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Hello everyone,

painting minis now for roughly one and a half year, I mainly painted single character figures I liked and by doing so, somewhat improved my skills over time. This time, however, I’d like to do something different and create an “action” diorama, showing a dynamic battle scene with multiple figures in various poses. After some brain storming I choose to make the Blood Angels, in particular the first company, the main attraction.

The setting: Blood Angels 1. Company veterans reclaiming the chapters banner from a traitor legions (Alpha Legion) dreadnought

I used mainly parts from the Sanguinary Guard box, combined with some Death Company parts and random bits taken from Space Marine kits (Terminator, Commander, Command Squad etc.). Especially the former kit is just perfect, for reenacting the scene I had in mind. And I like the BA painting scheme as well as their fluff Why Alpha Legion you might ask. I used to collect an AL army and had the model lying around. It’s as simple as that ;D

But enough of the talk. Here some pictures of the work I’ve done so far.

The first Veteran should asscent from the skies to aid his battle brothers in the fight over the chapters banner. In the final version he is about to deliver the final blow to the chaos dreadnought with its melta gun.
The wings and the cloak are positioned in the way, to emphasizes the downward movement of the veteran,which is just about to land on the top of the rock.




Backside of the figure with a still unfinished cloak. Maybe adding some neat engravings in pure white or so... not quite sure yet




The second veteran just cut the leg of the dreadnought and is moving quickly away, but still keeping an eye on the still active threat by turning the upper body in opposite direction to the actual movement of his legs. Just finished the first layer on the armour (Scab Red - Blood Red in a 2:1 mix). Cloak is still missing though.




Still unpainted diorama terrain made out of polystyrene




That's how the finished diorama should look like. Not sure about the Dreadnough position ... quite bulky and taking too much space, plus making the diorama look somewhat "overloaded". I might move him a little bit to the left or try a bigger piece of terrain~



Next Steps:
- Finish Veteran No. 1 (cloak, some detail work on the armour)
- Add more (three or so) layers to the second one
- painting/cutting/scratching/drilling massive battle damage onto the dreadnought, to show how hard he is been hammered by the veterans
- Decide about final version of the terrain (just ordered some stuff from army painter for that purpose)


Thats all for the first post about my first project. Hope it will work out the way I imagined it


Comments and advice is appreciated! Thanks in advance~


Keep on paintin'

I absolutely love the first vet. The upswept cloak and angled wings coupled with the head looking down completely reverse the feel of the jump troop legs. I've never seen a mini with such a convincingly implied descent.

Hey there~

here is an update on the diorama. Made some progress with the second veteran and eventually decided to move the setting to a bigger piece of terrain.
The one I planned to use in the first place, is indeed too small for three figures. Too much is going on, on too small space. Now with more space at hand, I further decided to add an extra mini to the diorama. Another First Company vet is about to enter the scene and he is nothing lesser than the “Shield of Baal” company captain Karlaen himself. Will do some neat conversion work on him. Pictures will follow~

The second veteran has a shiny new armor now. Four layers in total (Scaab Red + Blood Red 2:1, 1:1, 1:2, highlights with pure Blood Red and hard highlights with Blood Red – Blazing Orange in a 1:1 mix).
Saved the paint job I made so far with gloss varnish (makes the surface smooth for the ink) and directly inserted black ink into a few recesses, to highlight the red armor even more






Wings received a heavy sepia wash after been painted with bleached bone. After that, the same color mixed 1:1 with white is used again but only on the outer edges.
After that, some hard highlighting at the outer edges. You can see the effect of the last two steps on the backpack icon compared to the wings.





Next Steps:
- build captain (one-handed Thunderhammer and huge personal backpack banner
- lay out the details of the new terrain piece (figure positioning, rocks etc.)
- finish veteran number 2 (incl. a cloak floading in a similar way in opposite direction to actual movement)



Keep on painting~

KiraKira


Automatically Appended Next Post:

oadie wrote:I absolutely love the first vet. The upswept cloak and angled wings coupled with the head looking down completely reverse the feel of the jump troop legs. I've never seen a mini with such a convincingly implied descent.

Thanks for your comment. I'd like to aim for a similar effect with all the figures in this diorama. Thereby, the wings and the cloaks play the most crucial role.
However those new BA kits really give you alot of options to build some nice dynamic poses and with the help of some greenstuff possibilities are endless

Well the idea and most of your posing seems sound but honestly those wings are just throwing me off. You may wanna trim and clean up the point where they normally connect to the backpack.

What I'm doing for a similar piece is simply obtaining more wings from the sanguinar mini and the astorath mini. Those would suit you well and for a setup like this, the extra $40 would be well spent.

carabine wrote:Well the idea and most of your posing seems sound but honestly those wings are just throwing me off. You may wanna trim and clean up the point where they normally connect to the backpack.

What I'm doing for a similar piece is simply obtaining more wings from the sanguinar mini and the astorath mini. Those would suit you well and for a setup like this, the extra $40 would be well spent.

I can see your point here. But actually I think of them as some kind of freely moving steering gears instead of actual wings. Never liked them just hanging down the backpack with no purpose besides are reminiscent of Sanguinius.
That's the reason why I deliberately positioned them in a way as if they control movement in mid-air.

Looking good so far and an interesting concept. Do you not prime your minis before painting them? This can help alot with the overall paintjob. Looking forward to seeing the end result.

Looks really good so far, I do like the fact that you decided to move the diorama to a larger scale, though. The original area was far too small for the epic struggle that seemed to be going on. It is an otherwise perfect work in progress as far as I can tell, good work man!

This project is filled with pure awsomeness!
I really do love how you have created the sense of movement in the Sanguinary Guard.
I'm going to 'borrow' those ideas when I finally buy a squad.

KiraKira wrote:

carabine wrote:Well the idea and most of your posing seems sound but honestly those wings are just throwing me off. You may wanna trim and clean up the point where they normally connect to the backpack.

What I'm doing for a similar piece is simply obtaining more wings from the sanguinar mini and the astorath mini. Those would suit you well and for a setup like this, the extra $40 would be well spent.

I can see your point here. But actually I think of them as some kind of freely moving steering gears instead of actual wings. Never liked them just hanging down the backpack with no purpose besides are reminiscent of Sanguinius.
That's the reason why I deliberately positioned them in a way as if they control movement in mid-air.

Y'know what fair point, I always saw the wings as micro verniers in the "feathers" and steering vanes, thats why they're supposed to open up like sanguinor's in flight, if you look at the cover of the codex there's a sanguinary guard with his wings spread wide in the background.

One thing I forgot to applaud you for is finding a great use for those legs on the descending model. Its so hard to really get a good pose with those legs but you did it and I"m impressed with that one.

Killmaimburnkillmaimburn wrote:Looking good so far and an interesting concept. Do you not prime your minis before painting them? This can help alot with the overall paintjob. Looking forward to seeing the end result.

Thanks for tip, but actually they're primed with a grey colour very similar to the models original one when unpainted. The difference is indeed hard to recognize with the plain eye and even more when looking at a picture

Y'know what fair point, I always saw the wings as micro verniers in the "feathers" and steering vanes, thats why they're supposed to open up like sanguinor's in flight, if you look at the cover of the codex there's a sanguinary guard with his wings spread wide in the background.

One thing I forgot to applaud you for is finding a great use for those legs on the descending model. Its so hard to really get a good pose with those legs but you did it and I"m impressed with that one.

Oh, never recognized this position of the wings on the codex~ I see, you stick very closely to the "original". Toke a look at your project blog and now know what you meant with your first comment~ Nice work with your first company by the way. Might pick up some conversion ideas from it
Shows again that those kits, when in the right hands, enable you to some decent conversion work without using tons of different bitz. I definitly keep an eye on your project

Amazing job, I look forward to seeng more. ...cuz I am gonna steal yo' ideaz!

Really like the different view on the sanguinary wings! keep it up! can't wait to see the finished article!!!

Hey everbody~

just an quick update before I leave for a few days. Thanks for your comments so far~ Hope everything will work out in the way I imagine it in my head

Anyway the greenstuff just hardened (took forever) and therefore I proudly present the second veteran's cloak. Worked out quite nicely as I think.
However working with greenstuff is definitly not my favourite thing to do. So hard to keep things in the shape you want it to...








Concerning the terrain, I did some test runs on smaller pieces to find an appropiate style. Here is an example I made for khorne champion (just in case you wondering about the chaos iconography ;D)




This is the new and larger terrain piece in still in its pure form~ (no the veteran is not running away, he's just avoiding the stench cloud of the nurgle sorceror )





Ok, good night then and keep on painting

looking great! this blog is very nice, I'll keep tabs on it. The larger base works out great! Any dead bodies around, maybe some guardsmen who failed to take the banner themselves XD

Hello everybody,

time for an another update on my diorama project, after being out of town for over a week. Been rather busy these days and therefore made not so much progress with the terrain and the paint job on the vets.
However, I managed to almost finish the promised third Blood Angel veteran, company captain Karlaen.

And here he is (I promise to take better pictures from now on):










Unlike the other two vets he enter the battlefield on foot shouting out a challenge to the mighty Alpha Legion dreadnought. Again, the pose is deliberately chosen in a way to emphasize the dynamic of movement.
Still the cloak is missing though… already messed up three attempts to make one… but for some reason it won’t work out like the one of the other two vets.

Again, for the most part I only used parts from the kits I happen to possess (Death Company + Sanguinary Guard) plus added some single bits to the mix from various other kits (Iron Halo, commander chest plate etc.). As you might already noticed, some parts are already colored. That’s because I had to rip them of some already assembled models ;D

I really dig the backpack banner taken from the imperial riflemen (Wh Fantasy) kit, which really fits well, despite being ridiculously huge Will challenge myself with some neat freehand painting on it.

Does anyone know how the personal banner of the company captain looks like, according to the fluff?

So far research did only bring up the company banner and the individual BA hero banners (Dante, Mephiston etc.). Otherwise I have to make on up~


So far so good~ Next steps are, including those I not yet laid my hand on to:

- lay out the details of the new terrain piece (figure positioning, rocks etc.)
- finish veteran number 2
- begin painting the captain

Sagehaert
"...looking great! this blog is very nice, I'll keep tabs on it. The larger base works out great! Any dead bodies around, maybe some guardsmen who failed to take the banner themselves XD"

Nice idea with the guardsman, which sacrificed his life for retaking the banner~ Definitly add something like this as part of the terrain ;D (but maybe it’s not a guardsman, since I don’t own any imperial guard figures so far)


Keep on painting and until the next time

You could get a couple of the pre made ones for like 8 bucks, chop them up and bury them on the base and it could look pretty cool!

MORE!

Looking good keep it up.

looks rockin man!