Slow and Purposeful - The Hyanom Reclamation

[Yodhrin]

So, it's been quite a while since I've actually done any hobby work, but like any addiction it never goes away, and I've relapsed I make no guarantees that this will be updated often, hence the title, but I'm hoping the new format will help keep me motivated. Rather than try and work towards a predefined goal, or an arbitrary number of points, I've decided to go Forgeworld-style and use a fluff-campaign as a backdrop which gives me an excuse to just buy/sculpt/paint(eventually) whatever takes my fancy; the Imperium's attempts to reclaim the Hyanom Cluster from a variety of nasties, gribblies, and gits. I intend, eventually, to have an actual playable force of Iron Hands and Adeptus Mechanicus at the Apocalypse level, but for now I'm deliberately putting that out of my mind.

So, to begin, the obligatory workspace pic(don't expect it to stay this tidy mind );



My first project isn't cool or fun, but it is alas necessary. Like any good packrat, despite not having put glue to plastic with any frequency in at least a couple of years, I still have every half-used sprue, every half-finished conversion, and even a few complete boxes, and so for now my job is to fit this;





into this;



Yaaaaaaaay...

Of course, I also couldn't prevent myself from making a few small acquisitions, so I'll leave you for now with a couple of new items I picked up, and some of my horrifying attempts at concept sketches as a clue to what they might turn into. TTFN

[Yodhrin]

Reserved for Contents listing.

[Yodhrin]

Reserved for favourite images.

[Tinners]

That big transport looks awesome

[Dudde]

Yes I agree with Tinners- the big transport looks great, what will you call it? Look forward to seeing more.

[Yodhrin]

It's how I've always pictured the Mechanicus' "Land Crawler" - I'm going to draw elements from the Crassus chiefly, but also the Baneblade and some hints of the MKIIB Land Raider(to show the STC's provenance). When you think about it, a lot of the kind of work a Magos Explorator gets up to wouldn't involve whole Skitarii Legios and massive bases, I see the Land Crawler as a combat-capable mobile base/laboratory that a Magos can take down with a couple of landers full of troops and some Tarantula sentries, and have a serviceable base of operations for their work. The Centaur serves as a general utility/transport vehicle, or if combat is an inevitability, the forward bay can be used to transport Praetorians. The wee crane and iris assemblage on the top is so the Magos can retrieve and analyse samples even in a hostile environment, by virtue of not having to drag it in the back door.

In game it will just be a regular Stormlord, but I'm hoping to fully magnetise the top of the model then detail the whole interior, but that's only ambition at this stage, and the project can't start at all until I get my access to the BWC-Archive yahoo group approved, which evidently takes a while.

[arakis10191]

I'm liking where this is going, I'm currently ditching all non guard stuff from my overly large collection and concentrating on stuff like this, very much looking forward to seeing more. your initial concept drawing looks great!

more

more

more

please

[Petay1985]

I think you have the makings of what promises to be a fantastic project. looking forward to watching this progress.

[Tinners]

While I love the concept, the Land Crawler has a model...It was a smaller tractor thingy, it had a model in Epic, and was the basis for the Brunnhilde and the Siegfried. This was replaced by the centaur when FW redid the Krieg.

Unless you are refrencing something else that is.

[Yodhrin]

While I love the concept, the Land Crawler has a model...It was a smaller tractor thingy, it had a model in Epic, and was the basis for the Brunnhilde and the Siegfried. This was replaced by the centaur when FW redid the Krieg.

Unless you are refrencing something else that is.

Oh, balls, I was under the impression the Land Crawler was a larger vehicle and/or Land Raider variant discovered by the eponymous magos, but now you make me think about it, that impression may well have come from the older Tempus Fugitives fandex :/ I'll have to come up with a new name I suppose, suggestions are welcome.

My first update, not a very exciting one, rather just to show that I'm progressing. This is what five hours of continual clipping gets you;



Annoyingly, I seem to have misplaced most of my Catachan sprues, which puts a bit of a dent in my Skitarii plans as I was relying on having lots of grotesquely-muscled arms on hand; I bought them back when you got twenty guardsmen in a box for about £15, so you can imagine what kind of expression graced my features when I went to the GW site and saw they're selling the same models at 10 for £18 If anyone needs a ludicrous number of Cadian heads or legs and fancies trading Catachan arms for them, give me a PM. Otherwise, I'll have to take a crack at sculpting them myself. However, there was one positive, I found a baggie full of AoBR Terminators that I traded for here on Warseer ages ago which, when combined with the leftovers from an old battleforce and the small bitz order I made last week, gives me almost enough components for two full squads of Artscale Marines. I'm tempted to do a character and combat-squad from each of my three favourite chapters; the Iron Hands, the Star Phantoms, and the Exorcists. Thankfully in that respect, inspiration abounds; Doghouse got me interested in the concept when he started his old "Gothic-pattern" conversions, and more recently I spend my time marveling at the work of Lamenter(masteroftheforge.com). More recently still, I was linked to the deviant-art account of Mikhail Savier, and I intend to use his fantastic studies of Marines and power armour as the main basis for my own models, I only hope I can do them justice.

Lastly, another mistake on my part; last April, I commissioned Studio Colrouphobia to do me a decent concept for my Skitarii, and I completely forgot to put it up in the OP.



Despite the fantastic models some people have made, I've never really been a fan of the Skitarii as just Guardsmen in red robes, particularly so since reading Titanicus. I really want to try and mix the Roman and Ancient Greek elements that are so prevalent in the nomenclature of the Mechanicus, and give them the slightly bestial edge of Titanicus' Legio Invicta Skitarii. Anywho, I'm off to finish a few chapters of Know No Fear and then sleep; after so much clippery today, I suspect my hand will try and claw my face if I try to carry on tonight

[Razerz]

I like that concept. I have also had in mind to use bare muscled arms for my Skitarii, and acquired a couple of Kroot arms to try it out. They are a bit too spindly, and slightly long, but with some bulking up and shortening, as well as meching/wiring up they should work well for me. Maybe that's worth looking into for you as well?
Are you going to use bare, hooded or helmeted heads?

[LokkoRex]

oh, i suspect this thread will become a future favourite of mine...

[Yodhrin]

I like that concept. I have also had in mind to use bare muscled arms for my Skitarii, and acquired a couple of Kroot arms to try it out. They are a bit too spindly, and slightly long, but with some bulking up and shortening, as well as meching/wiring up they should work well for me. Maybe that's worth looking into for you as well?
Are you going to use bare, hooded or helmeted heads?

I had considered Kroot arms, as well as Flagellant arms and Marauder arms, but it's a question of scale. I intend to have my "basic" humans around the same scale as the FW Cadian upgrades; not quite as petite as the Krieg or Elysians, but much moreso than GW's bizarro-scale. By contrast, I'd like all of my Mechanicus figures to have an edge of inhumanity to them, just not to the same extent as the Marines. By the time I shortened and bulked up Kroot or fantasy arms, I'd be as well just sculpting my own - it would take a wee bit longer, but I could cast them to save time in the long run. I was just hoping to use the slightly easier Artscale Marines to ease myself back into sculpting but hee haw.

As to the heads, I'm not sure. I quite like the idea of some bare, but mostly helmeted, the problem is coming up with a helmet that fits. I can't use the FW Titan Crew helmets, because FW nicked that design from Jes Goodwin's sketches of Imperial Navy crew from back in the 90's, and I intend to use it for my Armsmen; I tried a few concepts for a techno-barbarian take on various Roman and Greek helmets, but it always made them seem too Romanesque, they didn't look like Mechanicus anymore. I'll probably end up just going with bare heads with enough bionics that they could feasibly survive without a helmet in hostile environs.

[Yodhrin]

Ahoy hoy, I've actually got a wee bit done this weekend, my first four sets of Terminator legs are prepped and almost ready for greenstuffing, two more and I can begin work on my Iron Hands combat squad and Iron Father. Seeing as it's the fashion, I'll document each stage as best I can on one of the minis so anyone who wants to can have a shot themselves, I hesitate to call it a tutorial as I'm still reading those myself on this topic, heh, but I'll happily answer any questions anyone has about my(rather, Lamenters') method. So...

Stage 1 - Prep

First up, these are the tools required for this stage;



Clippers, small and medium blades, and poly cement. I've not found any one brand of poly cement to be superior to another, so pick any brand that has the precision applicator.
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First, carefully start snipping away with the clippers, your objective at this point is just to remove enough material to make getting in with the knives easier. In the picture, I've only done one of the hip panels, I then went on to do the same for the other, removed the belt, any knee details, then finally I shaved his backside(not as dodgy as it sounds ).
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These two shots show the end result, but having looked at them I think I'll have to go back and take some more off the outside part of the thigh; one of my main objectives for these resculpts is to stop them looking like they've cacked themselves, so I intend to bias my bulking out process towards the inner leg. I'll do some comparisons to the artwork I linked earlier to see if it's necessary.
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This is the final part of this stage; the addition of 0.5mm plasticard risers on the soles of the feet. In combination with the bulking out, and by raising the belt further up the old waist area, I'm pretty sure I can achieve the desired proportions without having to chop the legs apart.


On top of that, it appears my Forgeworld order arrived on Friday but, typically, the Parcelforce chappie didn't knock very hard. Luckily my neighbour was right outside and took them for me, but he's off for the weekend, so I have to wait until tomorrow night to get my hands on it. I've also got to drag my carcass up the town to pick up the metal epic Baneblade I ordered to the local GW store, which I will be messing about with for my Praetorians, and also to the local model shop to get some RTV silicone and resin.

TTFN.

[Razerz]

Just being curios, have there been any more progress on either the Skitarii or the Iron Hands? I'm anxious to see more.

[Yodhrin]

Just being curios, have there been any more progress on either the Skitarii or the Iron Hands? I'm anxious to see more.

There has, I'm about 30% done with the greenstuff work on the first set of five Termie legs, but I have been delayed by: procrastination, Tribes Ascend, watching the EvE fanfest videos, lazyness, and course work

I'm also debating whether I can make my job a LOT easier by using these first five sculpts to produce a personal-use mould of ball-and-socket bitz, but I'm questioning whether I can be bothered with the level of faff it will require. I was initially worried about legal issues, but by the time I'm done the Termie legs will essentially be nothing more than an armature and no original GW parts will be visible, so I should be cool.

I'll try and sort out a proper update this week.

[Yodhrin]

Ahoy hoy, bit late and likely underwhelming, but here's a wee update. I've decided to continue working on one of the figures as an Iron Hand, using one of the two walking legs, which will become my Iron Father, the other four will be generic until I can finish and cast them up, at which point they will join a resculpted Forgeworld Moloc model as a combat-squad of Star Phantoms Veterans who will make up the bulk of the Kill Team I intend to create as a way to actually play some games at some point this year. The first run of cast legs will add to that foundation, and thereafter I'll be working on the Iron Hands full-time, with the Mechanicus forces as a side project for when I get bored of power armour, heh.

The next part of the step-by-step is the point where I'm beginning my deviation from Lamenter and Doghouse's methods. This image is pretty much my intended target, so the first thing I did was go back to the plastic and carve in some lines to show where the modified crotchplate boundaries will be, you will be able to see this on the poorly-focused images of the later stages

So, rather than proceed directly with the thigh armour, first comes the flexible joint ribbing. Take a small ball of GS and place it here;



Then shape it roughly using your fingers, and give it a going over with your sculpting tool to smooth it out(the grey size 2 flat chisel clay shaper is invaluable here);



The final step is a right pain, and has to be done slowly. Mark the lines as equally as you can(most will be straighter than mine) using a modelling knife(always save your blunt blades for GS work), starting with just indentations at either the front or the back, and then slowly mark each line round to the other side. I highly suggest doing it in stages, lightly marking each, then going back to deepen and define them once you're sure of where you're going. Leave them for a good hour, then pop a wee bit of vaseline on your detail tool(I used a grey size zero clay shaper for this step) and gently run it along the lines to try and get rid of any errant knife marks or scraps of fingerprint. You should get something like this;



So, the next step for me is to repeat this for the other hip, and both knee joints. Once all the joints are in place, the thigh plates can be sculpted over the top, and the other edges of the ribbing will be concealed by the chunky belt and by putting a new edge on the crotchplate, as well as new arseplates that are more in line with power armour than terminator armour. I've got a solid week ahead of me with no work to distract me, heh, so I'm hoping to have these five ready to rock by the time my Moloc arrives from Forgeworld. TTFN.

[Yodhrin]

So, here we are again. I'm not dead, and I have been working on my Iron Hands a bit, but I couldn't resist starting another side-project which has been gnawing at me since I first saw the DKoK Engineers: Imperial Navy Armsmen. The revolver-shotguns seem perfect to represent Naval Shotcannons with some modifications, exactly what a man needs when a dozen genestealers are boiling down a dank narrow metal tunnel at him full-tilt I'm working from the old Jes Goodwin concept art and a battle scene by the great John Blanche both from back in the 90's I believe, and trying to add in a little flavour of my own by drawing elements from retro space suits(the locking-cuffs at the joins between boots/gloves and the suit) and vintage diving gear(the oversized weighted boots). To start, here are the references:





And here's the WiP shots of the test model; honest critique requested, but bear in mind it's only about 50% complete:









The first of my Iron Hands combat squad should be to the point I consider it ready for public viewing fairly soon, I'm hoping that the remaining members of both that unit and the Armsmen will go much quicker once I've worked out the most efficient process on the test models, if not well, I did warn you this would be slow

Cheers.

[Razerz]

Those look good, very true to your inspiration.
I have to ask, is the cable between the backpack and helmet done with the Masq-Mini tool? If so, how is it to work with?

[Yodhrin]

Those look good, very true to your inspiration.
I have to ask, is the cable between the backpack and helmet done with the Masq-Mini tool? If so, how is it to work with?

It is actually, and I've found it very easy to work with, providing you don't use "fresh" putty; if it's been left until it's started to go a bit rubbery, the tool requires more pressure to work, but is also more forgiving of mistakes. Also, for flexible pipes like the air hose, you really need to get the ends fixed in place before the putty completely hardens(I find it best when it reaches the point that a delicate touch won't leave fingerprints, but it's still soft enough that it can't support its own weight if you hold one end), otherwise the putty is thin enough that it will snap rather than flex into shape. EDIT: Forgot to mention, that particular example is the #0 tool, the smallest of the three; the #1 is only slightly bigger, but the #2 will likely only ever see use on vehicles or Inquisitor-scale models.