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Hi everyone,

I'm Tom, I used to be a very enthusiastic young hobbyist, but have now just started to get back into it after a 13-year hiatus!

Expect to see here:

Orks

Sisters

Maybe some Tzeentch Marines and Daemons

Lots of conversions and kitbashing, especially of vehicles

Detailed planning and brainstorming of future conversions

Eventually some painting...

I have lots of big plans for conversions and fluff for these 3 armies, but I will take my time to talk about plans for different projects one-by-one.

I've also made an instagram you can follow @tom.makes.minis

For now here is the last model I completed before my hobby hiatus: when I was 14 years old!















He's a heavily-converted Space Marine Jump Pack Chaplain, from my custom chapter The Dragon Guard. (The symbol on his shoulder is meant to be a freehand stylised dragon.) He was made out of many different metal kits - if I remember correctly his body and right arm is from a chaplain with jump pack kit, his right hand and axe head from a captain kit of some kind, the handle of the axe is green stuff and the jump pack is made out of the chaplain jump pack and 3 standard marine backpacks. I entered him into the UK Golden Demon Youngbloods category, and I think he was placed in the "Honorable Mentions" cabinet or something, which I was happy with. Some fun details: there is a green stuff footprint on the base, and the winged skull design on the face of the axe is from a chaplain's crozius, not from the axe part itself! This model also predates this weirdly similar jump pack captain with axe model by several years.



I'm much more interested in other factions now though - this is the last loyalist marine you will see on this blog (at least the last living one....).

Thank you for the welcome! Now let me present my first big plan:

The Walking Cathedral

I want to make a Sisters of Battle Knight that looks like a stone cathedral with guns. This is my vision:



I drew that on an A3 piece of paper, and it's only slightly larger than the actual model will be!

I was inspired by this incredible WIP conversion of a Sisters of Battle Knight that I saw on reddit. (You can follow the guy's progress on instagram - there's a 360 degree view there too.) It is a kitbash using the Junith Eruita kit to replace the knight's head with a pulpit, and the Exorcist kit on top so it has an organ. It looks AMAZING, and I want to do something similar.



I want to go further though! I want:

Towers at the back, so that it looks like Notre Dame Cathedral from the front,

The saintly corpse from the Triumph of St Katherine kit on the top, like a walking relic,

Paint the armour like marble using this genius airbrush & baby-wipe technique I saw,

Extra armour plates to make it look even more like the facade of a cathedral,

A scenic base, I've bought the temple rolling pin from Green Stuff World and super sculpey, which looks like this once baked

It to be playable as a WYSIWYG Castellan (but probably with swappable weapons),

To also make my own datasheet for friendly games.

So far I've got the Castellan kit, the Junith Eruita kit, several 3rd-party extra armour pieces, and a torso extender, and am working out how I want it to look.

Questions for you all:
1) Can I get away without buying the Exorcist kit for the top of this? I don't really like the new exorcist organ and have bought plasticard tubes to fashion my own organ pipes from, but the front and middle of the top of the Castellan would still have to be largely scratch-built to house the Triumph of St Katherine corpse.
2) What kits/parts would work for the tower? Ideally I would make square towers with a 1 inch x 1 inch footprint. The Adeptus Titanicus towers seem like one possibility. But scratch-building a square tower would be doable too.
3) Where can a get a small bell for the tower?
4) What else could I add to the base to make it more interesting? I was thinking that the stone flooring could be visibly cracking under the weight of the beast...

Perhaps you could have some servitors, jawas, or something throwing petals or carpets under the feet as it walks?
If you're getting the Triumph of St Katherine kit, I believe that has plates of petal/communion wafers that would fit the bill nicely.

I was actually already thinking exactly this - I think it's St Mina from the Triumph of St Katherine who is laying out rose petals. I didn't actually buy the Triumph kit, I just ordered the parts for the saintly corpse from BitzandKits. They didn't have the parts for St Mina in stock, but I think I could get hold of St Mina from eBay fairly easily. A servitor with incense or something would be cool too.

The question is will there be enough space on the base? If I extend the width of the hips I might be able to get a model between the feet without it looking like it's about to be kicked... Here's Junith Eruita looking nervous beneath a bluetack-held leg and pelvis to show you the problem. If it was Mina with her big dish of roses it would be an even tighter squeeze in the middle there.



You can also see the extra knee armour, toe armour, double-back knee extensions, and waist extender parts that I ordered. They all look great.

As for square towers, I'm slowly working my way through some zone mortalis stuff that might look the part, but the towers are 57x57x58mm (about 2.2 inches)
There is also the OOP cityfight terrian that you might be able find on ebay, but again, thats close to two inches...

This picture shows the problem: a 2.2 inch wide tower would take up most of the width of the carapace.



Here's someone's comparison of cityfight and newer terrain - all of the panels look to be about 4.5cm (~1.75 inches) wide, assuming the markings on the cutting mat are 1cm apart. Might work if I chopped it up though?



I really think plasticard cuboids would work best - then what I would need are gothic-style window arches that are < 1 inch wide to stick onto the towers.

Been doing tentative work on the knight, planning out how it might fit together.

Top of the knight

For the top I'm going to use the corpse from the Triumph of St Katherine kit in the centre, but cut into the carapace, split down the middle and separate it to make a hollow for the corpse to lay in. That will then be flanked by the kneeling statues from the Junith Eruita kit, and have the organ behind it.





For now you're just going to have to imagine that this bundle of plasticard tubes is the organ



I've also ordered some bits from the Exorcist kit (including the organ keyboard ) which might affect how I decide to do this.


Knight's back foot

I don't like how static the default pose for the Castellan is, with both feet flat on the floor. I would much prefer it if it looked like it was in motion, but I didn't want one foot entirely in the air because it would look like it was running (or hopping), which is not how I imagine a marble behemoth moving.

So instead I've repositioned the front toe of the rear foot so that it looks like the foot is rolling forwards as it's being lifted off the ground.

This required sawing off the front toe





then pinning it back on with two wires for maximum strength





which means that now when the front toe is flat on the ground the rest of the foot is raised like this




I then filled in the gap created with green stuff.




Soles of the knight's feet

Raising the back foot off the ground means that the underside of the knight's back foot becomes visible. However, there's nothing there! So I've made soles for the toes with plasticard sheets. I've done the front foot first even though no-one will see it just so I get some practice before doing the back foot.







I'm not sure how much I like the tread - it's a bit thick, but I didn't have a thinner piece of plasticard rod that also had a square profile.


Base for the knight

It would be a crime to have such a huge base and just leave it flat, but also I want the bases for this army to look like temple floor.

So I thought the knight could be not just stepping forwards but also down - descending some steps. I want to almost imply that there is an even bigger church somewhere behind it, and the knight is coming down from that church to get you.

The plan is to divide the base in two diagonally, with the rear foot a few steps elevated above the front foot. More height difference = more dramatic, but the flexibility of the leg joints will be the limiting factor here, so here you can see me trying to get an idea of what might be possible using blu-tack to hold it up.













I think I will also have to widen the connection at the hips so that it looks less chicken-legged.


A random Ork

Finally I tried to sculpt some green stuff muscles on the shoulder of this Ork. Tricky!





Opinions/suggestions on the plan for the knight welcome!

Glad to hear that you think the tread isn't too much.

Today: two bases!

Ork Big Mek

13 years ago I converted this metal Big Mek, giving him a power klaw/chainfist/spanner/multi-tool. Today he's finally got a base.



This is my first time doing the Ork scrap metal effect - I think I should go a bit further with it. And add lots of rivets. You can't see it very well in the photos but the surface is textured plasticard with the little cross-hatched diamond metal floor effect.





He could also do with something at the front to break up the large flat space - I don't know why I didn't make the platform he's stood on take up a larger fraction of the base. Some gubbinz? A jerry can? A grot oiler? (my favourite idea, but I don't have any grots yet) A robo-squig?

You can see where I drilled the wrong place for his foot tab, then just covered it up





The idea behind this base is that he's on board one of his vehicular contraptions, and if I make a square recess on one of the open-topped vehicles (yet to be built), he can slot in and get pride of place commanding it.

As I want all my Ork vehicles to be flying (or attempting to), I think I will name him Orkarus.


Knight base

I traced and drew out how I want the base for the knight to be laid out.



The rear foot will be elevated by the height of the plasticard you can see on the left. I dry-fitted the pieces and it works. The hips of the knight end up in line with the front foot and centred on the base, which is exactly what I want to make it look like the weight is being transferred onto the front leg as it steps down.

I was planning to make all the steps out of plasticard (and do the texture on top of them separately), but with the 2mm thick plasticard I have serious trouble cutting through it. I literally snapped two knife blades while scoring it

Does anyone have suggestions of a better material to use? Some kind of hard, cuttable, fileable foamboard? Preferably one which can withstand being heated in the oven?


Final bonus WIP of me filling in the bottom of the knight's rear foot. It was hard to cut out a piece of plasticard to fit in the middle, and I ended up with quite a wide gap to fill with green stuff.

The Exorcist parts I ordered arrived, so I've started work on the body proper!












The carapace will look like this from the top




I've also made progress on the base. Thanks @Guardling for the suggestion of making spacers instead of trying to cut through lots of thick plasticard, that's what I did to get this:









You won't see those horizontal gaps once I use the roller to create the clay stone slab surface:



Though it might still be easier just to buy some kind of foam to use.


This also allows you to see how tall this monster will be



and this is without the towers! With the towers it will be taller than a full A3 page

I've now got time to consistently work on this project again!

I have been building various parts of the edifice, as well as experimenting with techniques for how I might achieve some of the ideas I have.
In no particular order:


- Organ

I couldn't get the bitz I wanted for the actual pipes of the Exorcist Organ, so I decide to just make my own instead. After much careful slicing of plasticard tubing, this is the result





I'm pretty pleased with it! I thought about adding extra detail to the front of the pipes using greenstuff and these tiny brass Fleur-de-Lys from GreenStuffWorld, but I kind of think that anything I add will just make it worse. I do want to add some bigger pipes on the back though, which will lead down to an organist-servitor underneath... Any suggestions for parts for a creepy half-mechanical organ player welcome - presumably some AdMech?


- Body

The body of the beast needs to be wiiide to accomodate all the details I wanted to add. I might regret this later as I now have huge gaps to fill in, but I've expanded the body in all directions:





You can see this gives loads of space at the front for the pulpit, but also for the...


- Choir

I want to make a choir. I spent ages looking for heads which look like they are singing, but all I've done so far is work out how they need to be mounted and spaced to fit within the available space.



I will attempt to sculpt robed hoods and bodies for these, but I think I need to practice with other bits first. They are also going to each have a little book of hymns in front of them. Then the plan is that they will sit in a bed of cables and wires, so they look like they never leave the machine, they do nothing but sing the Emperor's praises.


- Spires

I want Gothic spires, but I'm not sure what the easiest way to create the classic 8-sided church spire shape is. Here you can see two attempts: one gluing triangles of plasticard together, and the other shaving down a solid block of hardened miliput.






- Filigree

I really like the swirly patterns you see on the armour of Sisters' vehicles - I found out that surface patterns like that are called "Filigree". I think I've come up with a relatively easy way to sculpt nice smooth curves onto flat surfaces.

Instead of trying to position rolls of GreenStuff on top of flat armour, I use the tip of something hard (I used a giant screw) to repeatedly scratch out deeper and deeper channels into the surface. Then I lay my rolls of GS into the grooves, and they don't move anywhere! It's way easier to get nice smooth swirly patterns like this, and I'm excited to try it on a big piece of plasticard later in the build.








- Plasma cannon

I have this gripe with the plasma decimator that comes with the Knight Castellan: the barrel doesn't really look like any of the other plasma weapons! I doesn't have the classic smooth sides with straight recesses, instead it's a round barrel with what looks like a flamethrower-like lighter underneath?! I much prefer this gothic turret made by WargameExclusive



but I'm pretty sure it's so large as to look silly slung under the arm of the Castellan, even with the bigger body.

So how could I make my own? It seems to me that the hard bit is doing a good job of the plasma cannon barrel. You can make a nice smooth shape by sanding hardened miliput, but how do you neatly do those recesses? I tried an experiment with negative space: I made plasticard shims, lubricated them with vaseline, formed miliput around them, waited for it to dry, then pulled them out. Amazingly they slid straight out (with a bit of force, but no breakage). I'm hoping I can use this one sneaky trick to make a decent-looking plasma cannon barrel!








- Gothic parts

Really though I've realised I'm going to need a lot more gothic bitz and pieces. I especially want copyable (with blue stuff moulds) surface details, gothic arches, and little statuesque details. I'm willing to buy boxes just to fill out my bitz box, but don't really know what to get? Terrain sets? Penitent Engines?