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With the rumours of plastic Horus Heresy abounding, I thought it would be fun to celebrate with an in-depth tutorial on how to build 'true-scale' marines. This is what I've been working upon behind the scenes. The first part went up on today here on my blog, Death of a Rubricist [+noospheric inloadlink embedded+]

The remainder will follow over the next few days, and by following it you will end up with something like this:
.

...and eventually, this:






My aim is to make creating 'true-scale' marines as simple (and cheap!) as possible; so I hope you enjoy it.

+++

Parts two and three are now up.

Part two: Legs – an introduction to using greenstuff and sculpting.

Part three: Torso

...and now completed:

Part four: Limbs

Part five: Shoulder pads and finishing

This looks like an awful lot of work goes into these guys. are they noticably different on the table, excuse my ignorance 1st time seeing this done.

Looking at the tutorial, it seems that these Marines are only thicker and not taller. Is that correct? It looks like they're bigger in that a Tactical Marine is based on a Terminator model, but there doesn't seem to be any discernible height difference beyond that. When I think of 'true-scale Marines," I'm thinking about the ones that are considerably taller than normal Marines, too, not just thicker. Spacers under the torso at the waist, extended legs, etc. I think the term "true-scale" came about because Marine models are basically the same height as Guardsmen, while the fluff puts Marines in the neighborhood of 8 feet tall.


Ghidorah

In terms of size difference, they stand roughly 36mm to the eye (depending on pose, of course); or roughly half a centimetre taller. Obviously personal preference is going to come into whether one sees marines as slightly or considerably bigger than regular humans; and that personal view will affect how you approach making marines bigger (should you wish to do so, of course). I see marines as around 7'6"in tall in armour, so they need to be roughly 25% taller than a standard human at the same scale – and considerably bulkier given that they're both more muscular and wearing thick plate armour.

I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of these conversions next to standard marines, but hopefully these pictures will help to illustrate the effect you get by following the tutorial:











My intention behind this approach to making marines is to more closely imitate the artwork of Astartes; with the aim of reducing the heroic scaling of the heads/hands etc. by making the rest of the body larger. As a result, they are substantially taller and bulkier than regular marines. That said, the tutorial is also intended to be beginner-friendly in terms of minimising sculpting.

I hope it's useful!

 Apologist wrote:
...hopefully these pictures will help to illustrate the effect you get by following the tutorial:






I hope it's useful!

Nailed it.

The first picture with the yellow Marine doesn't really sell me, even taking in to account his lowered stance, but the 2nd and 4th pictures? Exactly what I picture when I think of (and spoke about before) true-scale Marines.

 Apologist wrote:
I hope it's useful!

Yes, indeed!



Ghidorah