Bitten off more than I can chew...

Well, the more astute of you may have noticed that over the last few months I've been showing off pics of a lot of commission work I've been doing, and not too much else.

That's because most of what I've been doing has been commission work. I still manage to squeeze in the odd bit of work for my own hobby here and there, but not as much as I'd like. So, once I get my current chunk of commissions out of the way, I'll be scaling way back on what I take. To give you an idea, I currently have five jobs to finish by Adepticon (less than 6 weeks away). I'll be burning the midnight oil to get them all done to my exacting standards, but after that I'm promising myself no more than two jobs at a time.

Anyway, on to the toy soldiers.

This is an army shot of a Pre-Heresy Emperor's Children army I've been working on in the background. There are some reasonably straightforward conversions, but one's that add a lot of character, as well as some that are more elaborate. I'm just converting this army. The client will be painting it himself. All the bases are from Dragon Forge Designs' Slate Wasteland series, perfect for painting up the coral of the Laer world (from the HH novel Fulgrim) and great for Space Wolves armies too!

Here's an example of one of the five Tactical Squads. The regular troopers have either MkIV, MkV, or MkVI legs, they all have the Eagle breastplate, and either MkIV or MkVI helmets. I switched up the magazine/handgrip configuration on the bolters too, they're reminiscent of the first plastic bolters from the old RTB-01 kit from "back in the day".

This is a unit that evolved following a bit of chatting back and forth with the client. They'll probably be used as Honor Guard, but represent the Phoenix Guard, those assigned to defend the life of their Primarch. The spears/halberds are from the Chaos Knight sprues, and the wings on the helmets are from a press-mold. Again, they have the early Mk of bolter. As you can see in the pic below, I've added a vambrace to their left arm to match the one on the Chaos Knight right arm. They've also been given plasticard spall-guards on their left shoulders.

The client requested conversion work on six Rhinos. I figured the cool thing to do was to retro-fit the current Rhino to have the classic signifiers of the MkI Rhino of old. So, with a great deal of measuring and plasticard cutting and gluing, these Rhinos rolled off the modeling table. I switched up the front panels, the side hatches, and the top hatch to match the styling of the older model. In addition my buddy Thomas cut me a few EC Legion symbols (the winged claw) which I then added to the top hatch. Really personalizes the models I think.

I have a couple more pieces to finish up for this one, hopefully I can put them in the next post.

Just so you don't think it's been all work and no play, here's my "proof of concept" model for my Centigor units. A Gor torso, Marauder horse body, and Ungor spear and shield. What do you think?

And finally, here's a teaser of something big I'm working on (slowly).

Don't forget, only one week left to get your ideas in for my tattoo competition!