More Space Marine Goodness

A couple of posts back, I showed you the Space Marine characters that I'd built for the Deepstrike Radio Flood Appeal. Well I haven't been idle, just caught up with a few other things.

Here they are in their painted glory. First up is the Chaplain from the Raptors Chapter.

And here's the Librarian from the Blood Ravens Chapter. I hope you (and the auction winners) like them.

Cheers

Dave

Garro

Quite a while back (2006, I think), I built and painted this Pre-Heresy Death Guard assault marine. It is based on a lovely piece from the Horus Heresy artbooks from Black Library. I entered it at the Golden Demons that year and won a silver trophy in the Staff Single Miniature category, beaten out by my friend Jake.

I was enthusiastic about Death Guard at the time, so I built a 1000 point force to take to Adepticon 2007 as part of a Pre-Heresy themed force (including World Eaters, Emperor's Children, and Thousand Sons)

Building that force, then reading Flight of the Eisenstein, made me want to build a Nathaniel Garro, which I entered in the Open category of Golden Demon in Chicago that year. I didn't place but I was deeply satisfied with the posing of the model. I wanted the moment captured to be the one where Garro, tired of having his loyalty questioned by Rogal Dorn, presents his own sword - Libertas - to the Imperial Fist primarch and basically says "Look, if you don't believe me, take my sword and cut me down now. Stop wasting my time and yours."

Well, some time last year - back when I was still taking commissions - I accepted a job to build Garro in a similar style, but much more dynamic. With Libertas outstretched and his new bionics getting a workout, the future of the Inquisition prepares to bring swift death to Humanity's foes.

With the pending release of the Grey Knights I figured it might be a good time to cast our minds back to the earliest days of the Imperial Inquisition. : )

The Emperor Protects.

Space Marines with character

Some of you may remember a few weeks back when I mentioned I was offering up conversion and painting of a Space Marine character for each of the armies being auctioned of by Deepstrike Radio for the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal (see post here).

Well, after the two auctions finished, Chris contacted me and let me know the winners wanted a Librarian and a Chaplain respectively.

This guy's a Librarian for the Blood Ravens Chapter. Inspired a bit by Thomas Schadle's excellent model that won a Slayer Sword in LA back in 2005, I also took the opportunity to try out the Instant Mold material that I picked up last month. When I put up painted pictures you'll be able to see the nice horned skull and scroll molded from another Librarian's shoulder pad.

And this guy will be a Raptors Chaplain. Since the release of the plastic Chaos Knights a few years ago, I've wanted to use the cool skull shoulder plates on a Chaplain model. This was the perfect opportunity. This model is really just a kitbash, but it involves parts from 9 or 10 different kits. Sometimes it's good to have an extensive 'bitz box'.

The bases for these two models are from Dragon Forge Design's Lost Empires range.

Finally, here's an update of where my Greatsword unit is at. Just the Champion and Standard Bearer to add to the big base, then eight more models to finish off the unit. I hope you like where it's heading.

I'm off to Cold Wars tomorrow for work so I don't think I'll get much hobbying in over the weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to scrounge up enough for a post or two next week.

Cheers

Dave

Driving a chariot down memory lane

Well, early this week my friends at Gorgon Studios sent me a couple of shots of a painted version of their next release, the Etruscan chariot. I was very excited to see the paint job Dave Pauwels had put on this ancient war machine. Why so excited Dave? We've never heard you express an interest in Etruscans before...

Well, let me tell you a little secret.

About 18 months ago, Hank and Dave approached me with a little challenge they thought I might be interested in. As part of their developing Etruscan range of miniatures, they wanted to include a chariot. The freelance sculptor they work with, Steve Saleh, is great with sculpting models of all historical periods, plus sci-fi and fantasy figures (including the latest Empire State troopers from GW, some of my favorites). While he loves the organic flow of cloth and flesh, he's not too keen on "straight line work" as it's know in the trade (apparently). Enter the guy who loves to work with plasticard and straight line conversions and scratch-builds.

That's me.

So, after taking a look at the source images that Hank and Dave showed me from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we started talking about a few changes we'd need to make to some of the proportions to take the perceived "ceremonial chariot" and turn it into a two-man fighting platform. Note: There's a little bit of debate in the ancient scholarly world as to whether or not the Etruscans ever used chariots in battle, but Gorgon wanted to give it a go anyway.

With some careful cutting, measuring, cutting again, carving, and a smidge of putty work, I was able to come up with the basis for their chariot. Steve Saleh was the man who added all the organic detail to the chariot, the intricate bronze bas-relief work, as that's a bit beyond my current sculpting level. Just over a year ago, I handed over my completed "masters".

Here are some photos I took once the work was done. The horses and stand-in "crewman" are from Gorgon Studios' Etruscan range, sculpted by Steve.

Below you can see the parts I provided for casting. You may notice there's only one wheel. That's because in the master molding stage they can create multiples of the wheel to go into the production molds. There was no may I was going to try and build two of these nine-spoked wheels. An odd number of spokes makes the whole thing very difficult build, and apparently it was a feature peculiar to the Etruscans. Lucky me.

So there you have it. I'm pretty darn stoked to know that a project I worked on for a few friends has now, after being considerably embellished by a sculptor I'm a big fan of, is about to reach the real world market place. There's something about seeing the words "This elegant machine of war was designed and sculpted by Steve Saleh and Dave Taylor" that has me tickled pink.

If I can get a hold of one before Adepticon, I'll try and get it painted up in time for the painting competition.

Cheers

Dave

Old Stuff Day is finally here!

Rob, over at Warhammer 39,999, posted a few thoughts about the tragedy of blog posts that fall into the abyss after being checked out by faithful blog readers, posts that are still worthy, but will probably never again see the light of day. You can read more about Rob's thoughts here.

I think it's a pretty cool idea, so I thought I'd dredge up some of my favorite posts chosen from the largest of the tags in my cloud.

Blood Pact:

Chaos Star Tutorial

My Stalk Tank Completed

My Blood Pact Army

Charity:

Doing the Right Thing

Storm Wardens!

Napoleonics:

My British army in the Peninsular

Highlanders

Pre-Heresy:

Horus Lupercal

Konrad Curze, The Night Haunter

I hope you enjoy a stroll back through some of my favorite posts, and it inspires you to take a look at some of the older posts on other bogs you may have just stumbled across.

Enjoy "Old Stuff Day" to the full!

Cheers

Dave