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 Nozeminer wrote:
The goggles tie the little fella in with the rest of the troops, like he's their little buddy. Too bad after he completes his mission, you won't even be able to find pieces of the goggles.

Oh no, got that covered...


Florin sump-rats

Like their necromundan cousins, the sump rats of Florin are indeed rodents of unusual size.
however, their domesticated nature means that thier genetic stock is much more stable than other wild sump-rats, not being exposed to hazardous waste or radioactive reactors.
On Florin they are mostly bred as pets for the wealthy and are considered status symbols amongst the arisocracy, easily trained to perform tricks...
However, never ones to pass up an advantage on the battlefield, the regiments of the Eoforwich system have trained these rodents to be extremely capable and accurate mine and other IED dectectors. thier small, light bodies allowing them to enter minefields and unstable structures without fear of detonating pressure sensitve devices.
On Filey, many have been kitted out with explosive vests and trained to find the weak spots in enemy vehicles and fortifications, whereupon they schluff off the vests and return to their handler, the explosives then detonated at a safe distance.
sneaky and underhanded, yes, but absolutely effective, nonetheless...

I'm not a monster

This is awesome great work on everything!

Thanks Ghostmmaker!

new project today.
some artillery for the Flexberg troops...

Yeah, you heard me right; Flexberg!
No, you're not in the wrong project thread.
Ragsta's got me drafted to help in the war effort and it seems the Flexbergers are soon to be the proud owners of some heavy artillery!

I've been commissioned to build and paint three artillery pieces for him, all from "the honerable lead" these minis are; 8" howitzer, 60lb gun and big-bertha, Krupp 42cm...


So, in 40k terms; thats a bombast field gun, a heavy mortar and a medusa!
Here they are after initial build. Literally just got them in at the time...

Ill say now.
The resin is a godawful mess. miscast, bubbley, slipped and oily as buggery... sigh.
The white-metal components are even worse. Disheartening at first, but in truth, nothing for an old soak like me to get sorted...
I can see why Ragsta didnt fancy tackling it...

I have been requested by Ragsta to essentially "osjclatchford-ize" them, to get them up-to-speed with 40k's aesthetic so to speak, adding bits, removing others all the time checking in to make sure its to his artillerymen's liking...

first up the bombast proxy:

I've added rivets all over and a skull icon to the barrel.

Fixed an ugly-assed section on the rear

and added a laurelwreath icon just under the barrel.

looks much more 40k already, no?


I've since added this towhook


I also toyed with using these wheels I had instead, I thought it was rather fetching. However, Ragsta firmly decided he wants them all to match, so I'll stick to what it came with, on this occasion.

Next, I turned my attention to the heavy mortar proxy;

Again, more rivets

A skull icon to the top of the breach and an aquilla on the deckplate

An imperial tank sprue bit as a support and the addition of a lined barrel, courtesy of some ali tube I had.

Finally the medusa;

Another lined barrel (an old biro end) and a robotic servo-arm to load the medusa rounds. (this was an anvil component I meant to use on the goliath I did but then didnt... waste not want not)

The rear of the breach comes from an old chimera hatch and the platform is the inside of a window that spellcrow sent me as a freebie when I ordered the barrels from them.
Also on here is a grab-climing rail made from heavy grade solder, bent and fixed in place on plastic tubing.

I added this rhino aquilla under the barrel because it fit a treat and looks bangin' doing so!
We decided, no gunshield. Meaning Ragsta has that for another potential build int he future...


This mess is an experiment in a base topper for the guns.
The concept is thus; once cured, they can be removed from the backing acetate, then ragsta can glue them onto his base of choice, add his own materials around the tracks and paint accordingly, to match his army, then simply glue each gun in place! lets hope it works, too because thats half a pack of miniput sitting there!

more soon...

The men and women of Flexberg will welcome this much sought after support. I really like the modifications you’ve made throughout- even the rivets fill me with joy! What are the ‘Ali tubes’ you refer to on those muzzles?

Now to think about what unit these arty will be a part of…

The man himself!

It's just some aluminium tubing I had from some such place too long ago to remember wence it came from now...

As for which unit, perhaps they're a detachment of the eoforwich artillery support regiment? perfect opportunity to extend both of our respective fluff into one extended osjclatchford/Ragsta multiverse..? Lol...

aaaand done...



bombast proxy




Heavy mortar proxy



Medusa proxy


This was great fun and I'm pretty pleased with how hte colourscheme has tied all three together a s a battery, dispite the size and form differences (as well as all the odds-and-sods and bitz-and-bobs I've added to each gun.)

Sure hope ragsta Like 'em...

Now the trickiest part of all is how to ship these badboys from the Eoforwich system to the Flexberger's current warzone in one piece... now, wheres that yellow shipping container..? time to give ol' Jago Kane a shout methinks

Well you could bail them up in bubble wrap, that is the traditional method, but I was really impressed by this guy who printed some little 1/48th scale BMWs for me, and he essentially tied them down to the bottom of the box by punching holes in it and tying them down. Not sure what you'd use as these guns look much hefter, but it is an idea.

Actually, I was referencing the fluff...

Still, not a bad idea at that...

XD
well in that case, may I suggest some following suggestions:
Consignment of weapons from the same Forge World or from Eofowich? Adminisratum mistake? Eofowich artillery regiment/battalion attached to Flexbergers for the duration of the current campaign or indefinitely?
Perhaps that happened in the past but Eofowich has stopped sending troops so they are all Flexbergers with inhereted consignments of Efowich guns?

Eoforwich sent them to assist...administratum orders.

Guard is guard and needs must. Jago shipped them over on the yellow snork.

As for the rest..? That's up to Ragsta

got those aforementioned kriegsrkin done, at last!

full squad


This pose was based on the old metal kasrkin aiming/advancing guy. With the gun-wires gone (god I hate those, bloody stupid), it took very little effort.

Here is the squad commander. I added the chest lamp to tie him in with the engineers.
His robot hand is done in the awful pink to visually reference the hideously coloured early prosthetic limbs of the 50's and 60's.
It also reminds me of Lister's robot arm he had in series 7 of red dwarf...



Another mask guy.
the HWT backpacks help with the engineer theme, due to all the wrenches and screwdrivers and that on them.
As the backpacks duplicate a bit across the squad I made some swaps for other bits here and there, like the krieg hatchet and waterbottle on this one...


...and the shovel (krieg), knife (old cadian) and scope (boltrifle) on this one!
Made sensible by the fact his scope is absent from his hellgun. which I added a nucadian lasgun sling too for some extra detail/bulk


The team's specialist has a melta, because that makes the most sense as far as damage output and the demolition/assault nature of the sapper's they are supporting.
I added a spare muzzle (got the idea from a deathguard mini) and did the colourisation of the heat bloom on the current muzzle. With this in mind, I chose the backpack with the pair of asbestos gloves/mits slung on the backpack. (can't really see it here. but its there!)
I figured he can use those to swap his muzzles out!
To further sell the sense on working away from his own lines and in/under enemy territory, he has a spare tank of melta fuel on his pack. Taken from and old landspeeder multimelta ammo. (a meltabomb would do if not).
he aslo has a holster (heavy intercessors) as his backup weapon.
To hide the fact that I'd used the backpack with the roll of tape on before (the guy with the hatchet, where I'd removed the gloves from his pack and put a gasmask box on instead) I shaved the tape off and added an old cadian waterbottle. melting is thirty work, I guess!


...and here is an example of one next to one of the engineers. They fit together well.
I mean it makes sense. If the engineers are made from cadians then the stormtroopers should then be made of kasrkin...
I elected to do all the 'soft' armour in the grey.
I figured there was not much trou on display as on the engineers and this way, with camo on the trousers too, the colourscheme was balanced. if I'd done all that stuff black they would have just been very dark dingy and kinda boring...

This whole squad has been made of leftovers from my other endeavours. The heavy backpacks coming fom the crounching cadians I used in the filey 87th and the kasrkin being left over from my 3rd ed style stormtroopers. The heads were just sitting there in my bitzbox! never get rid of stuff you might use in the future!
All in quite the result I'd say!




also, as a diversion I've tacked this mini too this week:

Its a copplestone minis 'em4 Robot skeleton with MAR' mini I bought from Forlorn games on ebay.
But I know what your thinking...
"thats a second/third ed' necron, that is!"
Although similar at first glance, its actually quite different. except for the head. I mean damn, its bang on, no?
As you can see Ive gone full nostalgia-nerd and done it the 1997 army theme as shown here:

Well. I do remember those with much fondness but alas, never bought any when they came out originally.
I personally loved the fact the faction only had the five warriors, two immortals, a destroyer, scarabs and a lord to lead them all.
easy to collect and nice and uniform on the tabletop as reams of faceless, souless automata should be.
They had (and I suppose still do have) a certain egyptian theme to them that essentially made them 'tomb kings terminators' for 40k, which, tbh this one lacks but imho, its better for it.


The steel finish and red eyes were an absolute must.
As you can see Ive added some weathering and rusty patina across his frame, suggesting that this necron is a lttle older than the ones you see gracing the tables today (which is kinda silly as theyre all supposed to be ancient, but you get where I'm coming from)
I also added the gold and blue scheme to his chestplate (like the egyptian iconography parts on the originals) and decided to do the the gun in the simple black casing with the muzzle done in green to represent the classic gauss crsytal muzzles...
the original mini's gauss guns had large ribbed tubes that came out of the 'stock' end and were rendered as bronze.
as these were absent on these, I simply did the ribbed hosing on the thighs in weathered bronze to reference this.
the base wa the final touch for me.
simple corkdust and chunks in xv88, washed with agrax and then drybrushed in zandri then ushabti with a mournfang rim.
very oldskool and a very pleasent diversion from my usual stuff that was a real walk down memory lane and genuine fun to do.
You know, if you showed this model to me in 1997 and said I was the person who painted it I'd have never believed it...

now, if only I could get hold of an original '97 immortal to go with it...

Loving the Kriegrskin models! They look so good in fact, that I might have to bite your style at some point... As I have a small "Finnish Winter War" Krieg force in the design stages..

I was going to say I like the Stormtrooper's chrome red bionic fist XD
Horrible pink plastic did not exactly come to mind at all.

Those minis are looking sharp as usual, great job!

cheers!


Filey Drop-troop 'Fulmar' class assault-pod

Sometimes the skies above a drop-zone are simply too dangerous for a valkyrie deployment, a low-orbit or even an extra-orbitial gravchute drop. In these specific circumstances the deployment of squadrons of 'Fulmar' class assault-pods allow the squads to be sent planetside well above the usual safe limits of orbital deployment, these single man drop-pods too small and too fast to track or fire upon, sending their deadly cargo well behind enemy lines, the sounds of rapidly decellarating pods causing terror and confuson as the Filey deploy amongst the enemy, quickly taking objectives and overruning defences before the enemy has time to prepare for assault...


"Incoming!"


After my dissapointment of the grey colourscheme of my filey equipment pod, I decided to give it another go, on one of these saviour pods from killteam.
This time I went for the green and black of the filey 87th trooper's armour with some steel finishes added in.
I figured it worked on the auto mortars so well, it was worth a go on this.
I think its much better.

I was mostly inspired by quake2's one man droppods...

While I was at it, I decided to do my other legions imperialis scale dread-droppod that was still awaiting a paintjob in this colour.


consider it a do-over of the filey supply pod.

Its better I suppose.
I think the peggy minge technique struggled a little with the small size of the mini (on the grey one I did before.)
This time, however, utilizing the same techniques as on the 'Fulmar' assault pod has definately yeilded better results.

Decided to have another crack at this today


The nightmare fuel that is my cybercherub

you may remember its last incarnation, its made from the body of the Kairic Acolyte's Vulcharc familiar.



This time I went for a simpler look (less mechadendrites) and then added a basic skull (chaos spikey sprue) with section of bfg aerial for an eye and gubbins sliced from various weapons to make the skull and body seem more integral and to add 'doohickies' to his back.
you obviously cant have missed the use of static grass as matted fur around the head, back armpits and crotch. A rather disturbing and rank looking effect that makes it looklike it flew right out of one of John Blanche's paintings!


The liberal use of weathered metals and dark tones help there too, of course!

The inspiration comes from Neil Reed who created something very similar for the Lesotho blanchitsu campaign.
see pg113, WD dec 2018...

Nightmare fuel is an apt description. An inspired conversion carried out flawlessly.

Love your take on 40k Imperial Guard, all this hobbying of yours has made for a fantastic thread.

Those kriegsrkin are pretty cool, tho range camo looks great!
Big fan of your cybercherub as well, hope you do more in a similar style!

Thanks muchly guys. I really do appreciate the kindness...

@guardling
I'm looking at the new vulture things on the new chaos knights... No bugger's got any for sale anywhere though!

Today I discovered that chatGPT AI bot can make some nice boxart/codex art style images of my models if prompted to do so correctly and with the right level of instruction and description.


I'm calling this one the cover of the unofficial Codex Filey drop-troops or even a Codex Eoforwich, if there ever was one!

putting people out of work? no not at all. fun and free exercise for me to create codex shots of my minis. absolutely.

and before anyone crows on about stollen assets and all that jazz. these are my minis its based on and its a free rescource. I can do with them as I please.

love it or hate it. its not going anywhere. might as well try to enjoy it...

I am quite impressed how well you managed to get those picts follow your original conversions!

Coaxing GPT by prompting is very frustrating stuff, most of the time you need to hope it gets you on the first try because "refining" the prompt further might end up a total wash.. In these cases, I'd say it was well worth it. These "illustrations" give so much flavour to your miniatures, they make them come alive even more

Cheers bud. Do go check out my bfg thread for more

The trick is to use the string ; "wh40k art style, remove bases, remove background".

Then. Don't just ask what you want. summerise it with commas and colons to point out the important bits.
If you don't have a pic with rotations to show the mini on all sides, describe what's actually happening on the mini as if you're explaining to a child.
Finally always finish with "try to keep the colours forms and shapes as true to the original"

That's the kicker. You must get that point across so it doesn't deviate too far.

Also. Never EVER get it to edit something it's already done. It's diminishing returns.

If you must, refine the search string And start a new convo. So it doesn't draw from something that's already gone wrong before...

I know AI art conjours mixed feelings, but the codex art is something I poured over hours at a time back in the day. It's completely influenced my model style and now I can turn said minis into art of thier own, it feels like a full circle. I'm not done by a long shot but I don't think I'll share any more, for now. I do have something planned for the future, possibly using this and most likely even more of these but that will take some time to reach fruition...

More actual minis soon

Well you took art (your hand converted and painted minis) and changed the medium through which it is displayed(AI generated imagery).

I always love seeing your minis, and this is just another way to display your dudes as far as I am concerned. Looking forwards to seeing more minis.

Loving the color scheme and the poses. Your models really come alive with all the work you've done for them. Excellent stuff.

Some terrific updates. Love those artillery pieces even if it sounds like they were a pig to put together. Kriegers look brill as well, that autumn camo rocks.

Really like the Notcron, that's a really cool sculpt.

A little trip down memory lane, and right down the end to nosltalgia avenue!


Second Edition inspired Bunker!

I fancied a break from my usual troops (or bfg ships!) and settled for this bit of classic looking terrain.
Based on the cardboard bunker designed by Adrian Wild that came free with whitedwarf back in '94:

Remember these?

Well, this one is a 3d print from bodgehawk on Ebay, based on original stl designs by Medicationforall.
I had long coveted the cardboard bunker back in the day, getting a late start on whitedwarf (I started buying wd nov '98). everyone had either built it straight from the template or not got it at all! madness! you'd photocopy it first, right? who'd miss out on having more than just one... well aparrently, I was alone in that sentiment and as such have had to wait 30 years to get one. Was worth it..?

... spoiler, t'was.


First up I added some details I felt were vital to sell the effect.
Namely some butresses cut from 5mm foamboard with thin card toppers with half-round bead rivets for the iron-clad-reinforcement look and as another excuse to add detail it the form of rust effects later.
The exterior door was from my old chimera (now a griffon), The aquilla from the old ig vehicle sprue and the 'dags' on the top rail are cut from some I beam to reference the very same detail as featured on the old hand-crafted bunker that in turn inspired the cardboard bunker this is based on...


Being a filament print, one of the next things I did was get it cleaned and spray-painted up ready to texture it. (the butresses were added after the spray btw.. foamboard hates spraypaint) I went for my usual mix of easyfill45 mixed to taste with cuprinol garden shades exterior acrylic. A tiny bit of fine sand thrown in this time, as (unlike insulation foam cut bunkers) this needed a little bit extra on the texture front.
As it happens this mini is an example of where the print artifacts have actually helped the mini; the banded sides looking like cast concrete and the pits in the top looking like rusted steel.
Still, that being said my texture paint, alongiside some agrellan earth and typhus corrosion added to the effects nicely.


Painting was done with stippling and drybrushing and was intended to portray the same colourscheme of the old classic card mini, but with extra weathering and effects to mirror the thirty years of real-time that its been since the minis were first available, in the fictional world it lives in.
This was accomplished with nuln oil, and thinned ratlinggrime. as well as some oranges for rust. a couple of propaganda-posters and a barrel on the inside. because, why not!
Its old, tired and possibly abandonned. but still it stands...

...and yes. It has an interior that I almost didnt do. but remembering the fact I did my 'badger' excavator interior, I figured I'd no excuse...
However, I'd say thats considered optional...

go get it here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/395168705731?itmmeta=01K5BY0YR2SCC9MV9AKCCA278K&hash=item5c01e3ecc3:g:ILwAAeSwrsZowGwv

Dude, that's awesome! Looks real good too, considering you did all that just with GWs "basic" paints.

Now it needs some MK7 marines for a mood shot..

 tauist wrote:
Dude, that's awesome! Looks real good too, considering you did all that just with GWs "basic" paints.

Now it needs some MK7 marines for a mood shot..

Cheers. Undercoat aside. It's just the fang, Russ grey and fenrisen stippled on successively.

Then zandri dust and ushapti for the worn bits.

It's shaded with nuln oil and agrax as well as some thinned rattling grime...

The rusty steel is gal vorbak, stippled with mournfang brown, then xv88 then shaded with agrax and a bit of rattling grime. Then orange recess/runs... As well as metallic edges...