Mordheim: Possessed Magister WiP 2 and Brethren WiP

Evening Readers, tis update time again

And as last time this update is focussed on my fledgling possessed warband for Mordheim :) , first up we have some more work on the Magister herself:

Im very pleased with her so far particularily her face which I got to a point I was happy with on my first attempt, normally I end up sculpting faces 3 of 4 times as I'm never happy with them :(

Her hair does need improving as does the fabric covering her boobs, for her arms I'm thinking of cheating and using vampire count skeleton warrior arms as the basis and then simply sculpting the flesh over the top.


In other Mordheim news my Empire Archers kit turned up yesterday(great kit by the way) and of cours eI had to start plotting the brethren so knocked up a quick and rough concept sketch:

this morning I took the ideas from the concept sketch and set about making a test model, her he is so far:

I'm pleased with how he is shaping up, the leather armour needs more studs of course and I will then file them down slightly once they have cured.

The mask is to have a bit of a theme of slaanesh as perfection, I looked at the helmets of the sanguinary guard for inspiration. The thin strands of GS will have some beads and gems on hanging from his belt, I thing material wealth like gems and such works well with slaanesh, could represent greed or something.

before I go welcome to new follower IzeColt :)

as ever feel free to let me kno wwhat you think guys :D

Mordheim: Possessed Magister WiP

Evening readers time for another update.


and whats this I've got another project on the go............I'm getting predictable I know :P

This time the project is Mordheim a game that I've had Foot_of _adhesive_tape nagging me to get into for a fair while now, but it is not him who finally pushed me over the edge no it is that sarcastic git known only as Rictus who is to blame for this after a MSN conversation the other day.

After being split between Undead, Beastmen and Cult of the Possessed I finally decided to go with the latter more specifically a Slaaneshii themed cult.

Why Slaanesh? I hear you cry, well of all the chaos powers it is the only one I have never really modelled anything for, dabbled with the others but I usually stick to Undivided. Now I'm drawing some inspiration from the Dragon age games namely from the desire demons and blood mages for the theme of the cult, specifically how in Dragon age each of those can control and influence people.

Theme wise the magister is a Woman who has seduced her way up the social ladder with a little help from slaanesh, I know this might be the stereotypical sort of slaanesh theme but I like it. Other themes I shall explore are gluttony which will most likely take the form of a rather chunky mutant as well as perfection which I am unsure of how to do with the warriors so far.

right enough rambling I'm sure you will want to see the WiP pics of the magister:

She is based on the legs of a flagellent which I have heavily cut and filed down to make them more slender, the torso and the start of the head are entirely scratch sculpted. Here is the concept sketch I knocked up whilst the ideas were fresh in my head the other night:

as you can see I'm going for the Slaanesh exposed skin look though keeping away from exposed boobies, this will give me space to do some tattoos. Mutation wise she will have some small horns on the left hand side of her head and i might even mix in some tentacle with the hair much like how the older metal daemonettes had.

The rest of the warband will be based around the empire archers set all be it heavily converted, the idea of this project is to further improve my sculpting skills and to try and create something unique. The fact that its a pretty damn cheap game to get into also helped :P

I shall be setting up a page on the blog dedicated to this project, an idea shamelessly stolen from Mr Feral. There I shall put down rough ideas, sketches and even the warband list :)

Also Welcome to new followers Stillfrosty Conversions and Now Undivided, thanks for the support guys :)

well thats it for now as ever any comments or suggestions are more than welcome

Dark Eldar Archon

Evening readers its again that time where I ramble on about hobby related things :P

First up I have been nominated for another of the "Stylish blogger" awards this time by Rictus over on Recalcitrant Daze So thank you sir :) Now Rictus has described me as having Modellers ADD worse than he does and he is likely right (just don't let him know that) as I have already swapped from messing with red corsairs to working on some Dark Eldar again haha.

Don't worry its not the end of the corsairs, theres actually a WiP one in this very update :) but first off here is the finished Archon:

Taken a fair while to finish this guy(had him since January :( ) but my interest comes and goes in armies so much that I normally don't get much done before I'm messing with something else. I aimed to give the skeleton on his base a bit of a burnt look as if it had just had its flesh vapourised by the husk blade. The latest DE models especially the scourges have caused my sudden interest in DE as to how long it will last well whos knows......

next up is a WiP Red Corsair:

He still needs a fair bit more work doing to him but I figured I'd throw him up to show some progress.

I have hit a bit of a brick wall with the corsairs, namely GWs latest price rises that will hit at the end of the month. Now I don't buy that much anymore most my projects use 2nd hand models or simply stripping old armies that I collected in cheaper times these Corsairs for example are based around the marines I got when I first started this hobby about 9 years ago.

However there are somethings I would like to buy for the corsairs such as a space wolf squad and some empire militia for the human pirate conversions but I don't know if I really want to support GWs policy of these constant increases. I guess I will have to make my mind up this week so I could order them before the increases hit.

On a lighter note seen as I have been nomiated for the blogger award again, I thought I would put up some more links to things I find inspiring:

Diary of a Workbench by Georc : A good few years back now(2005/6 I think) when I first got back into the hobby I used to go on a Dark Elf forum called Druchii.net, Georc was a member there and was the person who inspired me to first start sculpting as his character conversions were brilliant. He has further improved both his painting and sculpting work since then and I still find his stuff a huge inspiration. He also has a blog but doesn't seem to use it.

Garret Art lair: Brilliant art blog that I first stumbled on via his page on deviantart, the pictures he has been doing recently of characters from the mass effect series are amazing, easily some of the best fan art I have ever seen.

I shall leave it at just 2 this time or this post will get too big :P like I said before I shall try make this a semi regular feature :)

before I go theres a Hi to new followers: Rictus, Kiski, Marcin Ciszewicz and Danny Allen cheers for the support guys :)

Should have an update in a few days liekly to be some FoW but also possibly a test human pirate :)

Plotting Red Corsairs

Evening readers its quick update time.

Finally decided that I shall try and make a small Red Corsairs force. But instead of using the chaos marines codex I figured I would go for something a little special to make them different from my Word Bearers. So I have decided to use the Tyrants Legion list from the 1st FW Badab book.

I figured it would make a great corsair list because of the standard human units you can take, the Renegade Marauders unit in particular has captured my imagination. So to start with I am thinking of making this list:


HQ

Legion Centurion(aka Reaver Captain)

Elites

Renegade Marauders(mix of human and xenos pirates, likely kroot and the odd ork)

Troops

Legion cohort(Red Corsair squad)

Legion Auxilia(standard human pirates and mutants)



Think this will be a decent start, I rarely play so it doesn't bother me whether it is effective or not. It does however give a wealth of modelling and conversion options which is what has attracted me to it.

I shall start off by making the corsair squad first whilst I think up some ideas for the human pirates. So today I have started the first 2 marines for the squad as well as doing the last bits of GS work on the captain:

the torsos have had the plasticard spacers added to true-scale/up-scale them as well as the GS work started, the legs have been cut up ready for their spacers. I'm thinking of following the style of the captain with their armour, so very few Chaos specific touches but plenty of random trinkets dangling from their armour to keep with that piratey vibe.

they will largely be based on Imperial space marines, again to further deffirentiate them from my Word Bearers withtheir older style armour.

It shall be a long but hopefully rewarding project. And feel free to post up any ideas or suggestions too :)

In other news I have taken the plunge and joined the From The Warp bloggers group at last, been meaning to for a while but they weren't accepting new members. Looking forward to getting involved with the community.

Welcome also to new follower Blitzspear thanks for the support dude :)

Should have an update in a  few days with progress on these first 2 corsairs, as ever any suggestions are more than welcome

Red Corsair Reaver captain WiP 2

Evening readers, time for a quick update though a day later than I intended.

Been to the beach in Barmouth today decent day until a storm blew in, damn rain :P

Anywho here is another update on the red Corsair, he is pretty much finished conversion wise:

things left to do is to finish off the GS work on the out stretched hand (started life as a ghouls hand) as well as the one foot. I'm pleased with how the cutlass has turned out could have been a bit neater but it does the job :P

I'm considering making a squad of red corsairs to accompany him, what do you guys think? worth it or shall I stick with him as a one off?

whilst talking about Red Corsairs I'm currently reading "Blood Reaver" the latest Night Lords novel by Aaron Dembski-bowden. Great read so far and gives some nice background to the Red Corsairs which has sold GWs focus on renegades to me a bit more. Huron from the descriptions is 2nd in power and influence only to Abaddon himself which I found pretty cool.

Also welcome to new followers Red, travis yocum and El Diablo cheers for the support guys :)

Well thats it for this update, as ever let me know what you think.

WiP Red Corsair Reaver Captain

Afternoon readers, its again time for one of my irregular updates :P

Interest in modelling is still very low, between sketching, Dragon age 2 and going out I have little time for it and not really the interest. However all is not lost, I was checking for an update in Dan the Daemons log and found this guy.
As normal his models have had the effect of inspiring me so I set about building a random chaos marine out of various left over bits I had about.

Settled on doing a Red Corsair reaver captain, as its a change from Word Bearers and gives me a chance to play around with some pirate themes. So here he is so far still very WIP:

Gave him a flint lock looking pistol from the kroot sprue, works well with the pirate theme and to justify it I can say its an older pattern breach loaded pistol that fires man stopper rounds or something like that. I still need to make him a cutlass shaped power sword and add some extra details as well as generally tidying him up.

The string of beads/gems/eldar symbol on neck and hanging with the loin cloth as well as the medallion on a chain on his waist were the result as Mr Feral insisting the I should have some on a pirate themed model. The string on the loin cloth will get some GS beads added to it.

The helmet is from the chaos warrior sprue and still need some 40k touches adding to it.

I think they work quite well and show the sort of trinkets he has acquired plus they are a nice change to severed heads and skulls :)


In other hobby news I will no longer be getting any heavy gear models after seeing the price of them on wayland games, way to expensive for me :(

Also welcome to new followers Karitas and Colonel Shofer, thanks for the support guys

Might have another update in a few days time, so as ever let me know what you think :)

Tablet sketch and blog award

Well its come to that time again, where I post up something vaguely constructive :P

This time its another sketch, been busy over the past 2 weeks so have done very little painting or modelling at all. How ever all is not lost I've been trying to get my head around GIMP and finally found out how to create custom brushes as well as how to add ones other people have made. So after a quick browse through deviantart I found a number of brushes that I thought would be useful.

Decided to sketch Lady again as shes simple to draw and seen as its just something to test these brushes on I figured there would be no point trying to do something new and put a lot of effort into it.

So here it is:

like I said its rough I didn't bother finishing off the arms and guns but the torso and head are where I have used the brushes.

The main brush is a Tone one, these are what manga artists use for shading basically it is just a fine set of dots that act as shadow. You add these and then where the hightlights are you erase them, best example of this is her skin. On the jeacket I have used multiple layers of the tone to build up some darker shadows.

Another brush set I found on Deviantart is one for doing hair. Something that I find very difficult to draw so downloading them was a no brainer, I sketched the hair straight on in black and then swapped to white and lightly went over some areas to add the highlights. Of courseit looks quite crude now but I hope to get to grips with them over time :)

Here are the brushes that I downloaded:

Screentones- 28 Brushes - GIMP by ShiroiSinCell

Gimp Furr Brushes by Gymnart


Next up it appears that I have been nomiated for one of these hobby award thingys that seem to be popping up everywhere. Thank you to that scoudrel known only as Mister Feral for nominating my blog,

Now I don't normally buy into these chain letter type things, so instead of telling you 7 things about myself(which would likely bore you) I will merely put up a few links to some blogs/sites/logs/artists that I find inspiring:


Night Lords 18th Battle Company project log by Dan the Daemon

This is a hugely inspiring log that I stumbled upon when browsing bolter and chainsword last year, I pinched and slightly modified his method for truescaling marines and used it on my Word Bearers. I love the realism of his marines they all carry a  decent amount of equipment and all look unique with different trophies, armour types, helmets etc. For anyone doing chaos or even loyalist marines this is a recommended read :)


Reiq on DeviantArt

Now some of his artwork might not be to everyones tastes I dont like some of it either(giant boobs :\), but I find his livestream and youtube videos quite interesting to watch mainly to see his sketching process, as he uses next to no construction lines at all which is very hard to do. Hobby related he designed one of the characters for the soda pop miniatures line.

Genzoman on DeviantArt

I stumbled upon this gallery a few years back and have followed it since then, I love his drawing style sort of manga/anime mixed with a more serious style. Some of his takes on myths and gods are particularily good. Even considering buying his art book.

AWOLs log on Ammobunker

AWOL is a friend of mine who I first met on the Ammobunker. Hes always working on a variety of projects from 40k to FoW to historicals he paints up some great stuff and his scratch builds in particular are always awesome he even kindly sent me a 2 part mold for a autogun he scratched before :)

Blood on the streets

I've been unlucky enough to know the foul kiwi known only as Foot for a few years now, as well as constantly nagging me to paint/ draw stuff or buy games he occasionally finds the time to paint something ;). His latest projects are zombie apocalpse and Malifaux stuff which are coming on nicely. I would recommend looking at his mordheim and bloodpact forces as they are both very inspiring.

Feralique

I've been talking to Mr Feral for a couple of years now being exposed to both his and Foots madness has probably left me mentally scarred :P Hes constantly working on a variety of projects from 40k to pirates to EDEN. Though he is easily distracted when he does finally finish something it is normally great. I'm finding is latest project of making a squad of zoicans from the Gaunts Ghosts books very interesting.

Well theres a few inspiring links, might make this a semi regular thing to explain some things that inspire me :)



Well thats it for now quite a block of text there :P , might be some FoW models ready to post up in a few days time along with a few extra sketches :)

as ever let me know what you think.