tisdag 30 december 2014

Hell Lord WIP


To day I finished the build of the Hell Lord. It came about quite abruptly. I was working along with the green stuff and suddenly I could not think a any place on the model where more green stuff was needed, so I concluded that it was done. Sure, I might have added some more detail, but it was not sure that it would improve the model.  So I laid al the pieces out and cleaned them up for paint. Once I got them sprayed I just had to start with the paint. I choose the legs and the armour plates so see how it would turn out. These are some of the parts that I have put most conversion work into so if they do not turn out well, the rest of the model will not look good. There is still some touch ups to do but once mocked up the legs look god and when put next to each other like they will be on the model they really look good so I am happy.







lördag 27 december 2014

Hell Lord WIP





So, Christmas is at an end and soon also this year will see its final day. But before that I happens would like to get some more build time into the Hell Lord. We had family visiting over Christmas so the amount of hobby time has been close to zero, but now I will have some days free so I will try to get as much done to the Hell Lord as I can. It does however take time as there is quite a lot of green stuffing to do and as I keep putting my fingers on areas I have already worked on I have to stick to one or two areas at a time, which makes the process slow. Today I got some work in on the shield. As this is originally the plough blade of the Lord of skulls, the back side is not really detailed so I had to add some structure to the otherwise flat areas. I will go over these with greens stuff to close the gaps and make it smoother. I will probably also add some rivets. I also built the brackets that will hold the shield to the arm.






I am also starting to place the arms that will hold the wings from the Hell Drake. I have to fit them in between the back shield, back of the Hell drake, and the Lord of skull torso with the shoulder guards. This is not as easy as I thought it would be. The arms has to armour pieces that make them much bulkier than when I tried them with just the arms. So I had trim away some pistons on the arms to get them into the sockets and still have the direction I need to make the wings point in the right direction. I also had to take away part of the should guard ledge on the back side.



It is slowly coming together and I have to pace myself not to think it is done before it is done. It is always to easy to lose some details at the end just because it feels ready and it would be a shame if I made that mistake with this model as I have already spent quite some time to let it mature. But I am pleased with how it is shaping up,


fredag 19 december 2014

Hell Lord restart


It is Christmas time. Which means I do have some hobby time. I thought that I would try to finish the Hell Lord build and perhaps even start painting during the holidays. This build is something I started a way back, almost a year ago, mostly because I had this burning need to try to mix the Lord of skulls with a Hell drake and see if it was possible to make it look better than the original model. I am not to fond of the Lord of skulls in it original shape, especially not with the tanks and the back end of things. I have seen some people mixing the Lord of skulls with the Imperial knight kit and swapping the torsos between the two undercarriages. All in all I think that is an improvement to the Lord of Skulls but the Knight legs barely make it with the Knight kit, they are just to static. Instead I went with defiler legs, build from the front claws of the kit. This meant that I would need to make quite a lot of custom bits and that is about where the project stalled out. I kind of knew what the over all look of the model would be like but not the details. So I tried some variants of armor to the legs but could not find a style I was happy with and the project ground to a halt. But lately I have been sneaking some time into it just to feel it out and now I have found an aesthetic that I like and the details are coming together so I am hopping to ride the wave and hopefully finish it with out compromising the quality of the build just to get it done. Some things like my Green stuff modeling will be what it is as I have no hope of improving enough in time to actually make the GS details as good as I would like. But if I don't try I will not get better.

I am currently working on four different parts of the build, the legs, the shield, the axe and the flight pack. All of them are a mix of GW parts, plasticard and GS. I wanted the model to be striding across the battle filed towards the enemy so I decided to place the legs in a walking pose. I find the "normal" walking poses for GWs two legged constructions to be a bit clumsy. They tend to be walking with the legs far apart, pointing outward, like a toddler, swaying from side to side to move the feet. A more realistic walking style is where each foot is placed in front of the other as you are walking. This is something that I also did for Unbearable Desire, one of my war hound (which caused me some grief to to weight issues). So to get a feeling of motion I placed the feet in line, angled the legs a bit to get them under the centre of gravity. Next up was to cover the legs in plating, I have tried three different sets I think. In the end I settled for the simplest design with not to many curves, sections edges etc. They are inspired of the layered armour seen on the torso of the Lord of skulls. To give them some interesting details I added the alternative horns from the kit. I split the horns in two and folded them out so that I got two pieces forming a face on the thigh plate. Now I just need to adapt the mounting plates to get them to sit right on the legs.

Instead of the "small" one bladed cleaver like axe I thought it would look better if he carried a large, long hafted double bladed axe that he could sweep around him with, reaching the smaller models at his feet. The Lord of skulls has very stubby arms. I also wanted to use the front shield/plough from the Lord of skulls kit so I decided to make a shield for his left arm. I have seen it used as a shield before but the it was trimmed down to a smaller shield. I wanted to go the other way, making it to more like a large full body shield, so I added a lower part to make it longer. Off course I had to add something to make it interesting so I worked with the features already on the original part to create a leering face on the shield. Sadly the skull parts worked into the kit is of such high quality I could not hope to reproduce them so I made what I could and did some press moulding of a skull border on the shield. It turned out rather awkward but I do not think a second try will make it better so I will leave it as it is for now.

Lastly we have the flight pack. This is really the only part so far that comes from the Hell Drake. It consists of the back part of the main body of the Hell Drake. Instead of the neck I added one of the front ends from the Lord of skull guns. It will act as air intake to the pack. I then had to sculpt a new underside to the piece that would fit to the back of the Lord of skulls torso. I opted to make some cabling to cover voids, placticards and joints. In the end I do not think much of this will be clearly visible but it will make a nice back drop. In the end I will attach the Hell drake front arms with the wings sticking up above the shoulders of the Hell Lord torso. I am also thinking about adding a smaller set of secondary wings to the back of the backpack, but I have not decided on that. It might just look forced, like I have to use as much of the kit as possible, so I will see what I will do with it.

Even if I am not there yet I am starting to see the end of this build and I am looking forward to start the painting it. It will one big mini.

onsdag 10 december 2014

Last of the Grey Knights

I finished the last of the grey knights today. The banner turned out quite differently to what I had imagined but I think it works. Otherwise there is really not muck to say about the model. The sword/flamer arm still looks a bit odd, but that was a carry over piece from the plasma gun guy. I happy with the grey metallics, it is not to shiny.
I am still to tiered to do any serious work on any of the big projects. I am trying to get something done to the Hell Lord and I am dreaming of having time and energy enough to do something to Opus. Hope fully the holiday season will offer some rest. At least I should try to finish the last of the Myrmidon Walkers.


måndag 1 december 2014

Camera test


Normally I take my blog picture with a Canon  IXUS 12015 as it is small and quick to use. But we also have a borrowed Canon EOS 400 D so I thought that I would test this and see what it would do. As I had my Titans out of the cabinet the other day I tried to take some pics. This image is a cut out from one of them. This is taken at night, without flash, using a tripod and only normal indoor roof lights.