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I think I'd do the robes up in a tanish color maybe. Carlos is right, there's not a lot of contrast there which makes the whole thing kind of blend together.

For the height issue, have you tried mixing in Terminator parts? Using Termie arms and legs with regular marine torsos and heads might solve the sizing issue.

That's one way to do it, you can add plasticard to the waist and legs too but it kind of doesn't work for the old metal ones.

I'm actually getting increasingly fond of the idea of packing them up into sets and selling them off. I got excited when I had them all out in neat little rows but after painting this dude I dunno I just don't really seem to care too much.

My gaming group and I have been buying up armies on Ebay lately. As a trend Space Marines seem to the ones that sell the cheapest in large lots.

I suspect paint has much to do with it. Space Marines tend to be that army everyone starts with and did their paint job while they were still learning.

Yeah and I'm not really in the mood to strip my minis before I try to sell them either...

If things look too bleak I'll keep them and let them gather dust, I'm just that spiteful

I think I'll keep most of the vehicles and dreads and stuff anyway, they'll make great terrain if nothing else, and certainly some of them can be repurposed for my remaining interests. I just need to get the bulk of my infantry and whatnot moved out or the urge to make an army out of them will remain.

Maybe even if eBay prospects are especially bleak I'll just dump them all into one big bits bin and occasionally draw parts out to make the 'coolest most badass tall-scaled space marine ever' every so often.

 GrimDork wrote:
Only some of them have robes. And the armor is typically grey, it's just the off color on the shoulder pads, elbow pads, gun casings... ok there *is* a lot of black but it's less than half of the model when it's a normal marine. The robed dudes are not the best example of the scheme, however, point made and he probably is too dark.

How about throwing some red in there for the inner lining of the robes? (The bits that show I mean)

Ah yes, Enforcers have the height we all feel the SM need to be at, but the SM still are wider and bulkier than Enforcers. Hence the way one may joke that SM are Sontarans at times.

Ultramarines!



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They are even blue shaded

Yeah moving forward I would probably need to figure something out for the robes.

Lol! They do kinda look like sontarans in terms of stockiness

If space marines were enforcer height they'd be terrifying, I may just have to give up and tall-scale a few.

I think painting the eyes a brighter colour could bring in some nice contrast too. The dark blue on black can be hard to see. I kinda like the black colour scheme though

I think you could easily get a serviceable army out of that lot Grim, I could try and knock up an army list for you if you like?

How about puttung camo on the robes? It's a funky idea, but could work. Otherwise, I say go with a tan for 'em.

Did you get your Operation: Icestorm stuff yet Grimdork? Have you started any of it yet, or are you still working on your ninja diorama?

I like black too, though it may be that I need to do lighter robes, if I keep them going. I keep getting evil chaos urges.

@ToT You are welcome to try if you ever get bored Though as above, I may just chop them all up and make them evil chaos robot/zombie space marines But then I'd probably need flying hell turkeys to actually play, but that's ok cause I generally don't get to

@Barzam Camo robes may drive me nuts What about dark red if we're still considering them as space marines and not evil robot/zombie/mutant/chaos super-men/monsters. Not too dark, just not bright.

I've had Op:I since gencon, I'm just really slow at getting around to stuff =/

Still doing the samurai/ninja stuff, maybe I'll get some paint down this weekend. Still really need to finish the display board too.

Hate being this quiet, it's the lull before the winter storm of progress I tells ya! So far the only hobbying this week was me picking up another fancier pill-sorter thing. I'm thinking it's going to become some kind of space/future train, maybe I'll get a picture later.

Paint them as reasonable marines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ytuH_ZO7Y

That's pretty neat.

But is it as cool as them having tentacles and belly mouths and lots of spikes and nasty bits?

Plus chaos is a good excuse to tall-scale everything and cover up any wonky side-effects with extra spikey bits, gubbins, and mutations

I like the black robes too. But I agree that some element of contrast is needed. Maybe you could use some sharp edge highlights on the armor and leave the robes matt black?

Well the armor is grey, maybe I just took bad pictures

I guess I've got to figure out what to do with the robes eventually as I'm liable to pool all of my dark angels specific stuff together for it's own force and either sell the rest or devote it to chaos conversions





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It hasn't been a bad weekend, but it's been a bad weekend for progress on my projects

How you planning on doing your tall-scaling grim?

You going to take the full on Vet Srg route

Man you guys have latched onto this space marine thing and really run with it

I really just broke them out on a whim to show my large-scale plastic shame and then got nostalgic and painted one

Honestly though, if I do any tall-scaling it will probably be on the chaos conversions as I already have painted nilla marines and a lot of difficult-to-alter robed marines that wouldn't be going that way. The nillas would then be normal sized and the chaos would get evil extensions, only an evil space soldier would heighten...

If I were to do it on the 'nillas though I probably would go something close to VS's efforts, the extender in the waist seems prudent and I think you have to adjust the legs to get them 'just right'. I don't like the terminator legs approach as much. Also I think I would enjoy festooning the models with pouches and such which I think is also in-line with how he does his marines.

The chaos dudes would just get fun mutations to cover my tall-scaling work, which may be both easier and more fun at the same time.


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Another pill sorter because reasons! I'm thinking it could be some kind of space/future train, or some kind of.. Idunno... now that I have it in hand I'm trying to come up with something. Suggestions?

While painting on my samurai diorama minis I spared 10-20 minutes to get Phil battle-ready, I think he's good to go for dip:

Shoulda picked a different color for the glasses, he looks almost like he's got a bandit/superhero mask...

Here's mushashi and the oniwaban in progress:


I kind of picked the 'wrong' color to blend towards, and didn't do a great job at that. I should have picked a more neutral blue than the teal but I dunno it kind of works.

I'm thinking of doing dark red armor, something in the old scab red line of thinking, but maybe a little more brown red. Brick red maybe? I dunno we'll see. Shiny black is also an option, thoughts? Still planning on a pattern on the cloth in white, may or may not stick to the triangle/lines thing.


Ran into a snag on this dude. None of my inks or glazes are an appropriate red color to get the metallic red I wanted. What about doing the bright red with black in the recesses? Obviously it would need highlighted and stuff but just as a general idea? I'm thinking to keep the armor around the red as white, and the pants will probably be black. The sword will probably be black with white along the edge like a Bleach soul reaper sword.

Hmm. Yeah, that didn't turn out as I'd expected it to, either. Okay, an alternate of doing metallic colors that I'd used back when I tried customizing action figures, is to use Tamiya clear paints. They've got a lot of colors available, including a clear red. Basically, repaint your guy with your most highly reflective silver, then go over that with the clear red. you'll wind up with a very glossy, yet metallic red.

The pill organiser may work well as a some kind of train or transport system.

I think red armour may clash a little with the blue. Black armour with a shiney or satin finish may look better

Thinking on the red issue, get back to you.

The pile box, is begging me to put a cockpit on the end and an engine at the other and call it a drop ship.

Pill box is a great idea! Looks like a train transporting prisoners in each little cell. Or it could be a bunch of escape pods on a spaceship or something.

I can see that train looking great after some paint hits it. Any plans to build any more of it? Driver compartment/engine room ect?

Those colours contrast nicely on the ninjas.

Yeah I'm kind of wondering about a dropship for the pillbox too. Like flip it over and attach it to the underside of a ship? The doors open at kind of an odd angle but you could still have troops deploy from them...

I could brutalize my IG valkyrie to make it fit the pillbox instead of it's own cargo area, then maybe work some giant fan/engines to the ends of the wings (think starcraft2 air to ground ships... banshees maybe?) to suggest higher VTOL capability?


Train would totally work too.

Initial thoughts along the line of drop ship:





Ships for parts if necessary!



Onto the diorama colors...

D'oh, maybe I should use blood for the blood god for the arms. I didn't want them to look gory but if I can do a clean job of it, I've heard it likened to tamiya clear red before... Red too clashy on the samurai? Perhaps black will be the way to go.
Gonna try the silver+BftBG thing here in a minute.

Penal legion platoon transport?

I think you need a new cockpit as that looks like super scifi with a model T glued to the front. I like the idea, but I think a more techy look is definitely needed. What I envision, at least for infinity, would be a clear dome cockpit where there are two pilot seats, one on top of the other with the top one actually being further forward. Top guy is the pilot and bottom guy is copilot/drop chief/weapons officer. But it's your baby so run it your way .

What store did you get those pill boxes from? Might have to snag some for a similar idea.

I found that one in a Ross Dress for Less. I tend to hang on to packaging but my wife tends to throw it away quickly, so I don't think I can get you the brand name unfortunately. If I see another one i'll let you know what to look for. It was maybe six bucks which in equivalent sized plastic terms isn't too bad at all for what it may one day become. I mean it's like two rhinos so equivalent hobby value may be over fifty bucks right so it was a steal, right?

I dunno about the cockpit, it probably does need to look more high-tech, just not sure my skills are up to the task. Would make it just that much cooler if it were totally scratchbuilt though.

Nice idea on the drop ship, hadn't thought of that. I can see it working like the Chittaurai ships in The Avengers, basically catapulting the guys out the sides on ropes to either latch onto a surface or drop to the ground.

Your money logic makes me wonder if you worked for Enron . "So this being six dollars but roughly the same size as a bar of gold means that our valuation of it on the books is $10,000. And since it looks similar to GW product we'll make a shell company under us named GWL(GW lite) that we will say is worth tem million dollars . That's how the Emperah did it....honestly"

I'm sure right now there's some cheap toys at Walmart and target that would have a good vibe for the drop ship front. I haven't gone through their $10 toy aisle lately.....might have to make a run today.

Yeah I may have to go too. Haven't bought Madame Toddlerington any little nicknacks in a bit so it can do double duty.

And hey, I gotta justify my hobby budget somehow right

Also..



Are we getting to be on closer to the same page now, Barzam?

I think I could come to like the arm as it is now. It won't be a shiny (or blood-looking) once it get's flat-coated, I shouldn't think. May go back in and touch up the black lines once it's nice and dry too so they stand out.

Lucky me he already had muscle-shaped robot-arms or I'd have been in for a struggle painting wise!

New red looks great!