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That is seriously creepy, but also kinda cute. I love it!

Painted on two more minor freehands, the first is a strange dragon thing, and the second one is my family heraldry. Painted the barrels at the back of the model, I added a bit of texture to it and used a not so smooth transition for the shading to add to the imperfect feel the medieval art adds to the model. I hope it works. I will go back to the barrels to work on the gold a little more and add a few scratches. Painted a lot of metal too, but at this stage it's nothing interesting. Once I paint the whole thing I will add a glossy finish to it and then paint the cannon and add all the OSL effects.

I could do some more work on this, but there are other models to paint and all the interesting stuff is done.

I am a huge fan of your freehand. Some people might say it looks too cartoony, but I think it really fits the 40k feeling. Keep up the good work!

A guide on how to make tyranid/alien eggs quickly and easily.
You will need
-peanut shells
-PVA glue
-Paint
I've also added some sand, but you can use any other basing material you like.
Step one - open and eat the peanuts
Step two - glue them on to the base
Step three - add more PVA glue around the peanut shells, otherwise they won't stick
Step four - paint everything
A good paintjob can add a great deal of life to the eggs. That said I didn't paint these ones all too great because I don't play tyranids and I was just looking to give you some inspiration.

very cool painting skills...and i like your inventiveness... the nid eggs looks seriously gross....i will nick that idea for sure!

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
very cool painting skills...and i like your inventiveness... the nid eggs looks seriously gross....i will nick that idea for sure!

Thank you. And go right on ahead. It's been noted to me by some people on FB that this would fit good in their slanessh armies as well... Guess I should have painted them green instead of pink.

Since the alien egg thing was so well recived I decided to do something similar. I looked around the house for any garbage I could turn into a usefull model. In the end I cut up a few plastic bottles, the remains of a ruined drop pod, a non functional ventilator that used to be in my computer, some green stuff and plastic glue. What I got is the start of an ork airship/zeppelin. I think it turned out great, you can easily replicate it and it will cost you almost nothing. I'm not quite sure how good the rest of it will look since I've never really scratch built anything, but even if it doesn't work out you can at least use the idea for the baloon.

Its a great start..I have quite a soft spot for all things airship related...the chopped up bottle idea is a good idea...you should plan on how many minis are supposed to travel by it...thus the needed scale of gondola and so on will unreveal...

For my imps I've thought about using 2 litre bottles...but I have to say I started already three attempts of building o e airship...and haven't finished any...

The propeller unfortunatley fell off. But that's ok, it was facing the wrong way anyway. I reattached it using more green stuff this time, it's firmly in place this time. I scratched the bottles with sanding paper so paint sticks to it and put an ork head icon on the fron of the baloon for extra orkyness.


The actual "ship" part of the airship was made of cut up paper on which I put chopped up paper bits for extra thickness and orkyness. I put up a fence using a chopped up defkopta propeler and paper. On the bottom of the "ship" I glued the rest of the defkopta to represent a rotating turret. I made sure there was a hole in the "ship" so the ork could actualy enter the turret while the zeppelin is in the air. All that is left is to connect the two parts together. If I like the end result I will put an ork capitan and a wooden wheel so he can fly the thing.

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
Its a great start..I have quite a soft spot for all things airship related...the chopped up bottle idea is a good idea...you should plan on how many minis are supposed to travel by it...thus the needed scale of gondola and so on will unreveal...

For my imps I've thought about using 2 litre bottles...but I have to say I started already three attempts of building o e airship...and haven't finished any...

I am primarily doing this project to show people that this hobby doesn't have to be expensive (I'd say all the materials for this model cost 10$ tops) and that the result will arguably look better than the store bought thing, since it will be a one of a kind. That said, if you're having trouble completing your own projects, I would be happy to make a few zeppelin for you (if you like the result that is).

Nice offer, but I am honour bound to make all my own stuff

So the ship part will be on top of the balloon...nice, more roomy and probably even more fluffy of my that way...for my IGs I prefer the underslung gondola style tho...


Nice glyph too!

I'm sad to announce that my zeppelin project had to be scraped . The thing just wasn't structurally sound. I did, however, learn a lot and if I went ahead and tried to make another one it would be better visually, structurally and would be cheaper as well, since it wouldn't need any green stuff to build. I don't know if I have the will to do it though... What I really need right now is some encouragement. I'd be happy to give away my creation to anyone that wants it as long as they cover the shipping.

Welcome to my world, mate...i hope I haven't ruined your project due to talking about my own fails...:(

But all is a learning process...in due time you will stumble on fitting materials and then the hunt will start anew...

My only suggestion would be...keep the fan for future use...they're not really that cheap and a pain and a half to be scratch built...

By the way, green stuff isn't really meant to be used as a glue...i would gave used q sturdy screw an would have covered the screw up with a small glob of green stuff...

Power Elephant,
Sorry to hear you had to scrap your airship, it was looking cool. If you don't end up giving it away, maybe you can re-purpose parts of it. If you take the deff kopta turret off the bottom (cool idea btw), I think the gondola part would be a great start for an ork truck. That nice glyph should definitely be used again too.

Really sorry to hear that, man. I was looking forward to seeing it finished.

Don't worry guys, this is but a setback. Now I have all the details figured out and it's going to be sturdier, easier go build, easier to paint, cheaper and better looking.

To build your Ork zeppelin you will need:
-PVA glue
-2 half litre plastic bottles, as featureless as possible
-old T-shirt
-cardboard
-cereal box paper
-some string
Step 1
-glue 3 layers of cardboard together and cut out a shape for your gondola.

Step 2
-cut out a two sided fence for each side of the gondola out of cereal box paper

Step 3
Make the fence spiky and glue it to the sides of the gondola

Cut out random shapes from the cereal box paper and glue them ot the fence and both sides of the gondola

Cut off the "head" of the bottle and cut the bottles' bottom. You can shorten it from there with scissors depending on how long you want the baloon to be. Do the exact same on the other bottle, only on this one make 2 v sshaped incisions on opposite sides of the bottle.

Step 4
Insert one bottle into the other using the v shaped incisions and glue them together. Plug both openings with cereal paper and add any icons you want on one side.

Step 5
Make 4 holes in the edges of the gondola. Pull some string through them. Tie the ends together.

Step 6
Glue the strings to the baloon. Once it's in place, glue cut up pieces of an old T-shirt onto the baloon.

Step 7
Mix some PVA glue with water. Use an old brush to apply this mixture to the edges of the T-shirt pieces to stop them from flopping around. If you want you could apply this mixture to the whole baloon, so that it would act more than plastic when you are painting it. Glue the propeler onto the other end of the baloon (only bit used, but I'm sure you can figure something out if you don't have it).

Done!

Add crew member with apropriate weapons to represent any ork flyer on the table. You can also make it look prettier with bitz if you have any. The whole thing doesn't cost even 5$ to make, and for the most part, can be made by your kids as well (if you trust them around scissors ).Stay tuned to see it painted!

Cool, thanks for making a tutorial. I'll have to try this sometime. I like your suggestion about letting kids do it, a lot of my students have fallen in love with 40k because of me, they would love this!

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I won some bits from STUDIOLEVEL and they could help me make the Ork Zeppelin enven better! The bad news is that a piece of my airbrush broke in the most akward position possible, so replacement parts won't help and I have to get a new one. This also means that the painting of the Ork Zeppelin will be delayed as some of its surfaces have to be painted by an airbrush rather than a brush. That said some orks were painted! Enjoy!

Wow, those orks look great!

Managed to resolve all my airbrush problems, so there is finally progress on the zeppelin! Since the gondola is made of paper that has some texture I decided it would be best to make it rusty, so that the texture would work for me instead of against me. Painted it in a darker rust colour and the dabbed a brighter rusty colour onto the model with a sponge. Then I applied a heavy drybrush of a metallic colour, especially on the edges where there is more wear and tear - the rust tends to get scraped off there.

The balloon, which was painted in a dark brown, was highlighted and shaded with an airbrush despite my setting being on the low end. This is because I wasn't sure how fabric would react to paint by brush. I thought it would be impossible to have any kind of transition if I painted by a brush. The airbrush brought its own set of problems though. I won't go into the specifics but highlighting with brighter colours just didn't look very good because of the way the fabric reacted to the paint. So I ended highlighting with a mix of the base brown, red and a bit of white, just for the colour variation. The shades worked well, I used a very dark shade of blue.

And here is the finished product. Couldn't put it in a lightbox so I had to use daylight and unfortunatley it isn't very sunny this time of year, so I apologise for he quality of the pictures. Not that it's something too impresive to look at. The materials it is made of aren't of the highest quality so I decided not to put too much work into the paintjob. I am putting quite a lot of effort into the crew, which is being worked on at the moment. Now that the project is 100% complete I do have a few tips that can help you improove on my design, should you choose to make one yoursefl.
- Use chains glued solid with superglue instead of string
- Cut out smaller pieces of fabric than I did and start from the edges and then move towards the middle.
- Use plenty of PVA glue in the water-PVA glue mix and use multiple coats.
- When painting the baloon, paint it first in your highlight colour, then shade it down. Fabric does not react well to brighter colours.

I really like the freehand painted pictures on the sides of the balloon. And even though your post isn't about this, I'd like to mention that your Dark Angels in the background look great.

First member of the crew. Had a really difficult time taking pictures of him since he doesn't have a base, but hopefuly you can see the work I put into him on at least one picture. I'll have my brother re-take the pictures later, he's a much better photographer than I am. He turned out pretty great. Did some experimenting with using opposite colours for shading. The red shade works nicely with the green, but I didn't like the purple I used for shading the ushabti bone. The bright yelloww highlight on the skin also worked out. I also tried the loaded brush techniqe on the big shoota for the first time and I like the results. Will deffinently try using it more often in the future.

Neat stuff! The Dance of Death on the stormblade is awesome - I may well steal that idea or something similar. Love your variety of subjects and styles.

 kestral wrote:
Neat stuff! The Dance of Death on the stormblade is awesome - I may well steal that idea or something similar. Love your variety of subjects and styles.

Thank you! And more variety and styles comming right up with more crew members. Different skin tones, leather colour, teeth colour, lip colour, bulet colour and two different styles of rusty metal. I think I will do one more, then wait for some bits to come, upgrade the zeppelin with them, and add a capitan. In between that will probably be another human blood bowl blitzer. He will be pretty much the same as the rest of them, only I will try out a new NMM gold recipe and try to blend it using the loaded brush techniqe.

Just finished the tenth member of the blood bowl team. The coat of arms is that of the city Knin this time.

The ork zeppelin project is now complete. Hopefuly the pictures are good enough for you to see all this, the size of the model as well as the shadow that it casts on itself made it difficult to take good pictures. I used white paper and multiple light sources to take these. I think it would be best if I took pictures with regular daylight, but this time of year it isn't very bright out, even at noon. I hope that those of you that want to replicate this can learn on my mistakes and upgrade the formula, as well as add your own twist. Next up is a christmas themed ork that I'm doing for a competition.

WIP pic of a christmas ork I'm doing for a small competition. I decided that pink highlights would work well, considering the theme. Originally I wanted the ork to hold a present, but all the hands in a holding positions I had were left. So I made him hold some candy and a snow globe instead, since that's about all I can do with green stuff. I might still put a present on the base. The ball on the hat turned out well I think. I used a toothpick and tweezers to make that texture. What do you think of it so far?

Here is a little something I did for a small competition. It's a little early, but what can you do.