Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Ork Dakkajet Conversion



A little while ago I picked up three Hasegawa Egg planes with plans to convert them into Ork Dakkajets. I thought that the comedic shape of the planes would be a perfect complement to the Ork aesthetic. I've seen a couple of other Dakkajets created from egg planes online and I loved the look. I picked the Hasegawa F4U Corsair for my conversions.

I used styrene and a few items from my bits box to convert the corsair into my dakkajet. Additional details on the work in progress can be found on my previous blog post.






Weathering effects were created using the salt technique, sponge technique as well as oil washes.

MIG 'Fuel Stains' was used to give the look of fuel overflow leaking from the fuel tank.




The details on the base were created using part of a grot tank model I'm creating and some rhino tread. I also used the GW technical paints 'Agrellan earth' to get the cracked earth texture.






Fenrisian Wolves

I picked up a set of five Fenrisian Wolves at a local gamer's swap meet a couple of weeks ago. They came in a bag with many other models for a meager $2! They are the older model type so they're not much to work with but I think they came out well. Two were missing tails so I had to sculpt a couple out of green stuff.





Monday, November 23, 2015

Ministorum Priest Conversion


This conversion was accomplished using a Chaos Cultist. The head is from Maxmini. I created the staff using some styrene rod, the tip of a glue applicator, and a the Forgeworld icon shown below.


The head of the staff was created by molding and casting two copies of the Forgeworld Inquisition icon. They were then trimmed down to the icon only and glued back to back. The purity seals are also green stuff.


The book is green stuff sandwiched between styrene. The strap around the book is more green stuff and the skull was scraped off another model with a razor blade then applied to the book.

The censor, robes, and a good portion of the right arm are green stuff.

The original model used was the cultist pictured in the lower left of the box artwork shown below.



Monday, November 16, 2015

Sgt. Harker Revisited

While Sgt. Harker may have been nerfed in the most recent Astra Militarum Codex he's still a badass and I always run him with my veteran squad. Today's post is a republishing of a very old page I made dedicated to my custom Sgt. Harker project.

Why buy a character figure when you can make your own?  I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons out there but for the sake of this project let's just pretend there aren't.  Yeah Games Workshop makes a Sgt. Harker figure, but I wasn't in the mood for that.  You see I had lot of extra Catachan Infantry lying around and a whole lot of bits to play with so I went about making my own. 

I started with a standard Catachan Infantryman.  I chose the bare chested torso with legs which were in a bracing position.  Since Sgt. Harker is carrying a Heavy Bolter he was going to have to brace himself for both the weight and recoil.  One arm was a standard Catachan trigger arm and the other was a Catachan arm extending a sword.

Using a hobby knife I trimmed off the rifle butt from the trigger arm, the sword from the extending arm and carved away the ammo pouches and straps from the torso.

Next using Apoxie Sculpt I began bulking up the muscles.  In order to get a good shape for the neck and shoulders the head was glued in place.


For Sgt. Harker's heavy bolter I salvaged one from a Catachan Heavy Weapons Team.  It was a little long so I trimmed it down using my miter box.  I then smoothed out some spots with the hobby knife and added an aquila to the front facing side using apoxie sculpt.  I also drilled out the barrel and vents.  This is an important part which a lot of people overlook.  Simply painting black dots where holes should be is just tacky!

At first the ammo belt stumped me.  After looking at some different examples of heavy bolters I decided I'd make mine in the style of the Space Marines.  I measured the width of the chamber on the heavy bolter and trimmed numerous pieces of 3/32" styrene tubing to fit.  I then affixed these tube sections to a long thin strip of masking tape I had cut to be roughly 1/3 the width of the tubes.  This allowed the belt to remain flexible until glued into place.  After the tube sections had been wrapped down the middle with masking tape, the lengths were a little nonuniform.  I evened them out with a few passes over an emery board.  If I had it to do again I would have created the bolter before I did my sculpting.  Because the sculpting was already finished I was limited in how I could position the bolter and drape the ammo belt.  I ended up with layout seen here.



The shoulder strap with ammo pouches was created using Apoxie Sculpt for the belt, salvaged bits for the ammo pouches and sheet styrene for the buckle.  A sword and sheath were positioned in the middle of the back

You can also see here the addition of the forward arm.  A little more Apoxie Sculpt was used to create a forward handle for the bolter.

I finished bulking up the muscles and repositioned the head.  It had been buried in his neck.  I think now he looks like Sgt. Harker, not just a Catachan Infantryman with extra muscle.

Additional ammo pouches were added to his waist.  These were carved from scrap sprues.



I'd have to say for my first major sculpt I'm pretty satisfied. Due to the difficulty in obtaining accurate detail in Apoxie Sculpt I would choose Kneadatite in the future, but Apoxie Sculpt has served me well for small applications as well as adding bulk. The tape and tube styrene worked like a charm for the ammo belt and I will definitely be using that technique again.

A close up of the heavy bolter. The aquila was sculpted with Apoxie Sculpt using a dental pick.
A close up of where the shoulder strap meets the heavy bolter. It was sculpted using Apoxie Sculpt. The bracket was made using sheet styrene.
These ammo pouches were carved from scrap sprues.





Saturday, November 14, 2015

Gamer's Garage Sale

This morning I attended the Gamers' Garage Sale hosted by our local gaming store Imperial Outpost Games and man did I clean up. On top of picking up a basilisk and sentinel for $35 total I picked up Star Wars X-Wing with a Y-Wing for $10. But that wasn't the steal. I picked up all of the below for $5.


For a measly $5 I picked up:
  • 15 Space Wolves
  • 5 Space Wolf Scouts
  • 5 Space Wolf Terminators
  • 5 Fenrisian Wolves
  • 2 Sisters of Battle
  • 1 Emperor's Champion
  • 1 Space Marine Bike
  • The upper half of a Dreadnaut
  • and a pile of various Space Marine/Wolf bits and pieces
It looks like there will be a whole lot more Space Wolves in my future.



Friday, November 13, 2015

Tutorial - Terrain - Barricades


After completing my old Citadel Scenics barricades I got to thinking that they could make for a great 'counts-as' Aegis Defense Line. After measuring them I found that each piece was just a little too long or too short to make a reasonable 'counts-as' so I thought I'd make my own.

The below tutorial can be applied to your own 'counts-as' Aegis Defense Line or any piece of terrain you'd like to make. All the tools and materials I used were items lying around in either my garage or hobby desk so ultimately it was a zero cost project.

To replicate this project you will need:

Tools
  • Saw (optional)
  • Razor Blade
  • File
  • Pencil
  • Ruler/Tape Measure
  • Popsicle Sticks
  • Paint Brushes
Materials
  • 1/8th inch MDF
  • Model Bits
  • Super Glue
  • Joint Compound
  • Sand
  • Primer
  • Paint
  • PVA Glue
  • Static Grass
I began by measuring out strips of MDF which were 1.5" in width. I also marked those strips every 5 inches for the first 20 inches and then every 2 inches after that. I cut those strips on my table saw and then cut the 5 and 2 inch segments on my miter saw. As you can see above I several more sets that what I needed. I figure I'll get around to making more of these later since this first try was a success.

Each Aegis Defense Line is made of of four 5" sections and four 2" sections. In the above photo I've rounded the edges of each tile with a file and my razor knife. After I started to place bits on the tiles I decided to further trim the tiles into more narrow and irregular shapes.

After each tile was trimmed and filed into irregular shapes I placed various bits from my bits box along with some styrene and apoxie sculpt.

One of my smaller sections is built out of a piece of a dozer blade, a tank wheel and some sandbags made of apoxie sculpt.

 A Tamiya oil drum and some other bits.

Some larger styrene sections here, more sandbags and some wheels.

A great way to get texture on styrene is to chew it a bit with your molars. It seems gross but it makes for some great random dents and texture. Other bits were simply chopped up with my clippers and some received a plasma cut texture using the technique demonstrated in this other tutorial.

After all my bits were placed to my liking I applied joint compound to the tiles around the bits. Be careful not to apply too much, although if you do you can chip it off pretty easily. Leave the barricades to dry for at least 24 hours.

After the joint compound has dried I applied thinned PVA glue around the tile over the joint compound and then spread sand of varied size over the PVA. Allow the glue to dry overnight.

Once the sand was dried in place I applied two coats of Krylon 2x grey primer. This helped to ensure the sand stayed put and layed down a great base on which to paint.

I began my painting by applying a brown earth tone to the base. I followed that up with a dry brush coat of 'Blue Stoneware' to the sand followed by another dry brush coat of 'Dolphin Gray'.

After the ground had been finished I painted the bits. Most of it being metal I painted the majority of the bits with a 1:1 mix of gunmetal and black. I painted the wood with a light brown, the rubber with nato black, and the sand bags with light tan. After the paint had dried I applied a thinned down wash of Army Painter's 'Dark Tone'. The wash was allowed to dry overnight.

I applied PVA glue in a thin line around the edges and applied static grass to mirror the style of the Citadel Scenics. Everything then received a healthy application of dull coat. DONE!