Need advice on first conversions

[OrlyggJafnakol]

[IMG]C:\Documents and Settings\James\Desktop\miniatures\P1010017.JPG[/IMG]

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Here are some different views of my first fully plastic conversion. I want to develop my green stuff skills and am keen to move away from lumpy Nurgle style work to more realistic stuff.

My idea for this miniature was to represent some nameless adept of the administratum.



The torso is based on the fat bellied 'friar tuck' character from the bretonnians range. I snipped up a variety of assessories from space marine sprues to create the vox note recorder (the thing on the front of his chest) and used green stuff to model fur for the first time (inspired by the John Blanche paintings in the Horus Heresy artbooks)



I made the books by rolling flat some green stuff and them cutting it into squares when it was dry. Two squares of the same size made the cover and the spine was trimmed from a third square. I put a blob of green stuff between the two squares of green stuff and scuplted it into a rough square shape before using the edge of a blade to create the impression of pages.



What do you warseers think? Any tips or exercises to improve my green stuff skills?

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Here is my first attempt at a conversion (well of sorts). I altered the base of an Eversor assassin by adding heads to green stuff. Nothing spectacular but I would also appreciate any advice or tips for using green stuff in this way.

[Alexandr0]

Hello hello, my good sir!
Well, for one, I have to say yout painting is very nice. The colours look very cool on your assassin, but seeing as how it's not a painting advice column ...
For one, the fur trim and hood and underneath the speaker thingy looks pretty cool. It anything, i would keep your depressions relatively the same depth, becuase the ones under the speaker are not quite as deep as the one on the bottom trim, and that kinda throws it off. The chest piece is a pretty cool idea, although i would invest in some plasticard if i were you, it makes making rectangular shapes like the ones you did a piece of cake to achieve. Apart from that though, not much else to say, it's a pretty solid piece.
When you convert, the only way you will get better is with practise. THe more you do it, the better you get at it. One thing i could say with regards to training yourself is to try and blend to pieces that have a seam together. Say you have a chaos space marine, and you want his arm to be literally fused with his body. Why not try to add a couple of lines here and there and make him look like a obliterator-type-thingY? Keep at it, next thing you know you might be making vostroyan fur hats, and then entire vostroyans for that matter !!
Cheers

P.S. If you want to practise some more with the fur, why not actually try to make a fur hat?

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Thanks for the advice about fur, I'm going to try out a fur hatted conversion tonight. I've just been flicking through Horus Heresy:Visions of Treachery and I have found two sketches by the legend John Blanche. A scrivener and an imperial emissary p22-23.

Going to base my next two conversions on these images (I will scan both and post them soon). Plenty of fur on the emissary.

Though Horus's Bodyguard on page 89 is also intriguing me.

Just bought some plastic card off ebay. Cheap as chips really. I bought 1.5mm. Is there any particular size that works bext for GW miniatures scale?

[Voronwe[MQ]]

A fur hat'll mean some practising; I've done three Vostroyan ones on different bases as extras. It does increase your skill a degree when you gets to grab with it.

Voronwe

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Thought I'd share with you my original conversions. The first I ever did. I choose nurgle and the death guard because I assumed that bloated bodies would push a novices sculpting skills. I was wrong.

They did push my thinking though, I used old guitar string and fishing wire to do the piping. Use old heresy armour from the 90s for the legs and chest and more modern arms from the Death Guard range.

Their now fully painted. Please give me your opinions.



This marine I originally envisioned to be a champion, but became relegated after I attempted my first head swap. I created the huge belly with a ball of green stuff and modelled a cracked rim along its top. The breathing apparatus was just a square of green stuff with some random bits of plastic in. I was quite proud of the pointing hand, as I chopped off the glove and flipped the hand 180 degrees before slicing down between the finger and bending the digit into the pointing position.



As with the other miniature, I drilled in the bullet holes with a pin vice. Created holes to hold the guitar string too in the same way. I found it quite simple to create trailing guts by being conservative with the amount of green stuff that I used.

Please evaluate warseers

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Chosen to begin working on the Horus Bodyguard. Spent my first evening shaving off all of the plastic detail on the chest and legs. Smoothed everything down with my files. I cut into the bottom half of the torso to create a top section and filled the gouge marks with green stuff. Sculpted that to resemble the armour from the image I am working from.



Next, using an old backpack I clipped off the sides and used greenstuff to attach very thin pipes. Added two circular parts and an archaic rebreather over the mouth.



When this lot dried I plan to file the green stuff down to create more effective edges to everything. The arms are well on the way but I won't be attaching those until this mini is painted up.

My next challenge is to sculpt a long lock of flowing hair, I am planning to use some kind of thin wire as a support for this but am unsure how.

Do warseers have any advice on how to best deal with hair?

[OrlyggJafnakol]

Solved the hair problem by cutting a suitable part from an undead sprue. Pinned the piece on top of the hair so the hair sweeps back over the backpack as in the picture.

Next, I discovered that GS if rolled into a thin enough sausage (about 2mm) can be sliced when dry to resemble 'studs'. Added two of these to the chest unit and two to the end of the rebreather.



I had shaved and filed both of the feet clear of detail, I used GS to create a step on the top of the foot and a lip on the bottom of the left boot. I'll hopefully be doing the other tonight.



Finally I sculpted the strange peice of armour from the painting on the lower leg. This isn't finished, it needs a spike and some edging and added bits of cut up scoobee to create the pipes after filing down the backpack.