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Really great work Gits. A VERY distinctive army indeed. What next?


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Really great work Gits. A VERY distinctive army indeed. What next?

Deeezaamn, Gits! Those Mantis Warriors look boss! The gradiant shading looks so good from a far (up close too, but from afar and in a group... delicious). Absolutley loving it. Best of luck at Adepticon! Your post-Adepticon absence will be a sore spot on Dakka for quite awhile.
I know Adepticon isn't for a couple weeks, but I have a rough next 15 days or so, so my Dakka attendance will be lacking until early April.

Down to the troops and HQ then ya?

Truly beautiful work my friend :applause: (why is there no clapping orkmoticon?!)

Awesome stuff mate! Those pods really do look superb. Can't wait to see a full army shot when you've finished them all.

Your boys been getting any painting time in? Though I suppose you've been a bit busy to help them much right?

Good looking drop pods , the gradients are very smooth .the green yellowbold contarst suits the large canvas of the drop pod reall nice.

Lovely work, superb!

You're nearly there, keep it up!!!

Btw, did you miss a red panel on the far right pod (in the last pic)??

Hits_the_spot wrote:Really great work Gits. A VERY distinctive army indeed. What next?

2 x 5-man squads of marines for the Razorbacks. WM has already done some great building for me, unfortunately my list has been tweaked twice and the cool sergeants with power swords he built for me are out (sorry WM), BUT they'll have places of honor in any force that isn't this tightly squeezed for points. So, I have 4 troopers to build. Did one last week (my communications officer inspired by WM's and another two today.. though I ran into a block as I can't find where my marine weapons got to. One more to go and I'll show you pics of the builds (tonight some time). I love building... it's so fun & so bloody easy when compared with painting.

Moltar wrote:Deeezaamn, Gits! Those Mantis Warriors look boss! The gradiant shading looks so good from a far (up close too, but from afar and in a group... delicious). Absolutley loving it. Best of luck at Adepticon! Your post-Adepticon absence will be a sore spot on Dakka for quite awhile. I know Adepticon isn't for a couple weeks, but I have a rough next 15 days or so, so my Dakka attendance will be lacking until early April.

Thanks Moltar! I won't be completely absent after Adepticon... but I will be relaxing my painting schedule and updating less frequently as a result. Need to spend some time with my family and working on our place with the advent of spring.

whalemusic360 wrote:Down to the troops and HQ then ya?

You called it!

inmygravenimage wrote:Truly beautiful work my friend :applause: (why is there no clapping orkmoticon?!)

Thanks!

perplexiti wrote:Awesome stuff mate! Those pods really do look superb. Can't wait to see a full army shot when you've finished them all. Your boys been getting any painting time in? Though I suppose you've been a bit busy to help them much right?

Not much... they still need me as a motivator & I've been so preoccupied there hasn't been any time... plus I've been monopolizing the painting bench.

neil101 wrote:Good looking drop pods , the gradients are very smooth .the green yellowbold contarst suits the large canvas of the drop pod reall nice.

Thanks neil, I appreciate that!

Vitruvian XVII wrote:Lovely work, superb! You're nearly there, keep it up!!! Btw, did you miss a red panel on the far right pod (in the last pic)??

Danke! Hmmmm.... it does look that way dosen't it? Let me check... Damn! You're right! Missed two facing panels... what are the odds that those would be the panels I took the photo of? Anyway, nice catch... I'll address that.


No rest for the wicked...

Superb work Gits, this army has really taken shape over these last few months!

The airbrushing has worked extremely well on the pods. The progression from the bright colour to the blackened part on the bottom is very subtle and adds a good sense of realism to the model in general. Great work!

Tacticals are built!

So, here's the batch Whalemusic360 did for me out of the kindness of his heart. Each one has been summarily disassembled, often at joints that were NOT intended to be disassembled... and the lovingly reassembled into cool poses that the original marines could never have been put in. I don't know how WM does it, but his builds are excellent and seemingly effortless. Unfortunately the two sergeants will not make an appearance at Adepticon, but I love them and will paint them along with the rest as they will become my standard sergeant loads for other occasions.



And here are the four I did. God I love building... it's so fun! I've been recalcitrant in putting loyalist marine body parts on my bases like we're supposed to for our team... so I made an effort to salt my own builds and WM's with a few things. Solar_lion had sent me some scorpion stuff and I had a few odd bits myself that I'll paint up appropriately.


The marine in the upper left is my tribute to the original poses you could get with these guys, though even he has his right leg disarticulated at the knee and repositioned. Upper right marine is standing by a shot up rhino turret. He's a neat pose but the cacophony of colors of plastic and the odd angle he's at in the photo make him hard to make out. His left arm is bionic (God bless FW and the other bitz manufacturers who do bionics). Lower left is my communications officer inspired by WM's in the photo before. I think he was a bike or land speeder passenger but he's got an auspex and I gave him a relay antenna... he's reclining on some rocks. Lower right is my favorite. Jammed bolter discarded by a blown off rhino door, poised to spring into action with his bolt pistol and combat knife...

Here's a close-up of that one marine from a different angle. Really proud of the crouch I was able to get by modifying his bionic leg. Love bionics on these models... something about it says "old school" to me.



Not a bad day's work. Think I'll have a cocktail and a stogie. I'll get them primed tonight err I go to bed.

Lol, my reloading guy seems to be confused as the where the action is
Who's bionic legs are those? Also, using RS FW pads as basing makes me sad, I've always thought a RS force would be cool.

That looks like a very skillfully reposed maxmini arm and leg.

Great use of the Maxmini bitz.

Edit: arm and hand are maxmini, not sure about the leg.

Love the tactical marines, Gits!

Nice work on both groups there guys It's always a challenge to get interesting poses with good old RTB01.

Very nice work, seamless conversions.

No probs on the missed panel, better someone caught it early eh!

Where ae those bionics from? I recognise the sergeant's (headless) one which looks like its from the FW captain. But they don't have capped boots IIRC

Dakka mods hear me!
you must have a jaw dropping Orkmoticon!!!
I have spoken!

I love the tactical marines and I have almost finished building my captain (just need one shoulder pad and a helmet)

Forge World, Max Mini and some other company I can't remember (I think).

Thanks guys.... will be giving them a special GREEN paint job for St. Patrick's Day!

:-)

gits....
what do nyou use for the join on the mantis claws?
how do you make the tubing for cables?

That base where the marine is grabbing on to the piece of wall is brilliant. awesome concept. All the poses are really dynamic. Great use of creativity and imagination. But I still have to say Green is Best!

DarthLakey wrote:gits....
what do nyou use for the join on the mantis claws?
how do you make the tubing for cables?

Hey DL: As you can see here... nothing really, just carefully cut two swords to match at the angle I want and glue them together.



Then I just cover up the join with something mechanical looking...



I bought little cast pewter cables from some manufacturer last year, but I can't for the life of me remember who it is now. A good way to do cables is guitar strings. They're cheap and easy to find.


Tonight's Update: Well, I thought my builds were done, but then it dawned on me that I hadn't put on the roundels for the Mantis Warrior badge on the shoulder pads, or added the little chainsword teeth to the arms and legs. So, that's tonight's job. That and priming.

Family and I had a wonderful St. Patty's day dinner followed by our traditional activity... watching "The Quiet Man" on DVD. Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Cead mile failte, buddy.

Looking good Gits.

And stop posting so much refined awesome.

Cheers graven!

@Loma: Won't stop... but do promise to slow down after April 1st. But thanks!

Man I went through a lot of chain sword blades last night... thanks to everyone who donated or traded me for them in the past. But, all went well, the little blade bits went on much easier than normal. Got the priming done so we're ready to paint today (my day off!)!

Should be an interesting weekend. Hopefully Solar_lion is coming down today... I'll help him get the last of his figures painted as well as at least getting the airbrushing done on my infantry. Tonight we'll have a couple of practice games against the kids... then tomorrow we're off to my FLGS for a day long Adepticon primer tournament. Unfortunately neither of us will have a fully painted army yet, so we lose those points, but really I'm much more concerned about the two of us being on the same page on the battlefield. Painting will sort itself out weekend after next when it matters.

One thing I haven't been mentioning is that I need to make an objective marker. Have rolled around several ideas and gathered bits for some of them... then I blundered into a fig that someone just tossed into a trade because they knew I'd be interested and it works perfectly. Now if I can only remember what chapter I was supposed to do for my objective... Ice, you Remember? It kept changing so I've lost track.

Also adding the servitor added another model to my "needs to be painted" count... fortunately my son (Thing 1), volunteered his servitor for my army. Neat thing it it was a gift to him from Solar_lion! So everything is still "within the team" as far as the painting goes, it's very nicely painted... I'm just tweaking the base *and* it means a Doom Eagle will be fighting with us at Adepticon! (though there are no insignia on the servitor... but we all know where it came from).

Oh, and I have to clean the house too. (Solar won't care but my wife will kill me if we have company over to a messy house). So, I look forward to very busy but fun couple of days. I'll post shots of the infantry when the greens are done.

Wow Gits, it is amazing seeing your progress from the beginning all the way through the last group shot! Your painting and modeling skills have jumped by leaps and bounds, and to think of the results you got out of your airbrush in the time you have had it is remarkable. This is a truly inspiring blog, thanks for sharing.

Keep up the good work(?) and I look forward to seeing more

They'll be plenty more Tychron... no worries. I want to build out this early army eventually to around 2000-2500 pts and of course my late period army will be an ongoing process to several thousand points. Luckily there's some overlap between the two, but there is also exclusivity... so they really will be two different armies. Thanks!

awesome tac squad!

Still reading! Can't wait for your HQ!

Git, your main enemy would be the space sharks. That would make the most sense for an objective.

Thank you sir! I can do that...