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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

Grey Knights update

 I usually do not go back to a model that did not turn out as I had hoped, instead I tend to build a new one and hope that it will be better the second time around. However, the Grey knights that I bought a while back was never meant to be a large number of models, I just got inspired when the Lord Inquisitor trailer came up. I made a plasma carrying guy with a flamer on the other hand and a short blade. It all looked better in my head than what the model turned out to be. So I decided , that since I don't have or plan top have more than this squad of Grey Knights I might as well fix it. So I removed the flamer and replaced it with a power fist. At the same time I assembled the last two remaining models, a sergeant and the banner man. The sergeant got painted together with the replacement arm, the banner man will be up next. I might by more boxes of grey knight for the parts in the future and as such might end up with more of these guys any way. We will see.

Some random stuff that has been going on.

So, here we are again. I have not been able to finish of any large models lately so this will just be a short update on some of the smaller things. Fist I assembled the last of the Khorne Blood crushers/marines on juggernauts. This one has a standard but is otherwise pretty much the same as the other two, I am not sure if I like how the contrast between the shield and the banner turned out, but for consistency with the rest of the squad I will leave it as is.
Then I also had a bit of a rescue mission. As I mentioned in a previous post I had noted that one of my War hound titans, Unbearable Perversion, which is in a dynamic walking pose had started to lean over more and more. When I built the titan I made sure that each leg could stand on its own and that when attached to the pelvic the plane for the upper body was horizontal. Once assembled it balanced well on it own. As it did balance by it self I did not mount it on a base, as I tried to keep the foot print as small as possible. However, quite a lot of the weight of the titan is resting on the front leg as it as both its feet in a row with the back foot of on its toes. As the model was standing on a glass surface the back for did not have any grip on the ground and any force transmitted through this leg meant that is wanted to slip backwards. This put even more weight on the front leg and the knee started to twist and bend as the top of the titan wanted to tip over. This part of the leg is also quite fragile as it only consist of a thin resin plate joining the upper and lower knee joints supported by the added piston assembly The front leg also started to come apart at the joint between the leg and the ball joint, joining the leg to the pelvis. So I had to pull the leg assembly apart, straighten the leg with a hair dryer, make a base to join the front and back leg, and reassemble it again. I am hoping that joining the feet at the ground will help with the forces a bit better as the back leg cant slide out from under the titan again. When I was making bases I decided to put bases on the other two titans as well for symmetry. They are so far un-decorated but I will get around to it eventually.

Lastly I present the sergeant for the Fallen Dark Angels jump infantry. I thought that the sergeant from the Dark Vengeance set look much better with the tabard rather then the traditional full robes of the Dark Angels so I decided to try to make my own version of this. As this aesthetic also carries over in the Death Wing set I decided to try to marry a chest piece from the Death Wing with the back peace of a normal power armor. I think the result is quite nice even though I had hoped for a better fit between the two pieces. All in all I think the Jump Infantry is looking the part with the black armor and their pre-heresy jump packs. Well that is all for now, I will keep shipping away at my stock of unpainted and un-built models and we will see what turns up here.

Update from away from home

Just a short update on the Khorne daemons I am working on when I am not home. The last Blood Crusher is mostly done so I will pack it up and bring it back home for assembly. The Drake Rider is now underway and I am almost done with the Drake body, one wing left. I am quite happy with how it is turning out. I almost forget that is assembled from parts of different models, just some small unevenness where different parts met, but over all I find the parts looking good together as the style is similar in their design. It is going faster then I though to paint it so it might be done soner than I though, well, I will have to find something else to paint.

Back mounted thermal cannon

Ever since GW released the Imperial Knight Kit I have been a bit upset about the lack of build options with the model. Most other kits nowadays have  multiple weapons set ups etc. The knight kit only has two weapon options. FW is cranking out some nice alternate builds but so far you cant buy the weapons separately so that is not an option at the moment. When building the Knight I have, I decided to build it with the rapid firing battle cannon on the arm and not to magnetizing it, as I have seen many others do. This left me with some spare parts and as I am thinking about a new Knight build I wanted to test if I could build a back/shoulder mounted Thermal cannon from the parts left over. This is just a quick build as it is more of a test than a sharp version. I painted it to match the knight I have and mounted it in the hole behind the driver compartment. It looks a bit bigger on the pictures than what it really is due to perspective but I think it looks nice. I know that it is not legal in game termes but as it is removable it is not a big deal. I am not really sure this Knight will have it mounted like this at all. It might get transferred to some other model later on. We will see...

Hell Drake Rider, WIP I

This is something that I have been working on on the side. As I have finished most of my Blood letters, Blood crushers etc at a way from home I decided that I needed a Boss to lead them. I couple of years ago I came across a Hell Drake build someone had done on the net, combining the Mauler Fiend with a Hell Drake kit. As I did not have a Complete Hell Drake kit lying around I decided to combine it with the Daemon prince instead and use what Hell drake parts I had for the build. In the end I think the Drake works. I am a bit out on the rider, I think I need to get medieval on his ass (bring out the file) to get him into a deeper seat, now he almost looks like he is flying. I still have one day to work on it before it goes to paint.

Myrmidon Wlaker II; done

I have finished my second Myrmidon Walker. This one is equipped with two icaros las-cannons, a battle cannon, twin linked reaper auto cannons and two shoulder mounted missile launchers. I think it gives a nice contrast to the first Myrmidon Walker which has the dual quad linked auto cannons instead on the las-cannon and the shoulder weapons. They still have the same silhouette but they are still different enough to give the pair some individuality. Now I just need to finish the build of the super heavy Myrmidon with the quad lances, I am looking forward to that one as it is the main reason I build the Myrmidon Walkers in the first place. Hope you like my take on the Myrmidons.