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cool doublehanded pose. thats a very parttut on that matter, could/should get sticky for that alone...

vik

That's quite the list. Can't wait to watch every step.

Viktor von Domm wrote:cool doublehanded pose. thats a very parttut on that matter, could/should get sticky for that alone...

vik

Thanks vik!

The double handed pose was a royal pain. I don't think I'm going to be doing it again, and if I do I've learned that the longer you make the haft (provided its out of separate pieces) the harder it gets. In the future I'll use toothpicks or something. WAY too hard to get a perfectly flat join that doesn't distort the angles, and the GS likes to stretch due to the minuscule amount vs the weight of even a plastic piece!



Here is a picture of the stuff I'm starting out working on this morning along side my noobishly home made GS mold for alignment dowels and magnet sockets. After allowing the socket mold to cure it was coated in baby oil, a large GS ball stacked onto it, and another WFB base was pressed into it after being sandwiched between my coffee table top and a peice of glass. Allowed this to cure and then just easily pulled it apart when I woke up! There are tons of parts from the carnifex kit that are damn close to a terminator or true scale marine size and are easily trimmed using just the plastic clips.



Spent a bit of time leafing through art books and looking online for some artistically inspiring stuff for today. If this isn't Chaos, I don't know what is.



Here is a pic of the project so far. Bowl of heads and bowl of random chopped up bitz included!

I'm always impressed by people who are able to sculpt green stuff. I only feel comfortable using it to stick metal parts together, and I have a hell of a time with even that!



Make those pentagrams into the Eight-Pointed Star and you'll be styling!

Well, I'm going to be staying true to 40k since this is a 40k mini/diorama/wtfe, so there will be chaos emblems as opposed to modern day religious symbols. I was looking more at the devil in the center and the snake/tentacle things. I like the idea of GSing some snapping mouth things onto the ends of the 'nid tentacles I have for the base.

Here is a pic of the cured sockets and dowels from my goofy little home made mold. I know its not really that technically impressive, but I did come up with the idea all on my own. No consultation of forums required....so I'm proud of the uniformity of the results. Just remember to keep the surface of the molds well oiled when you press little GS balls into them. These should help me with the problem of components shifting while the joins cure, as well as drastically speed up the magnetizing process for future parts. The dowels and sockets were set set on the shelf to cure for 4 or 5 hours and they were easily removed with fingers.



I cannot stress how important the next pic is. These are #11 exacto blades. They are available at any hardware store and have a scalpel blade with a thin neck. They are the exact size of the blades that ship from Galeforce and fit their knife perfectly. SHARP BLADE IS KEY. I've gone through 8 blades in 5 days. Will be ordering bulk blades soon.

Oh yeah, that's a good idea too. I wonder if one could stylize an eight-pointed star like those pentagrams look though...

Monster Rain wrote: I only feel comfortable using it to stick metal parts together, and I have a hell of a time with even that!

Plastic is lighter, thereby making it MUCH easier to use GS and glue to construct a model. I don't like pinning and refuse to buy a hobby drill or vise.


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Monster Rain wrote:Oh yeah, that's a good idea too. I wonder if one could stylize an eight-pointed star like those pentagrams look though...

I probably could, but it would be easier to print out a copy of different 2D star, oil it, and then carefully cut an oiled strip of GS around the paper. I'm not going for the exact pose of that painting...WAY too ambitious. Just a few parts of it that have a 40k feel. I think there is a head in the Chaos Spawn kit or Beastmen/Beastigor Herd that could easily work for that, and the feathered wings can be sourced from the new BA kit.


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A side by side shot of the #11 blade vs a #24 which was offered to me as the "standard blade" in a couple of hardware and gaming shops I stopped at before finding the scalpel blades a block from my house. :/

I absolutely did not realize how much difference the blade makes until I read through Lamenters Tuturial on actual scale builds. http://masteroftheforge.com/2010/08/08/tutorial-actual-scale-space-marine/

The fine tips is great for tamping GS into hard to reach spots or any cut where you have incredibly tight tolerances, and the length of the blade means I can use the tip for precision work while the rear of the blade is used to trim plastic. DO NOT APPLY ALOT OF PRESSURE TO THE TIP UNTIL YOU ARE USED TO THE TOLERANCE OF THE METAL IT WILL BREAK AND YOU'LL GASH YOUR fething FINGER OPEN!!!!!!




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Oddly, the GS sockets I cast fit into termie shoulders almost perfectly. This was an unexpected bonus!!!



And here you see the advantage of the cast socket and using superglue as opposed to slow cure cement. Try to do this in uncured GS and the magnets just make a mess.



A few pictures! The cast sockets allowed me to tailor the fit so that the arms fit both the power armor and terminator armor, although only the terminator one will have swappable shoulders. I'm also starting to slowly work on adding a bit of mass to the upper legs of the power armor by layering on really really really thin strips of GS. Sadly, the heads with up swept horns always angle down a bit in the terminator cowl. Oh well.





The fit on this arm is a little odd in the back, but nobody including me is going to notice once its painted.




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This is my first ever project using GS or attempting anything beyond some really really rough glue on conversions. I want to be clear that nothing I've shown so far is "difficult" its just gaking time consuming.

agroszkiewicz wrote: I don't like pinning and refuse to buy a hobby drill or vise.

First let me say, for your first major GS work/Conversion, you are doing pretty darn good. To me it looks like you need to do some more work with smoothing the GS though. I know this is still a WIP, but I find if I take the added time to make sure even layers that I think will be covered up or not seen will still look good. You never know what someone else will notice.
Honestly Im not sure I would have attempted such an ambitious project. I would have just made 2 or 3 seprate minis, instead of a Single Ubar swapable one. I do like how you have magnitized the base so you can get multiple legg poses.

Now to your dislike of pinning. yes it can be a pain in the hynnie. With practice though you will find that it is a huge resource that you are over looking. I tend to pin almost evereything. One for the added strucural strenght, but also for the ability it gives me to make fluid motions. Here are a few examples...All of these Pics are WIPs. So please excusse mold lines, flash, and non smoothed GS. All got taken care of before painting.

All of these termies have had their arms pinned to the torsos and torsos to the leggs. this helped me create the fluidity of motion. I used florest wire, its very flexable.


In this pic you can see where I drilled holes for my first test of these arms. The arms in this pic are held in place with some wire and poster tak. Look how much more movement I can instill in this termi with some wire and GS.


Now wlook at the movement i gave to these Assault marines. I also pinned the hands on the dual chainsword dude.


I couldnt have created either of these minis without the use of pinning, especially if I wanted them to last. I know I used a wrong chest plate for one of these guys. Since this project never got finished(damm rules changes), I never went back and fixed it.


Dosent this just Scream "HAVE AT THEM BOYS!" more than 5 guys just standing there?


And my pinning skills isnt just for pinning one peice to another..It helped me creat Unique and Characterful models.


There you go.. I think you are on your way to becomming a really good converter. It never hurts to have more tools to draw from.

Nicorex

Edited some spelling

Holy hell.

Those assault marines just blew my damn mind.

Those are excellent pics Niko! I may bendon the pinning thing after the nightmare of building a 2 handed pose without it. Really drove home how it could be useful to me.

and that my Padawan is how we grow with the Force... 8)
Wana see something funny...
I made this termis when i worked as a Redshirt for GW a few years ago.


Last year GW reissued Space Hulk with this model. (Wonderfully painted my our very own GardenGnome)


I would like to think someone saw my mini and said wow we can make termis look fluid and did it.

@Nico
Wow, that's some pretty neat dynamic poses you've managed to create! I'm impressed!

@Agros
It's pretty awesome you've managed to come up with so many different parts to your miniature!
- On one of the bodies, though, i feel the stomach is too tall/long. It's kinda throws the miniature out of proportions a little. It may just be me. I've become pretty sceptic about that kinda stuff ever since i began drawing (I used aloooot of time getting proportions right).
The main reason i mention this is really that you can make the best conversion, but still have some odd-looking arm, leg or whatever steal the attention away from the rest of the miniature. It's just an eyesore, really, but doesn't mean the rest isn't great - 'cause it really is!

Anyways, Agros, you're gonna become one awesome sculpturer (i think that's how you spell it), if you keep this up!

I agree completely about the body thing Bill. The power armor body is just kind of....not right. I need to get some torso bitz and assemble them with about 1 mm gap between the back and front sections, then GS it a bit.

Two facts that I'm thrilled to have figured out through nothing but my own experiementation.
1. If you oil the GS it won't stick to plastic (or anything else) while it cures.
2. GW plastic clips can give you great rough cuts on cured globs of GS. I no longer have any use for plastic shoulder joints.

Artistic inspiration from morning devotional!





Anyone have a clue where to source a head similar to this? I'm totally stumped.



Pics of the cast dowels, sockets, and a roll of cured GS for future use.



Decided that I wanted to be able to stick the backpacks onto the terminator body. Using an oiled glob of GS I first made a mold of the torso. Practiced smoothing the GS surface too, but I'm not going to have much luck until I buy some clay tools. Most likely these http://www.dickblick.com/products/colour-shapers-tools/





Plan on having a productive afternoon, although I think my shawty is getting annoyed that I won't sit and talk to her for more than a half hour at a whack. Goal for the day is to work on dynamic arm poses....thanks Nico!

Music to sculpt to: "Angel with Scabbed Wings" Marilyn Manson, "Voodoo People" The Prodigy, "Hold Ya Head Up" Notorious BIG, "Lollipop" Lil Wayne, "Put that Pussy on Me" (Diplo Tonite Remix) Spank Rock, "Dusty Vinyl" Scooter

giger art is so cool. didn´t know he made art for dune as well. but i knew that pic of him for dune... well now that i can put one and one together...

and yeah giger is a great inspiration for any choas lunatic conversionists...

kkep up the good work, vik

Viktor von Domm wrote:giger art is so cool. didn´t know he made art for dune as well. but i knew that pic of him for dune... well now that i can put one and one together...

and yeah giger is a great inspiration for any choas lunatic conversionists...

kkep up the good work, vik

He did the original artwork for the Dune movie with Patrick Stewart as Gurney Hallack. Its far less well known that his work on Alien conceptual art, but its alot more mechanized which suits me nicely!


Really been taking the time to consider what kind of poses I could get with pinning. Future use only, this project is about the magnets as much as anything else.


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Stuff thats curing for a couple of hours. Once I figured out how to glue and shape properly, I socketed those termie shoulders in 15 minutes. I'm also making a mold so that I can produce sockets for the waist join. This should allow me to bang out lots of magnetized bodies.



I'm particularly proud of this part. Its not much to look at, but an backpack adapter for termie torso's is really fun since there are so many SM and CSM backpacks to choose from.






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Ahhh, and now I feel that the work is really starting to pay off! I've ended up scrapping far more parts than I've kept, but this is one of the configurations so far that I like the best. Can't beat a project that you get to play with as part of the creative process!!!!! (his rude gesture is for the gentleman that said I shouldn't use 'nid parts for chaos conversions)

Thinking I'll need to use unmodified termie legs with the backpack options. It looks more than a little top heavy. He was inspired by the NIN song "Big Man with a Gun"

Awesome, I really like the socket system. Cool stuff.

Go GIGER! (big influence on me from way back)

the shoulder looks total badass, also love the other shouldercanon. gives the predator look only 10times nastier...

where else can you get away with nid parts than chaos? well obviously my nid killas but that left aside its the manifestation of chaos sm...
the only thing thats not working for me is the growing numbers of modeling persons that use the powerclaws to show the rude finger. not that i´m to stiff to ywear or make a rude gesture myself every once in a while, but it´s so overdone...really who hasn´t den something like that...
beside that small rant, your work looks good, as usual^^

cheers, vik

Wicked stuff man! keep it up!

Brillinat Grimdark stuff you have here , very creative, i really like that you put your inspirational pics up too , so we can see your thought proccess!, and funny enough i was just talking to someone about the similarities between 40k and Giger! might steal that idea! and i just love your jump pack squad, very dynamic. But i bet it took an age to get the space marines on the lampost to stick and not fall over?

Predator....argh didn't even think of that! Gonna try and cut apart a real POS conversion I did 6 months ago with the head from possessed sprue.......

Also thinking that I could do a fairly nice looking red/bronze color scheme, and I'm also quite experienced with purple (and I paint in that color too!). I could leave some shoulders or arms black, or paint as needed to represent membership in the Black Legion. Any suggestions on color are welcome, just bear in mind that there are going to be alot of parts and rules that need to be represented in the model.

Hehe, tore down a few models off the "shelf of shame" and came up with a ton of stuff from the DP, Carnifex, and CSM box sets. My first batch of waist sockets got ruined because I removed them from the mold too early. Next batch will cure overnight and I'll work on some more legs in the AM. REALLY REALLY hard not to run out and get the Chaos Knights and Minataur kits to source parts from. Wamp wamp wamp.

sounds cool what things to come...

as for pinting bronze sound good, balck also, cant go wrong with that^^ and i would definatly add red... so you would have some more brutality paintwise^^

cheers, vik

As you progress your conversion work is looking even better. I like the relative size of the characters your building. Also like that you have given them more of a chaos look as opposed to the minis that come from the shelves. You definately appeal to a demonic side....very nice work!

Heh, so I found a page on Magcraft's site that allows you to literally custom build any size/shape magnet you want. You don't even want to know the gak running through my head right now involving a magnet shaped like a half sphere and one with a recessed socket.

http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/custom-magnets.aspx

Some pics that I'm looking over today.

One of my all time favorite mini's.


Picture from .016 seconds after the atomic explosion at the Trinity Site. The white is the superheated explosion, the small black specks at the bottom of the white area are trees.

no man, you can´t round us up and not let us in then, tell us, we can take it^^

vik

Dickie Roberts! This is a very cool blog, keep it coming.

Using the fully cured shoulder sockets, I can now construct parts "on the fly" in about 20 minutes per set. Plus its ALOT easier to cut than the plastic shoulder which is nice because I don't like slicing my fingers apart.



Spent maybe 5 minutes digging for bitz last night, GS'd a few things together and let em cure while I slept. Fitting and trimming was completed with a modeling scalpel, which took another 10 minutes. After that it was just a matter of sticking the magnets on with some glue. I don't like the gun pose, feels too clunky.









Playing around with sorcerer ideas.












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I also figure that the more GW detail I can preserve, the less GS detail work I'm going to have to do. To whit, I have ended up with some very very tiny peices. The tweezers belonged to my grandmother...an avid hobby/craft bittie. Found em boxed up in a 50 year old stamp collection, thought this was an appropriate use for em since I have concerns about my sausage fingers being able to manipulate them into place prior to curing.





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neil101 wrote:Brillinat Grimdark stuff you have here , very creative, i really like that you put your inspirational pics up too , so we can see your thought proccess!, and funny enough i was just talking to someone about the similarities between 40k and Giger! might steal that idea! and i just love your jump pack squad, very dynamic. But i bet it took an age to get the space marines on the lampost to stick and not fall over?

Let me be clear, the pinning and beautifully posed models (termie's, assault marines, etc) were crafted by member Nicorex who has been doing this FAR longer than I have. Just to make sure credit is sent where it is due.

Will no longer be building double magnetized shoulders for reasons of structural integrity when the model is fully assembled. Also, hoping to get more dynamic poses than those seen thus far and the consruction technique with magnets is limited when it comes to extreme angles. Yes I know pinning would be better, but this is a no pinning project!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

qoute
"Let me be clear, the pinning and beautifully posed models (termie's, assault marines, etc) were crafted by member Nicorex who has been doing this FAR longer than I have. Just to make sure credit is sent where it is due."

Fair enough , great work regardless i also suffer the dreaded curse of sausage fingers! tweezers are my new best friend!;-)

Important test: Making sure the waist join can support the weight of the base filled with GS, the legs, and about 10 magnets. This is pretty much the weight limit if you want to pick the assembled model up by the body. Still....not bad for such a small disc.



I took the plastic snips and cleaned out a large portion of my "shelf of shame", salvaging what I could and clipping down to roughly the scale I need.



This was my attempt at modeling one of the weapons from a special character in codex CSM. Won't say which weapon since its really not very good. Also used a GS socket and dowel cast to try and get a more dynamic stance. Meh...first try is first try.



On the model....





My buddy said the backpack looked cool for an Obliterator, so I bashed together some spare weapons. Personally I think it bears a passing resemblance to a termie scale dreadnought weapons pod.










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After looking at the posted pics, decided to yank off some crappy looking parts on the backpack.

I think this model manages to incorporate strong Giger and Lovercraftian influences, while still remaining true to the 40k feel and scale. Should also be tourney legal since it uses 100% GW parts.

Thats a pretty big gun mate, whats his name overkill! makes him look a little top heavy though, think maybe his legs need bulking out , with stablizers to support it!

Wow that are some big guns, its like a walking bomb to me...

great job

jelle