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Having mentioned Johnny Mnemonic that explains the strange quality those 'bare' bionic feet have; they make them look like beggars in rags and yet obviously that can't truly be the case because the bionics must be expensive, hard to come by et cetera.

The head swap definitely works better although I like the bald head, reminds me of Riddick when he's the Lord Marshal.

The army shot is quite something, uniqueness, originality are oozing from this army!

I can't wait to see the gangers painted up now.

Anyway, keep up the great work, but I know you will!

Thanks!

I may turn more of their bionic feet into boots as I go on. Still not sure how completely augmented I want them to be.

Last night my wife (an illustrator who is a master of realistic drawings of humans) took a look at the tech gang and pointed out some proportion problems. I didn't want to remove remove details and carefully sculpted greenstuff, but decided it was worth it and went ahead and performed some surgery last night. I'm very happy with the results:



Now I love the gasmask cadian legged guy! Some waste and knee extensions and a slight contraposto twist made all the difference and he is now my favorite in the group. The woman also got a waist extension and I've rotated the waist-coat guy's legs a bit although I'm still struggling to get his pose just right. Now I'm getting to the point where I am really excited about each model, except for the old man. I'll probably give him a horizontal visor and a cooler gun and start loading him up with bits but he may end up needing a more radical reconstruction.

Love the army shots, love it, love it, love it. Fantastic character throughout.

I like the black rims on your bases, I maybe considering repainting.

This project is getting better and better...

The Spice must flow!

Looking awesome as always! Really love what you have done with those new kits.

What putty do you use for sculpting? It looks like it cooperates with you much better than my Green Stuff (though that could be my lousy sculpting skills)..

Thanks!

I use a mix of greenstuff and apoxie sculpt. Plain greenstuff is a bit too dense and sticky for me, while plain apoxie is too rough and fluffy, but I really like the feel of the two mixed together. I try to use more apoxie in the mix for rougher undersculpting (its much cheaper) and more greenstuff in the mix for fine organic details. Apoxie also sands much better than greenstuff, so a 50/50 mix lets me sand things smooth and carve easiliy too.

Huh, what an interesting technique! I shall have to give it a shot one of these days.

Hey, Weirdingway, how do you paint the flesh on your minis? I'd like to try to replicate that eerie pastiness.

Every update to this thread is like looking at concept drawings. So much creativity and character to every miniature. Please keep going.

Thanks guys!

Youidiotkid: I don't have an exact formula, and try to mix it up to end up with lots of different fleshtones. But i generally use mixes of a bone color and grey as a base-coat for lighter skin. Then I add white to the mix and do some highlighting, followed by a series of washes. Brown wash over everything, then light glazes of blue ink in eye sockets and places like that, reddish ink in places too. I'll then do more highlights, maybe more washes. if things get too high contrast I like to glaze with a very thinned out mix of lahmian medium and the original flesh wash which adds a nice depth and pulls things together. Finally, I often add little touches of a mix of the old Ogryn flesh chestnut wash, red paint, and medium to places like lips, cheeks, and the tip of the nose.

I haven't had much time for the hobby lately but managed to rework the old man of the group. He wasn't working and I realized that bearded head would be perfect for another project, so I gave him a radical makeover, and I'm much happier now:



And I realized I haven't shown the backs of these guys, which have some fun details:



Once I get my hands on the Sicaran Ruststalker kit I should be able to really finish these guys off a few more fancy pistol, techno implants, and assorted pouches and canisters.

And I have started on a pretty crazy Magos Biologos who I think will eventually be supplying the household with some heretical flesh-constructs crafted from manipulated Merz-Itano DNA.

So much character in every model! Awesome project,thanks for sharing

Loving that one on the first picture, far left. Sick helmet.

After looking at these guys again I have just taken my mechanicus out of storage and started chopping them up. Truly inspirational stuff!

Awesome stuff. Thanks to you, I've finally started work on a Genestealer Cult. I'm basing the first plasma/melta-vet squad on the Empire State troops with some Cadian CCS bits, as well.

Thanks guys!

I'm finally joining the club and have begun a Nurgle Lord conversion! So far he's just been given the start of a Baron Harkonenn style spacesuit:


He was originally going to be a dome-headed Beacon Priest but now I've got a more exciting plan, and it looks like I'll be adding yet another Navis Nobilite to the household. This one is going to be pretty weird and I should have pictures to share next week ...

And I've also got a sneak peek of Genetor Paracelsus Takwin Aleph-359, Novatorial Doctor, Gestalt Mind, Flesh-smith, and Gene Collector:

Good he didnt loosed his head.
Those are looking great already but honestly speaking we dont expect anything less from you.

This is one of the most awe inspiring threads I have ever looked through :-)

The many headed one is very cool, never seen anything that looks like that. And the nurgle lord conversion is also tantalizing... as far as conversions go that is extreme! I'm sure the end product will make people look twice then realize it's a nurgle lord.

Looking great. I'm stoked to see what you've got in store for the next Navis Nobilite.

Thanks guys!

I have to say the new Mechanicus releases are so exciting, both as sources of bits and as new rules to build counts-as models to represent.

The thought of my Novator being able to lead a unit of bodyguard robots (and their magos handler) is very appealing! The raygun gothic look of the robots is close enough to my own dome-headed mecha that it's tempting to only convert them slightly but I'll probably end up mixing them with Onager and ironstrider parts for something more special.

Not to mention the tracked servitors may be the perfect way of representing another project I've been working on, weaponized navigator clones ...

Oh, the man of many faces looks very creepy indeed

Oh no... not another Nurgle Lord conversion!!! That model has kept Gamesworkshop in Caviar and Champagne!!

Heh, in all seriousness, I look forward to how you get on with it!

 weirdingway wrote:

And I've also got a sneak peek of Genetor Paracelsus Takwin Aleph-359, Novatorial Doctor, Gestalt Mind, Flesh-smith, and Gene Collector:

Spoiler:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHwhatthefuckisTHAT?

Normally I try to read this thread on a full-sized screen so I can see all the wonderful details better, but I'm so glad I checked it on my iPhone this time....

That is an awful lot of heads.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
That is an awful lot of heads.

Empahsis on the awful. In a good way.

This is an absolute mindrapist of a thread. Love it!

I love it all! Subb'ed

Thanks everybody! I just got back from a big amazingly fun trip to Japan and haven't had time to do any modeling for a while now, but I can share what I was working on in the weeks leading up to my trip.

A couple of months ago I was thinking a lot about Genestealer cults. I always loved their concept, and with rumors flying about GW bringing them back I started to think about how I would update them if given the chance. One of the ideas that I had was that the gene hybridization process shouldn't be so orderly, always resulting in perfect blends of human alien along prescribed generational lines. This is hostile genetic takeover, mixing things that shouldn't be able to be mixed, so maybe the results should be more unpredictable. That idea lead to a few sketches including this random drawing a brood-brother mounted on a monstrous Hybrid:



I really liked the peaceful human baby face contrasted with the alien body. I was tempted to start converting up a genestealer cult, but decided to shelve the rest of my ideas for now in case GW does redo them, and focus my energies on the Navigator household and their allies.

But I kept returning to the baby face idea, which has a lot of obvious antecedents, including Tony Hough's classic Chaos Spawn (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r9pcFSGDWI8/UWz-P82PmXI/AAAAAAAAEhM/7F_c1b5zR3E/s400/CIMG6002.JPG), the torture mask from Brazil (https://jryanm.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/brazil-1985-baby-face-mask.jpg) one of the few good parts of the Matrix sequels, Geoff Darrows drawing of the Deus Ex Machina (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bb/6e/9a/bb6e9a83dc2b16ccba8440ccb83b8f96.jpg), Tetsuo's giant flesh baby form from Akira (http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/7/72296/2189705-akira_3.jpg), and many others I'm sure.

So with all the Mechanicus stuff coming out I thought maybe I could repurpose the baby-head idea and use it for Vat-grown servitor steeds ridden by a Genetor or his shock-troopers:





So I jumped into sculpting some heads. This time I worked flat on a plasti-card sheet, and found it much easier than when I sculpted the giant headed Novator in the round. At least it was easier on the larger head; the small one has been quite a challenge! I don't know how any one sculpts regular 28mm size heads. As I worked on them they slowly became less literal baby heads and more neotenic adult faces:



I did a little more sculpting after that trying to get things more symmetrical but that's pretty close to the final versions. One of the reasons I was sculpting flat like this was I always wanted to have multiples of these, and I've regretted not trying to make a cast of my Novator before painting him. So I started playing around with Oyomaru / Instamold to push-mold a bunch of clones of these heads:



It's been harder than I expected to get good results, despite watching many demos, but I actually like the variation the imperfect molds give. I pulled some out of the molds while still a little bit soft which let me squish and squeeze them, as well as give that one guy nice skeletal nostrils where his nose failed to grow/fill-the-mold. With some cleanup and detail sculpting I think they'll work nicely, and give them the feeling of imperfectly grown artificial constructs.

Somewhere along the line I got less excited by the cavalry idea and turned to a new way of using these. I wanted to tie them more directly into my Navigator project, and decided that they could represent a new project conducted by the House's radical Mago Biologis ally; an attempt to weaponize the Navigator gene, producing mindless biological batteries powering warp-eyes turned into powerful aetheric cannons, etc. They could be quite nicely represented in 40k by the new tracked servitor units.

So I did these sketches:




And some very preliminary bits combinations (you can see that the new tracked servitors would be very helpful here!):





But along the way I got attached to these sculpts and decided they might be best used on an actual Navigator. I never intended to make another non-armored Navigator besides Novator Lebbeus, but I'm pretty happy with how this bicephalous Buddha is coming together:



Although I'm a big uncomfortable with just how much of a Buddha he is turning into! It wasn't a conscious attempt, although I did put this together right before leaving for the trip to Japan so clearly those images were on my mind. After visiting so many temples and seeing so many Buddha statues it's feeling like it may be a bit too sacrilegious but maybe I'll get over that. The hobby has a whole certainly has a field day with christian iconography.

The next step would be re-sculpting the nose and other details that didn't fill out in the mold, as well as giving both heads cosmonaut hoods like the Novator. But I do like the scale of him in combination with some of other freaks:



Oh, one more thing. While scanning sketches I found this which I think was the origin of the Hive-minded Paracelsus magos idea:



And strangely enough after working on him I read Peter Watt's novel Echopraxia, which features a type of metahuman that use loosely networked hive-minds to achieve incredible intelligence. There's a nice detail that these "bicamerals" always stand with their backs to each other when joined in network, forming triangles or circles with their eyes facing outward in all directions for maximum a field-of-vision. So now I want to add more heads to Paracesus looking behind him. And I have to say all of Peter Watts books (Blindsight is the best one) have great stuff about altered metahumans and some truly alien aliens that could definitely provide good ideas for Inq28.