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Nice and inspirational stuff!

Nice work! Love the little brass details. These are looking very cool, look forward to more.

Is the ogryn getting a buzz-saw utilising the front forks of the bike?

Ah I must have missed the coat colours...oops. Your point makes sense about the gang colours and getting the coat as part of an initiation ceremony. Glad their under garments, that is under the coat garments, will be an assortment of colours.

I knew I recognised that vent! Bloody orks.

The metal part has me at a total loss. Oh well I am sure you'll put us out of our misery at some point

Peter

@Scarper

I'm thinking maybe a Toy Story reference, but I really don't see how that could fit, so I wasn't going to say anything.

Del Boy would say " 'e who dares, wins!" or he would say "this time next year we'll be millionaires!", anyway you are right Toy Story it is.

@c0un7_z3r0

Nice work! Love the little brass details. These are looking very cool, look forward to more.

Thanks, you're the first one to notice them explicitly. The will be more brass on my leader and the second heavy.

Is the ogryn getting a buzz-saw utilising the front forks of the bike?

Yes and No. BUZZZZ was the keyword here, so I've turned the bike into a buzz saw, but it won't be the front forks. The rear wheel is where the buzzing happens.

@PDH

under the coat garments, will be an assortment of colours

Oh yes, even though it will be quite a stretch to find distinct and different colors, while not breaking the narrow range of colors.

The metal part has me at a total loss. Oh well I am sure you'll put us out of our misery at some point.

Ok, I'll have mercy.

You cannot actually see it on the pictures, as it is covered by Abi's beautiful hair *chuckle* but it is there. It was the front of a chaos terminator's pole rack. Some of them have a small skull like on Abi's left shoulder, the others have that optical thingy I used as a charge light on the power pack.



So much for the replies.



Time for an update:
I've got a flu, so I went to bed early and therefore couldn't paint last night. But I did some more conversion work in the afternoon. Ogryn is still on hold, but I feel the suspense rising here, so I will get back to him very soon. Instead I worked on my second favorite ganger, who was at a 60% done status and is now close to completion.
Some more details to do, some involving hard decisions, you might help me there!
The model is another heresy ganger, who has had head chopped off and hands and weapons replaced, now he is wielding two non standard plasma pistols. Again I went for a techy but not top notch feel, by giving him a power pack on the back, only this time it's completely different.

This is the base model:


The difficult points are:
1. His legs are kind of thin, I think he should get some armor plates for his shins to make good his twiggy physique. What do you think?
2. His new head is awesome, but it lacks goggles. I could sculpt some, but it would take away from the cool facial expression. So I thought maybe he is wearing photo contacts instead of a visor. You hardly ever see that on the models but it is ok with the backround. I might try to show it on the paintjob, so by some strangely colored eyes (I'm thinking black right now.). My only fear is to make him look daemonic. What do you think?

Well, I'd personally possibly just got with putting goggles on his forehead, as though he's raised them for a minute. Black eyes could kinda make him look daemonic- but would said contacts necessarily have to express colouration in the eyes? My verdict- I don't know.

And on the legs, it doesn't seem as though they're too thin, at least for a real human physique. Follow your nose on this one.

Kaesar II.

putting goggles on his forehead

Daaah, I could have had that idea... Thank you very much, I didn't even think of that possibility. I'll try it, this could work pretty well.

contacts necessarily have to express colouration in the eyes

Of course nobody said so, I just didn't like the idea of not having any visible sign of his delaqueish light intolerance. But I agree it would be very hard not to have it look like possession. Even though there aren't that many inquisitors stalking through the underhive one would possible not take the risk of being clenses by fire just for some fancy contacts. Still would like to try it though, since if done correctly I think it could have a real badass look to it.

And on the legs, it doesn't seem as though they're too thin, at least for a real human physique.

I thought so, looking at the pic I linked, but on the actual mini, especially if looking from the side, it looks worse. Plus it is also about those boots, it's not really the legs, but his thin ankles in those strapped tight boots, he looks a bit like a hooker...and not in the good way.

On something else, tomorrow is painting day! One of the other guys is coming over and we will be painting half the day. So maybe, big maybe, I can show you something regarding my sample juve tomorrow evening. So hang tight...

Just to keep you guys up to date, a minor...well... update. Painting day resulted in some definite facts:
1.) The color scheme for the coats is set in stone. It's mainly dark sea blue (DSB), simple black (slightly glossy) shadows, careful highlights with DSB+Ivory and finally a tiny layer of some cruel violet in the shadows. Looks awesome, assuming my skills will be up to par with the idea. It worked on parts of the coat so far.
2.) Boy, I need practice! Last fully painted mini has been years ago. In the meantime it was just a brushstroke here and a painting workshop there. Feels good to be back though, at least if you disregard the massive frustration of having the paint not following your bidding. But must of us know the feeling, I hope.
3.) I didn't expect the fething skin tone to be that much trouble. I'm going for a really pale tone here and it's a pain in the ass. And I'm not at all sure about my approach either, ah well you will see.

Expect pics of the painted juve tuesday or wednesday. Just to make the wait a little bit less hard for you, I know you're starving for my crap...

A little preview of the leader of the Espantajos, Alejandro Castro Ruz. He is far from being ready, but this will be his right arm:
(Quality sucks, but these were actually not intended to be released, they are from the first batch of pics e.g. cellphone camera.)

Wha.. what is that weapon?! It looks like something an Ork Flash Git would be proud to own.

That's some cool looking dakka right there.

Possible uber nerd reference here, but I imagine that thing firing like one of the incinerators from Fallout 3. Seems like it deserves to be more than just a flamer in game - it doesn't look like the kind of weapon to break every other shot Good to know you're working ahead

Hehe, I'm glad to see you enjoying my little interlude.
Regarding what the weapon stands for:
The Espantajos (in english "Scarecrows") are a bunch of revolting sulfur miners, who got pissed by the accelerated digging routines they were forced to use, so house Catallus can fulfill its new contract with Helmawr. These new routines resulted in a 13% increase of the sulfur harvest and in 65% increase of serious work accidents. So after becoming maimed, mutilated or at least horribly scarred scarecrows, they decided it's enough, they would die anyway so they stood up to fight for rights (not "their" rights, you don't have any as a imperial mine worker, most are slaves anyway). They threw over some dirty rags to hide their hideous faces and made for the nearest exit. This would normally have resulted in some dead miners and a nice bed time story for the members of shaft security (NO abbreviations pls) to tell their kids, but it didn't. Some strange coincidents took place, an open door here, a stabbed guard there, key codes for weapon lockers being written across the lockers and in the end some of the miners actually made it out alive. Rumour has it a certain (nicely converted) Delaque gang may have had their fingers in the pie. So now there is a growing movement amongst the abused workers of the hive, and the scarecrows are constantly growing in numbers, while house Catallus takes care none of the authorities find out, which would cost them their status with Lord Helmawr.
To not tell you the whole story, before I have properly translated it, let's cut it short here.
Crazy scarred miners, running wild, using what they find, skinning and mutilating back. An eye for an eye, so the leader of the Espantajos carries a device that sprays heated sulfuric acid, which is what you see in the pics above.

About the conversion the arm needs to be converted to look less scouty, but I'm not there yet. And maybe I will redo the whole weapon because I wanted it to be linked to a backpack and not be autonomous like it is now. Plus it needs to look a bit more improvised, without looking orky. (And yes we use standard flamer rules for it, the crappy thing also already exploded in Alejandros hands last game and made him go OOA )

To quote monkeytroll

That's some cool looking dakka right there.

I like the tiny little details on your weaponry.

Peter

That flamer is something else... Have to agree w/ PDH- LOL... holy crap, you built an entire gun from bitz rather than the standard route of just going with what the model has and doing some major body conversion work... that's what I call attention to detail. I look forward to seeing more of these guys. Your insane(ly good) weapons give the older models a totally new look while bringing me back to a time when my Delaques were sneaking and sniping the out of my cousin's Van Saar meatsacks.

Man that sniper looks just like the one in fallout 3, I like what I see!
Also using a bike as a weapon is very nice indeed. props!

Dudes! Your comments are just what I needed. Thanks for the massive props to everybody.

I just got a little depressed with my paintjob on my sample juve, sometimes being an overambitious perfectionist with a harsh lack of discipline can be frustrating.
Work is going slow on that juve since I've been messing around with a lot of ideas and techniques I wanted to try for later use. So instead of just testing the colors, I've tried to smoothen my blendings, tried some freehand and the look of a blackened blade (black oxide layer) on his knife (I will remove the freehand, as it is hardly appropriate for a juve and well because it sux monkey dick.), messed around with senital lighting, practiced painting chipped and rusted effects and so on. In the end it all looks kinda crap imo, so I'm taking a days break of painting, and go back to finish that plasma pistol toting ganger I was working on.

@the_wicker_man

Man that sniper looks just like the one in fallout 3, I like what I see!

Being compared with fallout always is a good thing. Love all the games, they have an awesome style, so I'm taking that as a huge compliment.

@PDH

I like the tiny little details on your weaponry

Details are everything! Sometimes it is just one detail that makes me fall in love with a model/novel/thing. It's that one tiny idea that seperates adorable from ordinary.
Also the details add to the credibility I hope. The 40k universe is at times to cartoonish I think and it sometimes lacks the detail a real military model would have. Things are out of proportion and very bulky. Take the acid sprayer for example, it's huge and the tip of it is way to big, but for me the valve on the upper tank and the tiny spinning gear on the muzzle make it "real" again.

@HF Izanagi

holy crap, you built an entire gun from bitz rather than the standard route of just going with what the model has

Designed my first gun in kindergarden. So I always had that passion for a nice looking weapon. Plus I think there is not much to convert about the Delaques, the poses could be more versatile, but by adding some heresy guys and removing and replacing an arm here and there that seems covered to me.

Your insane(ly good) weapons give the older models a totally new look

Thank you very much. That's just what I intended. If GW would do a new tier of Delaque models, they would almost look the same. Sure some slight improvements, but you can't change much about the look of long trenchcoats. The real difference would be the look of the weapons and equipment.

All of this leads to a general point: Weapons are SOOO important for the style of any martial fiction. Guns are style! Many hobbyists seem to overlook that.

What would Aliens (the movie) be without pulse rifles and smart guns?
What would Dead Space be without Isaacs tool-like weaponry?
What would Blade be without his personalized arsenal?
What would Batman be without his gadgets?
Answer: Anything but cool!

What is most memorable about Final Fantasy, Half Life, Fallout and the like?
Answer: The crazy weapon concepts, gunblades and stuff.


Aaaanyway, don't want to sound like im lecturing here... Sorry, teachers habits. Always broadcasting my unasked opinion.
I'm off to create something else for you to enjoy.

So you like guns then..

lecture all you like mate its your blog after all. You have got an insane level of detail on your weapons fella , and like you say 40k can be a little over the top , its about striking a balance i find , outlandish sci fi elements brought down to earth with believable characters and settings. and you certainly have the knack of believeability ..is that a word?
myabe you could design some nice new ig weapons for us all

btw its not all about guns , dont forget the chainswords

hmm just found your thread here in the recents...wow...just wow...

as for the last piece...could it be from a misslelauncher? the optics?

like how this will develope

vik

could it be from a misslelauncher? the optics?

The parts I used for the sulfur gun are: a scout missile launcher, a muzzle of an ork burna, a pack of tau photon grenades cut in half, the handle of a meltabomb, a targeting shield from lootaz box, a fuel tank from catachan command heavy flamer, some smaller metal bits.

Stupid busy week. Did some work on Radius, the plasma ganger, and I must say he is cursed. I started working on him sometime last year and when I was done with his backpack and pistols I wanted to show him around and dropped him. The drop left a mark but more annoyinlgy the two tiny valves on the backpack broke off. It took me 30min of crawling on the floor with a 1000w lamp to find them. THE SAME fething valve disappeared today. Can't find it. Did the crawling again, no luck. GOD I hate it when that happens.
Apart from that you can expect him to be done soon, maybe even tomorrow, since he only needs some final GS work to be done on him. Some straps, some rubber edges for the goggles and sculpting a neck. Shouldn't take more than an hour or two.

Besides I bought some additional painting supplies and I'm itching to get back to my sample juve.

Again to ease the pain of waiting, I decided to give you another preview on the Espantajos. This time it is the basic build (might add some more details) of Silvestro, the first Heavy of the Rebels. Enjoy and stay tuned...

No response so far, seems like you are just as wasted as I am. Feel free to C&C on the last pics, in the meantime I'll work on something new and more appealing than those bad phone pics.

There will definitely be a major update in the next few days...

...I just got a little bit turned off by losing that stupid part of the backpack, so I didn't continue with Radius and did some mindnumbing "clean your workplace" instead, did a few layers of rust pigments on the sample juves base and put some thoughts into the next steps of our gaming table project.

We are still waiting for some bits and pieces to arrive from Armorcast, but we are basicly good to go. And as I mentioned earlier it will be huge. As soon as we put up enough to be worth taking pictures, you'll see. But so far we only put together some towers, bridges and walkways constructed from the good old hexbuilders. We got 10399 Hexbuilder parts (real number I calculated it ). We also have a load of platformers, bio hazard plants, powerplants, syberclix and loads of armorcast pipelines and fuel tanks. Quite overwhelming at the moment, but once we find the time to put it up, it will be a necro table like you've never seen one.

Anyway too much talk too little progress. Till next time...

I absolutely hate losing parts in a carpet, especially if they're tiny. One of my very first GS conversions was a facemask on a Catachan head, and I lost it in the shag carpeting that was in my bedroom at the time. Hand and knees for an HOUR, honestly, and I couldn't find the damn thing. By the end of it I would probably have melted it out of spite if I had

Silvestro is looking really good (are those parts self-cast?!), but I'm not totally sold on his left arm. The rest of your models have such natural poses, that one arming such a large assault rifle whilst carrying a missile launcher kind of stands out. I really like his big pack though - really sells the idea of repressed guerillas, always on the move.

The campaign table sounds incredible, but it's a little hard to picture without knowing the parts. I'm looking forward to progress with it though - really need to make a decent table for my own games, so I hope you don't mind me 'lifting' a few ideas

Don't worry if posts go quiet occasionally - you can tell yourself it's cause there's no criticism to give! (Hey, delusion helps me sometimes )

NOOOO! The dreaded Carpet Monster!! damn his greedy ways!

I swear I have housemaids knee from spending so much time crawling around looking for parts that have pinged into those wretched maws!!

Liking the kit bash Baiyuan
Looking forward to seeing some paint/primer on and get a good looksee at that mask.

Yeah Neil's right you can wait weeks thinking no one is watching and gives a damn.
In my case it is usually true *violin*
Don't fret we are still keeping a beady eye on proceedings
Too much yummy goodness not to!

I'm not enamoured with the lasgun. The missile launcher looks good, like he is lugging it around, defensively looking about for an ambush or a juicy target. The lasgun needs to be a pistol imo.

I don't have a carpet monster at the moment but I hate dropping things because they always end up underneath my desk drawers which have about 5mm ground clearance...so I have to move the whole desk out

The board sounds really interesting...I look forward to seeing it. The armourcast stuff looks really nice but I'm always put off by the cost...but their canal system is very tempting.

Peter

I know there's a tiny little black hole roaming around my workroom at about floor-level. Someday I'll find a way to cross over to wherever it leads and find a huge stash of bits to keep me entertained. It's definitely a black-holwe and not a carpet monster as it has claimed a couple of pieces even after I pulled the carpet up when I flooded. 'Okay, it fell straight down past my knee, I heard it bounce once on the wood and there was no skitter afterwards so it should be just about......where, how, that can't be possible. Move the chair. Move that bits box. Get a torch. And the desk lamp. Where? WHERE?'

Have to agree with the others, that lasgun really needs to be a pistol. Apart from that excellent work once again.
And Chibi's right, peeps will still be lurking, sometimes if there's nothing useful to say it can get a bit boring typing 'great stuff' in reply to all the blogs you're following

Hehe, black holes and carpet monsters... in my case, since there is bare rough concrete ground under my working table, it is especially nice to drop tiny grey things. So far I have never dropped anything I couldn't find later on, first time I had to give up. So I'll have to cut another fw elysian plasmagun to pieces just for that tiny plasma cartridge on the lower side.

About the lasgun on Silvestro: I have to agree, it doesn't look that good. I was aware of that but told myself it's part of his "armed to the teeth" look. Now that you've all mentioned it, I'll give it another thought, but I can't go for a pistol. That's not my decision, as I'm not playing this gang. It belongs to me, but I'm building and converting it for a friend, who is new to tabletop games and I offered to help with the artsy part. We are doing the paintjob together and 4-5 models are almost painted. Anyway equipment is his decision, so I'll have to find a new solution for the lasgun.

No further progress today because sundays are working days for me, so I only found some time to go through the gang rosters and battle reports again. Tomorrow will be better and I will force myself to finish the cursed Radius. Besides if everything turns out right, I'll be the proud owner of something mega-awesome in a couple of days... details will follow. Soooo excited...

If a pistol is not an option.....then perhaps add a lasgun to the back pack. Then he can have an empty hand...or perhaps a knife in his left hand. Even heavies get the free knife!

Alternatively show your friend this thread and we can persuade him to buy his heavy a stub gun for purely artistic reasons....come on its only 10 creds.

Peter

Seeing how enthusiasticly you try to change him for the better, I had an idea. I still have a shortened lasgun conversion in my rifle weapon drawer, so I'll try that one. Don't want the weapon to be on his backpack, it would ruin the great looks of that old havoc backpack. You will see what I mean once I got pics with a proper camera.

Yeeeeha! Just bought a full squad of ash waste nomads at ebay. Awesome.
Will try to supply a major update tomorrow.
Did I mention my nomads? I did, didn't I?

Wow, I don't think I've seen those models before! Any chance of a link?

Link? Pics!













CAN'T wait for them!