Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Aliens vs. Terminators



hey all,

things are hot and heavy at the warforge the past couple of weeks... 4 of us are going up to the Battle for Salvation GT in NY on October 7,8,9th. We are fast at work, assembling, painting.. and.. oh yeah.. MORE painting.

just giving you guys a quick sneak at what i'm rolling with, another one of my terminator conversions..

this one is just a simple counts-as thunder hammer storm shield terminator, but I wanted to give it a tyranids appeal....

if you've seen the first aliens vs. predator movie, you might recognize an inspiration.

anyways, we were joking at the club one day, wouldn't it be cool if you modeled your HQ to have parts of a tyranid on their armor... the next club day.. i showed up with this guy...



Monday, September 19, 2011

Dark Angels Rhino Stenciling



Brother C here with another army work in progress update.

Today I wanted to talk about transferring an insignia onto your rhino chassis. Note that this technique is really just for those hard to draw symbols that make drawing your own a pain in the butt.
This is not an artists' article about how to paint gorgeous frescos on your models. This tutorial simply is what it is, getting a single colored simple symbol on your vehicles.

Step 1 is to find your symbol. Either scan your codex page or poke around on the internet until you find one you like. I chose the Disciples of Caliban logo since I am using their paint scheme and fluff for my Dark Angels. Very complicated curves and spacing for the lion and this technique seemed the most practical to use for this application.

Step 2 is to do a test print, so you can get your scaling down properly. Print out a few copies each at a slightly different scale (size) and see which one will be the most appropriate for the result you are trying to achieve. I wanted my whole symbol to fit on the top of my rhino body to match similar paint jobs in my army. It took my quite a few to get it just right.



Step 3 is to carefully cut out the symbol and leave the rest of the paper intact to use as a guide for your stencil. You MUST MUST use an Xacto blade for this and it MUST MUST be a NEW blade. Don't use that old crusty blade you've been using for your conversions, get a fresh new one and be sure to take your time on this part.



Step 4 is to place the stencil where you need it on the model, feel free to use masking tape to tape it in place if it won't stay where you want for tracing.



Step 5 is to trace the outline of the symbol using a metallic pen. You can pick these up at Wal-Mart real cheap. These are great because one, I can write on black paint with these, and two if you make a mistake it is very easy to rub off and start again. If you aren't tracing on black, you could probably use any type of cheap felt tip marker and it'll work just fine. Remove the stencil and study your placement. Does this work with what your goals were? Do you need to reposition? Simply wipe off the pen, reposition and retrace.



Step 6 is to fill it in with paint. I had to use 2 coats to get the consistency I was looking for.
Step 7 is touchup.
Pretty simple really, just know that you can't rush the cutting out of the pattern, or the tracing. And BE CREATIVE with this. Use these patterns as guides and feel free to make your own changes once you go in and paint.
Note that this same technique can be used to 'layout' your freehand as well. Just simple paint as you want when you get to that part.



What do you guys think? Any tips you have found when trying similar things? Is there a step I missed? How would you have down this if you wanted to use an airgun instead? Does the technique change if you wanted to apply this to an already painted model, or one that just has been primed?

Friday, September 16, 2011

Sanguinary Guard Done!


Hey All! Long time no update! I just wanted to share some progress on my Sanguinary Guard Unit! They are complete! These guys took me about 2 weeks but it wasn't solid work I was just knocking them out whenever I had the time to sit down. I think they came out pretty nicely :)


I am still trying to decide how I want to finish off their bases, and the bases of the whole army for that matter. I am probably going to go with a red sand/dirt color to represent Baal on them but we shall see. I figure that can wait till last for the army.


Next is working on painting up Assault Squad Fabian, my razorback assault squad. I should have them done this week. I am using the Army Painter spray and dip method on them, so I will post up a nice review on that when I get around to it!


Let me know what you think so far!

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Custom Terminator Apothecary



Brother C here,

Another addition to my DA force is my Terminator Apothecary.

This guy has a reputation, he has made many an opponent cry as he basically makes my terminator command squad immortal, including Belial (Brother-Captain Adso in my force). I didn't like the general apothecary parts that come with a typical space marine command squad. They just don't have the same scale as a terminator. soo.. I took it upon myself to custom make my apothecary with more scale to a terminator.



As you can see here I've used quite a bit of pieces from my bitz box to make this model. The first thin you will notice are the shoulder pads. these are custom made from Captain Crunch cereal boxes and painted to resemble a pre-heresy version of the terminator shoulder pad. I didn't try to make these perfect, I wanted them to appears a bit worn and rough, again to give the feeling of crawling out of a jungle.



I used a chaos rhino spot light for the searchlight on the apothecary, it gives a very nice scale to the model and really resembles what a spotter might need in a jungle setting.



There is a small light from a predator sponson and a mire of bitz from a hunter killer missle are in the rear to resemble some of the narcium parts that an apothecary might have. i have the Assault on Black Reach shoulder pads under the custom made pre-heresay ones to give it a little white accents to also give homage back to its apothecary nature.

more works in progress to come....

Followers