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Between working on the larger ongoing projects I keep fiddling with leftover bits, and came up with this new group of crusaders.



You can see that they're still mostly just "blue" tacked together, but you get the idea. I love the empire archer models, but they're so tiny that they're difficult to mix with other kits. I also had leftover blood angel torsos, which always seemed way too big to combine with regular human legs. I was pleasantly surprised to find the archer's legs are pretty easy to extend, which I think balances things out. The middle torso is also shaved down to be narrower, which also helps. I'll eventually use greenstuff to bulk up their feet and shins a bit. And of course turn their weapons into power weapons.

These guys are pretty tall and imposing, but still clearly not Marines. Maybe gene-treated warriors recruited from a savage world? I'm pretty happy with the combination of ornate armor, elegant coats/skirts, and barbarian-style heads. I'm not sure about the middle guy; he may lose his sideburns or mohawk or get a new head entirely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
... and here are some detail shots of the abhumans I forgot to include last night.






It's impossible to get a good photo of this one!

I love this thread so much.

Both Abhumans and Crusaders looking awesome. (You did get a fine pic of that one crouching Abbie,* too). Fluffwise, Crusaders can be big guys without genetic engineering -- give a lost colony 10,000 years on a savage world with lots of meat to eat (if it doesn't eat you first) and I bet good nutrition and natural selection will make the survivors pretty fething big.

* This is now my new derogatory for Abhumans, I've decided. I suppose "Abu" or "Abbo" make more sense but HOLY FETH REAL WORLD RACISM LET'S NOT GO THERE.

Thanks guys!

I love WH40k because of it's such a fun mix of different archetypes and references. Most often this mix takes the form of fantasy and historical archetypes rendered with sci-fi trappings, and of course made extremely dark. Sometimes it goes the other way — robots and spaceships turned into walking and flying cathedrals. As a kid I loved scifi and ancient-through-medieval history and art, and so wh40k was therefore impossible for me to resist.

I've been thinking that the astronaut archetype is under-represented in WH40k. The spaceman is so classic and iconic, from raygun fishbowl helmets to contemporary space-suits to Moebius' Samurai spacesuits from Alien. Some rogue trader figures wore bulky, almost space-suit like outfits. Jes Goodwin's awesome concepts for Naval crew wear sort of space suits, but are more like heavy welding suits. But the only direct spacemen references that I can think of are a few of John Blanche's drawings that include imperial figures in fishbowl helmets, including the great Navigator Kraut posted recently (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/510/439900.page):



Because Navigators are above all space farers, I've been trying to make my exosuits reminiscent of spacesuits, but I don't think it's really come through. So I've started doodling some wh40k style astronauts that could serve as henchmen in my household:


This guy ended up looking a lot like John Hurt in Alien, completely by accident.



I think these could make for fun miniatures, but I haven't been able to find a source for clear plastic bubbles small enough. Very frustrating. But in the meantime I decided to try making a astronaut with an opaque helm, and have the beginnings of a new henchmen, Major Tom:



I'm not sure what he'll become, but I'm excited so far. The helmet is a ball joint from the Dreadknight kit, and he will probably need big clunky moon boots. Right now he's posed as a psyker, but he could easily be a more conventional armsmen or a crusader instead.

You sketch well, too.

You're certainly something of a Renaissance man

 SisterSydney wrote:
You sketch well, too.

It's annoying no? I could accept the fact that you are an absolute master of scratch building but drawing as well? Now that's just not fair!

I just have to say that the ship you built on the last page is fantastic. Do you design stuff like this for a living? The ease at which you come up with these ideas is quite inspiring.

If you are looking for clear plastic bubbles, maybe check out the local dollar store. I'm sure there will be some useless item that is encased in the perfect shaped piece of plastic for your astronauts.

And then you can eat the delicious carcinogenic candy inside!

I like the idea of having the opaque helmet. It looks more mysterious.

 YourIntestines wrote:
I like the idea of having the opaque helmet. It looks more mysterious.

I agree.

Your sketches and Blanche's artwork do have the look of Grim dark, raggedy-ass Astronauts (Funnily enough there's a band that plays at a local bar where I am called the Poor Dirty Astronauts) which is great but translating them to actual models could be tricky. Having a few guys with translucent helmets could be cool but I would have at least one with an opaque helm. You could paint it up in a shimmering shade of gold like a solar shield or something else suitably cosmic or you could just go matte white or a creamy shade of alabaster with a little oxidation around the collar. Make a mystery of who... or what... is in there. What makes them so different? After all if you have a group of genuine weirdos 9 times out of 10 the one leading them is the weirdest of all.

Thanks everybody!

I don't design things like this for a living, but I do design things — book covers and interiors, with a focus on typography. But the principles are similar and I did study drawing, painting and some 3d stuff in art school before I specialized in graphic design.

You'd be surprised how large most plastic bubbles are! Useful for UFO model domes, but not 28mm man size figures, for the most part at least.

I do like the opaque helmet idea, and may try to make more of them. Much more mysterious. And I like both the gold and alabaster ideas.

Wonderful stuff Major Tom is excellent and the Astronaut motif is an excellent idea Hydra miniatures might be worth a look for this project as well.

 weirdingway wrote:


I do like the opaque helmet idea, and may try to make more of them. Much more mysterious. And I like both the gold and alabaster ideas.

>:3

i like the idea and now i'm thinking about grey knights codex to do some mercenary's i love your conversion work and your paint jobs there way better then my work.

Im not quite sure if this would work for the helmet to your space man, but worth a shot.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lego-crystal-ball

A great range of concepts in here - along with some really good looking models

 deadmeat85 wrote:
Im not quite sure if this would work for the helmet to your space man, but worth a shot.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/lego-crystal-ball

Ooh that brings back the childhood memories! I can say for sure that this won't work though. The plastic is too thick and any face you placed underneath it would be magnified and look massively bloated.

I was a Lego pro before I moved on to 40K so I know my blocks!

I'm so impressed with all the work on this blog. Holy mackerel that flier.

Yeah that was the first thing that popped in my head for the fish bowl helmet you were looking for.

You Rang?


...I jest. I really like what's been going on so far. I'm always impressed when someone can sketch out their ideas, and then it takes such accurate shape so quickly in the third dimension. Killer work.

Plus that screen name is always a bonus.

Thanks so much!

For anyone else interested in bubble helmets, the guys at the Ammobunker / Inquisimunda forum had some great suggestions:

Whiskey Priest pointed out some perfect domes that are sold with these Naismith models: https://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=24

Bruticus suggested alternatively encasing a painted head in a spherical mould of resin or water effects. I like the idea of the distortions you'd get from solid resin, and might just give it a try.

 weirdingway wrote:


Whiskey Priest pointed out some perfect domes that are sold with these Naismith models: https://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=24

What a fantastic selection of funny little hats

Wow they have some great stuff on that site.

I actually started painting something!

I've gotten a good start on the abhumans. I usually try to paint things a little differently to keep things interesting and learn new techniques. This means that I normally hate the way the models look for most of the time I'm painting them, and keep reworking them until finally I figure out how to make them come together.

This time I started with a grey primer with a white zenithal top-spray, followed by a slective wash of a mix of inks to build up some quick tone and color. And here I discovered a big mistake — I forgot to scrub the models with soap and water before priming, even though I used a liberal amount of olive oil on my sculpting tools. That combined with a too-light primer coat made for some weird spots that looked primed but were too slick for paint, especially ink, to properly adhere to. So now I will always wash my greenstuff off when it's cured!



Sorry about the low quality photo. And after a few more hours of work, I'm currently at this stage.


I ended up going for a heavily tarnished bronze look on the masks, which I'm very happy with. I looked at a lot of verdigris covered bronze and copper statues, and realized that a fully tarnished statue will often have a blue/green surface almost everywhere except recesses and cracks, which remain a dark bronze. That's kind of the reverse of most verdigris you see on models (including the tarnished gold I've been doing). So instead of using the new verdigris technical paint, I first painted the masks with a few layers of turquoises (including shading and highlights) and then unevenly washed them with a mix of bronze paint and brown ink. The result looks great in real life, but I may still clean it up with a final pass of selective turquoise highlights.

The rest of the abhumans are kind of a mess. I still can't decide what color their outfits will be, and I'm very unsure of my skin-tone choices. I'll probably push all of the skin tones partially toward normal human tones with some dry brushes and washes. I'm liking the white scarves as a way of setting off the masks, but could also see them being orange/red or just a rich brown. Or maybe they should be white with overall freehand orange or blue pattern-work? Keffiyeh style is probably beyond my skill-set but could look good.

Awesome. If this is your idea of "kind of a mess...." -- ha!

Tarnished bronze masks are awesome. (I too have looked at many an ancient statue....). And the greyish skin where you've not quite finished (far right model) actually looks good as a contrast to the masks and the earthy-colored clothes & armor, actually better than the orangey tones on the 2nd and 4th models (counting from the left).

Excellent progress so far! Keep it up!

I like the verdigris on those masks

The colours on the abhumans look just right.

thanks!

You've definitely captured the feel of the more bizarre themes of the 40k setting perfectly throughout this thread.

I really love the colour choices you've gone with throughout, very unique and they show your conversions/scultping off really well.

My particular favourite colour choice has to be those abhuman masks. They tie a unit of otherwise very different mutants together brilliantly.