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You know, enough talking about doing Squats, and time to do Squats. You should always do squats. Leg day is important.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Squats.



So I only have three of them so far, two rifleme- err, riflesquats, and a squad leader or something.



I'd been putting off doing these guys for a while until I was really sure what I wanted out of them. After all, Ork Boyz and Space Marines are a dime a dozen on Ebay, but unassembled plastic Squats (from a kit that hasn't been produced for over 20 years) aren't, lol.


These guys were both fun to do, and a bit of a challenge. You see, the original plastic Squats were designed with this lasgun in mind.



So the hands are very close together by default. But if I wanted to make them blend in with my Had to do some creative cutting. Like usual, some wrist rotation was also pretty standard. The guy with his weapon raised was an arm modified from a heavy weapons arm (cutting off its padded shoulder), and the shoulder from a regular one.

I probably could have saved myself some time and effort by using the arms from the plastic Cadian kit, but I hate that kit that much. The lasguns are a split. One came from the Catachan kit, the other (with its icon filed off) came from the Cadian kit.



I'll probably go back to finishing my Orks before I hit any more Squats (since I have around 250 IGuard figures between my Steel Legion and metal Cadians alone), except at the gym. Leg days are M, W, F. But plastic Squats will have to wait for now.

But they don't look any taller?

Oh sorry, got it yeah. OK

Great job.

Wow, squats!

Three things:

1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

2) I hope that Space Marine has good groin armour now!

3) This;

 Camkierhi wrote:
But they don't look any taller?

Oh sorry, got it yeah. OK

Great job.

Gets an exalt.

Cool collection dude.

Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

 Jadenim wrote:
1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

Yeah, it was always a plan with the Squats. The old school lasguns are just a no-go, lol.

JoeRugby wrote:Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

It adds an extra step of having to build up a neck with putty, but I really think it improves their look tremendously.

That's fantastic! I actually came into the game after the demise of the Squats, but being a Dwarf fan from Fantasy Battles, I love it! How many of the models do you own? They would be awesome to mix into a unit of regulars, in my opinion, if you don't have enough to run on their own (as proxies, probably yes?)

What a short post. I want to see more squats!

I should feel bad now for that pun. I really like what you did with the Lasgun replacements. It just feels "right."

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
1) Cool looking Squats Sarge, just giving them the modern style weapons stops the cartoonishness;

Yeah, it was always a plan with the Squats. The old school lasguns are just a no-go, lol.

JoeRugby wrote:Might give the ork head idea a go when I do my 40k ork deadzone Marauders.

It adds an extra step of having to build up a neck with putty, but I really think it improves their look tremendously.

Got any pics of one of your boyz without arms so I can pinch what you've done

The origin of my Eldar is somewhat mixed. When the Dark Eldar first appeared with 3rd Edition, we had a friend buy a the first boxed set. Mixed with the two or three rule boxed sets we had, that made for a fairly impressive Dark Eldar retinue.  That nobody every decided to put together. Most of them disappeared in the sands of time, but I had a small block of them left over. The problem? They're pretty ugly, so I'd resolved to use them as base decorations where I could theoretically obscure their shortcomings with mud and blood.

Then I had some fun conversion ideas, and I picked up a small lot of Eldar Guardians and bits and some Dark Eldar on EBay. The conversion ideas never happened either. It seems that Space Elves just weren't to be.


Then I thought to myself, well, I need some Eldar for my skirmish armies, and I have a fair number of them sitting around between Deldar and Eldar.  Why not combine them to be a small Corsair army? Nice, fluffy, and brutal. Plus another nod back to Rogue Trader. And every good sci-fi universe needs space pirates. Eldarrrrr.


Sorry.



Obviously I needed to convert, not just kitbash. Otherwise they have no place on this blog. Fortunately, my dissatisfaction with the core kit parts made this easy. I shortened up the Dark Eldar splinter rifles. Then I tweaked the shuriken catapult arms so they could get better poses out of them. Mostly just had to clip the firing hand off and then move it. Added some blades from the old school Dark Eldar sprues to pirate them up a bit. I rounded out the helmets too, because I never liked the super tall conehead look that much, and I wanted them to not just look like bog standard Guardian or Kabalite helmets.



Then I thought, well, it would be kinda lazy to just mix and match parts, and I wanted this band of corsairs to look like they were intermixed Dark and (light?) Eldar. I really like the Scourges heads (and the Reaver jetbike heads, but those are harder to get on the cheap), but headswaps aren't really converting either. So I thought, what if I swap parts of the legs around? This was a little easier said than done in some cases, but it gave them far less of a uniform look, which would be important to the aesthetic. So the ones who are regular Eldar (and thus still concerned about their souls) will have spirit stones. The Dark Eldar pirates will not. Otherwise, I will probably mix and match the weapons without too much regard for what's "legal".

Case in point, I took the splinter cannon from the 3rd edition kit, one of the few parts of that kit that looks okay, and put it on a Guardian body, with a Kabalite head (which apparently needs to be rounded out a bit now that I look at it.



Not entirely sold on the blade bits from the 3rd edition kit. I may get rid of those.





At any rate, this will be just the start. I plan to paint them up as Void Dragons, since I like the way that scheme looks, and their fluff from The Doom of Mymeara painted them as dangerous and unpredictable, as well as a bit of loose cannons under their haughty pirate princess, who should be fun to model up eventually.

All you do is add length to the space marine legs?

The DE factions will be fun to watch, I myself don't know anything about them.

 Johnnytorrance wrote:
All you do is add length to the space marine legs?

No, they have a 1.5mm spacer at the waist too. The Marine models are mostly plagued with scale issues around their arms, making them into gorillas. By lengthening the legs and torso slightly, it lessens those issues.

Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

 Stormwall wrote:
Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

The real problem with RTB01 Beakies is that they definitely skip leg day.

 Kepora wrote:
Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

I haven't really worked on any Space Marines recently but that may change. I never really did any step by step photos. I'll try to remember the next time I do.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Stormwall wrote:
Hm... I don't know if a RT beakie could handle that cutting.

Anyways, it is something I may have to try on my next army.

The real problem with RTB01 Beakies is that they definitely skip leg day.

 Kepora wrote:
Mind doing a tutorial sometime on how you convert your marines - a nice step-by-step, perhaps?

I haven't really worked on any Space Marines recently but that may change. I never really did any step by step photos. I'll try to remember the next time I do.

Please do so, it'd be great for leaders/characters.

And c'mon don't they know that the Emprah passed down to Chaplains the holy writ of "thou shalt not skip leg day." Maybe the Squats looked down on it and holed up due to the shame of the Imperium?

A bit of an aside to the project, but something I worked on. For those who enjoyed the original "Veteran Sergeant Plays... Dark Verngernce!", while my buddies played Advanced Squad Leader, I was busy assembling the Space Marine models from Deathstorm.

This is a cool kit, the Death Company Marines. For my taste, they're way too busy-looking and have too many details, but the basic kit is actually well posed, with some interesting bits. In the end, I only ended up having to do some light conversion (arm rotations, weapon swaps) on a couple of the models to get some decent poses. I swapped in a couple of Sanguinary Guard legs I had lying around that I wasn't planning on using to give a couple models some more dynamic poses, given than they all have melee weapons and jump packs.




My buddy was not excited about the idea of painting this pose.



Though when we realized he looks like he's about to do a Macho Man Randy Savage elbow drop (but with a chainsword)), it was kept. The thought to paint him up tie-dyed was dropped as too difficult, however.


So you can look forward to Veteran Sergeant Plays... Derthsterm! in the near future. Potentially with scenarios from other Shield of Baal books.

I'm not sure if that effect on the last photo was intentional or not, but it's pretty damn cool.

But you ddin't "tru-scale" them yeah? That's the big downside of those new "busy" models--it would be really hard to cut and extend the legs, though the waist might work. Then you end up with some "tall" marines and some shorties. That's what I'm scared of, actually.

What do you use to cut the legs with? Do you just use a hobby knife, or do you have some kind of saw?

Anyway, I love your conversions, thanks for taking all the photos and sharing.

No. Deathstorm belongs to my buddy (attached to the hand flipping me off in the pixelated picture, which is just a focal pixelate effect). Scaling them up is a lot of work, and I'm barely willing to do it to my models, let alone using legs I'd have to essentially resculpt from scratch, hence why my models are almst entirely built from the basic kits. Everything else is too much effort. And I don't like the overly busy kits like Sternguard anyway.

Tabards, excessive purity seals, etc. I mean, for fun, the guy with the power sword has like 11 purity seals on the model (6 are sculpted into the legs and torso alone), just to highlight how silly that kit is. I almost gave him a shoulderpad with a giant parchment on it, but I wanted the models to retain proper Codex markings (since the BA are a Codex chapter) so all their left pauldrons have the chapter badge on them. I'm a sucker for little details like that, and my buddy... is not. I also matched up the Mk4 torso and helmet, which he wouldn't have done, lol.

They were playing Advanced Squad Leader anyway which is fun to watch them play since it has about a gazillion rules and they don't know any of them), so it basically gave me an excuse to hang out and hobby. Plus, now that they are assembled, he can paint them so we can play the scenarios. Eventuallly he's going to have the strangest Space Marine army ever, with Dark Angels, Blood Angles and a tactical squad of basic Marines (trying to convince him to paint them as UM so he can have 3 out of the Big 4).

For leg cutting I use a hobby knife for most everything.

So it's been a while since I've done any real work on Space Marines (Deathstorm doesn't count because they weren't mine and weren't scaled up, just some minor conversion work.)

I've had the idea for this model floating around in my head for a while. Probably a year. I'd just never actually gotten around to starting it because I burned out on building Space Marines for a while. I wanted an badass Apothecary. But I wanted him to look like he was a Marine first, and since I don't play, it didn't matter what he was armed with, and I like Bolters.

Did you ever worry your Apothecary wasn't badass enough?

Meet Senior Apothecary Donatus, 5th Company, Invectors.



He will be getting an apothecary backpack shortly, but leaving it off makes the details a bit more apparent. I put the tubes behind him to better protect them from incoming fire, and gave him a Company Champion's shoulderpad (befitting his rank as a Veteran and providing extra ballistic protection while he works on fallen Marines)

You can also see where I shortened up the saw and reductor to look like they've been retracted (so as not to get in the way and to protect them when not in use). The narthecium comes from the Grey Knight Terminators kit (my buddy wasn't using it), obviously with the hand and arm separated, and then mounted on the upper portion of a regular Tactical Squad arm. The legs come from the Death Company kit (my buddy was willing to trade for some Sanguinary Guard legs for his DC). He's also the first model without an aquila torso. Can't remember where the head came from. I picked up a bunch of heads with antennas because I planned to use them for character models, sergeants and squad leaders. I think it's from the Land Raider Crusader kit. I don't much like the Apothecary head with the lamp on the side of it. Looks pretty impractical. This one looks like it's got all kinds of diagnostic equipment on it. Maybe a laser or something to help cauterize wounds. Let your imagination run wild. I just know it looks cool.

It's been so long since I worked on Marines I couldn't find my small drill bit, so his bolter is unattached, but eventually the barrel will get drilled out and converted to a Cerceus-pattern.

I've put him into the classic "advancing at the alert" pose that's not only one of my favorites, but popular among readers of the blog. This was accomplished, by, as usual, a clip and flip of the wrist.



He still needs a bit of cleanup, but this is effectively his final form. I was quite pleased that it came out more or less like I wanted it. This character ends up in a lot of the fluff that I put together for this project's back story, so I wanted his miniature to look every bit the part and do him justice.

This model is also a bit of a tribute to the Navy Corpsmen I was privileged to know and serve with, and on more than one occasion are the reason friends of mine are still alive today.

Looks great. That particular shoulder pad looks great too.

I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

 Desubot wrote:
I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

I have one entire pair! Been very hard sourcing them on bits sites :(

Some really nice conversions, the apothecary is particularly well done, they usually look very static and not very combat ready and yours is ready to rock!

Now that's one seriously badass apothecary, I think he's my favourite of all the marines you've done so far; he looks like he's ready to get stuck in where ordinary apothecary models look somehow forlorn, waving their chainswords around as if to remind everyone they're there.

Desubot wrote:I love that company champion shoulder pad too. i wish they where more available :/

I have 4 of them. Well, 3 now. I keep an eye out for them fromt time to time on EBay. But they're reserved for "special" models.

I'd had this Apothecary planned out for a while, though using that shoulder pad was something of a last second idea. It just seemed like it fit right.

Gogsnik wrote: ordinary apothecary models look somehow forlorn, waving their chainswords around as if to remind everyone they're there.

This made me laugh.

I'm glad you guys liked it. Like I said, I had this model floating around in my head for a while, and I wanted to make sure it was done right. I swapped the legs with a buddy when I assembled those Deathstorm Death Company Marines (you can see the Sanguinary Guard legs on them), taking the two sets of Mk7 legs from the DC kit. had to shave off most of the detail, but I managed to save enough of the wings on the right leg to re-attach them. When I looked at the pose for the legs, I decided they were perfect for the Apothecary idea.

Then somebody had asked for a tutorial on how to build them, which I'll put together shortly.

He's a pretty healthy mix of parts. GKT narthecium, new Tactical arms and bolter, old Tactical torso, DC legs, LRC head, Sternguard Crux Terminatus bit, Ravenwing apothecary backpack, and pouches. He'll have one of my pugio-stlye daggers assembled from the SM knife and a High Elf spear tip that I shared on the previous page.

People have asked for a tutorial on how I do these, so here goes. I tried to take some pictures as I went along with the apothecary.

So, how exactly do I achieve these Tall Scale or True Scale Space Marines? Here's a handy tutorial:

In the end, you'll have turned a 10 part model into a 40 part model. Sound like fun?

My two primary demonstration models will be this Apothecary here:



And the Section Leader with wrist-mounted auspex (closed).



Step 1: Preparing the models

Well, the first thing that needs to be done is to decide what you want to do with the model. In the case of the Apothecary, I liked the posture of his legs, so I was only going to be extending them, rather than a full rebuild. In the case of the section leader, I was using the old "squatting" legs from the old Tactical Squad kit, and wanted to do a fully new pose with him. This meant cutting the feet free of the model.

With these projects, I'll typically work in batches. You'll need to allow time for all the components to dry and set once you've glued them anyway, so doing them in groups of 4-5 may cut your downtime significantly. You can see with the ones below, I've removed their feet. The difference in the poses you can achieve can be dramatic since the foot will no longer be anchored to the leg in a static position.



However, if you're using specialized legs, or if you're simply happy with the pose the legs are currently in, you can leave them alone. In the case of the Apothecary, his legs came from the Death Company kit, and I was happy with the way they were standing. So I moved on to the next step, which was inserting plastic card spacers.

I use 1mm thick card on the legs. One in the shin, one at the hip. If you're keeping the pose, you might want to do a mid-thigh cut, but I've found I like the waist cut better. It gives a lot more options later.



For the torsos, I use 1.5mm thick plastic card, cutting it into strips to line the outside of the torso "ring". Cut/file the outside edge smooth, then, using a rounded-tip hobby blade, scrape the inner side into a rounded shape.

Adding another small square inside (or some putty) will allow more contact points for gluing the torso to the legs later. This will add length to the torso. Now, I add a lot of gear to my Space Marines because aesthetically I like them that way. If you aren't going to be adding pouches and grenades, you will need to invest in some Green Stuff to model out their belt lines.

Step 2: Re-assembly.

Carefully, using hobby snips or a hobby blade, cut the excess down around the legs. Then, even more carefully, use the blade to trim it as close to the contour of the leg as possible. Once this is done, you can file it smooth if necessary.

Once you've shaved down the plastic inserts, you'll want to use either Green Stuff or Liquid Green Stuff to fill the gaps.



Now to prepare the pose. What is your Space Marine doing? Is he aiming? Is he patroling? For the Apothecary, I wanted him to be holding his gun at the "alert", which means with the muzzle pointing slightly downward, but ready to be brought up for firing. I felt this gave a certain "attitude" to the model. So how do we accomplish this with the lackluster arms provided in most Space Marine kits? With a knife of course.

Any time you're posing a Space Marine (or any model for that matter), you want to be considering range of movement. At the very least, try the pose yourself. If you can't do it comfortably, why would the Space Marine? If you're trying to impart a swinging motion with a melee weapon for example, try a couple swings while watching yourself in the mirror. Make sure you know how that weapon is used in real life too. You swing a top-heavy weapon like an axe or a hammer much differently than you swing a sword which is balanced closer to the grip.

My Apothecary looks like this:



So, how do we get there?

Sorry I didn't take any in-progress pictures of the arms. That was an oversight I'll correct in the future. For now, I'll get as good of shots as we can for it. Fortunately I couldn't find my small drill bit for the barrel so the boltgun isn't glued in place yet.

Here's a basic diagram of the arm cuts.



First, we're going to clip the arm just below the "under shoulder" that the shoulder pad attaches to. Once this is done, we can rotate the arm to do whatever we want, from an aiming pose, to the "alert" pose. This cut is fundamental to pretty much all the Space Marines I do, and is the base of posing. Think about your own body. Almost all of the directions you can move your arm start at the shoulder.



Second we're going to clip the wrist and flip it around so that the wrist soft armor is sloping up, instead of down. Sounds confusing, but an upward slope will obviously give us a downward angled hand.



Now, since we've fundamentally altered the way the right hand sits, the left hand isn't going to sit flush on the bolter. So it needs to be cut free and rotated. You can see this best on the Section Leader:



The Apothecary doesn't make a great example because I had to cut the whole forearm off that model to replace it with the Narthecium anyway. Here it is on another model, and you can see the far more drastic angle that the cuts achieved.



And there you go. You've now made a 30-40 part model:




As an aside, I wrote The Brief And Humorous History of the Horus Heresy on my blog. You should check it out:
https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/a-brief-history-of-the-horus-heresy/


Thanks for following along.

That's great little guild. Inspiring to say the least.