzy stuff is just from sanding the fiber optic filiment's sides. i could have cleaned it up, but if you watch the star wars movies again, the sabers have a fuzzy glow to them, so i thought it fit well and kept it

I used to use those see threw neon toothpicks you can buy. It looked cool, but nowhere as awesome as that turned out. Nice work

LED infantry=win.

Nice work.

Rico.

1) Why is it fuzzy?
2) Why didn't you hide the wiring? It looks seriously blatant.
The exposed wiring just going into the slot really ruins the illusion of the weapon.
3) Likewise with the battery cover sticking out of the underside of the base.
4) Why isn't the base finished?

As for the modeling critique, the handle of this lightsaber is HUGE! He's not even holding it, it's so big. He's kinda palming it, like a basketball.


Great idea and the lighting really worked out very well. It glows perfectly.
A+ for concept.
A for effort.
A for achieving the effect.
D- for execution.

BladeSire wrote:your blood angels

lol




*EDIT* Links to GW's webpages never work. They take you to the splash page.


Ghidorah

I like the model; looks like he's force choking someone.

Psykers should've been equipped with lightsabers in the codex.

Ghidorah wrote:1) Why is it fuzzy?
2) Why didn't you hide the wiring? It looks seriously blatant.
The exposed wiring just going into the slot really ruins the illusion of the weapon.
3) Likewise with the battery cover sticking out of the underside of the base.
4) Why isn't the base finished?

*EDIT* Links to GW's webpages never work. They take you to the splash page.

1) fuzzy from sanding the fiber optic filiment, i left it because it A) enhances the look, B) makes the side glow brighter
2) main reason is that ive yet to base the model, which is going to require me to re-set both wires. when i do that, ill hide the wires much better.
3) by doing the base, ill be able to find a way to hold the battery in the base without tape.
4) time, not enough of it in my life.

the main reason that yellow wire is hanging off is because i dont have a switch for the led, so i have to bend it down and touch it each time i want to light it up. once i finish the base, ill be able to rig it so whenever it is placed standing up, the wire will touch, and voila.

as for your edit, if you sign up to the gw website (i did it for the white dwarf archives), and set yourself to always stay logged in when you visit, the links work fine. If your not registered, you can always click the link, choose your country, then click the link again without closing your browser and it will take you to the right page.

racta wrote:1) fuzzy from sanding the fiber optic filiment, i left it because it A) enhances the look, B) makes the side glow brighter
2) main reason is that ive yet to base the model, which is going to require me to re-set both wires. when i do that, ill hide the wires much better.
3) by doing the base, ill be able to find a way to hold the battery in the base without tape.
4) time, not enough of it in my life.

I'm not sold on the fuzzy "enhancing the look", but it's your model, not mine. If you like it, good on ya!
As for the other three, makes perfect sense now. Don't we all wish we had more time?

I had no idea abuot the GW site behaving like that. That is certainly a handy tidbit of info, there. Thanks!


***EDIT*** Awesome! I did your trick for the website and it worked aces. Kickass!


Ghidorah

I'd replace the hand with something better, as it stands it's kind of obvious that you just kind of chewed off the bolt pistol. And the lightsaber seriously looks ENORMOUS. I don't know if you need it for the LED or what, but seriously.

haha it really is enormous, but without getting a specialty LED that would cost something fierce (i assume, at this point i cant even find one) that would be smaller than 3mm. Hard to find them smaller.

The real problem with the fuzz is that if its gone, then the side wont be as bright, which diminishes the effect a lot.

Thanks for the good words tho everyone