Death Guard WIP: Pandemic (updated Jan 21 - fully painted Obliterator unit)

[Richter]

BLAH!

Ace! That is pretty darn brilliant....

[Fod]

The Demon Prince is amazing!!
NIce job! Cant wait to see him completed!

[Trick3y]

I would like to see a shot of the entire army

[Ryan_M]

You never cease to amaze me Svartmetall as usual you continue to put more nugle creations. Actually you should send pics of your sculpting to GW. On side note this has to be longest continuing thread.

[Chris_Lancaster]

I *think* somewhere in the thread Svart has pics of his lovely little Nurglets on display in Warhammer World, if I remember rightly!

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

Yes indeed, pics of my corrosive crew when they were in the Warhammer World display hall are here

[Svartmetall]

I'm working as much on trying to improve my general sculpting as anything else at the moment, so work on Pandemic is slightly slower than usual. However, I went to the AmmoBunker Open Bash this weekend just gone, and that's inspired me to actually finally get the current ~1,500 points' worth of Pandemic to a playable state...and this involves vehicles. Rhinos, to be precise...so here's the initial idea I've had for a way to Nurglify a Rhino:

I want to avoid the "I stuck bits all over the outside of the model" look that so many vehicle conversions have and really give the model some depth by going inside with conversion work and having things visible quite a way past the normal surface level of the model. If that makes sense. Areas of this kind of work in various places on the model should hopefully give them a nicely 3-dimensional look...

I've also had an idea for what may turn out to be a fairly nifty way to make sections of armour plating for Nurgle vehicles and other constructs...not sure whether it'll work or not yet but I'm going to have a go over this coming weekend. If it doesn''t suck, photos and possibly a step-by-step tutorial will be here soon after

[SocietySoldier]

Sickening, simply sickening.
Reminds me of the final level of Phantasy Star Online with the walls that are alive
Grade A+ work as always!

[Invid]

LOL. Plague Marine holding up the other side is pretty funny. Great work.

[Richter]

WOW.

[iCat]

That is awesome.

Hopefully you can achieve the same level of pure awesome on this as you have with your other stuff.

I know you can :P

[verybad]

Hmm, how about a bunch of giggling Nurglings rather than treads?

[iCat]

I'm nto sure how that would work. I'd like to see a sketch... :P

[Svartmetall]

A bit more progress; slime-mould-like tendrils worming their way out from the holes in the armour and over the body (I removed most of the previous smooth bits to replace them with mould tendrils since they looked a bit too generic tentacle-y to my eyes, if you get what I mean), a bulging mass of tumourous flesh poking out of the right rear 'shoulder' and a custom Nurgle icon on the door:


The Nurgle icon in close-up; I'm kind of pleased with how this is turning out (another set of very thin tendrils need to be added, but I want to let these cure overnight before adding those):

how about a bunch of giggling Nurglings rather than treads?

Heh, that would be funny. It would also, however, be a lot more high-fantasy than the look I'm aiming for with this army...


As always, C&C welcomed, more when I have it, yada yada

[Xenith]

Very nice, I like the thicker tentacles on the door, they look like slugs.

[Exetus]

As you've scored with all of the other tendrils, I'm guessing you will once you've completed, but is the Nurgle icon also going to be emerging/digging into the hatch to look like it's grown into/out of it instead of just embossed on?

As usualy, you're doing an awesome job and I can't wait to see how much you really get into the rest of the vehicles.

A suggestion for this one also would be no rear hatch... maybe just like a sickening orifice with a Plague Marine stepping from it to represent that it is, in fact, a hatch as if the Rhino is actually crapping these guys out of its innards...

[Richter]

Loving that icon!!! It'd be cool if you could make the whole icon a sort of creature thing, latching onto the side, digging into the plates...

[Open Blue]

I would really really like to see some battle damage on that, it would literally make my day. Otherwise, a brilliant job and much kudos on great green stuffing.

[Galorn2]

Looking very good so far Svart.

[plaugedpanda]

I love the rhino, but i'm not too crazy about the symbol on the side. something. in my opinion. just looks off. maybe its that perfect little ball in the center. or the way the tenticles are symetrical. i dunno.

but great work as always. keep it up

[Svartmetall]

is the Nurgle icon also going to be emerging/digging into the hatch to look like it's grown into/out of it instead of just embossed on?

Actually no, that icon is meant to be 'stuck on' rather than growing out of anything since it's an actual devotional icon added by the crew to the outside of the door.

you could make the whole icon a sort of creature thing, latching onto the side, digging into the plates

Nice idea, but see above - it's just an icon

I would really really like to see some battle damage on that

There will definitely be battle damage, but I wanted to get the Nurgly GS stuff done first so I could visually balance where the battle damage went afterwards; since the Nurgly bits are more structural in nature it made sense to do them first.

i'm not too crazy about the symbol on the side. something. in my opinion. just looks off. maybe its that perfect little ball in the center. or the way the tenticles are symetrical. i dunno.

Hmm; I don't see the tendrils as being all that symmetrical, I made sure they curved around organically so it was balanced but not actually symmetrical...I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have straight tendrils there, though, it wouldn't have looked Nurgly enough. The ball is there to give textural contrast so it's not just a mass of tendrils; once I've added the final stage of very fine tendrils to the icon (either this afternoon or tonight after work) it should hopefully balance out properly. The icon is kind of inspired by the little Nurgle icon thingies dotted about the Warriors Of Chaos army book; I sketched it out in my little ideas sketchbook at lunch yesterday then came home and built it.

[Fish Of Doom]

how about distorting the tentacles a bit? an eye or two on one, a couple tumorous growths on another, a schoolgirl on the last on.... uhh, nevermind :P

[Energizer Bunny]

A suggestion for the other side door (if you haven't already done it): What about having the door open (or pushed open) and having a protruding, sagging bulge coming out of it? Kind of like a belly sagging over the top of trousers (forgive the crass imagery. The effect I was thinking of was meant to imply that inside the rhino is exactly the sort of bulbous putrid mess that characterises the rest of the army.

[Svartmetall]

The finished icon:

The really small tendrils on top I think give it just the right amount of depth.

And now to work.
*sigh*
In the course of trying to improve my overall sculpting abilities, I've been trying to sculpt a basic 28mm-scale human face all day and I just cannot get it right, it's so frustrating...

[Svartmetall]

Been very busy with other stuff, but I managed to make a bit more progress on Rhino Number One (I guess I'm going to have to come up with names for the vehicles, since I'm naming every damn member of each squad):




The Dremel came in very handy for making the holes from out of which the tumourous bulges emerge; I think between said tumourous bulges and the sunk-in holes with tendrils and moulds creeping out from them, I've finally managed to settle on the 'look' I'm after for my Nurgle vehicles. The pieces are only dry-jointed together at the moment, but I think I'll be able to start gluing it all together now I've got a handle on how to do the conversion in a way I'm happy with.

Oh, and yay for 90,000 views

[Fod]

Truly Awesome!! Nice work mate!

[misterjustin]

Lots of good creeping crud on this one now. Very nice.

[LordAba]

Looks very nice. Are you planning something for the inside of the rhino as well?

How are you trying to sculpt the face? If you have anymore left over skulls they might make a nice base for you! :P

[Svartmetall]

A bit more progress on the Rhino:

The left-hand side now matches the right, in terms of overall amount of detail. If you look at the flesh inlaid into the front section, I'm really happy with how the veins work on the bloated flesh underneath; I think that detailing may well become a regular feature of my Nurgle sculpting, I'm certainly planning to use it on bits of Lord Borborygmus when I get back to working on him. I also like the hint of pus-like fluids oozing out from around the edges of the door...

I realised that the work I'd done on the right side wasn't quite complete, given the way I'd removed some of the upper armour; this left a sightline that needed filling. What it needed was this:

Now you can see where the track continues up inside the armour housing of the vehicle. I think this little bit of detail makes it look a lot more mechanically credible and three-dimensional I'm quite tempted to use the Predator turret base that comes in the Chaos Rhino box as a way to give the Havoc launcher a nice solid mounting; I need to think about that a bit first, though.

I've also started work painting my way through the mass of Plague Marine rebuilds. So far I'm just grinding through the boring bit, i.e. all the basecoating, but it's nice to see a real army-size mass of troops starting to take shape. I'll have at least 3 fully-converted 10-man squads of Father Nurgle's finest soon enough...



I've also started working on a bunch of original designs - not Games Workshop IP, this is stuff out of my head - which I'll be working on as part of my self-imposed 'improve my sculpting' program. I've decided on the first four things to be built, and am now getting the various bits of concept art I've done translated into basic armatures; this stuff will get its own thread once I've made enough progress with stuff for it to be worth posting pics of .



More, as always, when I have it.


_____

[juckto]

Awesome, as always, when you show it.

[Svartmetall]

Between live roleplay events and working on my original sculpts there hasn't been much time to get stuff done on Pandemic, but I got some more done on the Rhino - now with Havoc launcher and pintle-mounted bolter assemblies done, and battle damage added in places:


It's definitely starting to take shape now; next I'll glue the top on and add any GS bits that need to stretch or intertwine between that and the sides (for example, where there's a hole near the exposed section of track on the right front. I took the combat blade off the twin-linked bolter, since it didn't make any sense to me to have what's basically a bayonet on a weapon that's permanently mounted on top of a vehicle.

I don't want to go too overboard with the battle damage, since even though they're Plague Marines and not too fussed about appearance they'd still repair anything that damaged the structural & defensive integrity of the vehicle (it still has to work after all, dedicated to Father Nurgle or not), but I like the scratched battle damage on the left front. I wanted it to look like they'd been up against 'Nids at some point and something gribbly had been trying to carve its way into the hull...

Detail of the Havoc mounting:

I made an X-shaped assembly of sprue in the hole to mount the launcher onto, then pinned the Havoc assembly to that (figuring it's going to get knocked over or something at some point and so a bit of structural strength would be handy), then built up the organic GS texturing around it. I particularly like the multi-stranded segment of flesh reaching out from inside to wrap around the base of the launcher. I'm looking forward to doing the front panel, since I have what I think could be a nifty idea for a trophy-rack sort of thing there; pics when I have them.


Work on the first of my original sculpts is progressing apace; hopefully I'll have WIP pics at some point this weekend.

_____

[SocietySoldier]

The havoc mount is made of pure win!
Although i think under the doors could use a tad more oozey stuff IMO. That's my two cents tho XD

[juckto]

I think painting a few of those Havoc tendrils as power cables would show a nice blend of creature/machine.

[Chris_Lancaster]

Mmmmm, squelchy

[Richter]

Now. To inorporate an eyeball into the end of one of the missiles....


looking ace mate!

[Energizer Bunny]

Big set of teeth at the front would appear to be what the doctor ordered.

[DelphicFist]

Great green stuff work. I've now got some ideas for my nurgly soul grinder...I'm doing the fantasy giant/defiler conversion that I've seen going around. With any luck I'll be able to set mine apart from the rest...because it'll be inventive...not because it's crap.

[TomVI]

Damn fine GS skills! Think i might have to try a rhino converstion! the small detail on the tendrils/tentacles looks amazing really sets it off

[VeteranSergeant]

Just popped in to see the progress, inspirational as always... Noticed you're going to scratch build a weapon, and, if someone else hasn't already suggested it, I suggest either using brown stuff or a mix of brown/green stuff, and sculpt it around a wire. Didn't read the posts (sorry, lazy today) so I apologize if someone else hit on this, or if you've already looked into it.
Later and keep up the good work.

[Linked]

Hey, Svartmetall!
When do you've got more updates? I love your work! You have really inspired me to model some more nurgle stuff for my nurgle army. Two thumbs up.

[Svartmetall]

Big set of teeth at the front would appear to be what the doctor ordered.

That would be too high-fantasy for the general Pandemic look, to be honest. However, when I get around to doing the Daemonically-Possessed Rhino...then I'm just going to go nuts on that one

Now, what does any good Chaos vehicle need?

Why, it needs a hood ornament, of course!


It was kind of fiddly threading all the bits onto that very fine chain, but worth it for the final look. The Rhino's pretty much done, now, I just need to attach the rear door and that's it. It does feel nice to have finally wrapped my head around how to Nurglify a vehicle in a way that I'm happy with, and getting this one done means doing the rest will be a lot simpler since I'll already have a template to work from.

Since I was already working on a couple of original scratchbuilt models, it seemed a good moment to have a crack at something I've fancied making for a long time - a Herald of Nurgle based on the one from the Chaos Daemons codex; if you read that, on the page about Plaguebearers it goes on about how they are recognisable by their thin wasted frames and bony limbs, and then proceeds to show a drawing of a hulking great Sumo Plaguebearer I've always thought the one in the drawing would work well as a Herald of Nurgle (the bigger, tougher and more disgusting Plaguebearer; it is to a normal Plaguebearer pretty much what an Aspiring Champion is to a normal Plague Marine) model, so I've started to make one of those from scratch as well as the other models; here he is at his current very early stage, next to the drawing from the Codex:

I think I'm starting to get the feel for posing armatures now, and I like his businesslike striding-forward-to-eviscerate-you body language. In the background of that shot, you can see the very skinny (and small) armature for the Ghoul design of mine; to give you an idea of scale, the Herald is just slightly taller than a Chaos Terminator.

I've also started work on painting the Possessed Terminator for the painting competition, and will tomorrow be beginning work on the scavenger-worm creature from my original designs.

More when I have it...


_____

[SocietySoldier]

Just when I think you've hit your peak, you keep coming back and blowing my mind....please keep blowing my mind....'nough said

[Exetus]

You DISGUST me, Svart... but in the very best way =P. Excellent work, as usual!

[misterjustin]

Your adaptation of the codex sketch is coming along nicely. Bravo!

[Richter]

Daemonically possessed rhino.... *slobbers*

[Svartmetall]

Here's how Herbie is coming along...


I dunno why...he just looks like a Herbie to me

[Richter]

Ahhhh the first touch of guts....

[battledaemon]

I'm a complete noob - it's my first army, my first attempt at Green Stuff, and my first attempt at 40K figure-painting*.
So be nice

Oh the glory days eh? You've definitely improved methinks! That herald looks fantastic so far! I really wanna see it done...

[Svartmetall]

And just to prove that I haven't forgotten them, I finally today finished basecoating the 22 new & resurrected Plague Marines; it's amazing how much time even plain basecoating can take when you have a lot of highly-detailed figures to do. 3 of the ones in the front row in the first picture are further along in the painting stages than the others, but rather than just do those and leave the rest plain undercoat I figured I wanted to get them all at least basecoated just as a psychological step:



Now you can see the conversion work beginning to sit properly with the original figures; even at this early stage I think they'll be a force to be reckoned with once finished. Nurgle alone knows when I'll have time to completely paint all 22 of them, but at least now - unlike when I was desperately using literally every waking moment not in work to paint things for the WHW deadline - I can chill out a bit and do them in lots of maybe 3 at a time, which is considerably more relaxed.

[Svartmetall]

Here's Herbie with new and improved moobs, a smoother and slightly bigger eye, a section of spine added to his back (which will be visible poking through the final skin texture), better leg proportions and some really tiny teeth:


It's probably not clear from the pics, and there's obviously a long way to go yet, but in the flesh he's now starting to feel like a recognisable version of the one from the original art...

...I think I'm finally getting over my mental block about scratchbuilt figures. Which is nice.