Vulpa Daemonica Reaver

Long time, no updates. I've started using Reddit more to post day-to-day status updates and such. It's just so much easier to take a quick picture and share it over there. Since the last update, I painted a bunch of marines, a few tanks, assembled some more Titanicus terrain and titans etc.

But here's something special. The beginnings of my new Legio, Vulpa Daemonica! Inspired by Titandeath, this is a Khornate legio of possessed Titans.

This model ended up being a bit too brown for what I was going for; I think I'll paint the subsequent titans with a bit more red, and brighter perhaps.

Onto the second one. Thanks for looking!

Gundam Zaku Head

I took a course on modding and weathering models until they look realistic, aged and weathered. It was a fun premise - get a toy and make it look like a piece of art. The course was taught by Seth, an amazing miniature artist.

Here's the original model:

I did a a few things I've never done before, and a few others I've never done nearly as successfully. I added addinional panel lines to the model, underpainted the panel lines in black on top of white, then glazed the model into taking shape. Weathering was done before and after the glaze, to show several layers of age.

But more than anything, it was just fun to take a model I didn't care about and go ham.

I'll post more of my pictures at the bottom of the post, but here are a few pics from other attendees of the course. It looks like I don't have closeups from all the pieces! I'm sorry to those that I've missed, I fully expected to have taken a pic of each piece. Luckily there are more pics that Seth uploaded at https://www.instagram.com/p/B7hziDsnpE5.

And finally here's mine. Do note that I've spent a few hours touching up some mistakes after the course, and that I took these pictures with a much better camera. Thanks for looking!

Primaris Crusaders Done!

Not much to say here; I used Interceptor bodies with Reiver arms and Assault Marine chainswords I bulk-ordered off Ebay. I'll be calling them Crusaders, but count them as Reivers.

I kept the Reiver one shoulderpad theme going in order to make room for some actual melee Primaries marines that may come in the future.

Thanks for looking!

Converting/Fixing the Primaris Repulsor Executioner

Like with the normal Primaris Repulsor, I wanted to try improving on the base model. The main Executioner heavy cannon looks great, but I find the asymmetry offputting (and I'm not the only one); and besides, the twin barrels on a large tank was a great look ever since the Mastodon tank from the old Command and Conquer games.

So I got one and modeled this bit:

Got it printed from Shapeways (you can too; I do earn a commission worth a cup of coffee if you do), and put it on the model.

Mouting the cannon was pretty difficult. I couldn't find a good way to model a latching mechanism that would work nice out of the box; the front plate of the turret needs to be cut off and made flat no matter what I did. So in the and, I gave up; I cut off the front plate of the turret, used sprues to rebuild it flat, milliput to fill out all gaps. Here's what that looked like in the end:

Then I spent a lot of time sanding it smooth:

The turret just happened to slot in perfectly after that.

As with the original Repulsor conversion, I moved the turret weapon to the chassis in place of the heavy bolters, and moved the bolters to a pair of sponsons.

Later I also decided to push the turret backwards a bit. It makes the tank look much better in person, resembling my Fellblade and Deimos Predators a bit. I had to sand off a chunk of the upper plate to make this work, and countersink the icarus stubber lower into the chassis. It also doesn't turn no more. I'm ok with that.

Other than that, it's the same conversion as before. I used the same Predator sponsons as on the original model, except these aren't magnetized since one can't mount lascannons on an Executioner for whatever reason.

Thanks for looking!

Converted Helbrecht

To give the main man the justice he deserves, I redid this once entirely.

Normal Helbrecht

The original model is very short, and being one chunk of finecast doesn't make it easy to modify.

Instead, I opted to build him using the Dark Apostle as a base:

Dark Apostle

There's a lot of Chaos that needed to be removed from the mini, but the level of intensity is about as high as it should be for Helbrecht.

I started by removing all Chaos. Each octed is stripped into a circle, the skulls and the dude's head have had their horns shaved off, and all trim was shaved/resculpted into clean lines. After that, I decided to give him some additional height by extending his legs. Here's a WIP at that stage:

I used the original Helbrecht backpack and sword on this one. The Chaos backpack is amazing and could be de-Chaos'd significantly, however, the general shape of those spheres hanging way to the side is really difficult to fix.

I also patched the ripped part of the cloak with putty and sanded it smooth.

The hand that's holding the lantern by the chain was a lot of work. It's a SM knife holding hand with the knife shaved off, plus the chain wrapped around the fists of one of Dark Apostle's retinue, and some more chain from the same kit, and finally a regular lantern from the bits box.

Then I created a little tabard for additional wind effect, attached a meltagun to a tiny chain, and voila. The circlet was a pain to make. I literally sculpted it very carefully, waited for it to dry, and shaved it into straight lines. More or less. It's not perfect but I'm hoping to be able to mask it with paint. I have no idea how sculptors make stuff like this.

And voila: