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Due in no small part to a decidedly dubious grip on my own sanity (or complete lack thereof), I have managed to convince myself that it would be a brilliant idea to sculpt/convert some skitarii for an upcoming narrative campaign weekend sometime in 2014. This event is set during the Horus Heresy and will be featuring a forgeworld. Beyond that, I cannot say, but check out Animosity Events for further updates as they are released.

So, making your own skitarii. How many times have we seen that done before, with varying degrees of success. Whilst there are many excellent skitarii conversions/kit bashes to be found on da intawebz, there are also quite a few that are equally rubbish. Whilst what I have in mind are by no means highly original, I’m hoping that I can finish them to a fairly high standard. I’ll let you be the judge of that, once I’ve finished and posted some nice piccies!

Anyhoo, my rough plan involves adopting what some might say is a crazy/stupid approach (and part of me is inclined to agree with this statement). I have a load of plastic 1998 OOP Dark Eldar warriors still on the sprue. They’ve been sat around, doing nothing except gathering dust and generally looking quite pitiful. Then it hit me: why not put them to use by whacking on a load of greenstuff and turn them into obedient skitarii! Yes, I know. This is not the easiest way to make a skitarii. I do like to make things difficult for myself.

There are four sets of legs, arms and bodies on the DE sprue, so I can sculpt four different basic poses. Being multipart, I can put them together to create many more poses, resulting in each figure being individually poseable (is that even a word?). But the best part will be casting these bwadboys (for personal use only, of course) so that I can create a horde of raging skitarii hypaspists, ready to bring laser-death to the enemies of the Mechanicum! Cue emotionless, yet undeniably maniacal, vox-filtered cackle…

I’ll be posting some pictures to show the initial stages, whereby I’ll be cutting, sanding and filing all of the spiky bits off these unfortunate DE warriors. I aim to show each stage on this thread, so you can see my working process. Feel free to ask any questions or indeed make suggestions as I go along (although I can’t promise I’ll listen to the latter, since I’m a stubborn old git).

I've started with the DE legs, chopped/filed off spiky bits, filed down the size 15 winkle-pickers and slapped on some shin guards and a protective boot plate. I'm using ProCreate modelling putty for the first time on this one, and must say that so far it is a lot easier to use than greenstuff!

Anyway, the first piccies, shown alongside the original skinny DE legs. Apologies for the quality - they were taken just before bedtime!







I need to refine what I've done so far, before moving up the legs to add some small knee pads and sculpt some thigh plates (the existing thighs are way too skinny). Haven't decided yet how much - if any - of the legs will be covered by a cloak (or indeed if I may not bother with a cloak at all; they ain't exactly practical)!

Peace!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Leg armour so far…








The little holes perforating the knee pads and leg plates are guide holes/indentations for tiny little studs (i.e. really really little balls) to be inserted. For these I will be using filtration balls taken from a used water filter, in case anyone was wondering. Pictures of those to come…

Laters!

I love it when modellers go insane and create mind-bogglingly complex, but also really cool, tasks for themselves! This looks great so far. Keep this madness up; at least finish one. I definitely want to see the fruit of your labors. Subscribed!

Very nice!

Can't wait to see more.

Nice start. Looking forward to seeing this develop.

Cheers guys!

@ Waaazag - Yep, it truly is madness. With what I have in mind, I'm pretty much covering 90% of the DE miniature, which is technically more of an armature with some muscle mass, I guess! Depending on how this turns out, I might eventually get the wire out and create an armature from scratch and sculpt a 100% original miniature. We'll see...

I've been looking at the baldy DE head (the one with the topknot) and it really is small & narrow when compared to regular human IG heads. I'll see how fleshing out the face goes before removing the topknot and adding some augmetics/cyber-dreads. Although I may just end up sculpting a head from scratch...

The madness continues - more pictures soon!

Did the other thigh plate plus added some little pouches on the back. Not sure what style of thigh plate I want to go for - the layered plate on his right leg, or the smooth, plain left thigh…

Thoughts?

I'm liking the layered armour at the moment - for some reason I kind of associate that look with various skitarii i my head. As you're doing a few armatures for your casting nothing to stop you having single plates on a few though

Looking great so far dude - more pics! ALL THE PICS!

Thanks monkeytroll and liquidbassline. So far most of my mates reckon I should go with the layered armour plate, although there are others who think a mixture is good. Personally, I'm beginning to lean towards layered armour on both legs.

Whilst I make up my mind, I reckon I'm gonna start on the torso. I can always go back to the legs (which I need to do anyway, because I've decided those pouches on his bum look whack and need altering/removing)...

Been faffing about with the body and added some rivets/studs to the leg armour. Here's a quick photo of the basic form of the torso. It's about 50% finished at this stage as I want to add a bit more to the front, and I have quite a bit to do on the rear.

The plastic guard head is for scale purposes only - it isn't stuck on and in no way represents what I'm going for head-wise!

did you sculpt the torso or is that a a games workshop one?

 OnlyWar wrote:
did you sculpt the torso or is that a a games workshop one?

I sculpted the armour plates over an old 1990s DE warrior chest (after cutting the 1980s shoulder pads off). I'll be adding a few more bits, like rivet/studs and some rebreather tubes to run up around the neck. Once I've finished there'll only be a little bit of shoulder and waist joint left from the DE warrior torso - I'll have covered everything else in ProCreate.

Here's another couple of shots, this time with a silly Space Wolf head… As I said before, still plenty of work to do on the torso to refine it and add details.

Awesome work so far!

I'm highly interested in this project because I love the Admech. They contend with my favorite faction for top place.

GoT any scetches of the head?

Cheers guys.

Yeah, I suppose I could upload some very quick scribbles I did of the head options. It'll have to wait until I get home from work, though.

I didn't manage to get any more sculpting done over the weekend due to an annoying eye infection. It seems to be getting better now, so hopefully more sculpting very soon!

 chilledmonkeybrains wrote:
Cheers guys.

Yeah, I suppose I could upload some very quick scribbles I did of the head options. It'll have to wait until I get home from work, though.

I didn't manage to get any more sculpting done over the weekend due to an annoying eye infection. It seems to be getting better now, so hopefully more sculpting very soon!

Sweet! Can't wait to see

Looking very promising indeed! Subbed.