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Happy New Year!

I've got a quick update. First off, I've added some flying buttress and landing supports to the Landing Pavillion. I'm happy that they ended up looking both like gothic architecture and fins on a midcentury style rocket ship:



I've also added tons of details but those are harder to see. I think I'm getting close to finishing the bulk of the construction, and can move on to more fun details. And for fun here is what the ship might look like flying through space:



Didn't realize I was making a federation starship complete with warp nacelles!

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I've also started painting the two headed Navigator, and done a few more touches on the tech gangers. I often go months without painting because I keep coming up with new ideas for models to build, and my desk gets overrun with bits, and then it seems daunting to clear off enough space to set the paints back up. But I'm always glad when I do. It's so fun and satisfying, and relatively fast compared with the types of conversions I've been doing lately. I'll should be doing a lot more painting over the next few months.



I've only just started the Navigator (mostly just begun on the faces and done the tarnished gold) but you can start to see how the he will come together. I'm still debating color schemes, and put together a photoshop mockup to test some ideas. Feedback much appreciated! The obvious/smart choice is to go with some combination of teal, dark grey, reddish orange, and ochre to tie into the rest of the household but I'm always tempted to try weird new colors and make them fit into the larger project.



ps. yes my kitchen floor and cabinets match my army's color scheme

I like 7 and 11

I like 7, or possibly 8, but with a darker body.

N 7 looks the part tome too.

6 or 10 would be my favourites. love that aged looking turq. Super work as ever

I like 6, 7, and 10, although they all have interesting color palettes. I'd like to see a little bit of that regal maroon in the future, although I would probably hold off on it for the two-headed navigator.

Thanks so much guys!

I went ahead and base coated the Navigators bodysuit and hoods last night, and decided at the last minute to go with something like option 7. Now I see more comments suggesting 10 or 11 and I'm having second thoughts!





It's just one layer of fairly yellowy orange on the body so I could probably drybrush and glaze my way to an interesting and rich greenish yellow like on 11, but a very light turqoise woudl be harder to pull off, but not impossible. Or I stick to my guns and keep building up and enriching the orange. Hmm...

And here we see a cluster of family members and their Landing Pavillion, ready to explore the ruined wasteland that is my desk:



@youidiotkid: good point about the maroon. could be perfect for the Courtly Envoy.


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Oh and speaking of spacesuit color schemes, here is a great photo is supposedly every spacesuit that's been worn in space:


I saw this last year when painting my second exo suit navigator but hadn't realized how much I recreated it with my grid of color options until this morning!

I just spent a ridiculous amountof time staring at those spacesuits!!! Great work btw

Thanks Januine!

Here is the current state of the bicephalous buddha:



Very happy with how he's coming together. And I get to do fun weathering and detailing soon. The face sculpting isn't the cleanest but I think when i finish detailing with purple, red, and green inks and washes I will be able to make the irregularities work as scars, warts, etc.

+ + +

For a while now I've been focusing on building larger-than-life freaky characters (and vehicles), so I decided to take a quick break and throw together a quick kitbash, representing a much more humble servant of the household. Although I have my tech gangers, my rather unorthodox Magos Genetor doesn't have any traditional Mechanicus servants. I can't picture a doctor of his stature treating his navigatorial masters without assistance, so I present his Acolyte Attending / Orderly / Nurse-mule:







He's almost done, just needs a tool on his servo-arm and maybe a second arm coming from his back. You can see he's laden with vials and canisters of drugs and unguents, ready to dispense them to his magos at a moment's notice. His mouth has been replaced with a much more useful clamp-beak. Maybe if he proves to be a devoted enough student he will be given the privilege of having his head removed and added to the gestalt mind/body of his master.

+ + +

Also, RIP David Bowie. Such a sad day! I was just listening to this last week while working on these models:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw

The video includes a conclusion to the story of Major Tom, of particularly relevance to this blog. I love the spacesuit / bejeweled skull combination of course.

2 lovely conversions! Great use of that Empire Huntsmen body which I haven't seen in many Inq28 conversions. The Nurse-mule is great too. Did you feel bad using up so many great heads in one go? :-p

That's more than a little creepy. Nice work


Loving the ship.

I feel if a jury existed in the Imperium courts they'd look like that. Freaky.

Oh, yeah. This just keeps getting better.

Looking good with paint on. I like the colour scheme you've picked , the orange works really well.

I'm blown away by the spaceship you've made, super mad skills!

EDC

Love that ship, your art concepts, and I am very, very disappointed that I lost my subscription somehow to this thread. I want to see that ship primed, might learn something from how you've added the bits to it.

Thanks so much!

I've made a bit more progress on both of the mechanical freaks:






You'll see the Doctor now has weaponry, and I like that they could all be sort of medical in nature. A shock-prod (for battle-field defibrillation), a needle/vaccine gun or some sort, and an arc-welding hand for cauterization or mechanical repair. The Nurse's buzz-saw was originally supposed to go on his mouth, as a reference to Rogue Trader AM artwork that also features the horse-skull magos and the super-cool double-face magos (that actually inspired the doctor).

The doctor looks overwhelmingly busy in these shots but I plan to really unify and simplify everything with paint. I'm considering going for a very old-school blanchitsu approach, without my typical cool colors. Rust-red body and hoods, off-white, ochre, and brown skins, dirty black details, and glowing yellow-white eye-lenses? We'll see.

I love where this is going, but I'm not sure if the Doc's legs are quite enough to support him. You could bulk them up with a couple of armor plates and maybe a piston to attach the thighs and back of the calves. Also, though I like the shape of his feet, they seem too small too keep him balanced without constantly correcting his position.

Wow, this is like the insane love children of Froud and Jodorowski. Love it

Thanks!

@youidiotkid: I actually took your advice and bulked up his legs and feet quite a bit. I was worried about losing the gangly wierdness but now he looks like a mini-titan and I'm happy about it. Pics soon.

@mastiff: perfect! Two of my favorites. I'll have a pic of my updated Imperial Envoy Navigator soon and I think he's got a pretty Moebius vibe going on that you may appreciate.

And here is Doctor Paracelsus Takwin's with his new bulkier legs and feet:



The toes and groin-plate are cut from the armored plates that come with the Kataphron servitors, and there are other Kataphron bits on his thighs and mechanicus autocannon barells on his shins. I was worried I'd miss the gangly oddness of his old legs, but I actually love the result. Now he looks like a mini warlord titan or Knight, and I think it's better to have his mechanical body be more grounded to contrast the central weirdness of his many heads. The thigh plates are on the big size but that just makes me think of Landmates and other large thighed mecha which is fine by me.

I've also done more work on the Courtly Envoy:



The crystal ball / navigation globe ball is a pin-head, which just happened to fit perfectly in a random hand in my bits box. It's hard to see but he also now has fancy ornamental platform geta shoes! Couldn't capture the gothic arches from my sketches but this will do. Next up I need to do putty cleanup on his legs, and maybe try sculpting him a head-dress or visor of some type, something to exaggerate the height of his face (and body). I've tried lots of bits on his head, and none really work, so if I sculpt something that works I will just leave his head in the simple astronaut hood, which I think looks good with his built up shoulder armor. I'm also currenty planning on not festooning him with tons of detail and bits, but giving him a cleaner and more elegant finish, which at least gives me the options of a crazy Moebius / Ziggy Stardust color scheme with freehand patterning if I decide to go that route.

You make some uniquely interesting and creepy stuff The bigger legs are nice.

The creepy ring-claw on the bony hand stroking the globe... is creepy, in a good way. Cool.

I expected to prefer the heavier legs on the Dr... but I have to admit I quite liked the marionette quality of the spindlier legs. It had a graceful quality like a giraffe, and was a nice contrast to the really solid bulk of the rest of your troops. The new legs look great, mind you.

The finger tapping the cane is a wonderful touch, and the regal head absolutely screams Moebius. My god, you have some wonderful touches in every model. I need to look at the rest of the blog, I just hopped in to the last page.

For the visor, you could use some blister pack style clear plastic wrapped into a tube then some kid of rounded piece to use as a top/lid with a Green Stuff tube/pipe to cover the join from making the tube. Obviously it would need to be painted separately and glued in very carefully but it wouldn't hide or obscure his face, it would be as tall/long as you want and with it being a tube it would exaggerate his features, wouldn't have excess detail and goes with the astronaut look.

It's a shame the gothic arches for his boots have been difficult to transfer into model form, I suppose you could exaggerate the whole thing by making them a bit like those spring running stilts you can get?

Your conversions are stunning as always.

Doctor Paracelsus Takwin is stunning, but I have to say that the Courtly Envoy is becoming one of my favorite miniatures you've built. He looks like he leapt out of Moebius' sketchbook and rolled around in a pile of that classic Weirdingway flavor. I think it'd be really interesting to see you adapt a flashy Ziggy Stardust color scheme into your gritty style.

The bigger legs on the Dr are definitely an improvement.

The crystal ball dude looks great too, I'm glad you revealed it was a pinhead, as I immediately wondered where you got a small sphere from.

EDC

Whilst the new legs look fine, I did prefer the spindly ones. It reminded me of the tripods from War of the Worlds.

Thanks! The bulky legs are a bit divisive but I'm happy with them. I'll have to make a truly graceful spindly legged cyborg later.

Here's a detail of the Envoy's shoes if anyone was curious. @Gogsnik, I like your leg extension idea but not for this guy. I may add a few more bits to these shoes but I actually like how they're turning out.


The shoe supports include cross-guards from greatswords and some fun little loop bits from the Kataphron kit.

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Gogsnik's excellent clear visor suggestion got me thinking about my old sketches that included translucent space helmets:



I eventually gave up on the idea because it seemed tough to implement, and discovered the gold chrome foil which i love and have used instead. Since then Mars Attacks miniatures with perfectly shaped clear plastic domes have come out, but somehow they seem kind of incongruous with the painted surfaces and "fake" the same way Necron glow-stick do. Much more successful is the clear resin approach that Meade used on his Witch Engine.

So now I'm thinking it might be worth the effort to try to encase the envoy's head in a dome-shaped block of clear resin. I could do a push-mold of his face so i could do multiple attempts. The end result would hopefully look like this:



Or I forget the dome helmet, and stick with my original plan of just an ornamental fore-head piece.

A third and somewhat radical option occured to me last night. i was testing helmet sizes using a half-built helmet I made for my Lodge Warriors and discovered I kind of love the result:



Would it be completely insane to remove the long-face head entirely (saving it for another body down the line) and instead give this Navigator a gold chrome mask? I am really into the aristocratic glam grimdark astronaut effect. And it's certainly more mysterious. But the long-face was a big point of this conversion. Then again, kill your darlings, right?

Any opinions? I'm not sure what to do. Options are:

+ long-faced head, maybe with an ornamental forehead or head piece
+ long-faced head encased in clear (or tinted) resin dome
+ opaque, gold chrome dome helmet

Thanks!

My vote goes to the Meade pattern, the shape of the torso would really nicely fit this kind of helmet and easily hide the resin's entry point.

I love the idea of the resin dome. I feel like it could come out looking amazing.