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Nice tetsubo! How did you make it?

On a related note, is Hida Yakamo actually holding a jade tetsubo? Or did the artist just color it green for style? Cause, I mean, damn, those things are expensive (but effective!)

tzeentchling wrote:Nice tetsubo! How did you make it?

On a related note, is Hida Yakamo actually holding a jade tetsubo? Or did the artist just color it green for style? Cause, I mean, damn, those things are expensive (but effective!)

The tetsubo is a piece of metal tube with four pieces of thin plasticard glued down each side. I left a gap between the card and the lower hand primarily for proper proportions more than anything, not sure at the time if I'd put the offhand there or lower down. The studs are these tiny Japanese glass beads (that I bought years ago for a failed project, not 'cause they were Japanese) that I simply glued onto the sides.

AFAIK the character actually has a solid jade tetsubo... and, yeah, they're expensive but he's the son of a clan daimyo. Hell, his left HAND is solid jade, too, but that's a whole different story.

Last night I did a few additions to the model; nothing major, just filling in the gaps that were left by the first stage of assembly.

Out of an accident of hand placement rather than intentional design, I found that it would be impossible to put the right-side flamer on the model without it being directly in contact with the weapon's handle (making it difficult to paint). Rather than try to keep track of a flamer bit for the time it'll take me to finish this guy and prime it (which won't happen until my magnets come in the mail) I decided to try an interesting double-flamer on the other fist. It turned out to look pretty dynamic over there, and it's easy to imagine the wraithlord throwing out a fist and letting loose with the flames.

Also, I used the two minor "fins" on the sprue to cover up the holes on the back that are left by the back banners and my only using a single vane on the back. Nothing major, like I said, but it does add a bit more balance to the back of the model.

There's also a shot of the model's base in case anyone was interested.

Eldar and conversions look great.

My only comment would be that I think a little green or scorched green static grass on the bases would help tied in with the nice green on the model.

Cheers

tallmantim wrote:My only comment would be that I think a little green or scorched green static grass on the bases would help tied in with the nice green on the model.

Definitely a good idea, and one that I'll probably use as I start getting more of my models brought "up to date". Most of my existing models just had plain sand bases, and as I update their banners I've been doing a wash/drybrush on them (like the Avengers above). So, once I do that, I'll probably take your suggestion and throw some grass on them. Should help the unification of the army some for sure.

I swear, I'm going to get to painting some stuff this weekend! But in the meantime, I've (barely) started work on a Raider for my wife's Dark Eldar army (as discussed above). It's based on a Falcon, of course, and this is a very, very early WIP shot of it. The next stage is to find out how long a Raider generally is supposed to be (little help here?) so I can better size the bridge tubing, and then start building a platform for riders. I also have a pilot built together (just a Jetbike driver with a little bit of fiddly bits, he's not glued in there) and I'll get a seating area for him, and then we'll see what else we do to it.

At the moment it's a few inches longer than a Wave Serpent as pictured.

EDIT: Replaced the original pictures with two newer pics with non-glued bridge tubes in place



And the original two pics which show the angles better.

Aaaand I've added floor plates and the front gunner. I still have no idea what I'm going to do with the pilot, but we'll figure that out.

Cool work!

You see very little dark elf stuff, so lovely to see some, especially taking off the eldar stuff.

wow cool tanks!

Been doing some work on the Wraithlord. I'm pretty happy with the bone color, as well as the blues (except the head) and the contrasts between the light bone, the blues, and the darker bone areas.

The head, I'm less than happy with. The idea was to create a sort of "background" set of runes that were just barely visible as a lighter blue within the foreground that I can then paint a main rune over (somewhat inspired by the unit graphic for the WL in DOW2). I might strip the head and repaint it, as it's not glued on yet, or I just might keep trying to mess with it. We'll see.

I'm pretty thrilled with how the banners look, even pre-painting, and the weapons magnetized nicely (as the pics show). I'm curious as to what folks think of the angles of them, as I skipped the ball-mounted weapon mounts and just mounted the weapons directly to the back vanes, since I prefer a more integrated look.

Feedback, comments, and advice are all welcome!

For the Jedi Mind trick thing, ever thought of using green stuff to make the supports look like energy, or something, maybe some extra strung between the space marine bits to more illustrate your point. If you painted it using it as a light source i think it would look amazing.

Got an O-Chem exam next Monday, so I'm not going to get any work done over the next several days, so I figured I'd at least get SOMETHING up here. I've been needing to take some additional pictures of stuff anyways, so here goes... these will serve as "before" pics on some of the minis that I'm going to do additional work on over time.

First, a better shot of the Wraithlord WIP (see notes on it up a couple posts) using the lightbox. I still think I need to work on getting my brightness up, but that'll take some time (and better lighting in the box):


My two Wave Serpents that I'll probably spend some time working on. These are old paint jobs, obviously, something I'd class as my "second tier" (after I'd gotten a handle on doing decent paint but before I got to where I feel like I'm "pretty good")... I probably don't need to strip them, but I'm going to go into them and do some highlighting and shading to add a bit more depth to the models. I will probably strip the turrets just to bring them a bit more in line with the rest of the army, as well as giving them more interesting bases (the one on the left's base broke off when I pulled it out for the picture, conveniently enough). I also need to swap out the Shuriken Cannons since they aren't defensive weapons anymore.


Finally, my Dark Reapers. I mainly need to do the bases up a little nicer (probably just a wash-and-brush job), and I'll likely replace the solid metal banners to match the paper ones I've done for my newer models. These models were the first ones that I completed in the bone base, flesh wash, paint pads something else scheme that has become the standard for my eldar, so they're sort of a "groundbreaking" unit for me. Some advice on how to distinguish the exarch's weapon as a Tempest Launcher would be welcome, though.


EDIT: Forgot one: my "Hover Wraithlord" that's probably going to be retired unless I need a really cheap Bright Lance-Only model, since I really don't feel like working on getting him up to current rules-spec. (Most likely will only be fielded if I'm playing some huge-points game with multiple force orgs.)

Awesome stuff!

@ your Hoverlord.......daaaaaaaaaw aint he cute

nice stuff keep up the ace work

I like how your DE are coming along and the interesting conversions you make for them.

Thats a great Raider conversion. Mixing in Dark Eldar design with Eldar parts works really well.

Personally I always found it odd how some of the Dark Eldar vehicles looked really crude and barbaric (in an ignorant Human way) as opposed to a twisted all powerful race at the height of madness.

The wraithlord is also very well done, good dynamic pose and the banners are genius!

This is coming along very nicely.

I have never seen a anything dark eldar converted to that extent. Very impressive.

Very original. /thumbsup

You should make an army profile with these things in it.

malfred wrote:Very original. /thumbsup

You should make an army profile with these things in it.

Been thinking about it, that's part of the reason I got some more pics of old stuff last night.

I Like, High Five.

Had some spare time last night and this morning, so I did a bit more work on the Raider for my wife's eventual army. My goals here were to make it look a bit more like an integrated whole, to try and tie the piece together rather than just looking like a bunch of plasticard stuck together. I think it's getting there, but suggestions are definitely welcome and encouraged.

The first picture is an artificially high-contrast image showing the plates that I added to the deck, intending to resemble the upper-plate look of the Eldar parts of the ship. I had to do this one because the white-on-white just does not show up at all in the rest of the images since I was using a flash.


And the rest of the traditional angle shots of the Raider:

Dude these are looking awesome ! im loving the conversions on these eldar and that terminator oh absolutely divine !!!
if you dont mind i may have to steal that idea !
anyway can't wait to see more of these eldar

all the best
Wolf

Small update: I added a couple "rails" along the inner part of the platform. It's primary intent was just to liven up that part of the model, and are designed to look like handholds for the riders to be holding on to while they're being flown around. I'm thinking I'll probably add a couple prisoners, chained up near the back, as well as a couple nominal "passengers" or helpers who will help it look a little more busy up there.

The only real thing I have left is to finish up the rider's area, and I'm kind of stumped as to what I should do back there; it's pretty darn plain under his chair, and just looks like a conversion (with visible plastic rod and stuff). *shrug*

Found some time between school work and Empire: Total War this weekend to wrap the model up for all intents and purposes. I might put together a few models to use as markers for when the "Raider" has passengers, probably magnetizing them. I'm just sad I don't get to paint it.

I finally decided to just put some fake "hydraulics" under the pilot's seat. I guess it could be described as a "stabilization platform" letting the pilot keep relatively level during hard turning and acceleration or something...

Also, once I mounted the cockpit, the original tail was completely off-center (rotated about 10 degrees clockwise), so I had to break it off and put on a new one. It turned out to be a bit of a happy accident, since I was able to trim down the leftover pieces and use it to give the tail a bit of a double-level effect.

The last week was mostly spent putting together a model for the Jungle Fighting paint contest (though there's yet to be any paint on the model), but I went ahead and did some paint work on the Wraithlord today. Here's the current state of his paint; the next step is going to get to work on the banners (trying to decide between paint and markers in a thread here.

I decided to go ahead and just paint the sashimono traditionally; the overall look of the army is made more coherent, I think, by banners that look like the units themselves may have painted them (something that they do in my craftworld's fluff); going with markers would probably have made them look too manufactured. Runes and characters should look like someone put them there IMO.

I may do some more highlighting on the characters; once I get the rest of the model painted (mainly weapons at this point, plus gems if I decide to do any) I'll see how flat it looks overall, and if adding some texture to the banners looks like it'll help I'll do that.

Looks nice.

Looking good...

The edge on view of the platform however looks too thin - I would suggest something like cutting a plasticard tube and pushing it on to give a larger edge with shape - that would stop the side on view looking so thin I think.

Bye

You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!

Platuan4th wrote:You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!

You could probably make a fairly decent Bretonian footslogging or High Elf army out of them... in fact I might very well do that with all the ones I have lying about.