Shenanigans in the north of Scotland
- Thread starter Doghead13
- Start date
Reckon that's one fairly successful first go at truescaling:
Because even Space Wolves need the odd gunfighter - just needs a lick of paint now, once his putty's dried. He's a beast, towering over even pretty big miniatures like my ageing gunslinger or even the biggest human figure from the Malifaux stuff and making poor Fred the Scalecadian look like a shrimp, and the full-sized bolters look pretty convincing as a Space Marine's pistols IMO.
I'm really starting to enjoy playing with greenstuff, and starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere learning the stuff. Good fun. Meanwhile on less tangential subjects I've finished making a trucker hat for the technical's driver.
Because even Space Wolves need the odd gunfighter - just needs a lick of paint now, once his putty's dried. He's a beast, towering over even pretty big miniatures like my ageing gunslinger or even the biggest human figure from the Malifaux stuff and making poor Fred the Scalecadian look like a shrimp, and the full-sized bolters look pretty convincing as a Space Marine's pistols IMO.
I'm really starting to enjoy playing with greenstuff, and starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere learning the stuff. Good fun. Meanwhile on less tangential subjects I've finished making a trucker hat for the technical's driver.
And the last miniatures for the Inquisitorial retinue: a gun-servitor who used to be called Renfield; and Commissar Murray's boon companion Brother Egil Skallagrimmsson along with his boon companion Freyja;
Renfield's story begins when he, then a low-level Administratum clerk, developed a rather questionable mania for eating live insects; he was kept alive and largely undamaged at the residence of Engineseer Seward (himself an expert in the human psyche) for the duration of then-Miss Murray's attempt to discern whether his distasteful habit was heretical or simply a side effect of his having gone quite mad. Shortly following his diagnosis as a lunatic and not connected to any warp entity or xenos, he attempted to alert his captors to the nature of Lucy's illness; during the confrontation that led to Vlad the Devil fleeing the planet, he received a head injury sufficient to reduce him to a mindless vegetable; thus presented a largely-functional body with the lights on but nobody home, Seward converted Renfield into a gun servitor on the theory that this would grant the unfortunate madman some semblance of revenge against the fell beast that had finished the work lunacy began.
As for Brother Egil Skallagrimmsson, a close look at his heraldry and the craftsmanship of his armour and weaponry, as combined with some knowledge of the markings used by the Space Wolves chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, will at once reveal him to be an elite member of that august company. He wears the colours of a Wolf Guard in the Great Company of Lord Ragnar Blackmane, marking him a hero even amongst a chapter renowned for their heroism. The exact details of his travelling with Inquisatrix van Harker are unknown, but can be presumed to stem from the lady Inquisatrix's father's friendship with Logan Grimnar. He wears finely-made artificer armour, and is armed with a pair of what are bolt pistols to an Astartes but would serve as boltguns in the hands of lesser men.
Brother Skallagrimmsson is accompanied by Freyja, a young adult Fenrisian wolf and one of the most potent weapons available to Inquisatrix van Harker. Together the two are an extremely powerful combination, and one which the lady Inquisatrix unleashes only with a great deal of care as Brother Skallagrimmsson is, not to put too fine a point on it, ever so slightly trigger-happy.
And, here's the entire retinue. Now all they need is basing, which will have to wait for me to get suitable basing material, and a little retouching and refinement of their paintwork here and there; I've left everything quite simple at this point to allow things like further highlighting and shading over the top of what's already there as I get more capable of doing so.
Renfield's story begins when he, then a low-level Administratum clerk, developed a rather questionable mania for eating live insects; he was kept alive and largely undamaged at the residence of Engineseer Seward (himself an expert in the human psyche) for the duration of then-Miss Murray's attempt to discern whether his distasteful habit was heretical or simply a side effect of his having gone quite mad. Shortly following his diagnosis as a lunatic and not connected to any warp entity or xenos, he attempted to alert his captors to the nature of Lucy's illness; during the confrontation that led to Vlad the Devil fleeing the planet, he received a head injury sufficient to reduce him to a mindless vegetable; thus presented a largely-functional body with the lights on but nobody home, Seward converted Renfield into a gun servitor on the theory that this would grant the unfortunate madman some semblance of revenge against the fell beast that had finished the work lunacy began.
As for Brother Egil Skallagrimmsson, a close look at his heraldry and the craftsmanship of his armour and weaponry, as combined with some knowledge of the markings used by the Space Wolves chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, will at once reveal him to be an elite member of that august company. He wears the colours of a Wolf Guard in the Great Company of Lord Ragnar Blackmane, marking him a hero even amongst a chapter renowned for their heroism. The exact details of his travelling with Inquisatrix van Harker are unknown, but can be presumed to stem from the lady Inquisatrix's father's friendship with Logan Grimnar. He wears finely-made artificer armour, and is armed with a pair of what are bolt pistols to an Astartes but would serve as boltguns in the hands of lesser men.
Brother Skallagrimmsson is accompanied by Freyja, a young adult Fenrisian wolf and one of the most potent weapons available to Inquisatrix van Harker. Together the two are an extremely powerful combination, and one which the lady Inquisatrix unleashes only with a great deal of care as Brother Skallagrimmsson is, not to put too fine a point on it, ever so slightly trigger-happy.
And, here's the entire retinue. Now all they need is basing, which will have to wait for me to get suitable basing material, and a little retouching and refinement of their paintwork here and there; I've left everything quite simple at this point to allow things like further highlighting and shading over the top of what's already there as I get more capable of doing so.
The whole team looks really great together. Are you just flocking the bases? I had an old door-snake explode and it has tiny-tiny sand in it, that I have been using to base terrain... 
Poor Renfield, I like his story most I think. Does the cable coming from the guns go into his head?
Poor Renfield, I like his story most I think.
Does the cable coming from the guns go into his head?The plan is to use raw sand straight off the beach with some debris mixed in - tiny plastic shavings left over from converting miniatures, fragments of solder, fine grit again off a beach, that sort of thing. Make things a little more interesting than just flock-and-paint without producing the 'carrying around specific highly distinctive piece of scenery so as to be able to lean on it' effect. It just requires me to nab a jam-jar, get on my bike, and take a turn down the shore, and that depends on a nice enough day when I'm neither dog-tired nor working.
And yeah, Renfield's cables are two short pieces of florist's wire running from holes drilled in the back of his metal skullcap to the back of the piece of cut-down GW sprue forming his gun-servitor gun mount. It took a bit of tweaking and trimming to get it to sit OK, but nothing too ticklish. Come to think of it, you could get the same effect with paperclip wire. The only real trick to it is to start out with pieces that are quite a bit longer than you think you need and trim them once you've held them roughly in position to go from guesstimate to estimate - I had to chuck the first piece as I'd cut it far too short.
It occurs to me that the lower of his cables either disappears behind his shoulder or blends into the light reflecting off the MDF movement tray in both the above images. Here's a rear view of him, under an electric light rather than being backlit by weird mix of daylight and laptop.
I'm going to give his skin and metalwork, along with Brother Skallagrimmsson's skin, another go-over in the morning and maybe do a little highlighting on Brother Skallagrimmsson's armour, then see if the weather's fit to go get a bit of sand, but right now it's my bedtime.
And yeah, Renfield's cables are two short pieces of florist's wire running from holes drilled in the back of his metal skullcap to the back of the piece of cut-down GW sprue forming his gun-servitor gun mount. It took a bit of tweaking and trimming to get it to sit OK, but nothing too ticklish. Come to think of it, you could get the same effect with paperclip wire. The only real trick to it is to start out with pieces that are quite a bit longer than you think you need and trim them once you've held them roughly in position to go from guesstimate to estimate - I had to chuck the first piece as I'd cut it far too short.
It occurs to me that the lower of his cables either disappears behind his shoulder or blends into the light reflecting off the MDF movement tray in both the above images. Here's a rear view of him, under an electric light rather than being backlit by weird mix of daylight and laptop.
I'm going to give his skin and metalwork, along with Brother Skallagrimmsson's skin, another go-over in the morning and maybe do a little highlighting on Brother Skallagrimmsson's armour, then see if the weather's fit to go get a bit of sand, but right now it's my bedtime.
Basing sounds great! Particularly like that you mentioned that it can look like people are carrying a large chunk of scenery around with them to lean on
Perhaps a few hazard stripes to distinguish the metal cap from the hairline? ;-)
Perhaps a few hazard stripes to distinguish the metal cap from the hairline? ;-)
Expended brass and shotgun cartridges in the footwell;
Don't think I'd be able to get even hazard stripes painted onto something, especially as small as they'd need to be on someone's head, and if they're uneven they look dreadful. My freehanding isn't really up to that sort of task yet and it'd be the very devil to get a stencil in under the cabling. I think I'll probably work towards a brighter metal at the rim of the skullcap.
Don't think I'd be able to get even hazard stripes painted onto something, especially as small as they'd need to be on someone's head, and if they're uneven they look dreadful. My freehanding isn't really up to that sort of task yet and it'd be the very devil to get a stencil in under the cabling. I think I'll probably work towards a brighter metal at the rim of the skullcap.
Latest pitslave type waiting for her greenstuff to dry; usage of the Ork runtherd bit brazenly stolen from UpsideDownTortoise because what a brilliant idea.
^The amount of detail in this is amazing. Those little shotguns shells in the foot-well, the fact that the underside actually has all the bits require for a functioning vehicle... Putting my half-arsed efforts to shame! :-D
Well, that would've been a lot easier if I'd measured it with something other than a MkI eyeball.
28mm-scale cardboard box. Yes, the flaps are the correct size to fold shut. Needs painting into the colour of an ordinary brown cardboard box, then attaching to the technical's passenger seat. After that I'll have to make and paint some shotgun shells before putting them into the box. Next up: a beercan, and once I have the beercan in place I am going to add a few bits-box bits then declare the interior detailed as if I don't it'll get silly.
28mm-scale cardboard box. Yes, the flaps are the correct size to fold shut. Needs painting into the colour of an ordinary brown cardboard box, then attaching to the technical's passenger seat. After that I'll have to make and paint some shotgun shells before putting them into the box. Next up: a beercan, and once I have the beercan in place I am going to add a few bits-box bits then declare the interior detailed as if I don't it'll get silly.
Box in place on the passenger seat. Also something that's going to be the very devil to paint; the contents of the box. These are going to be a real pain in the backside as they have to be painted the same brass-and-red as the expended shells in the footwell before they can go in. It's going to be a job for the tweezers and may involve an attempt to invent a new swear word.
None of it is particularly complicated. Most of it just involves stringing a piece of wire from one part of the model to another - any old fine wire will work, tearing apart one of those old multi-core electrical flexes is a great source for nice fine easy-to-work-with copper wire. Old-school fuse wire is another. Fine solder, the stuff used for working on precision elecronics. Florist's wire. And so forth - the important part is that it is thin. Half the time one end is just shoved up inside somewhere where you can't see it.
A good rat's nest of wiring up underneath really helps the look of your average soft-skin vehicle. Look under a light truck next time you get the chance - there's miles of cabling down there, and plenty of it is visible from the side.
The empty casings are simply bits of solder, cut to the right sort of length then finished with nothing more than paint - the shotgun cartridges are from fatter solder than the brass. It's very easy stuff to work with - you just cut it with an ordinary craft knife. Half the time (like the stuff on the floor) you can glue it down before worrying about paint - the stuff for in the box is fiddly because it has to be painted before getting glued down. The cardboard box is a small piece of printer paper, cut into the same pattern of an empty cardboard box - something I'm intimately familiar with through years working in stock handling and unloading - then folded into shape and held together with a dot of superglue; it doesn't actually have a bottom, that's just formed by gluing it down and painting the surface it's sitting on.
Each and every part is a very simple shape and roughly bashed together; there's just a lot of them in not a great deal of space.
A good rat's nest of wiring up underneath really helps the look of your average soft-skin vehicle. Look under a light truck next time you get the chance - there's miles of cabling down there, and plenty of it is visible from the side.
The empty casings are simply bits of solder, cut to the right sort of length then finished with nothing more than paint - the shotgun cartridges are from fatter solder than the brass. It's very easy stuff to work with - you just cut it with an ordinary craft knife. Half the time (like the stuff on the floor) you can glue it down before worrying about paint - the stuff for in the box is fiddly because it has to be painted before getting glued down. The cardboard box is a small piece of printer paper, cut into the same pattern of an empty cardboard box - something I'm intimately familiar with through years working in stock handling and unloading - then folded into shape and held together with a dot of superglue; it doesn't actually have a bottom, that's just formed by gluing it down and painting the surface it's sitting on.
Each and every part is a very simple shape and roughly bashed together; there's just a lot of them in not a great deal of space.
And some complete and painted 28mm-scale shotgun cartridges, just waiting for the brass-colour paint to finish drying before I start gluing them into the box on the seat. Not pictured: Some unpainted tools and an unpainted beercan.
Just about time to paint the driver.
Just about time to paint the driver.
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