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So I'm making a fluff-friendly chapter that's Salamanders supplemented with Ultramarine gene seed, and I've got an idea that I feel is very ambitious.



I feel like this helmet design is something SM players either love or hate, and I like the idea, but I'd want to make the feathers into either scales, or flames.
Does this seem doable or am I just gonna have to have a mouth full of feathers on my Sallies?

I could be wrong, but I feel like if you paint the feathers the right colour they're going to look like layered scales without any extra work.

skolirvarden wrote:
I could be wrong, but I feel like if you paint the feathers the right colour they're going to look like layered scales without any extra work.

I was thinking of maybe cutting them in half in a manner that could break up some of the uniformity of the feathers

I fear that cutting the feathers up a bit will look weird.

I recommend you take a spare generic SM Helmet and play around with green stuff until you are happy. Then make a silicone mold and make resin casts. More effective if you make 3-5 heads in similar style and make a bunch of heads with each cast.

 Stephanius wrote:
I fear that cutting the feathers up a bit will look weird.

I recommend you take a spare generic SM Helmet and play around with green stuff until you are happy. Then make a silicone mold and make resin casts. More effective if you make 3-5 heads in similar style and make a bunch of heads with each cast.

You could be right. Or I could make resin casts of that helm and not feel as bad about ruining one lol

 Stephanius wrote:
I fear that cutting the feathers up a bit will look weird.

I recommend you take a spare generic SM Helmet and play around with green stuff until you are happy. Then make a silicone mold and make resin casts. More effective if you make 3-5 heads in similar style and make a bunch of heads with each cast.

Agreed. Instead of modelling on that helmet, I'd just get some green stuff and wrap your own scales/flames around a generic SM helmet. I'm afraid it might be overkill to attempt to modify the pictured one and likely will take way less time to just model the lower half yourself on a generic SM helmet (probably would not want to do this on a Corvius helmet though).

 HillyKarma wrote:
I was thinking of maybe cutting them in half in a manner that could break up some of the uniformity of the feathers

Yup. I think that if you could model fine enough, you could add an extra row in front of the existing two, or in front and between, and the shorter length of old and new rows would look pretty scale-like.

The advantage of using this head - or a copy of it - to work on, is that you just have a little bit of detail to scrape out and replace, if needs be, and you'll have the rest of the wing-shape (edge and/or angled surfaces) to use as a guide. Doing it over a standard marine helmet means a bit more work trying to get each side at the right angle, reasonably symmetrical etc. before you sculpt detail.

I've been through the custom helmet + wings dilema. You're right this one is kind of love/hate. I liked the feathers near the back, but hated the mouthful of feathers as you put it.

I went with a beak instead of mouth full of feathers.

<--- see avatar

 JWMarines wrote:
I've been through the custom helmet + wings dilema. You're right this one is kind of love/hate. I liked the feathers near the back, but hated the mouthful of feathers as you put it.

I went with a beak instead of mouth full of feathers.

<--- see avatar

I actually gave that picture a vote in the gallery earlier, so I'm aware haha.
Very nice job