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

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

"hoping for a lion fish dread"

Sorry, he's not going to be a lionfish :P Though that does give me an idea for a potential Slaaneshi or Tzeentch Dread...hmm...for a long time I've been considering making a highly-converted 'matched set' of Chaos Terminators, one for each of the Dark Gods and one Undivided, just to test my conversion and painting abilities in different styles; it would be fun to make some other styles of Chaos Dreadnought, too. Gah. Must stay focused. Too many ideas, not enough hours in the day!


"it beats the forge world dread by a mile!"

*blushes*
Erm, thank you, although I don't know if he's that good. Yet. I am intending with this guy to produce a Nurgle Dread that can easily hold its head up in the company of the FW ones, though...I love them, but have been wanting to make my own statement on how a Nurgle Dreadnought can look for some time now. I actually have the original FW Death Guard Dread sitting in a box, which will at some point get assembled; however, I'm even converting that to personalise it more. He'll be a lascannons-and-missile-launcher long-range killer, as opposed to Vvornth's CC-and-infantry-grinding combat load.

I think I got kind of burnt out on doing the Spawn squad for that competition; I really like the resulting beasties I came up with, but concentrated so hard on it - and to a deadline, to boot - that it did become more of a job and less of a labour of love (as I think someone pointed out somewhere in the labyrinthine depths of this thread). I'm feeling really psyched about doing this Dread, though, very much as though my batteries have been recharged and the creative juices are flowing at full pelt again. Having done troops pretty much exclusively, I'm enjoying doing something a little different - I see a Dread very much as more like a super-Terminator, closer to a troop than a vehicle, given that what it is is essentially a person given a mechanical body.

And that enthusiasm is helping with the scratchbuilds I'm working on, too...more on those when I have pics that are worth posting. At least one of those is a Nurgle...thing.

[scalphunter]

Your dread looks awesome, should paint up real nice.
You haven't forgotten about Wolfie...have you..:-)

[son of tzeentch]

Blood and Ashes. Blood and bloody ashes.

Dude that is flaming stunning. Go into Golden Daemon. wow.

ps. are the spikes on the CC weapon from a predator?

[Svartmetall]

"...are the spikes on the CC weapon from a predator?"

Nope, they're actually from this thing on the Chaos vehicle sprue:

The extensions on the CC weapon were actually the very first thing I did on this Dread, last September just before the depression was diagnosed; the thing's been sitting there untouched since then until last week or whenever when I started work on it again.

Also in that shot you can see the Old School^TM Plague Marine, I picked up a whole box of those in mint condition on Ebay for like £5 two weeks ago . They're definitely going to have a squad to themselves in the full 3,000-point version of Pandemic...wish CSMs had special rules for Veteran squads, they'd be a cert for that.

I'm still gonna green-stuff the arse off them though

[Svartmetall]

"You haven't forgotten about Wolfie...have you?"

Oh no. Here's Wolfie with feet finished (and those ugly white spacers finally removed), shoulder musculature enhanced and first tentacles added...

[misterjustin]

You may already be thinking this but....

With some wire you could sculpt tentacles that are reaching and twisted. It would make it look like the tentacles are ALSO coming to get you. BLECH!

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

I did think about that, but I wanted the overall shape to be fairly simple so as not to detract from the sheer oddness of the model. After quite a bit of umming and ahhing about it, having the tentacles dragging behind him like a poisonous jellyfish seemed the best aesthetic option to me given the pose of the rest of him...

[Draconis77]

That is some awesome green stuff action there. The muscles look amazing. What would you think of having the tentacles longer, spreading out across the ground a bit?

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

Yep, several will be longer - as long as I can get away with and stick to a sensible base size (ideally they'd drag up to a couple of metres behind him, but sadly that doesn't mesh well with in-game legality). I also want to have some short ones as well, the idea being that as he loses some in combat he grows new ones to replace them. Some will be thicker and with surface texturing, too...at one point I wondered about adding suckers like giant squid tentacles, but then I figured he wouldn't need those with the claws he has to grab onto stuff.

[scalphunter]

Thanks for taking the time to up date wolfie, he's looking great.

[Khorney]

ah, the old 5 pound box set ones! i've got a ton of those lying around somewhere...the 'zerker ones too.

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

Aye, I like 'em...the moulding's not as sharp or as detailed as what they're doing now, but they're still cool. I am so very, very tempted to make a whole squad of them - green-stuffed and converted to hell and back, naturally - as part of my planned Plague Marines Mark II upgrade...whenever the hell I get around to doing those

[Svartmetall]

OK, back from the Gathering (biggest live roleplay event in Europe)...bruised, achy and exhausted, but happy . Here's Vvornth with the 'slime mould' GS detail added to his weapon arms and upper torso; hopefully this looks nice and organic...

...but as always C&C is welcomed.


Currently I'm thinking along the lines of a Nurgle icon planted into the hole in his upper torso, probably a slightly customised version of the one from the new CSM Command sprue; either that or a tentacle to match the one coming from under the right side of the torso...

More when I have it.

[Jopax]

Looking good, the dread looks very nice, the wolfie on the other hand, has some issues, the way he looks now is much to static, like standing still(well technically he is), maybe if you bent the arms/legs whatever they are a little so it looks like he is "walking", that and maybe smoothing the arm muscles a bit, they are a bit too standing out now

[Svartmetall]

Unfortunately I can't reposition Wolfie's arms now, they're pretty much solid green stuff with no flexibility. I kind of like the very defined musculature he's got going on, though...

[Jopax]

Well it's not that they look bad, it just looks like he has only muscles on his bones, maybe paint him only to have flesh, no skin on his arms, and for the repositioning, maybe position him, lean him a bit to the forward or something like that

[Svartmetall]

That's the thing, though - he's totally immobile. Ehh...for a first attempt at totally scratchbuilding limbs I like him - despite the somewhat rigid pose, I still think he's got tons of character for a Spawn. And the next time I'll be able to work on the pose, instead of just panicking about whether I can actually scratchbuild something at all

Now back to working on the 100% scratchbuilt stuff I'm slav(er)ing over...hopefully I'll have pics of them soon, too.

[Svartmetall]

Here's Wolfie, pretty much finished constructionally:


I used very thin layers of GS to build up tattered skin around the hole which makes up the bottom half of his torso...


...I'm pleased with the result.


And here's a very early look at one of the scratchbuilds I'm feverishly working on; this one's going to become a Nurgle Obliterator. The basic frame is made of galvanised steel wire, bent to the appropriate pose then with GS built up painstakingly in layers to make skin, armour etc.

Given that he's an Obli, I'm planning to put lots of augmetic cabling running around the armour and into & through the flesh.

The idea is that when he reshapes his flesh Obliterator-style, Nurgly bloating occurs and he expands. Hence the burst and broken edges of his armour as his limbs crack it when they shift...obviously the edges that should be straight aren't right now, but they'll get trimmed flat with a knife once it's completely cured hard.


He's obviously pretty basic right now but I'm after feedback on pose etc. Currently the idea is to have multi-melta bits emerging from the tissues of the right arm, and a large Nurgly CC claw on the left.

More, as always, when I have it

[Sir Clausel]

Right now the scratchbuilt looks like crap to say so. But Im pretty sure I aint gonna say that when its finished!

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

Yeah, it's obviously going to look a little rough at this point...I'm just after feedback on the position etc, the really basic stuff. Scratchbuilding is really interesting but the learning curve is pretty damn steep*; I'm working on quite a few other (non-Nurgle) scratchbuilt things as well, all with an eye to improving my overall sculpting ability.

One thing I like with the armour which may not be clear from those pics is that I've made it double-layered; power amour, especially Terminator armour, isn't just a single-layer item and I wanted to convey that - if you look at the damaged & corrupted armour on his inside left leg in the second shot of him, you can just see through the largest hole another smooth surface inside. That's there to represent one of the inner layers of the armour peeking through the hole in the outer; I'm probably going to do that again on one of the big shoulderpads he's going to have. It's not mentioned in any of the fluff I've seen, but I can't see Obliterators not tinkering with their armour; they have what is effectively Terminator armour anyway, rules-wise, so I figure given their archeotech alterations & additions their armour would in all likelihood be even more bulky than standard Terminator armour.

At the risk of stating the obvious, to me one of the main advantages of scratchbuilding is that it frees you up (once you can do it well enough, which I'm working on ) to make stuff you just can't get any other way, allowing you to have a really distinctive model/army on the table or in the display case.

Plus, it's just really fun


By the way, any C&C on Wolfie or do you think he's pretty much there now?



* we're talking ice-skating up the north face of K2 steep

[Skrzyp]

The only thing I'd suggest about Wolfie is thinking about making the gaps in the forearm muscles more subtle.

If you have a look at anatomy pictures, the forearm muscles are grouped more tightly together. Right now I think it looks a bit too much like just a smaller version of the upper arms.

As for the scratch built, I'd make sure to lower the groin a bit as the legs seem a bit long. Of course this may not matter, as when you bulk it out the problem will go away.

Besides that, looking good.

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

"...making the gaps in the forearm muscles more subtle.

If you have a look at anatomy pictures, the forearm muscles are grouped more tightly together..."

True, but my thinking was that since these muscles are now part of the main load-bearing limbs for the body they'd have bulked up a lot during his Spawnification. Between the actual weight they have to move around and needing to be able to actuate the claws so he can grab onto stuff, I figured larger and bulkier muscles would make sense; anatomically-correct forearm muscles would look too scrawny and skinny in this context. I checked out medical diagrams etc. for a while before deciding on the final muscle build for him; even with crazy 75%-scratchbuilt Spawn, I do my homework

[Skrzyp]

The size I think is fine, it's just the shape makes them look more like cylinders wrapped around his arms rather than large coils of muscles. But maybe that's just personal opinion.

[scalphunter]

Wolfie looks awesome, and I look forward to seeing him painted up.
Anatomy wise, you are right, yes it's not correct, but I think it's right to assume he would develop what he needs.
If he was mine I would give him mohawk ? hair that ran down his back like a ridgeback. it would make for a nice contrast ( with so much flesh ) me thinks.
Scratch build; the pose looks fine so far, and the rest is coming along nicely. I would have used milliput for the bulking out, just to save on the cost of green stuff. I am looking forward to seeing him come to life.

[Svartmetall]

"...it's just the shape makes them look more like cylinders wrapped around his arms rather than large coils of muscles"

Hmm. I think I know what you mean, but it doesn't actually bug me. It'd be interesting to make a Wolfie II, 100% scratchbuilt with a steel-wire endoskeleton and a more dynamic pose just to see what I could come up with. At some point I may well do that, 'cos I love making distinctive crazy shit just for the hell of it...but I have enough on my plate round about now.

*adds it to his don't-forget-this-idea list*


"Scratch build; the pose looks fine so far, and the rest is coming along nicely. I would have used milliput for the bulking out, just to save on the cost of green stuff. I am looking forward to seeing him come to life."

He's actually starting to do just that now; I added some basic 'feet' to him last night so he now stands stably upright by himself, and the pose works for sure now.

As for the green stuff, I bought several 90cm. strips of it from Tiranti.com, and it works out pretty cheap when you buy it in quantities like that. Plus I'm used to GS now, and the learning curve I'm up against is steep enough with just scratchbuilding without making it steeper by using a new material I'm not at all familiar with...

...yeah, I know, I'm a wuss.


I took some new photos of some of my favourite models on the new background, and like the way these have come out - a bit more vivid and lively than the drab background I had before:









....

[Mormoran]

Dude you HAVE to finish your dread, it's just too awesome!

And make 3 more!!

[misterjustin]

This army is going to look fantastic. I hope you find yourself in my neighborhood at some point so I can see them on the table. Oh, sure, there's some water between here and there but still....

[Energizer Bunny]

Get that dread painted. NOW!

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

"Get that dread painted. NOW!"

Heh, at the rate I'm green-stuffing it's going to be like a month before I pick up a paintbrush again Plus, Vvornth isn't quite finished yet - I'm still vacillating on whether to stick a Nurgle banner-type thing in the hole in the top hull (as I'd originally planned, inspired by the excellent FW Black Templars Dread) or have tentacles coming out of it to match the little vestigial one that's already emerging from under the right 'shoulder' of the model. I really can't make up my mind, both options work equally well to my sense of aesthetics; I may actually end up tossing a coin.

Plus, I want to customise his base at least a little; I'm thinking dismembered/crushed corpse and some debris.


EDIT: and on a vehicle-related note, having Searched through the topics about scale - would it be safe to say that a 1/35 scale model would work as a basis for a 40K conversion?

[Skrzyp]

I see no reason why you can't have both tentacles and a banner. I mean, what better way to hold a tentacle than a mass of extra arm(-like thing)s

[Svartmetall]

It's not Nurgle-related, but what the hell - here's the first pure scratchbuild (Wolfie has Ogre bits so doesn't quite count) I've ever done...a Dryad.



I wanted it to look more realistically tree-like than the current Dryad models, and I had a lot of fun getting the bark texture right; I particularly like the knot in the wood on the front where the three limbs meet.

Just to show scale, here he is with a Plague Marine:


I'm working on a bunch of other pure scratchbuilds at the moment, but this is the first completed one so I thought I'd share; as much as anything else, now I know that I can produce decent-looking trees, I can make them to any shape needed for dioramas etc

[[MaGiC]]

nurgle infested tree perhaps?

[verybad]

Maybe have a nurgley tentacle proudly waving the Nurgle banner as your Dreadnaught fights for Plague, Infection, and the Nurgle Way. After all, he's got a lot to be proud of after 10,000 years of fighting for the good guys!

[Svartmetall]

And finally, here's the finished construction on Dreadnought Vvornth...

[Zombie Phlegm]

im really looking forward to this model being painted!

[Winterdyne]

Wow. Really nice greenstuff work.

[Telliphas]

Nice one Svart, this thing is looking awesome. Now all you need to do is cast it and produce another one for me.

[Fish Of Doom]

that dreadnought's greatness s such that i'll spell it phonetically in spanish: dis drednogt is sou osom ai cant beliv it, iu roc diud!

[[MaGiC]]

O_o haha awesome sauce.. I wanna have something phoneticly wrote in my posts

other than that.. paint this dready up Svart

[Galorn2]

Very Slick and Sic looking as always Svart.

[Svartmetall]

A brief aside...I thought it would be fun to try and sculpt something at the '3-up' scale, so I made an Ork head that's been stuck on a pike:


Had great fun doing the dangling viscera and the droopy ears...it's damn fiddly to get all that fine skin texturing detail to match up across the surface of the head, but I like the end result, I think he's got character. I shall call him Bob

[SilverTabby]

The work is going well. You ask for critisism - so here goes. Please don't take this as bad, I'm just trying to give a bit of direction

You need to exaggerate things more. Look at the smaller scale orks and try to not do things in a 'realistic' way - and build up slowly adding features with every layer. For example, I'd personally have put the eyes on, then built up the lids around them, then added bigger-than-normal overhanging eyebrows in three stages so the eyes are more sunken and slightly further back in the head. I'd also recommend adding a larger lower lip over the one there, and use the existing one as gum underneath.

The texturing on the skin is good - but it should be the last thing you add, once everything else is in place. Adding a final layer of thin skin over what you have done is much easier than trying to texture the major work without altering things.

[Fish Of Doom]

the neck is kinda small, and the head a bit square-ish, but otherwise it's a very nice sculpt. NOW GIT BAK TA PAINTIN' DA KILLY DREDNOTT YA GROT!!!!!!!!

[Svartmetall]

posting from work

Tabby - I actually used the Black Reach Boss head as a model, and tried to scale up from that; I actually started to try a bigger jaw, but I though it looked silly. Maybe it's the picture; it looks decent in the flesh to me...
As for eyebrows, I've seen so many different Ork faces and some have eyebrows, some don't, so I opted for the middle ground kind of solution you see there. You're probably right about the eyes. That is pretty much how I did the skin texture, though...there were huge raw lumps of GS underneath there

Fish - I figured the neck would be significantly shrunken in diameter once the spine and musculature that usually fills it out was no longer there. Hence the very loose flaps of skin and little bits of viscera dangling out...

[Svartmetall]

50,000 views...! I do believe that's a P&M record

To commemorate this, I finally managed to decide on a head for my favourite conversion to date, a.k.a. Jaws...

...I ended up being mostly inspired by Tinweasel's suggestion of a helm based on Lord Humungous from 'Mad Max II', and found a helm roughly similar to his in the 'Hordes Of Chaos'; and this was the result. The idea is that he's so hideous that even other Nurgle troops told him to wear a helm to hide his face; all you can see of the flesh of his head is the remnants of what used to be his mouth before he grew the new one in his belly during Possession.

All that needs doing now is the back of his head and then he's ready for paint-age.

[[MaGiC]]

very nice Svart.. good decission on the head.. you could go for some tubes coming out from the back of his head

[Master222]

Very nice I think it's also my favourite one, looks really evil and chaotic I just can't wait for the paint job!

[misterjustin]

Ooh, yeah, nice. Tubes out the back will totally make that. Or an exhaust vent....

[scalphunter]

Svart: The conversion on jaw chest ( does he have a name ? ) is simply awesome.
The ork head..not so good, you can do better than that, and I think you will. When you have finished your 2nd or 3rd head and compare it to this you will see what I mean. The eyes and top lip look..well, all wrong. Please don't take offence, none is meant.

[Fish Of Doom]

jaws is awesome. second the tube suggestion, and additionally suggest making something like mucus blobs or thick slime coming out of the holes in the helm.