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Category Archives: Scuplting

Navigator Fogg & ‘Kulo’s Cook’

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by Alex in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Rogue Trader, Sculpting, Wolf Time

Greetings Terrans, I have another Wolf Time update for you this morning – I’ve finished Navigator Fogg, and an un-named cook from one of the sub-plots… Let’s start with Fogg – from the Book of the Astronomican:

“Like most Orkish navigators, Fogg is a psychic. Orks navigate by a crude process of intuition and primitive divination. So long as they stick to relatively short warp-jumps this works well enough. However, there are occasional accidents, like the one which has stranded the Charadonian fleet in the Wheel of Fire.

Fogg has a psychic mastery of 1 and a psi-level of 10. He is able to use the hammerhand, mental blow and steal mind abilities. Fogg has the following weapons and equipment:

Flak armour. Mesh armour. Bolt gun. 2 bolt pistols. 1 vortex grenade.

 

So, as a proto-Weirdboy, I had the perfect opportunity to include one of my all-time favourite minis from the Ork range – the Warphead Weirdboy from 1991. I added a suitable right arm & left upper arm, and then sculpted on sleeves, a brace of holstered pistols & the left forearm & hand clutching a bomb:

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I wish I had done a better job with the left hand – you can’t really see the vortex bomb from a natural viewing angle, but I promise you it’s there:

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In terms of painting, I wanted to make Fogg quite flamboyant, so went with bright yellow & purple as the main theme – I love his snazzy yellow boots! His hair got strongly emphasised, as did his crazy eye, complete with subtle glow effect. Other than the slight gripe with the too-subtle vortex grenade, I’m really happy with this guy, and I think he reads well as a crazy-assed psyker!

 

Now to explain ‘Kulo’s Cook’… There are a number of sub-plots in the final scenario of the Wolf Time campaign, and one of them refers to the cook, (no spoilers!). I wanted to have a few of the sub-plots in my back pocket for when I run the game, and while it isn’t necessary to have a mini to represent the cook, but I thought it would be fun. He doesn’t get named in the scenario, so I’ve christened him ‘Gore-den Ram’s-Eye’:

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Ram’s-Eye already had his cleaver, so I just needed to sculpt his chef’s apron & hat, and his right forearm & cooking pot (complete with squig gribble-stew). I didn’t give him a gun, (he’s more of a skulker than a fighter), but I’ll do a bunch of kitchen squigs for him to fight with in-game. I hope I get enough players to warrant using him!

Here’s one last pic of the two together:

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And that’s me for today! Just  ‘Captain of the Guard, Rulko’ and Kulo himself to finish :-)

Salute 2019, paint brushes & Doc ‘Bits’ Spleenripper!

08 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by Alex in Mag Bellum, OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Painting, Rogue Trader, Sculpting, Wolf Time

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? It has been a bonkers weekend for me, and this is a pretty eclectic post as a result. First up, I had the privilege of attending Salute this weekend – as a trader! I was helping out my pal Mark (Heresyofus) on his Mag Bellum stand, along with Ed (aka E.J. Henries of Malific Design). It was a real eye-opener being on the other side of the table, and was brutal on the voice, (I completely lost mine), but wow, what an experience! We didn’t sell much, but we got a whole lot of positive feedback on the Mag Bellum system, and on the prototypes for the next phase of the product. We also learned a hell of a lot about running a stand in the process, and we will certainly be better prepared next time! It was also great to spend some time with Mark and Ed – great company & we had a proper good laugh, (Ed faking an orgasm was a thing of absolute beauty). Here they are, looking tense (Ed?) prior to the punters coming in:

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The rest of the show mostly passed me by to be honest, but I did get to say hi to a few pals from the OldHammer scene, (Geoff, Paul, James, the Wargames Foundry team), and I got to say a quick hello to Annie from Bad Squiddo too. Dave ‘The Imperfect Modeller’ kindly stopped by to say hi – lovely bloke, great to meet him & put a face to a name! He had some of his minis with him too, so I had the bonus pleasure of seeing some of his work in RL – (the photos on his blog really don’t do him or his minis justice at all!)

I also had the chance to have a brief natter with John Blanche, (gasp!). I’ve met John before, but only very briefly, and I was a bit too star-struck to say much on that occasion! It was great to have more interaction with him this time, and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing him at BOYL later this year. I also met & had a really good chat with GW designer Maxime Corbeil – wow, what a lovely guy! His enthusiasm for his work is just brilliant to see, and he’s such a cool dude to chat with.

On a personal level, the highlight was probably bumping in to Kev Adams. We had a good talk about sculpting, and I got to show him some pics of my attempts at Ork power armour –  I was quite nervous, but he was so kind and positive! He gave me loads of encouragement & some top tips on how to do a better job of edging and detail, so it was brilliant to meet him again & so decent of him to take the time to give feedback and advice. He really is a top bloke.

It was also my Birthday over the weekend, so my only purchase at Salute was a slightly indulgent paint brush set from Artis Opus – I used some B’day money I received from my folks, so thanks M&D!!:

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I had a quick spin with them last night, and they are bloody lovely to use… Not revolutionary, but they are certainly nicer in the hand & more accurate than the brushes I am used to. I also saw a demo of their new KickStarter Drybrush set, and I had to completely revise my view on what you can do with a drybrush… I saw a piece in hand that was so subtle that it almost looked like airbrushing. Seriously guys, go check Artis Opus ‘D’ series on KS – it’ll blow your socks off! Needless to say, I’ve now backed that project for an early Christmas pressie to myself ;-)

Speaking of painting, I did manage to finish one of the characters for the final scenario of Wolf Time in amongst all the chaos! Doc ‘Bits’ Spleenripper is the first out of the blocks – he’s basically a proto-painboy. From the Book of the Astronomican:

“Doc is fond of ‘experimental surgery’, as many of his patients have discovered. It was whilst cleaning his chainsword that he lost his right arm, and whilst many surgeons would have taken this badly, ‘Bits’ merely saw it as an opportunity for further experimentation. His arm is a marvel of Ork bio-engineering ‘know what’. It doesn’t work all that well but… by grumblat! …it’s impressive.

Doc’s arm is bionic and includes all the gadgets listed below. To represent the fact that this piece of technology is rather haphazard, roll 1D6 immediately before any phase of hand-to-hand combat:

1 – the arm goes wild, attacking any randomly selected model within 1” (including Doc Spleenripper himself)

2 – the arm simply fails to work for that combat phase

3-6 – the arm works normally

Doc Spleenripper is armed and equipped as follows:

Flak armour, Mesh armour, Bolt pistol

Plus

Bionic arm: Chainsword; Power-glove; 4 Jokaero digital lasers.”

So quite a specific and tricky modelling challenge! I started with an ‘Ere we Go era Painboy, (the one with the surgeons mirror to match the artwork from the book), and I looked around for a suitable bionic arm to graft on, but I really couldn’t find one that worked for me so I ended up having a go at sculpting one over a wire frame. I wanted it to look like it would work as a hand/power-glove, yet have a chainsword that could be extended out as required. I also tried to suggest some digi-lasers on the knuckles as well – not the easiest of things to represent! While I had the putty out, I just did the left arm as best I could, and sculpted on one of my ‘standard’ bolt pistols:

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Paint-wise, I kept to a blue theme for his scrubs – for reasons that will become apparent in the near-future. I also deliberately added less rust & gunk compared to the Ork Guards, but I did slap some ‘Blood for the Blood God’ around to really push the crazy surgeon vibe. Finally, I added a suitably ‘Painboy-esque’ glyph to the back plate – back plates & glyphs aren’t strictly a Rogue Trader thing & came a bit later, but I thought it a nice nod to the Doc being the first example of what has since become a standard part of Orky law.

I’m really happy with how the Doc came out – there are probably a few things I’d do differently if I were to do him again, but he certainly fits the brief admirably I think. I’ll be continuing to finish the remaining characters this week – they are all basecoated & shaded, so it’s a quick evening on each to highlight, add detail etc. You can expect a series of smaller posts as the week progresses, and hopefully the Orks will be finished by the weekend!

Onwards and upwards :-)

Armoured Orks pt.1

25 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by Alex in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

≈ 41 Comments

Tags

Conversion, Rogue Trader, Sculpting, Wolf Time

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? All good I hope :-) I’m really excited to be sharing this post with you today – I am finally on the home stretch with the Wolf Time Ork project, and we’re getting to the really really interesting bit… the mythical ‘Guards with power armour & chainswords’! Now, some of you might be wondering what the big deal is – maybe you’re only dipping in to this project recently, or maybe (like me) your memory is more suited to remembering how much damage a Heavy Bolter does in RT* than what you had for breakfast… Either way, I’ll offer a quick recap.

One of the guiding principles of this whole project has been WYSIWYG** – I cut myself some slack with the difference between flak or mesh armour, but I wanted every knife, bolt pistol, grenade, hand flamer etc. correctly represented on every miniature***  I also wanted to use period models as much as humanly possible & avoid the later ‘Ere we Go’ minis with plastic arms… (a couple of these slightly later minis did find their way in for some of the characters, but not too many.)

The problem is that many of the loadouts specified in the campaign pack never existed in miniature form, or were only represented in a couple of models. The Skumbos (bolt pistol & sword) are a good example of the latter condition – there were a couple of minis that suited, but not enough to do a full 25 without chronic duplication. The ‘power armour/bolter/chainsword’ combo is an example of the former… there simply wasn’t a period mini that represented that load out at all. In both cases, my approach has been to attempt to sculpt what I needed – proper Old School :-)

I’ve been showing you the skumbos over the last couple of months – they have loads of sculpted details like pistols, scraps of armour, swords & scabbards etc. All in all, quite a lot of effort… However, the Guards were a whole different level of work – we’re talking 18 full ‘over-sculpts’ of power armour, 3rd party chainswords, bionics, the odd gun-arm… basically this involved hours and hours of sculpting in and around other bits and pieces – hence the excitement in getting some paint on them! Here are the first two squads – Red and Orange:

 

And here are some closer views in pairs:

That last pair was the squad leaders – they get a hand flamer each as well as the bolter. The orange guy is the only ‘as is’ power armoured mini in the whole group but he still needed his hand flamer sculpted on. Note his chainsword is actually part of his gun-arm.

 

I also thought it might be fun to compare a Skumbo, a Boy and a Guard as well – I’ve accidentally managed to get quite a pleasing range of sizes:

 

And one final shot of all 10 Guards together:

 

So there we are – 10 down, 8 to go. Are they perfect? No, of course not – they are lumpen and misshapen, rough and ready. Some have worked better than others, and some are frankly ridiculous. Was it easy? Hell no – sculpting is bloody difficult and time consuming, but I learned so much through doing this… I think it’s fair to say that while my sculpting is still pretty meh, it did improve a lot through this process, and I’m certainly a lot more confident pushing putty now than I was before.

But the most important question is do they work? Well, I’m hardly in a position to be objective about this, but I really think they do. They look big & heavy, they look well ‘ard, and they look like they warrant a 4+ save… They look like the classic end-of-level uber-henchie, and they look ready to crump some Marines…

In that sense, I think I’m calling these a complete success :-)

 

*D4 Damage(r) – if you knew this, and if you can’t say D4 Damage without adding the ‘r’ and immediately following with ‘power to the people’ or ‘with the ill behaviour’ then I may actually be in love with you.

**What You See Is What You Get – your model is a true representation of the army list.

***One sneaky Boy is passing his Heavy Bolter off as a regular one… I’m allowing this because the Heavy B is tiny, and because I can’t handle perfection. Sorry Paul.

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