…for my FoW Fallschirmjager force. Apparently, Battlefront had a different idea:
Supplies inbound!
The beleaguered Firebase Xenite has been short on supplies now for weeks. Finally under the onslaught of the chaos giant project, supplies ran out. The greenstuff stores are little more than yellow, and blue residue left in the putty storage zone. Sculpting tools lay cold, still and unused. Just as things were looking darkest, there was the faint drone of engines in the sky…
I have some new greenstuff, and other sculpting supplies coming in the mail! Progress can continue! My greenstuff that I had been using was getting a bit old, and stiff. I will probably blow through this next batch much faster considering the size of some of the projects I have coming down the pipeline.
In addition to some sculpting supplies, I ordered some fantastic Freebooter minis! I am a big fan of Werner Klocke’s work, and I am excited to work on these minis. Some will be conversions for the Slannesh army, others I would just like to paint. Yes Felix… I said paint.
Army of Slannesh Update – Marauders, Giant, and Scorcerer WIP
While its been a little bit since I posted images of some of my work on this army, I have been crunching away at it. Most of my time has been working on a way to make my Slanneshi Chaos warriors, and the big, creepy giant. I have also been working on getting my 10 marauder horsemen together. Fianally I found a use for a random miniature that I picked up from Crocodile games of a Nehekuru Wizard. He has become a chaos sorcerer… fitting.
For these guys I stuck closer to the kit than most things in this army, with the exception of the Chaos Hounds. I think that GW has done better with these than with their Chaos Marauders on foot, which look like out of proportion vikings on steroids. These models smack of that a little, but they pass in my opinion. I still wanted them to look more like they meshed with the theme of my army, and needed some de-skulling (those of you familiar with GW models know what I am talking about).
The horse models that accompany these guys are really nice. I did very little modification on them, and am really looking forward to painting them. The thing that makes them work is that they really look like actual horses as compared to many of the equine models made by GW in the past.
The Slannesh marked Giant is going to be a centerpiece in my army. I had a very cool concept in mind for this guy, and how he was going to fit in with the style of the rest of the army. These pictures are still pretty early in the process with this model. There are still large parts of his body to build out, and a lot of armor plates.
The first step I took with this model was to change up his pose some. I did this for two reasons. While I really like the plastic giant kit, I decided that I wanted his pose to be different than that of the standard kit. When you see several of these at a tournament they start to look similar, simply because they have the same basic pose. Changing mine up also allowed me to add some details, and to give him a more aggressive stance.
The hands replaced by gruesome looking weapons is a theme in this army. I think it captures the twisted nature of Slannesh, and it’s minions.
There are several things that I would have done differently with this model if I could go back in time. I believe that I rushed the initial armature of the model, and his pose suffered somewhat because of that. More recent sculpts have benefited from my taking more time with getting the pose to be accurate, and natural. This guy’s leg, and hip positions are a little off. I am pretty happy with the skin, and musculature so far however.
This guy is the first character for my army. I have a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head for the various heroes, sorcerers, and lords that will be part of this army eventually. I want the main characters to be focal points for the greater visual themes I am incorporating. This character will be more of a multi-role spellcaster. The bird feathers on his back, and head could help mark him as a Tzeentch caster for the times I want to branch out slightly from the Slanneshi nature of the rest of the army. I will probably paint him to be a bit more neutral, not only to make his allegiance less fixed, but also to help him stand out from the rest of the army.
Tool Tip: Dremel Stylus
Quite a while ago I posted a bit about how I acquired a Dremel Stylus for my modeling kit. I was pretty stoked about this device when I got it, but didn’t get a whole lot of chance to use it… until recently.
I have been using this thing a ton lately. The chaos giant for my WHFB army required a huge amount of drilling, grinding, and cutting to accomplish what was needed for the extensive conversion that I have planned. Some of my Flames of War tanks needed some modification on their resin hulls (Eeek! Grinding resin!! If you do this, do it outside, and wear a face mask. Resin particles are super evil for your lungs). The chaos knights plastic kit has way too much ‘heavy metal’ going on in detail-land for me, so I wanted to remove some of this efficiently. The Stylus took care of these jobs with no problem.
The types of things I have the Stylus doing are pretty light-weight. I recommend that you avoid this tool for heavy work, as normal dremels can burn out if you put them to hard metals, or even large amounts of woodwork (or so I have heard). I have taken it to the body of a large metal mini in the past with pretty good results.
The ergonomic shape of the stylus is where this thing wins hands down. I have had other grinders in the past, and they were fine for house-hold tasks, but for mini work, they were cumbersome enough that I often just wouldn’t bother using them. My only complaint about the Stylus is that the two bit holders that it comes with are too large for some smaller bits, such as pin-vise drill bits. Smaller ones may be available, but I haven’t poked around for them yet. The other gripe about the stylus that other people have, is the price tag. I got mine for a shade over $100 after shipping. Honestly, if you can afford it, the price is totally worth it. I should have asked Dremel for a freebie to write this review! Hmmm…
New article: Sculpting Fur
I just posted a new article on sculpting fur in the hobby article area. Check it out!
Mixed putty experiments…
I’ve been experimenting with mixing different types of two part putty to get different surfaces depending on what I was trying to accomplish. Pro sculptors in the miniature industry have been mixing greenstuff with the more rigid brownstuff for a while. What I have been trying out is mixing apoxie-sculpt with greenstuff. Rigidity in putty translates into a material that is easier to carve, and sand.
Recently I was creating some masks for my Chaos Marauder Cav models, and I started initially with greenstuff. I was running into some problems when I was trying to use a xacto knife to trim up, and do some carving on the putty. Greenstuff is pretty flexible once it is set up, and this was causing me some problems. When you are doing carving, you generally want a fair bit of resistance from the material you are carving. This allows you to control how much material you are taking off at any point. Less is more in this situation. Usually, taking off too much material is a bigger problem than too little. When I was growing up my father taught me to carve things out of wood. I learned quickly that while balsa wood was super easy to carve, I could get finer details from bass wood. The situation is similar with 2 part epoxy putty.
I have been using apoxie-sculpt a bunch to create the base for larger models for a while now. I have never been that thrilled with the stuff for finer scale, or the detail layer of my sculpting as its a bit too soft, and very, very sticky until it sets up some. I found that if I mix greenstuff and apoxie at a 3:1ish ratio that I get some very cool properties to work with…
- More rigid when set up which is good for carving
- Lighter color which makes seeing the detail that you are applying a lot easier. Greenstuff on its own is pretty dark, and can take a lot of moving around to see what is actually occurring on the surface of your sculpt.
- Workable consistency of Greenstuff. GS wins when it comes to general workable properties over other putty that I have tried. At this ratio, the workability is essentially the same as uncut GS.
I think that I will have to play with different mixes of putty based on what I need. If I am doing press mold casts, I figure that I will stick with uncut GS. The flexibility helps a lot with fixing set bits to models. Weapons, armor, or other situations where I need cleaner edges, or less organic shapes, I will start to add in apoxie-sculpt. I have yet to apply a dremel grinder to mixed putty. I figure it will work pretty well, but will have to do some tests.
More (and somewhat better) shots of the spawn progress
Tentacles!
I did a bit of work on the modified Chaos Spawn this week. Work life has kept me away from my modeling bench somewhat, but I was able to resolve the missing leg on this critter, as well as the feelers coming out of its face. I am pretty happy with the use of guitar wire for this. I will have to carry this over to some of the other monstrosities that I have planned.
I took a bit more care with these photos as well. I remembered to shoot in RAW mode, and took the time to play with their exposures in photoshop. What I need is better lights, and some kind of stands so that I can position them more easily.
In the front shot of the spawn you can see a very rough region under it’s chin where the sculpting is particularly unrefined. This is my next target with this thing. That, and some sort of hook/claw/feet for the ends of its legs as well will pretty much wrap up the modeling on this piece.
More Cultists & Chaos Spawn WIP
This is the latest progress on my Slanneshi army. The 1st group of cultists is almost done with its modeling, 2 spawn are almost there as well.
The champion has received a sword and a shield.
This is the full block of 20 cultists. The standard bearer is the next modeling work I need to do on this unit.
This is a conventional GW kit chaos spawn. See, I can have non-converted stuff in my army!
This spawn has a lot more custom work done to it, and some more to go.
Other units that are under way are a block of more dogs, Chaos Warriors, Mutated Chosen, and a Slanneshi Giant.
WHFB Podcast – heelanhammer.com
This podcast has been what I have been listening to at work lately. It has an excellent balance of game talk, tournament scene, and painting for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. If you are into hobby podcasts I recommend it. The forum on the site is excellent as well. Check it out!
Scenic Base Questions…
I have noticed lately that the scenic base article has gotten a ton of attention lately. This is fantastic, and I was thinking about adding a follow up article that covers some more advanced ideas. What I would like to do is to open this up, and to have people submit some questions that I will attempt to weave the answers to into the article. If you have some basing, or other sculpting questions, go ahead and comment them to this post or email them to me at ahschmidt *a*t* gmail *d*o*t* com!
