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These guys are looking progressively more creepy, I love it! I can see the sphinx navigator looking good with a big container of some kind strapped to its back, maybe a big oxygen tank or barrel of acid that it can spray around?

Again, brilliant update, if you were to tell me you live in the Giger museum in switzerland, next to the wall of creepy baby faces I would not be surprise.

That last quadrupedal guy is already especially creepy, there is something silent hill about it.

Keep up the good work !

These navigators are getting creepier and crazier. That two-headed fat guy looks awesome, though. Keep up the insanity!

 weirdingway wrote:
I see it as a weaponized Navigator Clone grafted to a bio engineered transport body (abhuman derived? or just atavistic genes unlocked and twisted). Another take on the Sphinx archetype, and a kind of biological parallel to Novator Lebbeus on his robot throne. I'm not sure yet if the body will be left naked and animalistic / medical experiment, or clothed in something like a space-suit, ritual robes, or some combination of the 3.

*feels giddy and a little weak at the knees after reading all this sci-fi deliciousness*

- Salvage

Yeah. That stuff is getting pretty wild. Multi-face makes me think of one of the bosses from Space Harrier.

I love your Navigators, even if they are potentially the thing of nightmares.

EDC

Thanks so much everyone! Glad the weirder and creepier stuff is being well received.

My wife is out of town for the week so I should be able to make a lot of progress on the minis, probably mostly painting terrain and tech gangers, but maybe some other cybernetic/robotic kitbashing will happen as well, so stay tuned.

I also wanted to let everyone know that my Navigator army is featured in the current issue of Warhammer Visions! That's issue 22 / November, in the Blanchitsu column. This is a real dream come true and the photographs all came out really cool. It's so strange seeing the models that I hacked together in my attic on the familiar studio terrain and under professional lights and cameras. I wish I could tell my 15 year old self.

Woaw, that is highly deserved, congratulations. Looking forward to the vision then ! As well as to the week's progress.

Fantastic and well deserved !

Creepier and creepier, I should have picked s different post to read whilst eating

Amazing. You've taken inquisitor style kitbashing to a whole new level of gothic kitsch. I am inspired.

Congratulations, and very well deserved

Well done mate! I thought I recognized them when I was reading through :-)

Thanks everybody!

First off, I finally got my hands on Warhammer Visions, and I'm thrilled. It's so wonderful seeing my models photographed professionally. And in addition to some fun orange lights in some shots (which work very nicely with all the orange accents on the models) they've kind of cranked the saturation across the board, which actually looks great. I originally intended the army to be colorful and crazy (thinking along the lines of the color palettes in Lynch movies, City of Lost Children/Delicatessen, as well as Chris Foss, Moebius, and Rogue Trader) but somehow everything ended up a bit neutral and drab. They look good up close and under bright painting lights, but when I played with them at Adepticon I was disappointed by how grey they looked at arms length in flat lighting.

So in a way the Blanchitsu photos kind of capture how I always intended the models to look, which is a great and unexpected outcome. I also love how they included bits of my fluff and the ridiculous names (only one mistake; the drop ship is meant to be Pentiment as in "pentimento/i", not Penitent).








The whole experience is really inspiring, and I've got big exciting plans for the Household. I just put in an order for the parts I need to build a squad or two of new henchmen, who will a more uniform and professional group of warriors than my current rag-tag groups of misfits (don't worry, they will still be very much in the style of the army).

And I've already started on another brand new Navigator, who I think will nicely embody another facet of the Navigator concept that I haven't properly explored yet, the type of Navigator who would be more easily imagined working with Imperial Naval Commanders and negotiating deals in the chambers of Holy Terra. I think eventually I'll have a whole group of Navigators who each embody one of the aspects of the concept as I see it:

The God King (Lebbeus)
The Enlightened Dreamer (the twins)
The Veiled Children (the exo-suits)
The Living Relic (the exo-knight)
The Holy Abomination (coming soon!)
The Courtly Envoy (coming soon!)
The Armored Prince (coming soon!)

They will be joined by their most trusted retainers and servants:

The Fool (the lobotomized fat navigator)
The Priest (Beaconite with the astronaut helmet)
The Doctor (see below)

Maybe the Armored Prince will be demoted from a Navigator and become a new Master of Arms instead. We'll see.

In any case, I've finally figured out how I'm going to complete the households' representative from the Adeptus Mechanicus, colony mind Magos Paracelsus Takwin:




The legs are built from the actuators on the Onager Dunecrawler's big legs, parts of the Skitarii Radium Carbines, and parts of what I think are old IG mortars. The pelvis is a Scout torso. The strangest part is of course the giant muscular arm (which will be better integrated with greenstuff), but I think this Magos is either entirely a Genetor (interested in creating living weapons through genetic manipulation and transplant surgery), or at the very least a mix of Genetors and more conventiional, mechanically minded Magos heads. Paracelsus will also get a few more arms and weapons.

And although I keep coming up with exciting new things to build, don't worry, I have not forgotten about painting. In fact, I actually primed a bunch of stuff and have everything ready to start painting in earnest. Just warming up with some practice on the Underhive terrain before I paint the Volt Oxides and the Buddha headed twins:

Congratulations on the article, the pictures look great.

Love the new concept for your representative from the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Your models look even more brilliant under studio lights! And the colony mind is sending me insane just looking at it.

Amazing! Simply amazing! Did you apply to be in Visions or did they come to you?

Congrats man! Your models look amazing when photographed professionally like that. I really love the direction you are taking exploring the same themes in depth, especially the creepy organic constucts.

Congratulations on getting your work in Visions.

I hope it inspires others into the hobby.

Hive Fleet Moloch was a massive inspiration for me to start and although this is different it follows a similar tradition.

The crew looks even more fly in that article
Some well deserved recognition to be sure.

And the new stuff continues the trend of being awesome

- Salvage

Stunning work as ever. And many many congrats on getting the Visions feature. Wholly deserved! Keep up the amazing work....we crave moooorree!!!

Congrats on making it into the magazine! I can't wait to see what comes next.

Congrats on the well-deserved recognition.

Gongrats! Great army and truly deserved compliment!

This is a great blog.

Congratulations, you deserve to feel really good, your work is outstanding, and I'm glad it has been featured in Visions!

Thanks everyone!

@Doombiscuit: they came to me (via the Ammobunker).

I've been working on a few different projects at the same time, and have in fact started painting the tech gang, but don't have any of that ready to share yet.

But I do have some photos of the newest version of the baby-headed Navigator:






Obviously, I finally bought the amazing Techpriest Dominus. Such a beautiful model! I was originally going to do a fairly straightforward conversion and just put a navigator head on it, but ended up with this instead. I think I prefer this combination to the ape-body quadruped. I'm sure I'll find a use for that ape body at some point; maybe it really is meant to be a steed as originally intended.

I like how this combination reduces the Navigator to basically just a floating head, a type of huge servo-skull. It also shares a design space with the Zooanthrope in a way, which makes sense, both engineered psychic constructs. I think of this creature as having a withered, almost vestigial body, supported by suspensors and carried by the robotic leg apparatus hidden beneath the cloak. I think just some greenstuffing around the face and some more tubes and rivets and I'll call it done.

In fluff terms, maybe this baby-head and the twins are siblings, part of a new generation engineed by Lebbeus and his doctor in an attempt to create battle navigators with offensive warp-eye capabilities, with resulting abnormalities both physical and mental ...

Anyway, Bruticus suggested I switch the body the other way around, which I've mocked up very crudely with photoshop here:



I'm not sure which arrangment I prefer. Any opinions?

Holy warp, that is brilliant ! Although I will shed tears for the quadrupede I am sure he (it) will come back in a newer magnificent incarnation.

You damn right about the 'huge servo skull' interpretation, and I think Bruticus' arrangment goes that way.

Keep it up !

I think this is one of my favorite starts to your conversions so far! Long time lurker. It is so interesting that you posted this today. Literally earlier today, MIGS on Ironsleet posted his Bonesinger Librarian, which has a insanely similar look.

As far as your question, I think i like the second configuration, but that is just my opinion.

Beautiful work as always. Keep up the inspirational work.

Second one definitely! His third eye looks off though. Have to agree though this is going to turn out amazing!

I do prefer "the Bruticus edit".

I think the original configuration could work if you have something to fill in the dead space that the crescent shape creates in the original. Perhaps filling it with mechanical arms/tendrils?

Maybe something like this?

Like the head is leading the atrophied body?