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Really nice Rat Ogres man! Love the bruising effects and the scarring.
Have you tried using lightning claws as powerfists for these critters or something? I mean, i can easily picture one of these rippinbg apart a termie-smurf and stealing his arms to enhance his wrists

Looking forward to the next few! Subbed!

Good luck making all of those IoB Rat Ogres unique!

_Tim?

Perhaps keep one as the normal Rat ogre with the knuckle-dragging arms, but with like a few vials on his back.

Maybe even one with its mask torn away, revealing a horribly-fethed up face.

Thanks for the pics Jon!

Lol the hardest part of being a civ addict is admitting you have a problem.

Question, when you came up with your color scheme did you every consider any other light colors


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lol the hardest part of being a civ addict is admitting you have a problem.

Question, when you came up with your color scheme did you every consider any other light colors

Good to hear you've finally discovered the joys of Civ3. I'm also a long time addict of Sid Meier's games but my favourite has to be Alpha Centauri, which is even older. The wealth of strategic and tactical options in that game as just mind-boggling since you actually get to terraform the planet to make land bridges to an opponent's continent or sink your opponent's cities by lowering surrounding terrain.

As for the hellions, every little bit of feedback helps so thanks.

Regarding your Grotesques, I'd see what I could do create some more dynamic poses, such a leaping Grotesque, both fists above his head in a "Hulk smash incoming" type of pose. Also, depending on how you plan on ferrying them across the field, maybe building one that has a grasping hand that looks like it's either crushing a skull or holding onto the a Raider's side rails would look cool. All you'd have to do is magnetise him to his base so you could use him as a transport token and a squad member at the same time.

Stunning Grotesques absolutely stunning.

I reckon Dark Gears got it right there, you need to The Hulk for inspiration here.

One hanging off the side of a building
One swinging a street lamp. Hell, swinging a tank!
One with carnifex crusher claws
Mega armored nob style PK

Nurgle daemon prince style left hand tri barrelled wrist-stump-body-fluid-cannon (counts as liquifier like this guy)

Hey man,

Old School Terminator did some rather nice Grotesques over at Dark Future Gaming some time ago. While they are mostly converted from different models than Rat Ogres, these might still give you a couple of good ideas:

http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/06/grotesque-files-subject-1-ripper.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/06/grotesque-files-subject-2-squirter.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/06/grotesque-files-subject-3-tickler.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/06/grotesque-files-subject-4-lasher.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/06/grotesque-files-subject-7-twins.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/07/grotesque-files-subject-8-cutter.html
http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2012/07/grotesque-files-subject-9-hunger.html

I am also rather fond of the models my cousin whipped up some time ago .-- again, unfortunately they are not converted from Rat Ogres:

http://eternalhunt.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/power-from-pain/

I hope this will give you some additional ideas. Amazing work so far!

You're getting a lot of cool suggestions there Jon.

Hope you don't if I steal for your inspiration. What with the Dark Eldar Corpse Cart in progress I'm realising I'll have to sculpt a few Raider Grotesques to tie the whole piece together and these extra will definitely do the trick.

Wow, a lot of great Grot suggestions are coming in! I'll be looking and responding to them in detail but first I need to switch back to posting more photos from the photoshoot. Also, thanks to Gitsplitta for his recent contribution !

You can zoom in quite a lot into these photos to see more of the details.

Here's the whole Kabal again taken from a higher angle with some "mood" lighting.


Some angled shots, I really like how these show off the models:




Some Drowned Gardens HQ Elites and Troops:


Some Drowned Gardens Fast Attack:


The Razorwing Jetfighter (in evil Comorragh lighting):


Finally, my favorite photo, Suvarsara and her Talos. All this photo needs to be perfect is a good Metal soundtrack (I'd recommend the one from Brutal Legend) . Actually, some good Metal would improve just about anything, excuse me while I visit Youtube...

Thanks for posting a sampler of the series. The pics really came out looking fantastic. Sara and her "Pet" are becoming worked on for a new background.

Fantastic stuff Jon. Amazing what the mood lighting does for the drama of the figures.

I think I would have preferred much lighter backgrounds myself, without the "mood" lighting

Crikey, those are beautiful. I absolutely love the OSL on them with the black backgrounds.

And the bases! Simple, but very effective!

Do any of you write out longer posts in a word processor before you post them? I should probably copy my posts into Word once I've got a fair bit of text written so I don't lose the post if the computer decides to crash .

I'll retype the commentary on the Grotesque conversion process in a future post, but for now enjoy the WIP progress shot. I'm strongly leaning towards giving the "knuckle-dragging" Grot some Scourge bat wings. Mainly because it reminds me of the "Winged Ape" monster from Chrono Trigger!



@Dark-Gear: I'd be interested in this image when you're done!

@Gitsplitta & Foo: Thanks! It was really surprising how tricky it is to take nice whole army photos!

@Arakasi: I'll be taking some brighter and "flatter" images of the army at some point in the next few months so look forward to that .

Jon, you're doing a pretty damn good job making the Grots individual considering the static nature of the originals! they each look excellent and i can't wait to see the whole squad painted up, it'll look epic!

Great work on the army Jon. Pictures look fantastic.

 Mechanicum Jon wrote:
(...)Mainly because it reminds me of the "Winged Ape" monster from Chrono Trigger!

You, sir, win the internet

 Mechanicum Jon wrote:

The guy on the right looks like the classic grumpy old man.... "You kids get off my lawn!"

Have you considered using Beastmen minotaurs? They are similarly sized, and the changes In pose might be nice. Might be to little to late, but hey.

I got sucked back into Civ III for more than a few hours . A word of advice, do not play Civ III intensively and then try to go to sleep. I ended up lying awake in bed with my thoughts running wild about the astounding majesty of human endeavor (i.e. Civ gets me high or something). I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "holy f*ck, the Industrial Revolution, that was only two hundred years ago. Two hundred years for all that, two hundred, wow."

@nerdfest: The Rat Ogre models have ended up being a bit more restrictive in their posing than I had first thought, but I think I've worked out enough posed for the squad now.

@Eggroll: I'd love to have a Red VS Blue match up against your Blood Angels someday!

@KrautScientist: Why thank you sir, I've never won an internet before. On the topic of games, if I had the choice for one game to get a really good total remake or sequel it would either be Chrono Trigger or Skies of Arcadia. Chrono Cross unfortunately doesn't fall in the "really good" category .

@prototype_X: It's the "angry" face-mask that really completes the effect.

@whalemusic360: I love the examples KrautScientist linked earlier in this thread. The Minotaur models give off a great "hulking slab of flesh" vibe. But like I said, I underestimated how hard it would be to get unique poses out of the Rat Ogres. Still, I think the squad gains a nice coherent look by using the same base models. I'd want the squad to either be consistent (as I have it now) or be made up of completely different base models to create a more chaotic look.

 Mechanicum Jon wrote:


@KrautScientist: Why thank you sir, I've never won an internet before. On the topic of games, if I had the choice for one game to get a really good total remake or sequel it would either be Chrono Trigger or Skies of Arcadia. Chrono Cross unfortunately doesn't fall in the "really good" category

Ah, Skies of Arcadia! What a fun ride that was! The game really gave me a vibe quite similar to Chrono Trigger, as a matter of fact. The early Grandias also count. On a related note, if you liked Skies of Arcadia, give Valkyria Chronicles a try: It was done by the same team and it even features Vyse, Aika and Fina. It's a completely different genre, though, but easily one of my favourite games. Oh, and Chrono Cross can be really enjoyable too, if taken on its own merits and not as "Chrono Trigger 2".

Ahem, sorry, back to topic: Another great option for converting Grotesques are the Vargheists/Crypt Horrors! Logan did a really nice proof of concept here.

So, I uninstalled Civ III .

I'm really pleased with this whole conversion. The concept is that this Grotesque is one method for a Haemonculus to "stress test" freshly grown wings for Scourges. The idea being that if the wings are probably good to go if they can survive a battle on the back of an over-muscled flesh golem on a berserk rampage. Particularly when the Haemonculus has decided to amuse itself by giving the Grotesque the strong urge to fly along with wings that are just a bit too small to actually do anything. I can just picture this mob of Grotesques with one in the back that keeps jumping up and down, furiously flapping its wings and getting angrier and angrier . I would not want to be the poor enemy squad that this Grotesque decides to take out its frustrations on.

It took me at least two hours to work out a position for the wings that I liked. Sanding, pinning, gluing and ripping them off to try it all again several times really ate up the hours. That's why I'm amazed that the conversion came out looking so clean, the photos almost look like a CG render!



@KrautScientist: I thought about Vargheists but decided that I liked the much bulkier, armored look of the Rat Ogres more. Logan's conversion is incredible however ! I doubt this is true for many people, but for me, Valkyria Chronicles was actually the "killer app" system seller for the PS3 ! It's a huge shame that Valkyria Chronicles 3 looks like it won't get an English version. But at least that made me put the three years of Japanese I took in college to good use!

Whoa, that Grotesque really looks like the bigger brother of that winged ape in Chrono Trigger! Great job! The connection to the torso also looks really smooth. Excellent!

Oh, and I totally agree about Valkyria Chronicles! Defintely a killer app! I also loved the sequel: While certainly less opulent than the first installment, and frought with obvious high-school animé clichés, I found it to be a well-paced and even somewhat addictive experience...dang, drifting off topic again...

I think the time you spent on that model payed off.

Nice! My favourite of your grotesques so far, I can't wait to see it painted.
If you want to, I think painting in some veins on the wings would look great, to give it a more fleshy/operated on/haemonculi look.

Here's a quick and somewhat haphazard masking job to get the blue sprayed on in roughly the right areas. It also has the benefit of making this Grot look like it's on its way to a toga party. For some reason peeling masking tape off post-spray is still one of the most satisfying modeling activities I know of.





I'm really not sure what color to paint the wings yet. I was leaning towards painting them like my flying rippers but veins as suggested by Gutsnagga sound cool as well. We'll see how I feel after a bit more time rummaging around online for inspiration.

I second the veins idea. It would work really well.

Yeah I'm not sure that the 'spotty' wings as seen on your rippers would suit these larger wings, unless you could make them look scaled. Perhaps the veined look will be less time consuming and ultimately detract less from the face of the model, which is where you want the focus drawn to