a little bit of everything (but no punctuation)

so to those of you who are new to the vorro/synapse/duchotomancer/nathan experience, here's a post with a some old (and some very old...) work ive done over the years. truth be told, im not very prolific but when i do do work i tend to do a lot at once, and then fall into a laconic state (the last one of which lasted well over a year - you have my long-term GF to blame for that :p).

Other than that, ive been modelling and painting on/off since the summer of 1992, when i first discovered GW - blood bowl! i went into a toy/hobbyshop with my parents looking for a birthday present. i was torn between rollerblades (a big craze at the time) and blood bowl, based on the amazing GW leaflets they had at the store. there was also one of 2nd edition 40k with blood angels and the egg dreadnought facing off against goffs and their own, ahem... egg dreadnought! i was hooked.

but the craze prevailed and i got the blades, but there was this niggling thought in the back of my head and  couldnt stop thinking about the cool brightly coloured (this was GWs infamour red phase!) fantasy/sci-fi models. so i made a 3 mile trek in the scorching maltese sun through a foul valley of filth and a slaughterhouse to the store and bought the 40k boxed set (20 marines, 20 goffs, 40 gretchin and lots of cardboard buildings and a card stand-in ork dread. in all fairness i had some limited experience with this type of game the previous year (i was 8) when i got a heroquest clone game (similar thing but not MB/GW but it did have a cool dragon):

the box in all its glory  

i also got a box of old purestrain genestealers and the tyranid paint set. this is the result of my labours:

holy shit! paint asplosion!

that was the beginning of my torpid love affair with GW. at the time, i was foolish and young. i pronounced genestealers in a way that sounds more like general stealers and thought tyranids were immune to all pistols (and not just needle pistols) due to the tricky wording in the 2nd ed codex. ah sweet memories.

since then ive had many armies (well not that many actually).

• about 3000 points of 2nd ed tyranids - amazingly multi-coloured and horrendously jarring in their greatness.
• when 3rd edition rolled around i switched the nids to that system (i had no hormagaunts previously and needed a lot.. of expensive metal ones) and started blood angels. i accumulated about 3000 points of 3d edition blood angels.
• about 2000 points of death skulls orks
• i scrapped the 2nd ed tyranid models and began a new one with the lovely 3rd edition plastics (atill think the gaunts and warriors are amazing models now)
• i retired the blood angels round the end of 3rd and repainted them as ultramarines, which i amassed to a lovely 10,000ish size before selling them off a few years back.
• a huge nurgle lost and the damned and death guard army featuring loads of deamons, nurgle beastmen, imperial guard and death guard. this army probably came to about 6000 points (3k LatD and 3K DG). the army was never really finished as the latd codex was rendered obsolet before i got halfway through it, though the models were all purchased
• this when what i call my wilderness years began and i started to drop out of the hobby (friends dropping out due to other commitments and my group slowly starting to unravell). slowly, i started a bad moons army which i also sold off around the turn of 4th/5th edition. i think those bad moons are the army im most proud of - really looke coherent and i lvoed the colours/conversions (more on those later)
• hee we come to the current era of Vorro models: my truescale pre-heresy world eaters (again more pics later)
• the angels of censure featured on this blog
• the howlign griffons and other random models

The World Eaters
my babies, my labour of love. i always loved marines, though it was their idea, their fluff,rather than their models. these are paragons of the human race; rendered apart from that which they were created to protect. they are super-human, giants, adonic figures, clad in the armour of gods and equipped with the best that mars can produce. they are the space marines, the adeptus astates.

yet they have teeny tiny models and stats that put themto shame...

there, that's better



pity. id love for GW to take their heads out of their arses and make a proper amrine codex - where a 1500 army gives you 2 squads an hq and a small vehicle likea  speeder or attack bike or a dread. each marine should be the equivalent of another army's character, yet sadly theyre not.

I love the smell of flamers in the morning

thats what these are and, with the inspiration of doghouse and apologist who frequent warseer and bolter and chainsword, i decided to make models that live up to that ideal.

no, not the axe!

though i had made simple 'truescale' marines in the past (adding a spacer to the shin) these were my first serious attempt. and i really went off the deep end, using terminator legs, slicing each leg in two places and sculpting the chest from scratch. that first unit was a real bitch to make, but it was so rewarding (especially the comments i got on forums :p). at first i decided - no more, but decided to continue and make a whole army. the initial idea of two 10-man tac squads, 10-man assault squad, 10-man dev squad, jetbikes or land speeder, dread and spartan landraider never quite materialised though i got damn close.

in particular, though, im proud of the dreadnought (below), which was really a bitch to make - i started from the legs with no plan or drawings of any sort (usual for me actually. youd think id have learnt my lesson by now... ) and for a long time, the thing just lay on my table gathering dust, little more than the skeletal frame of legs and hips. then inspiration struck and i continued to what you see below. its a bit odd in design (the Horus Hersy artbooks are very contradictory when it comes to art, especially dreadnoughts, so i had my pick of the litter, so to speak), though if there's one thing id change it would be the width of the torso - its a tad too thin for my liking, though its nothing i cant live with. overall i get a great feeling when i turn this model around in my hand, which is the best result i can get from a big conversion like this (and, thanks to the cheesy new Grey Knights codex, i can use it as a dreadknight rather than a crappy dreadnought - result!)

pre-heresy dread

Varren? who knows

in hindsight they were far too big, a scale onto their own (35ish mm), but i do like the result. thats why i decided to make the howling griffons - to be something more in-sclae with 40k, but still conveying the bulk and gravitas of the marines.

then came the terminators.

my babies!

whose a big boy now?

and i thought the power-armoured marines were difficult. the terminators were a real saga to get made. making the masters, the trials and tribulations of RTV casting, the money wasted on dud moulds and dud casts... but i love the end result and i think it was worth it... save the fact that theyre to scale with the world eaters and NOT the howling griffons, which means when (if) the time comes for me to make howling griffon terminators, ill have to start from scratch...Grr! but the idea, even of a single griffon character makes me giddy with anticipation. maybe, who knows

groupshot

Orks
one of my fave armies, orks (like nurgle hosts) are a great army for convertors (and a great army for bad converter to hide behind :p). ive had a few ork armies over the years (three in all) all of which, oddly have been sold. my first was a death skulls army with lots of bone trophies, random vehcile and weapon parts and a  really cool battlewagon that i sadly sold (one of the few non-commissioned models ive sold that i wish id held on to). following that came a bad moon army that i sold pretty much the moment i mad it and then, about 2-3 years ago (just before i started work on the world eaters) these guys. sadly i cant find pics for all of them but heres the 'best':

Tyranids
Sadly, ive lost my tranid pics though un-sadly, i still have the models (most of which are unpainted). i have what some people have lovingly termed wasp zoanthropes (head like the old 3rd edition hivetyrant and a tail made from a carnifex crushing claw) and a bunch of warriors (about 24) and 3 carnifexes waiting paint. this is the only picture i have of the paint-scheme i chose for the army (the final product is more hawk turquoise than jade green though, though im pleased with the resultt.

Lion Rider
i think, one of my fave models. as soon as the high elf lion chariot model was released (what an amazing model and a prime example of what can be done with the 3d sculpting tech that GW now uses), i knew i had to convert a model as a lion rider. the inspiration came from the fantasy world that ive been slowly fleshing out over the years (the map-background on the blog title is one i made for that world), where one society has many cuktural links with lions. so here's the model:

Death Guard
probably my fave chapter of marines both pre and post-heresy (and the original chapter/legion i was going to use for my first truescale project that later turned into the world eaters). i love death guard and nurgle in general and have made a few TS DG models. now that ive started work on Garro what id love to do is 2 5-man squads of truescale DG - one before and one after nurglification, with before/after models in the same poses. that would be cool! anyhow, heres some pics of past DG models.

the penultimate model is not finished yet, though id love to go back to him and finish him off. still happy with the chains on the last example

Eldar
my shortest-lived army, probably to its radical departure from things i like (sloppy painting and converting - generally i dont see eldar as a converters army though id love to be proved or, better, prove myself wrong), though ironically, the only squad i painted is probably my finest squad ever... and i gave it away to a decentish bloke ive never seen ;)

 sexeh dragons

 scale shot

well that concludes my tour for tonight :p 

5 men and a barbarian and a giant

so first thing's first - these pictures are boring! but im just trying to show that im making progress on the next 5 models.

man 1: soon to be an ultramarine veteran tyrannic war veteran with tyranid skull thunder hammer and hive tyrant head-crest storm-shield and various out bits and baubles

man 2: will become the fifth Howling Griffon, so i can 'promote' the guy with the lion head/cloak to company captain.

man 3: what could this be? what could that chopped up shoulder pad be doing on his shoulders?

man 4: will become a mentor legion veteran leading a squad of carapace-armoured IG vets... when i get around to making them. he's equipped with a drum-mag bolter with silencer and scope and will have errant armour and lots of pouches and equipment. looking forward to painting this one.

man 5: no idea!

got my airbrush and been messing about with it on random models. been meaning to paint this up for ages and just undercoated him and tried out the airbrush on him. feel confident enough to undercoat the Howling Griffons and basecoat/highlight the yellow parts of the armour with it.

and finally... whats this? the first tentative steps on my road to sculpting a large (around 80 - 90mm tall) marine. enlarged a pic of one of the Griffons and printed it out to scale with the final product.

quick update with the weapon ill be using on the 5th model:

its probably going to be dug into the earth with his right arm resting on it, though cant start work yes as im waiting for a box of termies to arrive so i can use the legs, though ive started work on a torso which ill try to cast for any future models

some more pics:

as per request; a blurry scale shot comparing two of the marines with a guardsman. actually the size difference isnt as bad as i thought it was going to be - result! the marine on the right is the latest addition to the squad:

the left arm was difficult to get just the way i wanted so i ended up GSing the top half. the lion head on the right shoulder pad is the start of a cloak that ill add tomorrow once the torso has dried. after a rough start im quite pleased with the end result and think he fits in with the rest of the unit... now onto the last guy then i can start with last details and then paint!



and, just because i can:

ah sweet pea, i cant wait to see you :)

progress

well here's another marine almost done - just waiting for the brown stuff (stop it...) to dry on his left hand before adding the fingers; need to hollow out the barrel on the plasma gun, and am waiting for a pointy terminator hand to arrive to add to his left arm. im rather pleased with the way the squad is shaping up, though am thinking that the proportinately the torsos turned out slightly large for the legs; i think this might have somethin to do with the fact that ive not enlarged the legs as much as i used to on the world eaters (no spacer on the shin and no extra Gs added to bulk out the shin), though i do like the overall shape and bulkiness of the models.

ive tried to add a lot of equipment to the models - pouches, grenades, etc as ive always liked those extras on the sprues though found theyre too large for the normal models, especially if you want to add more than one to each model. i do intend to add more purity seals and possibly tabards to some of the models, though will wait until ive finished the 5-man squad to see what they look like together before doing that (also, ill be able to see the worse GS work and find a way to cover any glaringly bad bits with stuff :p)

im about halfway through the standard bearer, have started the legs on the 4th model and am waiting for parts to arrive to start the 5th.


also, heres a pic of the chest eagle before being applied to the model:

and a pic of the base chest (taken for the assault marine sprue) with the eagle attached, awaiting GS:

and now time for something completely different...

well, not quite.

Its still a marine, but a slightly different scale to the last ones. This is the first of a planned 5-man Howling Griffons squad; knightly and covered in various equipment and stuff. I've always loved their colour scheme and thought that the yellow/red quartered scheme was reminiscent of brettonians and so i always imagined them as a knightly chapter. further research (particularly Imperial Armour 9) revealed that they were actually a  very busy fleet-based chapter which valued nobility, honour and knightly virtues who had well-equipped armouries; perfect!

the models im making are smaller than my previous so-called artscale marine army (the world eaters, for anyone who remembers/knows) though larger than the terminators that featured in a previous post. so slightly more sensible :p

The legs are a normal terminator legs with a 1mm plasticard spacer added to the top of the thigh and GS used to fill in the armour struts on the legs, add detail to the top of the greave and replace the feet after the original plastic ones were hollowed out so i could achieve a pose I was happy with. the belt was widened with GS, also. The body is made from GS with the addition of an imperial eagle from a normal tactical marine added to a blob of GS around which the cuirass was sculpted. The arms are normal terminator arms with the piping removed and replaced with lead tubing of various sizes; while the shoulder pads are a cast of some masters I made a while back for another truescale marine army. various accesories from dark angel, black templar and scout kits were used around the model.

I intend to paint them pretty damaged as though theyre in the middle of a campaign, with lots of dust on their legs and chips and worn areas. Models will have individual heraldry (in the form of paint and, once the parts i need arrive, shoulder shields, in the fashion of grey-knights.

Other models will include a banner bearer, a flamer dude (based on the below model, from my truescale world eater army), and another 2 guys i havent decided yet.

Finally, pics!

well the converting-work is mostly done on the terminators. they've been lying in storage for close to a year, assembled but lacking GS. as theyre the easiest job to get started i decided to start with them, to get me back into the groove, so to speak. all they needed was a spot of gap-filling, GSing on the greaves and (yest to be completed) GS work on their feet and, in the case of one of the termies, a left hand, as well as some work integrating the skull-eagle onto the storm-shields.

here's a group-shot:

4th guy from the left still needs a left hand, and quite  a few feet need some GS work

im actually really pleased with the poses and weapons on these guys, especially the flanking guys on the left and right. the spear and angel are two common chapter emblems, which will be depicted in various guises on their banners and personal heraldry. once the GK termies have been released ill probably use some shoulder shields to add to these guys, to increase individuality with personal heraldry.

onto the individual pics:

i love the commander model, with the servo-skulls and parchments. im hoping to be able to do some free-hand on the armour once he's painted.

thinking of which, ill be painting these guys a veined bone colour with some dark green detail (a reverse of the normal marines - which ill try post pics of soon.