A 40k project log (Easternheretic's Peach Blossom Isle)

[easternheretic]

Yet another project log with 40K and Malifaux! (Eldar, Tyranids, Orks & The Neverborn)

Latest updates:
Painted Malifaux Lilitu, Doppleganger and Insidious Madness. Painted Dreadknight Conversion. (05/01/2012) page 14 post 268
Painted Malifaux Waldgiest, Pandora, Candy, Baby Kade and Avatar Candy. WIP Lilith Avatar of Natures Malevolence(05/01/2012)page 14 post 267
Painted Dagon Overlord Hive Tyrant conversion & Completed Dreadkngiht conversion. (04/12/2011) page 14 post 262
WIP Eldar Grav Tanks x8 and completed Tyranid Hive Tyrant conversion (Dagon Overlord)page 13 post 238
Painted Malifaux Sorrows x3, Nightmare Edition Teddy & Dreadfleet Grimnir's Thunder. (04/11/2011)page 13 post 237
Painted Malifaux Lilitu and Desperate Mercenary. (04/10/2011)page 13 post 255
Painted Malifaux Nekima the Dark Sibling. (04/10/2011)page 13 post 254
WIP Malifaux models Pandora and her crew and a converted Tech marine for 40K. (29/09/2011) page 13 post 251
WIP Malifaux models Desperate Merc, Nekima and Lilitu. (19/09/2011)page 13 post 250
Painted Malifaux model Lelu of the Neverborn. (25/8/2011)page 13 post 249
Painted Malifaux models. Lilith starting box set with additional Cherub and 2x Young Nephelim. (10/08/2011) page 13 post 248
Painted Farseer and Eldar Army Shot. (17/06/2011)page 13 post 246
Painted Howling Banshees, Wraithguard, Dire Avenger Exarch and Rangers. (06/06/2011) page 13 post 243
Tyranid Dominatrix Conversion Painted. (31/05/2011) page 12 post 238
Tyranid Dominatrix Conversion Completed. (15/05/2011) page 12 post 234
WIP Tyranid Dominatrix conversion. Continued. (07/04/2011) page 12 post 230
WIP Tyranid Dominatrix conversion. Continued. (04/04/2011) page 12 post 229
Completed Mega Armored Ork Warboss conversion and WIP Tyranid Dominatrix conversion. (20/03/2011) page 12 post 223
WIP Mega Armored Ork War Boss scratchbuild. (13/02/2011). page 12 post 222
Painted commission tyranid bone-sword/lash-whips, painted Ork slugga boyz mob, and WIP ork slugga boyz kitbash. (06/02/2011)page 11 post 218
WIP Eldar Wraithguard and SM Captain and Tech Marine conversions. (31/01/11) page 11 post 216
Painted Eldar Rangers and 2nd Edition Ork Grots (23/01/2011) page 11 post 211
Painted Striking Scorpions. (16/01/11) page 11 post 209
Painted Mawloc, 2x 2nd ed carnifex, 3x 2nd ed zoanthropes, WIP 2nd ed striking scorpions AND Armourcast Dactylis. (26/11/10) page 11 post 207
Completed tyrannofex conversion (11/10/10).page 11 post 203
A tyrannofex conversion WIP. (08/10/10) page 10 post 199
Painted Dire Avengers & Howling Banshees. Completed Mawloc conversion and a tyrannofex WIP. (02/10/10) page 10 post 196
Wave Serpent converison completed. (15/08/10)pace 10 post 191
2nd painted Doom of Malanti & wave serpent WIP. (14/06/10)page 10 post 187
Painted tyrannofex conversion. (06/06/2010) page 10 post 185
30 painted space marines and some painted GW terrain. (03/06/10) page 9 post 179 & 180
Another Doom of Malanti conversion. (18/04/10).page 9 post 168
WIP Tyrannofex continued - model complete awaiting paint. (13/04/10).page 9 post 162
WIP Tyrannofex continued. (11/04/10). page 9 post 161.
WIP Tyrannofex. (07/04/10).page 8 post 159
Painted Doom of Malanti and painted Jetbike Faseer conversion, (4/4/2010).page 8 post 153
WIP Doom of Malanti. (28/3/2010). page 8 post 142
Painted Trygon/Trygon Prime/Mawloc. (5/3/2010).page 7 post 135
WIP paint of female farseer on jetbike & Painted Tervigon and bonesword conversions. (3/3/2010)page 7 post 131
WIP and step by step for a female farseer on jet bike conversion. (27/2/2010) page 7 post 127
Minor update. Photo of the under belly of tervigon conversion. (18/2/2010) page 6 post 116
Completed Tervigon conversion with last of the step by step. (17/2/2010) page 6 post 109
More WIP and step by step of tervigon conversion. (16/2/2010) page 6 post 104
WIP and step by step of Tervigon conversion. (15/2/2010) page 6 post 101
Step by Step on bone-sword conversion. (12/02/2010) page 5 post 95
WIP painting progress of Trygon/Mawloc kit. (12/02/2010) page 5 post 92
Modular Trygon/Mawloc plastic kit assembly step by step. (24/01/2010)page 5 post 90
Painted the last of my SH genestealers as well as 3 old school tyrant guard. (21/01/2010) page 5 post 87
Painted 10 more SH genestealers and finish painting 20 SH stealer scenic bases. (09/11/2009) page 4 post 78
Painted brood lord conversion. (23/10/2009) page 4 post 63
Conversion of metal broodlord and minor conversion on old tyrant guard. (18/10/09) page 3 post 59
Painted pouncing lictor conversion. (16/10/09) page 3 post 58
Painted 5 tyranid warriors. (05/10/09) page 3 post 57
Painted Devourer Fex. (28/08/09) page 3 post 44
Painted SH broodlord and genestealers. (13/09/09) page 2 post 39
Painted upright carnifex conversion with venom cannons and barbed strangler. (09/09/09) page 2 post 30
Painted "striking scorpion" wraithlord conversion . (05/09/09) page 2 post 29


The project? To get my lazy b*m moving and finsih painting all the minis in the cupboard!

I've been collecting minis since 1997 and I'm sure most of you can relate, have amassed enough minis to stock a small store. The unfortunate thing is that less then half are painted.

So a commitment to myself to change the fact around from less then 50% to greater then 90%. (Here's hoping anyway!)

I have 3 40K armies. DA, Nids and Eldar.
DA 3000 pts painted.
Nids 5000 pts painted.
Eldar a miserable 300 pts painted.
Of course there are plenty of unpainted ones to go as well for all 3 naturally.

So I'm starting on my Eldar first!

Truth be told, I have had the Eldar minis in my cupboard for well over 7 years now and never been able to paint them as I couldn't find a color scheme that I liked till I stumbled across an issue of white dwarf featuring the WH codex. There was a SOB army being painted by an Eavy Metal lady which looked really cool, and I nicked it an modified it for the Eldar!


My first painted Eldar! Yay! A squad of Fire dragons. 4 more to go.


My First Striking Scorpion.


A converted Striking Scorpioin.


My first Warp Spider.

C&C welcome!

Cheers

[the_reaper]

Awesome scheme, the lighter blues and purple go well with the white.

Are you really going to do all your eldar in that colour, you mad!

Keep it up

-reaper

[easternheretic]

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, I believe I am a little loco as I do intend to paint all of them this way. Including my guardians which i believe I have about 38 unassembled ones at the moment.

Its one of the main reasons I'm posting them here, to have an addtional reason to hold me to paint regularly.

Another trick I use, is to stick in a conversion between models to keep things fresh. I find I prefer coverting more then painting.

My current conversion project is my avatar.

Found this avatar on CMON
http://www.coolminiornot.com/171688

And agree with the poster that the existing model is too static.
Decided to covert the current model to mimic the one on CMON

As I'm nowhere near as good sculpting, I will be breaking out the couping saw.

Here's the almost finished model needing GS.



Will follow up soon with the "gory" hack and slash wip shots soon too!
Cheers

[easternheretic]

As promised, some WIP shots on how I converted my "leaping Avatar" All thats left is to make a base thats appropriate for him.

I'm leaning towards a wraithbone and lave base. Which means I'll be needed to break out the GS.

As stated earlier, I was inspired by the fluid and action pose of the avatar on CMON. I needed to change the pose of the avatar to reflect his current legs akimbo static pose to one that is just plain more exciting! (I hope!)


The red lines are where I made cuts using a coping saw.

The ones around the groin region are cut to about 3/4 way through. This is to allow me to move/squeeze the legs closer together.

The left calf and foot was sawed off at the knee to allow a more backwards repostioning along with a knee bend.

The cut above the left knee was cut 3/4 though and then the gap forced wider via a screwdriver jamed in for leverage. This allows for the more pronounce knee bend I was looking for.

The foot peg was sawd off.

The left foot was sawed of to allow a pointing the toes repostioning latter.

The right foot was sawed 3/4 through and bent into postion to allow for the toe point look as well.



As I was going for motion in the avatars pose, his loin cloth needed to be repostioned as well to go with the flow of his lunging/leaping forward motion.

I used my dremel tool to make a number of grooves along the back of the loin cloth to thin out the material. Then using pliers, bent the loin cloth to match the flow of his intended final motion.



This shot shows the repositoning of the leg and loin cloth as described above!



This shot shows the pin hole drilled to slightly modify the torso to legs attachment. Once again, to give the impression of forward movement, I will be pinning the avatars torso and legs with a more pronounce back arch!

Cheers

[easternheretic]

This shot show the torso pinned to the legs showing the slight back arch I was talking about. This gives the impression of that forward lunge I was talking about.



The red lines in this shot shows where I made saw cuts on the right arm of the avatar to convert it to hold a wailing spear of doom instead.

I sawed the conter balance pommel of the sword off.

I sawed the sword of where the hilt meets the hand of the avatar.

I made a 4/5 cut at the wrist of the avatar, and using the same screw driver as leverage technique, repositioned the fist to have the top of the fist more forward facing.



This (Bad photo. Sorry about that.) shot shows where I hollowed out a cavaity in the right shoulder and dremelled out the collar of the avatar to allow the repositioning of the arm to a more upper arm raised high lunging/thrusting downward pose.



This shot shows all the parts coming together to complete the coversion.

Final GS shot to come, and of couse the mini painted!

C&C Welcome!

[nofx]

wow great stuff mate love the bases on the fire dragons

[Son of the Lion]

Not to mention the fantastic Avatar conversion.

[easternheretic]

Thanks for the kind words!

Have been working on GSing the avatar to fill in the gaps.

Working on the avatar base so that he's "leaping through the air". A major pain making a base that won't result in a topple over once I'm hands off.

WIP of the bases for the scorpions and dire avengers I'm painting. A quick how I did it.

Will post pics on the above tomorrow. Need to Photoshop the image size and quality.

I have also been working on another major conversion project. Just had to have one inspired by the DOW female faseer after I stumbled across this on on the GW website!

http://fr.games-workshop.com/40k/eld...acha/index.asp

And I do have some WIP pics of this one!


I did not want to spend more cash buying the same models as the ones recommended on the GW site so I made do with the ones I had one hand.

Yes, it is a bit expensive using 2 minis to make one. I had these as spares when I bought a 2nd hand army from a friend anyway AND like I said earlier, I really wanted to convert the DOW farseer.

The Red lines inidcate where I made complete cuts with my couping saw.

From the farseer model, I get the fins for the back of the "new" farseer, her helmet, a shuriken pistol and 2 do dads to spiff up the robes for final details.

From the warlock model, I get the robes and feet and and additional blade for the singing spear.



Red lines are where 1/2 way through cuts with my couping saw.

The reason is to make repositioning easier.

I was going for the pointy toed look, as I intend to have the model "float in mid air" while casting eldrich storm.



Red lines are where I made complete cuts with the couping saw.
Filing was done to reshape the parts.

Using a female guardian torso I pinned/attached it to the warlock robes to make a complete body fo the "new" faseer.



WIP pics of the body of the "new" Farseer. Pinned, filed/reshaped and glued together.

[easternheretic]

I think the arms are eldar jet biker arms (I'm not sure, had them lying around in my bits box) The Sing spear came with the original sacrificial farseer model.

Red lines indicate where i made cuts with my couping saw.

The right hand was sawed off. The singing spear hand was reshaped/filed and attached to the right arm.

I was going for the bent/cocked wrist look with the spear pointing to the floor.

The left thumb was carefully cut using a pen knife and reattached/glued to the side to make it look like and open palm. Fingers were repostioned/bent via dunking the arm in boiling water to soften the plastic.

Mind you, if you which to give this technique a try, please be careful as I almost scalded my hands, and I did break of the fingers of my first attempt.

The shoulder areas of both arms were reshaped/filed so that they can fit in the sockets of the guardian torso.



Pic of the farseer body with arms attached "floating" in a ring on a base to show hopefully, a farseer in mid casting of eldrich storm.

Will be GSing a ring of fire to give the visual representation of the casting of a psychic power.

Hopefully I'll have more WIP shots soon, I'm having a tough time getting the GS to come out right for the robes I'm sculpting on the farseer at the moment.

C&C welcome as usual!

Cheers

[easternheretic]

Well better late then never.

I finally found 1 image of the avatar with GS work on it. The rest were way to blured. Dang the inability to shoot decent pics!



The avatar with the GS added to cover up gaps and what not.

And as promised, some pics with the avatar on his base. As well as WIP of the base it self.

I'm hoping that the wratihbone looks like wraithbone and is recognisable as such. Nicked the idea from the limited edtion bonesinger GW came out with a while ago.





All thats left is to paint the fellow. Which unfortunatly is not my favourite part of the hobby. Anyway, thats what this log is for. To nudge me in the direction of a balance between the saw and the brush!

C & C welcome as always!

Cheers

[Komodo]

Nice converting! I'll be watching this.

[easternheretic]

A minor quick update.

A step by step on how I do my bases as promised.

As I've said earlier, that I had taken a few years break, it included GS as well. Since it was drying up and becoming useless, I had to use up and fast hence GS the bases.



1) Place lump of GS on base.
2) Spread out GS all over base.
3&4) Oil smooth surface and rub GS over to smooth it out.
5&6) Using a screwdriver head, I press the base design into the GS.



7) Contrary to popular belief, you can file/sand GS. It has to be dry off course. This is to smoothen out the surface after the design is pressed in.
8) File the sides of the GS to smoothen it out.
9) Cut of the metal tabs of the mini and make pointed triangles to press into GS.
10) Mount and glue mini onto the complete base.

C&C welcome!

[Monsterzonk]

Very nice! Great tutorials and I really like your colour scheme! The Avatar will look fantastic! Consider me subscribed.

Cheers,
Monsterzonk :skull:

[easternheretic]

Thanks! It sure is a pain painting this scheme, but the end result is worth it though!

Must be my sloppy painting style that makes painting eldar a real pain. I guess I'm too acustomed to painting Nids where a small mistake is no big problem and usually overlooked anyway.

But on the eldar, it stick out like a sore thumb.

Could I get some opinions/advice as well. I'm currently painting 5 dire avengers and am having a problem with a nice colour scheme for the helmet hair. I tried the usual hawk turquoise and liche purple that is on palette, but the purple just doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

On a more heavy and annoying note.

The avatar was coming along fine untill it fell of the table. Arggghhhh!!!! The horror and night mare!!!

Thank god for wooden floors though. Only chipped paint and not dinged metal.

Still, I'm contemplating more coversion work on the model now to balnce the stupid thing out.

Do you thing adding base details weighted with metal would work, or having a space marine impaled on the spear and using it as a prop up be more cool? (Falling forward was what had the avatar take a nose dive of my table in the first place.)

Cheers

[nix]

These look great!!!

Your method for customizing your bases is very straight forward and results in a fantastic looking base.

Your Avatar also looks very good. I would love to see a pic of the Avatar painted.

[Terminator jax]

Nice work on the farseer looking forward to seeing it finished

[easternheretic]

Another quick update.

WIP shot of my farseer conversion.

I decided that I wanted my farseer to go helmetless.
I figured, what was the point of doing a DOW female farseer coversion and have her run around with the ghosthelm with only her mammary glands as the distinctive feature to differentiate gender.

After a quick look through my bitz box, I realised I didn't have any suitable heads, let alone female ones. No surprise actually considering My other armies are space marines (no females), nids (no humanoids) and eldar.

I had a brain storm to convert the existing floppy haired fellow from the guardian box set to a more feminine looking head. Time for some plastic surgury literally and figuratively!

Pic below shows the step by step progress.



I started by filing the jaw and cheek bones down. The original face was way to angular and the jaw way to strong for a lady.

Making sure I had the cliche slant line from nose tip to chin tip (see 2nd pic) for the classic "beauty" line.

I added GS to the eyes and the mouth area to have some material to work with, and to remove the sunken eye look as well.

I had a night mare trying to sculpt the eyes and gave up. Settled for closed eyes instead with the cheap a** excuse that her eyes are closed to faclitate concentration while throwing powers around!

I next tackled the ears. Whats an "elf" with out the pointy ears. I decided to go for the Deedlit looking elf from the anime Record of Lodoss War. What better way to emphisize "elf" then distinctive pointy ears! . After sculpting 3 pairs of ears and accidentally squashing them and driving me up the wall. I went for a different approach.

I dug up one of those old tabs that came attached to the space marine shoulder pad and filed it to the right shape and attached it to the head. Done, Nice and simple. No more squashed ear!

Finally, I sculpted the hair. Went for "flying" hair look to further emphasize the casting of powers with the powers swirling around her. Hoperfully...

Will have more WIP shots soon with head attached!

C&C Welcome as always!

Cheers

[easternheretic]

A quick update with my DOW inspired female farseer!

Finished GSing the robes and the sash to hide the gap in the waist.

All thats left is to add some more detials like talismans, gems and pouches to spruce up the model to the level worthy of an HQ model.







I think I'll paint her first before I attempt to finish the "ring of fire" I'm working on that sourrounds the model to give the impression of psychic powers flying about.

Its proving to be alot harder then I anticipated. The GS ends up way to rough and messy. *sigh*

Anyway a pic is worth a thousand words so heres a WIP with the farseer floating in the center.



Next up WIP shots of the avatar partially painted!

C&C welcom as always!

Cheers

[Radium]

Some very nifty greenstuffing! Very nice!

I think you've done a real nice job using non-traditional colours for the aspect warriors. Very original, and very well executed.

And your step-by-step guides are inspiring, way better than I could ever do :P.

[Alex_H]

Nice work mate. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these painted.