A few days ago I started work on my first truescale Scouts. At first I just expected them to be a very simple conversion requiring nothing more than slightly lengthened legs. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case as they turned out still too short with long feeble legs.
My approach then is two fold. Increase the height and mass of the torso and make completely new scaled up pairs of legs. The torso is made by chopping the breather tubes from the front of the scout torso component and then completely removing the front of said torso and replacing it with a chest piece from a regular power armoured Space Marine. The breather tubes can then (with a little trimming) fit back on top. I’ll give a full breakdown with pics at a later date.
The legs were a little trickier. In the end I just sculpted fresh legs in the same style and position as the existing plastic legs but so far without any of the details like pouches, ammo or holster. I spent most of today trying to make casts of these legs (I made 2 variants) and much to my frustration haven’t been able to get rid of the air bubbles that are ruining them. I may end up simply making the whole squad’s legs from greenstuff as trying to fill in holes left by air bubbles is more time consuming than making them from scratch.
I don’t think the arms will look too out of place, but I haven’t checked yet. Other than the legs, these are pretty straight forward so I’ll try and knock together a tutorial at some point.
Also in the works is a Scout Biker squad, but instead of bikes they ride lions. I’ve mounted these High Elf lions on bases, with some minor pose alterations and started rebuilding the shoulder armour so it’s less “High Elfy”.
He’s not quite ready for painting, as there are a few details that still need cleaning up or adding, predominantly to the shoulder pads. Anyhow, I figured the conversion is close enough to finished to show it off.
The original concept was to have him in this pose with the shoulder mounted CB and carrying a 2 handed thunder hammer/wrench. As I was building him it seemed a shame to obscure the sculpting on the model with a big weapon held in front of him, this was my main reason for switching to a single handed thunder wrench. I also really like the scanner arm from the (Thunderfire Cannon) Techmarine, for some reason, and it fits the torso nicely.
These two images were central to the concept I had in mind.
Anyway here you go. Pretty sure I’ll be painting him up as a Lamenters chapter Master of the Forge (he’ll be my new forum avatar, and I’ll work his image into the banner of this website too).
Been on these guys for a while now, I didn’t want to just make a rush job on the poses and just make do, so they’ve almost all been repositioned and resculpted.
Click for larger image.
Rather than convert all the arms from terminator arms it seemed far more logical to convert and scale up the existing power armour arms. Because most of these arms come bent at 90degree angles they are always quite difficult to fit on scaled up Marines, especially with the bigger shoulder pads. Most of the arms were cut in half at the elbow and straightened, and in some cases plasticard spacers were used to lengthen the arm too. I then bulked up the forearm and added new elbow pads that cover the cuts and spacers I had made.
Sorry for the poor photo quality, the final models will have individual close ups.
This squad is to go with other Mark V squads that I’ve been working on for far too long to make a complete Mark V Actual Scale army. After this squad will be a devastator squad, some characters and some scouts.
I managed to make a little more headway with the Master of the Forge conversion, assembling his backpack and thunder wrench.
However, although in game terms a Master of the Forge with conversion beamer is more stand out and interesting, now that I can see pretty much how the finished model will look I’m having second thoughts. The concept seemed just so awesome in my head but now that it’s in front of me I’ve decided to “downgrade” him to a simple Techmarine with a simple servo arm and Power Axe.
I’ll have to purchase a few replacement bits but I think the finished result will be far more pleasing. I still haven’t decided what chapter this guy will belong to yet – Blood Angels or Lamenters?
If I make him a Lamenter, he’ll become my new avatar (my username on forums is usually Lamenter), but if I make him a Blood Angel he can be included in Captain Tycho’s battle company (that I’ll one day get around to making).
If anyone is interested in converting their own MotF, I’ll be finishing the conversion beamer and thunder wrench components and putting them up for sale (£6 for both including shipping).
EDIT: I changed my mind regarding the conversion beamer. I’m going to do a bit more work on it and see if I can get it to a point where I’m happy with it. The CB is something of a rarity on the table, which for me is enough of a reason to pursue it.
Work is progressing on the Mark V Assault Squad (I took some pics but they turned out blurred, so I’ll take some more when they’re a little further along), but whilst I’ve been working on them I’ve given a bit of time to a Master of the Forge conversion. I’ve been thinking about this particular conversion since I started the site as I had plans to incorporate photos of it into the header for the blog.
As I had a few sets of resin legs spare (with air bubbles in them) I figured I’d use a pair as the starting point and sculpt all the lovely Techmarine stylings over the top of it. The top half of the model is from the Thunderfire cannon Techmarine.
The original concept of the model was to have it equipped with a Conversion Beamer, mounted on his backpack over one of his shoulders, and carrying a Thunder Wrench in both hands, reminiscent of the Rogue Trader era Techmarines. The head is roughly based on the design of the Techmarine featured in Dawn of War 2.
So far I have the main body built and as you can see I’ve started work on the conversion beamer. There’s still some fine detail to add, but I’m having a hard time deciding how the final model will be equipped. I have plenty of techmarine bits, so I may go with a servo arm or possibly even a servo harness instead of the CB. Weapons/equipment could be anything from power axe, thunder wrench, tool box, bionic arm, power fist, auspex/scanner, or any range of the usual Space Marine guns. The final decision will be based on what looks coolest, and I’ve only had doubts about the CB because I’ve had trouble making a good looking mounting on the backpack.
I like to have my models 100% WYSIWYG so I need to decide which codex I’ll be using and exactly which Chapter he’ll belong to. He’ll be either a Blood Angel or Lamenter, so he could end up being a plain Techmarine rather than a MotF and as such could also have a jump pack.
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Continuing work on a long overdue project, I’ve been working on more Mark V marines for a client wanting an entire army of them. Most of the squad is in the progress of being assembled, but I pieced together the sergeant trying to figure out his pose and get a pic at the same time.
I always think Lightning Claws make a model difficult to pose, especially when wielded in pairs. In this case I’ve tried to point them both in the same direction but with one drawn back which gives it a balance of sorts. The claws came from the Chaos Lord boxed set with the thumb claws trimmed off and replaced with normal powerfist thumbs to help lose the Chaos styling.
I’m not certain about the leg raised in the air. I was trying to give the impression of him stamping down with it, but I’m not 100% sure about it yet, so I may reposition it.
Almost the entire squad have had their feet replaced with greenstuffed feet (using a silicone putty one piece mold – I should probably show a pic of this at some point). This should make running and landing poses far easier to make and provide some variation amongst the squad.
I’ll also be trying to implement Doghouse’s method of converting Power Armour arms for these Actual Scale models. I have a feeling this will be rather difficult, but his turned out very nicely and all the assault weapons I need for the squad are already attached to the arms.
I haven’t done anything on this for a while but I figured I’d give a bit of evidence that I’d started work on other greens for casting later on. This particular one is a set of Mark II legs. It’s in the standard Space Marine pose but still needs detailing up with lots of rivets and trim. After it is cast I might use this as the basis of a Mark III, as they are virtually the same except for the addition of added plating on the front.
Just a quick mockup of the finished Mark V greens. Two more and I’ll start working on making a few casts of the greens. Certainly my favourite of the Mark Vs I’ve made to date.
Here are a couple of the greens I’ve been working on to be cast. I’m sculpting the legs, torsos and shoulder pads. The torsos are being sculpted directly onto the legs but I will most likely cut them off before casting.
I have several of these in progress and plan to make 3 variations of marks 5, 6 and 7, with one or two variations of earlier marks.
Hey all,
So it’s about time I posted some evidence of progress, so here goes… the heading towards finished Grey Knight Chaplain.
Whilst painting him I decided I wasn’t totally happy with the positioning of the shield arm, mostly because the direction the attached purity seal was hanging looked odd. So I rebuilt the arm with the shield in a slightly more dynamic pose and the seal hanging more naturally downwards. Whilst doing this I realised I’d missed an opportunity to take the rather awesome Iron Haloed Skull and repeat the design on his own shield. So before continuing with painting I’ve sculpted the Iron Halo design onto his Storm Shield.
Originally I’d wanted to have all of his power armour black (as described in the novels) with just a few gold details and a silver skull helm, however, the all black armour just didn’t really look that good, so in the end I opted to paint both shoulder pads the same silver as his helm. It certainly requires a lot more attention on the painting side of things, but you can certainly imagine how the finished model will look now.
I’ve also managed to gather bits together for more members of a Grey Knight squad. All the legs are quite obviously from GK Terminators, the torsos from MK8 armour and a Black Templar plastic bit and the heads come from Black Templars, a metal veteran model, a company champion and a AoBR marine.
