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I've been wanting to do a project for a while now, where I'd get some of the 54mm scale guard bits, and create a detailed 54mm scale model of one of each of the famous guard regiments.
Once I had one I could use for scale, I could sculpt parts that would fit and use GW's weapons or heads where necessary as bases. I know the add-on pack had two lasguns, and I'd probably do some of them with special weapons and some regiments have non-standard lasguns. HAs anyone seen some 54mm tallarns/mordians/valhallans/vostroyans/catachans they could point me at for inspiration?

Main problem is I have no idea of how rare these are, and what sort of value they'd be - its now a long, long time since GW was selling inquisitor scale models. Are we talking praetorian guardsmen rare? Echer plasma gun rare? Or or solid gold box of RTB01 owned by Jesus Christ himself rare? Anyone able to advise? Or better yet has some bits lying around they'd want to haggle for?

Posting these links here as much for my own memory as anything else:
https://www.coolminiornot.com/91538
https://www.coolminiornot.com/89701
https://www.coolminiornot.com/80092
https://www.coolminiornot.com/98649
https://www.coolminiornot.com/133150

Check out 54mm historical miniature manufacturers. You might have decent success finding what you need there. Many different companies exist and you can find stuff in metal, plastic or resin.

Skriker

It was the lasgun arms I was after - luckily I have found some and made an offer, but the seller is taking a loooooong time to get back to me on this.
Cheers for the pointer though - I could save myself a lot of sculpting if I use historicals for base pieces, and inquisitor bits just for the weapons.

Not sure they go for all that much really. I tried selling my Inquisitor scale space marine still unassembled for the price I paid for it all those years ago on eBay and it didn't sell...still have it in a zip-lock bag in my closet.

The standard lasguns in 54mm are incredibly rare though - the guard character you could actually buy in the shops were armed with some wierd spear thing - on the plus side Im bidding on one now which uses the mial-order-only cadian pieces, so should get what I want.
As for that brother artemis mini you have - I turned mine into a statue by re-posing the limbs with greenstuff, got £25 for it on ebay last year. Artemis isnt worth much on his own - great for converting as a show piece though.

 Mecha wrote:
Cheers for the pointer though - I could save myself a lot of sculpting if I use historicals for base pieces, and inquisitor bits just for the weapons.

GW has a chunky heroic scale though, which tends to result in weapons being drastically overscale. Most 54mm Inquisitor weapons will look out of scale alongside what most historical figure manufacturers offer.

In all honesty, if you're using 54mm historical figures, you're better off with GW's 28mm weapons. This was the Sergeant I made from some 1:32 (54mm) scale Airfix figures:



The chainsword is two stuck together, but the rest is all direct from the 28mm plastics. Even the 28mm lasguns worked well for the rest of the squad after extending their buttstocks, being ~ 30mm long - which is about a scale 90-100cm, around the same size as assault rifles tend to be.

I do a lot of 54mm sculpting, but if I want to use any pre-made bitz, it almost invariably has to be from my 28mm box, otherwise it doesn't fit the truer human proportions I'm used to working in (or that used in any official artwork I want to base models off):

Managed to find the catachan with lasgun arms at Vapnartaks bring and buy! Absolute bargain - will be (definitely not) making a few copies of that lasgun bit for use in my series I'll be doing. Thinking catachan and cadian first, then maybe tallarn as they're my favourite.

Sourcing parts is getting hard and expensive, and I assume it will only get worse with the line discontinued. I dont know what models where in what waves, but the upgrade blisters were discontinued before the models.

I use this site as reference all the time http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Inquisitor_54mm

For specific 54mm gaming and models the conclave still exists, but is pretty low traffic, and they push all trades to a yahoo group that seems mostly dead.

@Fango - The 54mm space marine seems to be the most common model they made. But even now a complete in box one goes for a reasonable sum. Alternately you could post here on the dakka swap and see if some dakka folks would trade 28mm stuff for it.

@MarcoSkoll - I had seen that 54mm sister before but didn't know who made it, she's amazing. Do you have any WIP or step by steps of the build? is she a scratch build/sculpt or did you start with a base figure?

 Mecha_buddha wrote:
@MarcoSkoll - I had seen that 54mm sister before but didn't know who made it, she's amazing. Do you have any WIP or step by steps of the build? is she a scratch build/sculpt or did you start with a base figure?

I've thrown what WIP photos I have below. Aside from some of the gear, it's all scratch work (the grey patches in some of the photos is left-overs of ProCreate - which I tried, but didn't like as a putty - used for bulking up the armature, not a base dolly).

Well that is absolutely amazing work. Most impressed by the head sculpt.

I want to make a 54mm sister for a diorama involving Marines and Tau, but my sculpting is nowhere near that level. I have a 1:32 Priezer Eva kit on order to use as a base, because I don't think I could get the anatomy right from scratch.

Inspired by this thread I'm getting my dad to dig out some old Airfix 1/32 figures, some are the multipose WW2 sorts, others are historicals including a mounted Dragoon which I'm tempted to turn into a Rough Rider.

Collecting Inquisitor is very frustrating, and the eBay prices are just getting ridiculous. A Genestealer sold for over £100 the other day, much as I want one I cant pay that sort of money for a single figure.

 Mecha_buddha wrote:
Well that is absolutely amazing work. Most impressed by the head sculpt.

Faces are easier than most would assume. While the dexterity is important, it's really secondary to an understanding of facial structure and proportions.

By default, humans don't actually need to understand what a face looks like - we have subconscious processes that allow us to recognise something as a face easily enough without having to learn what a face actually looks like (to the point that something like is registered as a face). It's only really when you want to create faces that this shows up a shortfall.
It's not that hard to learn an artist's eye*, but does come with the downside you then spend your entire life noticing that people's faces are wonky.

*Although my school art classes certainly sucked at teaching anything other than an utter hatred for the subject, and I quit it at the first available opportunity. It was only complete chance that about three years later I got into a slightly daft "bet" with a mate and discovered I actually liked art.

In any case, that model's kind of old now. I've come along reasonably well and feel I've done better faces at 28mm scale since.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
A Genestealer sold for over £100 the other day, much as I want one I cant pay that sort of money for a single figure.

Wowzers. I'd've guessed the prices had gone up since the ranges went OOP, but gorram... that's a steep increase.

Re: the genestealer. I think it's really only worth half that judging by the more general trend of sales. I'm assuming there was some bidding war by people impatient.

Yes the recent spike in ebay costs is disheartening. Some rare figs like the Navis Nobilitae went for something like $230US. I was looking at one seller who had a Kroot Mercenary in box and the blister to make him back into a "normal" Kroot but opening bid was $105US total + shipping.

Thats why I think its time I tried my hand at sculpting

I've bought quite a lot of figures over the past week all through forums and groups online and I feel I've had fair prices depending on their condition. eBay is just going a bit nuts with things selling very high one week and not the next, I don't think the super high prices are a trend but the prices are going up generally as all specialist games are now OOP. Still, I'll be raiding my parents' attic this week for 54mm historical stuff.

 Mecha_buddha wrote:
Yes the recent spike in ebay costs is disheartening. Some rare figs like the Navis Nobilitae went for something like $230US.

If anyone was selling that as rare, they were being pretty dishonest - that sucker was available for years on end.

The standards for "rare" are better set by the very short lived Kal Jericho model (but, despite that, it only used to auction in the £50-70 range). Or the civilians, which are rare to the point I only know of one person who owns any (I've never seen any auctioned, although I've not exactly been looking exhaustively).

Thats why I think its time I tried my hand at sculpting

As good a reason as any. I got started on sculpting mostly because the end of the bitz service made it enough harder to do what I wanted to that I decided I might as well work from scratch.

Heres a question - if I could get my mate to use facilities at his college to cast up my custom sculpted guard regiment parts - thats totally legal right? So long as I dont use imperial aquilas or make the guns identifiable as lasguns its all gravy?
Anyone else I can get onboard with this project who's a better sculptor than me?

No.

... or rather: "No, it's not unequivocally legal". Copyright is a complex issue, and goes deeper than just not using Aquilas or Lasguns (although using those is certainly a bad start).
As long as you're not engaging in a total rip-off, it'll probably be legal*, but I wouldn't want to give a definite answer on that because a) I don't know what you're doing and b) I'm not a lawyer.

*Although, given the cost of a court case, the question for a lot of people is usually not "is it legal?" but "will I get taken to court?". And really, an effective way to avoid that is to not ignore Cease and Desist letters if GW should send them.

If you don't use imperial aquillas or lasguns then you're just making 54mm SF bits, what is left to make them anything like GW stuff?

The most obvious example would be (if they're commercial castings*) what they're advertised as. Other problems could be too closely copying things other than those two - the Cadian helmet design might be recognisable if too closely copied, for example.

*If it's not commercial... well, then GW is practically guaranteed to never find out about it, and anything's legal if you don't get caught.