Saturday, February 20, 2010

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!

17 comments:

  1. Love the EC army - hope to see these develop through to final stages Dave!

    Nice Centaur too, I did exactly the same thing:
    http://www.mywargame.com/2010/01/04/creating-beastmen-centaurs/

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  2. I saw the title and felt your pain. I've got a medieval castle to finish off for little man's class at school for monday!

    And then last night, I agreed to build some terrain for the club. One of these days, I am going to learn, I am, I promise!

    In the meantime, it's going to be a long weekend!

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  3. Nice work Dave. How did you wrap the plastic card around the halberds? Heat it up in warm water?
    Mike
    Santa Cruz Warhammer

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  4. Great stuff dave, I love the centagaur conersion as it's very unique.

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  5. What did you use for the standard?

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  6. spot on, i would love to paint that army!!

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  7. vets and rhino look amazing, nice work.

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  8. This is FANTASTIC work. I really like the Centagor conversion.

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  9. Good work with EC so far.

    For gors I have mixed feelings: idea is good, and you did a great job, but I think that it is a bit short on torso (tho, it can be my personal imagination, or fault of perspective)

    And as for my Bloodwolf problem - I found model that fits my idea of it: Necerarch Demon from Lucifer Wars series http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=935

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  10. the EC look outstanding! have you seen the stuff that chapterhouse do they've a Mk2 to Mk1 conversion kit, bit late for your current 6 but might be useful for the future??

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  11. I love those MK1 rhinos. Do you use bondo as a gap filler?

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  12. Hi guys, thanks for the comments. Now to the specifics:

    @ Rusty Dice - Nice Centigors there ; )

    @ Col. Corbane - best of luck finishing up that castle!

    @ Mike (from SCW) - I just wrapped the thin plasticard around my file handle very tightly and held it there few a little bit. It is glued to the halberds in two or three places.

    @ Auston - It's the banner from the plastic High Elf Lord kit. Only change I made was to replace the elven symbol at te bottom with the Roman numeral III, legion number of the EC.

    @ Amdor - refresh my memory, were you thinking of using these as wirewolves? If so, they could be great with the right paintjob.

    @ Anton - Yep, I've seen them. They're a bit too "soft" around the edges for my liking.

    @ Skeller - Yep, Bondo works great in areas you can get to with a file. My thanks to Thomas Wynn for turning me on to it.

    Cheers
    Dave

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  13. Firstly i thought of making some human-chaos hound hybrid, (i don't remember in comment under which post I said wrote it) however this figurine looks better than my efforts ;]

    Idea is to use it as Count as Eversor - it's stats and bloodwolf fluff mix quite well

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  14. I do feel your pain, I'm relatively new to the hobby and decided to build all of my initial 1750 points before I painted a thing, I have most of it built, bar a few pieces here and there.

    The biggest problem I have is work, it can be a task to motivate myself after 10 hours of work, but I must get better and just paint when I have time.

    These models look amazing though, the mere adding of rivets on the shoulder pads makes a big difference. The winged helms look brilliant.

    -Draz

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  15. I like the EC, especially your retro-styled Rhinos!. Makes me wish the guy had requested a Land Raider too; it would have been cool to see a Rogue Trader model remade out of newer parts (instead of the half-assed Forge World repro)

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  16. Beautiful army. I particularly like the studded Mk4 pads and the retro-fit rhinos.

    I know why... I've been doing the same thing! :D

    http://heresywhitescars.blogspot.com/

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  17. Looks like you've come up with the new improved Zoat

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