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...And in addition to the DC, I've also started sketching out the Assault marines

Still waiting for some bits, so the Sgt and Eviscerator marine will have to wait. I will also swap out the bolt pistols for the umbra pattern pistols, and also include a full set of accessories like pistol holsters and grenades later. I'm deliberately using the harness chest pieces without skulls for everyone in the squad, the chestpieces with the skulls are all reserved for DC, I'm not a big fan of GW's skull spam tbh

Kitbashing the current Assault squad plastics and FW beakies is a blast! I love the variety of poses you can do with the combinations, so much so that I'll probably need to make another squad of five soon. This is also giving me ideas about the tacs, I'll be switching things up a bit more with them too, wanna break the monotony a little more..

Refined Sgt Lorenzo and Brother Furian some more. Furian got a new pose and Lorenzo got a FW special edition umbra. Ended up cutting the Mk IV combiplasma from two places, taking the hand as well as the plasma part of the combiweapon. Stressful cutting but got it done in the end! I still want to make Furian's backpack a voxcaster version, add accessories etc but the backpack bit isnt here yet..

These latest two are looking snazzy! Great variety of bits

Thanks for sharing

 IGtR= wrote:
These latest two are looking snazzy! Great variety of bits

Thanks for sharing

Thank you sir! I am not 100% satisfied with the poses yet but the character models are improving no doubt.

Some more bits arrived today so got the Assault squad completely sketched out. Also headswapped Brother Syras so now he's looking like a proper Sniper specialist

The skull faces work well in this context as being specific to your Death Company to separate them from the beakies. Cool idea.

 The Riddle of Steel wrote:
The skull faces work well in this context as being specific to your Death Company to separate them from the beakies. Cool idea.

My original idea was to make the DC as the misremembered "black BA" (who were in fact DA all along..) from my childhood, wearing black beakie helmets with red stripes, with the beaks covered in blood.. I always thought the beakie marines could use their helmets in battle, kind of like how predatory birds use their beaks to rend their prey.. But I felt that I wanted to make them stand out a bit more than that. I accept the official BA lore where the Death Company members wear decorated suits of armour, and my take on it is that the Chapter honours their "fallen" by grafting them artisanal armour and arms them with prescious relics of the chapter, playing up the "Death Visions of Sanguinius" angle to the max. In a way its also a way to honour the DC, as those lost brothers are considered dead already, they are just living out their funeral ceremony at this point..

Besides, with the colour scheme taking a twist towards a more terracotta shade, I can now make the Std Assault squad troopers' beaks bloody, and it'll still show

Looking at the talented oldhammer works of Ninjabread, I'm starting to get an itch for outfitting the Assault squad beakies with the "period correct" style jump packs. What do you think? I dunno, the modern jump pack is so bland somehow, and has a lot of unsightly gaps to fill out.. I can't understand why I never seem to nail assembling them perfectly either.

Nice work on the death company. Those helmets fit the theme really well! Hopefully your motivation comes back soon, so we can watch this cool project continue

 gobert wrote:
Nice work on the death company. Those helmets fit the theme really well! Hopefully your motivation comes back soon, so we can watch this cool project continue

My motivation isn't what is stalling progress. I don't spend all that much time working on my minis (other things in life, other hobbies getting in the way) and also I want to take my time with this project. I don't want to rush anything, I'm only going to be making this army once in my lifetime.

I still need to get a hold of several kits and spare bits for everything, and sourcing those down is also taking my time, as well as researching for options. For example, I didn't know that the Grey Knight kits had that spare marine hand clenching a severed daemonette's head, its was a happy accident I ran into while just casually skimming through ebay. As was Lorenzo's umbra combi weapon. And now I just found out about the vintage jump packs...

I'm also thinking of keeping the models together on blutac until I have most of the army sketched out, as the idea is to make each model in the army unique somehow, be it in terms of bits used, the pose of the model, or both. This is probably not a realistic option to sustain,as blutaced poses slump and deform over time, but I'm taking pictures and will verify all the poses once finalizing things with glue and putty begins.

Meanwhile, the colour tests continue, waiting for new paints to arrive ATM.

TL;DR - Sorry the builds are progressing so slowly. I can only hope the end result will be worth

Got a chance to sit to down for another sesh today and took some of the ideas I got during sketching the Assault squad and tweaked the tacs further.

Now the tacs are getting to a point where almost the whole unit has enough flavour and variety! There are still four brothers who have a very similar pose but a few helmet swaps help to mix things up some more. I had one pair of assault squad kit legs in the squad and that marine always jumped out somehow, so changed his whole build to a knife holding version, which actually made the legs make much more sense.

Once Furian's voxcaster backpack arrives, I'll finalize each model's accessories and I'd say its a wrap build wise for the tacs! Their Drop Pod has already been built earlier so all that remains is a Rhino/Razorback transport option for them, which I will probably postpone tbh. I want to build a rapid deployment force first, so that means drop pods and flyers take priority, as they should since we are talking "Space Marines".

I'll finalize the DC sketches after the tacs. They are pretty much done, just need to do a few conversions to add DC some bionics. After that I'll probably build another drop pod (deathstorm) and the rest of my tarantulas for some mechanized fire support. Assault squad should be getting their vintage jump packs by that point, if budget plans are favourable.

I got a shipment of oilbrushers and made a new colour test. I feel I'm getting very close now!

My camera doesn't capture the colours properly, but here you can see the new test model side by side with the 1991 SM paint set BA colours, and it's not very far off - less saturated for sure, but the shade is a reasonable match. One caveat is that I can't remember if I applied a red glaze over the terracotta/orange paint job back in the day, if I did, that might explain the difference in colour saturation. But I don't mind the lower saturated colour of the test mini, if anything it'll probably result in a more "realistic" end result after weathering..

I'll let the oils dry for 24+ hours and reinspect the result, as previous tests with oilwashes showed significant change of shades as the oils settled and dried. But getting very excited already!

I was a bit heavy handed with the cleanup stage and the thinner tore up right through the primer at few points. Gotta learn to be more careful with the cleanup

Interesting project!
Looking forward to see how you progress with the painting.

One thing you could try with the oil washes, is to cover the model with an acrylic varnish before applying it. Then you won't have to worry about losing the primer / base coat.
I'm too lazy to do that step myself, but might be something to consider.

 Ezki wrote:
Interesting project!
Looking forward to see how you progress with the painting.

One thing you could try with the oil washes, is to cover the model with an acrylic varnish before applying it. Then you won't have to worry about losing the primer / base coat.
I'm too lazy to do that step myself, but might be something to consider.

I am a complete noob when it comes to working with oils. This was my second model I've used them on.

The wash evaporated almost completely as it dried. I have applied the wash three times now, each time with a different consistency, using less thinner in the mix each time. I find I don't even have to use thinner for cleanup as long as I use a really thin brush and apply the wash directly into the crevices.

I hope I'll nail it eventually. The wash effect looks gorgeous as long as the wash is wet, I'm sure its just a matter of finding the right dilution ratio.

I will probably try the varnish after I get a good base colour modulation, since I will need to add more oils in the actual weathering stages. I hope the varnish doesn't destroy the previous work, I have bad experiences using varnish before and therefore dont usually use any.

Hey mate,

Love this project from the old (OLD) metal minis to the proliferation of beaks to the squatpack jumperdudes.

Good luck with the oils mane, that's an exciting path to take. Have seen some awesome results but never been brave enough to try myself. Can't wait to see how they shape up!

Today was not my day it seems.. I was really happy how the oilwashed armour looked on the test mini so thought I'd try finishing it quickly. And ever since I grabbed the brush today it was just a clusterflock of mistakes, one after the other

Don't know if I've mentioned this, but I suffered catastrophic eye damage late 2017 and my eyesight will never recover. Its been a bitter journey trying to relearn painting, and a constant struggle with the fine detail work due to nonexistent peripheral vision. I can't match the painting quality I attained even just a few years ago anymore, and its really making loving this hobby hard at times!

I am still going to finish the testpiece but I need to reapply the washes etc. This is where the basecoats ended up, I messed up in bunch of places and ended up tidying up way too much, lumpy paint layers and everything. Ach! I even felt desperate enough so added heavy chipping fx to some areas of the nodel with bare metal showing, will be interesting to see how the oil washes will affect those.

It was a good learning excercise for me though, and I made notes of everything I messed up so that I will avoid all of the most serious flockups when it comes time to paint the real minis. When you can't tidy up your brushwork anymore without fear of creating even more mess, you start to think about optimizing the painting process to a sort of industrial workflow, which minimizes the amount of difficult stages from the total workflow.

Oh, and spent my jump pack budget plus my remaining "candy money" on a new desktop lamp.. Daylight Lumi incoming, hopefully a superb light will help with the detail work.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tzurk wrote:
Hey mate,

Love this project from the old (OLD) metal minis to the proliferation of beaks to the squatpack jumperdudes.

Good luck with the oils mane, that's an exciting path to take. Have seen some awesome results but never been brave enough to try myself. Can't wait to see how they shape up!

Thanks! The oils are actually quite easy to use, kind of like using contrast paints. I just need to get some more experience under my belt in order to get consistent results everytime.

I don’t recall the eye issues, but it certainly sounds like it sucks! Despite that I think the test Mini looks pretty good. A heavily weathered look might help overcome any neatness issues the eyes may bring. The Army is gonna look awesome if the tester is anything to go by

 gobert wrote:
I don’t recall the eye issues, but it certainly sounds like it sucks! Despite that I think the test Mini looks pretty good. A heavily weathered look might help overcome any neatness issues the eyes may bring. The Army is gonna look awesome if the tester is anything to go by

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm going to finish the oilwashes on saturday and then I'll base and add last touches on sunday if all goes to plan.

The eyes thing does indeed suck but I'm learning to compensate by using better tools. Better lighting and magnification lens for the small details, slowly getting used to the lens and the weird focal point it has, and since I got an airbrush my basecoats with difficult colours such as yellows and reds have improved immensely, good coverage while still having plenty of surface detail left from the thin paint coats.


Cheers


PS: I caved and ordered the vintage backpacks.. Noodles and porridge for me during the next two weeks

Got a chance for some hobby time a day early so finished the oilwashes and added some weathering details.

In hindsight, it was a bad idea to try any varnish on this model. Again, as has been my experience for decades now, the varnish changed the underlying colours unacceptably. The shoulder pads and all the spots where I tried applying a little varnish, look totally different in shade than the rest of the model.

I'll do the base during the weekend and will make at least one more test model before I'm done with the painting tests. The shade of red isn't exactly where I want it to be, but it is darn close already. Now it's more about getting all the smaller details done acceptably, with just a lil tweak for the colour with a glaze or adjusting the shade of the oil wash a bit.

On the plus side, I am finally getting semidecent pics taken with my iPad! The trick seems to be twofold:
1) Disable HDR
2) Disable Automatic Focus & Exposure and set both manually

I got the Lumi Daylight lamp last night, the colour temp is a lil different than the lamp I used earlier, the colours look slightly different now but nothing too drastic, thank the omnissiah

..And he's done. Despite many failed stages of painting this one, it turned out aight in the end. Well, except for the mold lines I didnt bother cleaning.. and the messed up sections with the varnish.. And the few mistakes in the helmet details. Oh well.

UPS is showing new stuff should arrive next week. Then I will have all the rest of the bits for Squad Lorenzo.

Looking nice and beat up tauist! How come his chapter symbol is on his right shoulder pad? Is it to fit in better with the mk vi marines?

 gobert wrote:
Looking nice and beat up tauist! How come his chapter symbol is on his right shoulder pad? Is it to fit in better with the mk vi marines?

It is?I didn't realize Primaris have swapped the chapter symbol to their left side, my mistake there.

The transfer tore up while trying to get it to hug the shoulder pad better so that's why a part of it is modeled to have been rubbed off. I used to have some chemical for softening transfers up to better conform to uneven shapes, but that bottle is lost somewhere so had to do it the old fashioned way. I need to get more of that transfer softener again..

These colour test models will probably just be used for gaming, I haven't really inteded to use these in the beakie army. I am only going to include Gravis armoured Primaris with the actual force, as Gravis armoured Primaris are closer to Tactical Dreadnought Armour sized. The Tacticus and Phobos sized primaris make firstborn look small and weird, since those Primaris models aren't chunky enough to give the appearance of a significantly bulkier suit. I will probably mount all Gravis on 40mils to make the distinction even more obvious.. or wait, arent all Gravis models on 40mils already?

Another infatry unit joins the sketchboard - My counts-as Eliminators with bolt sniper rifles. That's right; I intend to use firstborn models as counts-as Primaris with this one, why the heck not! These will be on 32mils instead of 40mils, so not 100% halal for tournaments and such but I'm a filthy casual until death so whatever

Cutting away the Raven Guard insignias is a bit time consuming but I reckon it'll look better for it once I finish the conversion and tidy up the joints. Thankfully, I only need to do two more.. I'm not sure if I'll end up keeping the nonstandard studded left pads, but Im going to leave them on for now, just removed the Raven guard wings from the corner.

I decided to use the triple blood drop insignia for all the sniper specialists in the army. It was a choice between that or the skull one from the DC kit, I want to try to incorporate the skull shoulderpads into my DC models somehow, if at all possible.

Also started using Adobe Lightroom on the padd so the pics should be a bit crisper from now on. Dakka scales down images a bit funny, the downscaled preview images are always blurry somehow (?)

Another distraction.. Can you guess whats coming from this conversion test?

Its going to be the hardest cutting/fitting conversion I've done so far, but if I nail it, its going to be glorious!

Yeah chapter symbols have been on left shoulders since 2nd edition I think? Not sure what the new conversion is, maybe a reiver or scout but with a beak?

 gobert wrote:
Yeah chapter symbols have been on left shoulders since 2nd edition I think? Not sure what the new conversion is, maybe a reiver or scout but with a beak?

Funny, I've never realized this before, but you are right! Even when looking through GW publications from the early nineties, the chapter symbol seems to be on the left shoulderpad for everyone else except for Mk VI suits. Just shows how fixated on the beakies I've been all these years

Jump Packs and the new Drop Pod are arriving next monday. I'll reveal the new model when its fully sketched out, that will have to wait for now. The eliminator squad needs to be built up in the meantime..

Got some of that polystyrene rod and started finalizing Brother Castivar. Since I had to cut the Missile Launcher up in order to make the build possible, I thought why not also use the opportunity to mod that launcher up a bit! So intentionally wanted to lengthen the rear exhaust of the weapon. What do yall think, is it distractingly long now? I want to keep it linger than the original but maybe not this long..

Also reposed the bolter reloading marine since the previous pose had started to bug me.. I'll call him Brother Sholta from now on. His pose looked too similar to Castivar's crouching pose, both of their torsos were turned to the left earlier, so now Castivar is leaning more to the right with his gaze to the left while Sholta is leaning more to the left but with his gaze to the right. I think the new pose looks more dynamic, its as if he's hugging cover more now.

Can't wait until the Jump Packs and Furian's voxpack arrive on Monday!

Ok, that's some serious dynamic posing going on here! The two crouching beakies work really well IMHO. Cool project overall!

Yeah that might be a bit long. I can see that knocking over other models as you try and move it.

 MobileSuitRandom wrote:
Ok, that's some serious dynamic posing going on here! The two crouching beakies work really well IMHO. Cool project overall!

Thanks! I really enjoy posing multipart models. The new GW kits which are sort of monopose are gorgeous no doubt, but when I get to decide on the pose by myself, that's when a miniature starts feeling more like my own.. I envy experienced converters who can kitbash and convert models which look like they've been sculpted looking like that, maybe one day I'll be able to pull something similar off.. But until then, posing and slight kitbashing is all I can do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:
Yeah that might be a bit long. I can see that knocking over other models as you try and move it.

I don't know about the knocking model over effect since the launcher is pointing towards the ground so the rear exhaust is pointing upward more than sideways, but yeh, maybe it's still a tad too much.. I'll keep the current rod just in case I change my mind later but I'll make a new shorter one and give it a try.

I came up with nametag tranfers for the tacs while sipping my morning coffee today. Does anyone have any recommendations how to get these printed nicely? I know modelling shops sell printable transfer sheets, and I actually still have a sheet left from the old days, but I don't have a printer anymore so I'd have to get the sheet printed somewhere..

I still need to take measurements to figure out the size of the nametag on the shoulderpad.. Unless someone has already measured these for their projects? Castivar doesn't actually need one since his pad is without the nametag (lorewise, Castivar has seen visions of his death in battle and considers himself already dead in a way.. "The dead have no need for nametags" he often says), but I might as well print one for everybody just in case.. maybe I can add a nametag to his Missile Launcher?

The font is a free font from dafont.com (Fasigeko) and should be free to use for noncommercial use. I really like the mix of gothicness and angularity of the font, reads like space fantasy to my typographic sensibilities.

Some great posing on those latest chaps.

And really interested to see whether 'print your own' transfers work. I find the ones in the kits is enough of a difficulty