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Posting because I still want to see that Flyer painted.

Now that the Novator has a paint job he looks like a priceless piece of art, in 3d form. Amazing.

Truly, truly incredible, the face is just perfectly painted. I feel like a broken record when I see all the amazing stuff being produced lately, the bar is just raised higher each time.

There absolutely i wish i had even a little bit of the skill that has gone in to these guys.

Outstanding work, really nice to see a group shop with all of them painted up!

Wow. I know that's not particularly useful as painting advice, but, wow.

Fantastic stuff so far.

The hood is the biggest plain surface on the model, and, if being ultra critical it seems a little flat. I would say it maybe needs more depth of colour, or more detail.

Top stuff!

Oh boy, that is perfect! The hood reminds me of an old Russian cosmonaut's attire, very cool.

This giant walking head is the freakiest mini I have ever seen. It looks great.

Fething INSANE! In the most positive way

Thanks so much guys! So very encouraging.

I agree that the hood is flat and both it and the robes are too light and similar to the flesh. It’s a balancing act because I want the soft cloth parts of the model to clearly stand out from the armor and throne (I figure it’s such a confusing model I need the paint scheme to make it clear what’s going on).

The robes were kind of poorly sculpted to begin with so they're challenging to paint, but I think they're starting to work better.

And I've glazed the hood with turquoise and darkened it some, as well as adding more variation and detail with warm inks. Much better I think. Now it doesn’t blend in with the base color too much:




Next I think it's time for some broken blood vessels on the face and a big toe-nail. Still not sure if it will be manicured and painted or old, gross and grey.

That's looking beautiful with some paint on

The glazes you've added to the hood worked brilliantly, bringing it out from the flesh and tying it in with the armour whilst keeping it's soft feel.

I'm liking the new hood colour, it provides a better contrast to the face.

Looking ace.

Novator is an okay name, but if it was me I'd channel some Stan Lee and call him N.O.V.O.K.!


Oh, and great work here.

Awesome.

This whole project has just been 100% boss win.

Man I'm so jelly right now. Stunning work there man.

Thanks so much!

I think I'm officially done painting the head navigator now, and all that's left is gluing him to his base. I'll try to post some photos later.

I also put away my paints and infantry sized bits and set up for some vehicle-scale scratch-building. Stay tuned ...

Looking forward to your next project

The head of the household is complete!











Of course, the next time I have my paints out I may make a minor tweak or two. That base rim needs to be cleaned up at the least.

---

My brother (who was the one who introduced me to this hobby in the first place) has also started collecting and modeling after a very long hiatus, and has been buying up interesting things on ebay. He just gave me an ancient Captain Tycho model.

I remember loving the model when it came out, and it's a very important design, introducing the Blood Angel death mask, halo, and sculpted torso motifs (or maybe that classic painting of a pile of blood angels with a white chaplain and golden captain came first?). But viewed from a modern perspective, the model is pretty goofy (sorry oldhammer die-hards!). It has great details but poor the poor captain's head protudes directly from his sternum.

Due to rampant scale creep, poor Tycho is also tiny. I realized I could use his small stature to my advantage and use him into a regular human in power armor. So I took a dremel to Tycho and removed his enormous head and pauldrons, trying to preserve as much of the rest of the model as I could. I also narrowed his bell-bottom boots to try to move away from the SM silhouette a bit. I forgot what a pain it was to work with metal!

After a flurry of kitbashing last night I ended up with this:





I'm so happy with the result. It was fun working so quickly and finishing a model in two nights of work. I'm surprised how well the modern bits work with the old figure, and what a difference the higher head position makes. I see him as a grizzled and pragmatic mercenary captain, wearing the Household's gift of archaic power armor. I can't wait to paint him -- it should be interesting painting metal again.

I also realized this is the second version of this model I've beheaded. My primary army as a teenager was a home-brew blood angel successor chapter (that I called The Sons of Sanguinius), and when I made my own kit bashed chapter master, Tycho was demoted to a veteran sergeant and got a regular MK 7 helmet.

That's a stunning little conversion mate, great use of parts, the base figure is completely changed, I love it.

"Head of household" -- just got that. Heh.

Also gorgeous work as usual.

Thanks!
I just realized I should've included the unaltered Tycho model* for anyone under 30:


* or proto-Tycho to be more accurate; he was a generic Blood Angel Captain that was named Tycho for a classic Andy Chambers / Jervis Johnson battle report, IIRC.

I've been busy this week and have finally finished two models I started a while back.

First off, the failed challenger:



This model began as a way to use up the failed remains of my big headed Novator -- I ordered the giant head thinking it would be much larger, which led me to sculpt my own head. And then I ordered this mutant body before deciding I needed to sculpt something smaller and more noble. But the two rejected parts work great together.

In fluff terms, this represents a cousin of the Novator who challenged him for leadership of the household. Navigators resolve such challenges through warp-eye duels, and although the challenger was himself ancient and powerful, he was no match for the Novator and the pure blast of warp power seared his brain and left him a gibbering simpleton. As a further indignity, the Novator had the challenger converted into a Servitor, to serve as his personal bodyguard and a living warning to all future challengers.

A last minute touch I'm really exited about are the scraggly hairs around the back of his head, made the same way I did the Novator's eyebrows.

Next, I finished the fencing master. I actually sculpted a fancy helmet with a blast-shield type covering over the eyes, going for a blind samurai type thing. However when combined with the small body and youthful face, the whole model just looked too much like Luke sparring with the practice droid. So I pulled that head off (I'm sure it will be useful on a future model) and found this bearded head in my bits pile:



I think this really made the model, and added a lot of character -- much more of the mysterious wandering swordsman look I was going for. In fact, while working on the model I decided he may not just be the household's fencing master, but a secret Sensei, working in hiding as the Novator's swordsman and personal bodyguard, but with his own mysterious agenda. After all, the Novator claims that when he delves into the Astronomicon, he can see the soul of the emperor himself. The Sensei may not fully understand his origin on an off-world colony twelve centuries ago, but finds himself drawn to the light in the warp and those who promise to understand it.

So, my plan is to prime this batch and start painting them this weekend as the core of a new group of henchmen to accompany the Novator. Assuming I don't get distracted by a half-built psyker or Beaconite Preacher ...

Whoa, that failed Challenger is awesome!

Nice work on the failed challenger and swordsman! Both look great, and I'm liking the hidden sensei take on the latter.

Thanks guys!

I always struggle to completely finish models. There's always a gap that needs filling or some small detail that I need to sort out before I can actually start priming and painting, and it's always more exciting to play around with random bits and half-built components from my desk-pile.

So I'm very happy that I was able to finish the 5 new henchmen for my household and prime them over the weekend. I've just begun painting them with some very preliminary flesh tones. The Hidden Sensei is quite yellow but that's nothing a few layers of dry brushing and inking can't fix:





My current plan is pale green armor on the mercenary captain (similar to the robes on the Novator, including the reddish shadows), a variety of cool greys, blacks, and whites on the Hidden Sensei, and dirty, rusty turquoise armor and mechanics on the Failed Challenger (a dirtier version of the armor on the Novator). No idea on the drones, although I'm tempted to make one of them a very weathered pink. The type of pink you'd see in a 14th century fresco. We'll see!

Anyway, I also took some photos of a vehicle I've been working on for a while. I think I started it way back during the winter olympics, but set it aside so I could focus on finishing my dropship and giant robot. Neither of which are finished. I've been thinking I need some form of ground-transport to ferry henchmen around, a count-as-chimera in game terms. But a conventional tracked vehicle seems out of place in my army. So inspired by the classic deodorant hover tank, I decided old nasal spray bottles could make nice hover pontoon type things:







This was much more of a planned out construction than the drop ship. I even drew up templates in Illustrator for the main hull. I think the result is more in keeping with wh40k vehicle aesthetics but still seems suitably unusual and custom for my strange household. Still lots of work to do, especially around the back of the pontoons.

Do I need to obscure the fronts of the bottles more? I would at the very least add some armor plates, rivets, small details, etc. But I could also extend out some rectangular forms from the main hull to break up the shapes.

In any case, I'll probably be focusing on painting over the next few weeks before returning to the Hover chimera. Unless something else distracts me first.

i think on the chimera add some sort of intakes on the front of the bottles to help disguise them as they really stand out as bottles atm, appart from that it looks awesome i have followed your thread for a while now n always find it fuels my own builds

This is what 40K is all about. Truly brilliant conversions and I love what you've done with Tycho, sublime.

Thanks so much!

Absolutely phenomenal work in here mate. That navigator is just stunning. Really looking forward to updates mate.

Thanks!

I love seeing other people's half-finished ideas. I know my own projects go through many phases before they're complete, and many of them are never even finished. So I thought I'd share some rougher in-progress shots of some more henchmen.

But first, some long winded aesthetic theorizing. There's been a lot of interesting talk on the forum lately and it’s got me thinking.

My favorite part of the hobby is converting, particularly the joy that comes from playing with a pile of bits with no clear plan, and the random combinations and ideas that you stumble across (Brian Eno and his oblique strategy cards would approve). This is a similar feeling I sometimes get in my job as a graphic designer -- when I am designing a book cover I create a huge file filled with fragments of type, pattern, and imagery, and let unexpected combinations emerge. I focused on that process a lot in art school, where I made collages from scraps of paper. One of my key methods was never being precious with the piece I was working on; it's very easy to become attached to something early on, so I would force myself to slice finished collages down into smaller pieces and put them back together again in new configurations.

I've tried to take a similar approach to kit bashing. I'm very indecisive, so it's always tempting to tack things together without ever gluing them in place. So I try to make myself glue bits together when the inspiration strikes, with the understanding that I can always hack them up again, leading to more unexpected and layered conversions down the line.

While working on that last batch of henchmen I also did a bit more to some half-built pieces I've been working on for a while. Although I will most likely never play with this army/warband, I like using the framework of the rules as a guide. And it seems that my henchmen squads would be well served by psykers, weapons servitors, and battle priests. Here are rough versions of each of these archetypes:




The idea behind the servitor's dapper facial hair is that he is no regular servitor, but a former rogue trader or merchant captain who betrayed the household in some way, and has been captured and turned into a servitor as a punishment. He would join the head Novator's henchmen along-side the failed challenger. Grag managed to turn the same body into a far more evocative servitor, but this model is just a bit boring and lacks something special so it's shelved for the time being. Maybe he needs to get chopped in half.

Right now I'm considering recasting Major Tom (the astronaut) as a battle Priest. The idea is that all priests in my household would be members of a cult that worships the Astronomicon itself as the glowing soul of the Emperor. See below for more fluff. The idea behind such a long haft on his scepter is that it is actually the Novator's holy staff (and appropriately sized) but carried into battle by his priest. It also would suggest a standard bearer, an archetype I don't have in my army yet. But there's something stiff and boring here so I'm not sure.

And finally, a psyker. I made that torso with the plasticard armor for a crusader, and it's been repurposed many times, even acquiring some rough robes along the way. My favorite depiction of Psychic powers is in Akira (both the Anime and Manga) so I thought I should try for a Tetsuo-style levitation effect. The head is the one I sculpted for the Fencing Master, here repurposed as a psychic hood type focusing helm. I'm afraid I'm now getting Magneto overtones, but this is still my favorite of this bunch.

I stole the psykers staff and arm from this poor fellow:



Since I was also out of pointing or grasping psychic type left hands, I was forced to build him a bionic replacement, which led to his bionic eye. This made me think about Palmer Eldritch from the Philip K. Dick book, in which case he needs two bionic eyes and metal teeth. But again, I will probably end up chopping him down for bits eventually because he's missing that special something.

--

Anyway, the idea of an Astronomicon priest wearing ceremonial garb fashioned after an ancient void suit really appeals to me. So much so that I'm thinking of making some push-molds of that dome helmet, and making a set of Beaconite priests. But what to use as bodies?

One idea is to turn to the classics of the genre; the plastic models that have been so well converted by the elders of the forums (and others) so many times already. So far I've stayed away from them because I wanted to try to find my own new conversions, but now I'm excited about a sort of homage to the classics:



(crude from memory sketches of the corpsemaster from coven throne, nurgle lord, and chaos sorcerer)

This would also allow for a variety of priests, each with their own character, united by their fishbowl domes. I sort of hope sketching the idea and sharing it here will be enough to get it out of my mind so I can focus on finishing my existing projects, but something tells me I may end up buying some more plastic soon. Maybe instead of the Nurgle Lord I need to do a whole unit of Blightking-based astronaut priests ...

And finally, to finish off this long and rambling post, some fluff:

Beaconites believe that the Emperor's mortal body on Terra is only a cocoon or husk, and the true form of the god emperor is the shining light in the warp, the astronomicon. Patterns of Beaconite worship invariably include hourly prayer, during which the mendicant must always turn to face in the direction of terra and the astronomicon. Beaconites revere Navigators with an almost jealous intensity, for they believe only Navigators with their warp-eyes can truly see the face of god.

Beaconites are naturally drawn to the stars and the warp, and will do their best to find work in the Imperial fleets (and conversely, many voids men are natural converts to the cult). The most devout cultists become itinerant preachers or space pilgrims, shuffling from ship to ship, spreading the holy word. Many of these pilgrims seek out Navigator controlled ships and space stations. Although only a few Navigators are sanctified members of the cult (blind religious fanaticism does not always flourish in the minds of those who calculate infinitely complex math in the maw of total warp insanity), most Nobilite recognize the value of religious devotion, and will welcome space pilgrims into their entourages and courts.

A growing contingent of pilgrims are convinced that *Name TBD / Head Novator*, with his proclaimed supreme insight into the Holy beacon, is a type of Messiah, and is in direct contact with the God-Emperor. Pilgrim after pilgrim has sought out the household and sworn their service and devotion, and now rave and proselytize amongst the ranks of mercenaries and killers. The household sees the value in this devotion and has encouraged the spread of the cult within the staff.