Artscale Errant Armour

by Lamenter-Admin · June 25, 2009

This mini was made as the prize for the winner of my “name the website” competition that I ran over on Warseer.

He requested a marine in Mark VIII armour carrying a thunder hammer. Originally I was going to make a flying through the air pose with his thunder hammer held two-handed ready to strike, but after putting together the initial pieces the model looked too OTT. I often find this to be the case with action poses, they often lack a sense of realism. This can be especially true when the model lacks elements that can be used to show movement like flowing cloth for example.

Originally I tried to pose the arms like the 2008 Games Day Space Marine with thunder hammer. In the end though the pose just didn’t work with his stance so I altered it. Positioning arms can be incredibly difficult to do when both arms are holding the same weapon. To make the Mark VIII I used this image as my main guideline.

I normally attach a model’s head last as I always feel the direction it’s looking has the most overall effect on its pose. In this case (because of the gorget on the Errant design) the helmet would not sit comfortably in any other position without looking odd. I also had to trim down the helm to make it fit. The greenstuff on the helm is to try and represent the “sharper” look of the helm in the illustration, and deviate slightly from the mark 7 design.

I decided to bulk up the greaves after adding the circular joint protecting the ankle. Whilst the plastic terminator legs work wonderfully for scaled up Space Marines I sometimes prefer to add a bit more size to them. The knee pads were made to be slightly pointed and I decided to sculpt a new set of chunkier straps across the chest rather than use the standard component. I made the Thunder Hammer by modifying the plastic one to look more like the GD Space Marine version. The simple inclusion of an Imperial Eagle on either side and a little Green Stuff is enough to make it non-standard.

I decided to resculpt both hands so they’d look similar and because the standard right hand did look bizarrely small. They were perfect (this was one of my earlier artscale conversions) but they were passable.