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I love seeing the true scale marines and posts like this just make me want to spend all my money to make them, its so unfortunate.

Nice work! You've acheved the visual palette from the book cover very well and sclae wise these are superb, with very nice detail on each one.

I find the base texture way too coarse and how the legs are weathered more a wet material drying on armour instead of dust accumulating if that makes any sense.

Ive just now seen your fluff-idea and I must say, awesome work there.
I didnt even notice the Alpha and Omega pads until you mentioned it. What a great idea that is!

Im also looking forward to a primarch dread. Seeing how you scaled up these guys very nicely, thatll be quite challenge though. Same goes for the Omegon Terminator armour.

All in all, those three guys are very impressive and Id like to see more.

badass models bro

Chapter 2: "Curse you, Guilliman!"

Thanks for the comments guys. Here is some work in progress shots of my primarch Alpharius, having been installed into a dreadnought after being mortally wounded by Roboute Guilliman on Eskrador.

Since I am not a millionaire I am trying to build this project using old models and stuff I have lying about that I have never got round to using before. Thus I am using old-skool terminators from Space Hulk, and the plastic marines from the 3rd edition 40k box. Which included a land speeder. I have also used a couple of IG Sentinels that I got second-hand and seem to have been badly mistreated.

Below are work-in-progress shots before I start to bulk out the legs by covering them with armour. I gave my dreadnought a periscope 'head' to try to emphasise the idea that this is a person, rather than a vehicle. The final finished pose will have him leaning slightly further forward to give a more dynamic lunge.



Close-up of the marine having his head crunched. He will be painted blue.



Rear view. The yellow parts are small pieces cut from the sides of a butter tub. The sides and lid of the tub gave me sheets of ~1mm plastic which I will use to build up the armour plating and create shoulder armour etc.



My fingers holding the other arm in position. The gun is triple-barreled.



I still have to do shoulder armour, and leg armour in the style of a titan. The feet are not done, I was just using them to stand the model upright. The toes will be lengthened and beefed up. I am considering increasing the length of the legs as well. Then I will need to go over the model with plasticard and greenstuff to fill in the gaps and give detail, before doing the fun stuff like decoration and scrolls etc.

That is one of the best looking "humanoid" dread conversions I have seen. You managed to avoid making it too goofy looking while still keeping some of the dread features. I think you probably want to bulk the arms quite a bit. Maybe making the crushing arm have some sort of "gauntlet" armoring to make it more evocative of the dread CC weapon.

Isn't he oddly top heavy with the metal sentinel head?

To add to the above comment, I think you need to lengthen the legs a little bit. But It's a great idea. And it's be cool if you could kinda get his head showing in the Dreadnought.

Further work to the legs etc...

Greypaint: I have built up his wrist a bit to give that gauntlet vibe. Also I have started to add piping and wires to bulk out the arm, which now look like the outline of 'muscles'. The arm still looks spindly, but this is to compensate for the big shoulder pad armour he will have. Overall I am very pleased with how this has turned out.



Sicarius: I have extended the length of the lower leg parts, which give him better proportions, and have started giving him leg armour like a mini titan. I also beefed up his feet to make him more titan-y.



This is roughly the pose I intend him to have. He will be 'breaking the fourth wall' by stepping off his base in order to grab the marine. The body is hollow and the head is not that heavy, so the model is actually really stable; this is being photographed without any supports or glue on the feet. Well done whoever designed the sentinel legs.

One problem I have - as I use more yellow plastic card to bulk out the armour, the more it looks like Bumblebee from Transformers. :S

One thing I kind of noticed, why isn't the marine he is holding true scale? So now you've got true scaled marines fighting against the Midget Astartes.

Superb. All SM figs should be this scale...

Malika2 wrote:One thing I kind of noticed, why isn't the marine he is holding true scale? So now you've got true scaled marines fighting against the Midget Astartes.

Exactly correct. That crushed guy will be painted ultramarine colours since I think Alpharius would be pretty -off with that chapter. I specifically did not true scale the ultramarine because when I play games with this army my opponents will have normal scale guys. Also I like the idea that over 10,000 years the gene-seed has diluted, so now you have all these smaller, weaker astartes running around, compared to my mighty Heresy-era dudes

Actually, I believe that, fluff wise, thats actually pretty cool. After thousands of years of reproduction with technology that has been sort of lost, made the reproduction process less effective.

Good thinking, darth. I dig it.

Very cool. It just looks much more... real with the amrour and all. The legs are awesome. BTW, any chance you'll be at the next UK games day? If I were you, I'd see about getting a Tacticla Squad painted and then add this guy to the squad. You could enter it into the 40k squad section

Looking very good here; always good to see the Alpha Legion 'crush' the Smurfs!

Detailing on those marines is fantastic too.

Would like to see more updates on that Dread!!

Everything so far has been excellent. I hate it.

holy bad ass! those look awesome. and huge! nice job

1000 apologies for the criminally slow updates. I was distracted by life and Christmas and also Battle Fleet Gothic. However, here are 2 more Alphas, 95% finished. I still need to go over them adding writing, kill markings, more weathering etc. Also, I have tried out a different way of doing desert bases, and I hate the results. A top tip for budding painters out there is to test out new techniques on spare models, not the ones you want to show people.



On the left is Mathias Herzog, Captain, 2nd Company. His chainsword is 1 1/2 times the length of a normal space marine sword, and was also beefed up by adding plasticard to the sides.

On the right is an Alpha legionnaire armed with the autocannon from a sentinal. I drilled out a vent hole in the side muzzle to make it look more bolter-esque. Rules-wise, this is my counts-as psycannon.

The guy in the middle is my next initiate into the legion, and was allowed in to the photo for scale purposes.

Holy crap - I didn't realize just how big those guys were until you put them side-by-side with a Terminator. Geez! They look great, though. I don't think the new desert base is that bad looking - the dustiness up the legs of the marines looks pretty good, I think.

where is the link to the instructions you used to true scale as I would like to make a squad for kill team and such.

Amazing Marines dude.

Ghost in the Darkness wrote:where is the link to the instructions you used to true scale as I would like to make a squad for kill team and such.

I second this. Google "Doghouse" and it should pull it up, but his aen't as nice as these.

For a first attempt, these are simply fantastic. Every modelling project is a learning experience, and this one is fantastic.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

I based the construction off this thread from warseer by a guy called Synapse, but search for Doghouse as well because there are other methods to true-scale such as using chaos warrior legs etc that would be much cheaper to do en mass.

Difficulty-wise, I would say anyone could do this and get good results. You just need to build it up in stages slowly, making each armour panel as smooth as possible. Start with the thighs and feet. I smooth them out as much as possible using the back of your sculpting tool (which I keep wet with cooking oil), then let them set overnight before shaping them further with a file and knife. then I do the shin armour. Again I smooth it then let it totally dry before filing, then I start on the kneepads etc. Just take it in small stages, and try to get it as nice as possible before moving on.

Wow amazing work ... for their next trick getting into a rhino ^_^

That is awesome work. Hope to see more.

Chapter 3: The Cabal Revealed

Ok, so because this army is meant to be the Cabal and the Alpha Legion working together, I have started work on the Cabal members:

First up is Slau-Dha, the Eldar Autach who leads the Cabal into battle. He will be my count-as Inquisitor Lord, with the other Cabal members filling inquisitor-retinue rolls. I have based the model on a Dark Eldar because I wanted to give him a more ancient eldar feel, since he has been around for a while. I'm thinking he is past his prime compared to average eldar warriors etc, but arrogantly still sees himself as a combat master. I have tried to pose him in an arrogant manner, and his right hand will be drawing back a cloak which I havn't done yet. I'm pleased with how his basic structure has turned out, and now have to add in details and improve his armour etc.

In the book, the only real description is him being taller than a human, having Pearl-white armour and "massive" white wings(!). So I will have to think about how to create some sort of Swooping Hawk-esque backpack thing. I have extended his legs and arms to make him taller than a normal man, but (if helmetless) not as tall as my marines.

The sword he is holding has been photoshopped into place whilst I finish sculpting it.

It was made from a length of wire to support a block of greenstuff which I let dry before carving the shape.I then wrapped thin wire around the handle, and have started on the hand-guard which covers the join.

Here is further work done to Alpharius; I have given him shoulder armour in the style of pre-heresy terminator. The main structure is now finished and now begins the detail work and greenstuffing gaps and edging of armour plates etc.


Finally, I present the starting sculpt of Gehet, one of the alien members of the Cabal. He will count-as a Mystic. He isn't described very well in the book - the only description I could find was that he had two sets of nostrils(!). Progress has been slow because every time I try to sculpt him I start laughing.

Love the Gehet - great use of a plastic, single-pose Skink!

Hmm interesting, I'm just a bit worried that the Eldar will look too chunky, must be those legs...

Darth Fugly wrote:

In the book, the only real description is him being taller than a human, having Pearl-white armour and "massive" white wings(!). So I will have to think about how to create some sort of Swooping Hawk-esque backpack thing. I have extended his legs and arms to make him taller than a normal man, but (if helmetless) not as tall as my marines.

The sword he is holding has been photoshopped into place whilst I finish sculpting it.

Really I didn't notice.
Anyway good job I will be following this thread.

The skink mystic is great! Heaps of character for such a basic mini.
Looking forward to see how the eldar turns out. The grieves you've sculpted are very nice.

goffnob deffsmakka wrote:

Darth Fugly wrote:
...
The sword he is holding has been photoshopped into place whilst I finish sculpting it.

Really I didn't notice.
Anyway good job I will be following this thread.

Yes, perhaps I should have said 'MS Paint'!!

Malika2 wrote:Hmm interesting, I'm just a bit worried that the Eldar will look too chunky, must be those legs...

Yer I know what you are hinting at, but this is still in the basic 'skeleton' phase, where I have just roughed out basic shapes. My sculpting style seems to be do everything chunky, then cut and file it all back to proper thickness and shape, then rinse and repeat. I just can't seem to get the hang of doing fiddly small details off the cuff.
I have been following some of the ][-munda threads, especially CMDante's, to try to get tips on how to do 28mm scale detail and hopefully face sculpts for when I do some of the normal sized other characters from the book, but there is a world of skill between doing my true-scale marines (which are really 40mm sculpts made with simple shapes) to doing 28mm highly detailed models.