Painting and converting Legion of the Damned models

[juckto]

Welcome to my tutorial for painting and converting Legion of the Damned. I've reorganised my posts since I originally made the thread, so some other users replies might be non-sensical...

Anyway, the thread is now broken down to:

Painting Legion of the Damned
Tells you what colours I use, and photos taken at each stage of painting.

Simple conversions
Conversions which don't require any greenstuff at all. Just simple cutting and gluing.

Simple Greenstuff conversions
These are the basic green stuff conversions I did. Stuff like sculpting a spine on top of a bolter.

Not-so-simple Greenstuff conversions
Stuff like cutting away a models head and resculpting it to look like an exposed skull.

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I've used thumbnails throughout the thread to save you on bandwidth, simply click on the image to see a full-size version.

Final pictures of the army can be seen in this thread

[SocietySoldier]

wow, nice tutorial
i might have to make myself up a squad of these

[juckto]

Black
20-25 min per model

1. The paints:
   
   "Shadow Black" - 3:1 Chaos Black:Codex Grey.
   "Navy Grey" - 1:1 Chaos Black: Codex Grey.
   
   
2. I spraycoated the model with Chaos Black spray then touched up any areas with watered down Chaos Black paint.
   
   
   
3. Then I went over all the armour with Shadow Black.
   It's so dark you can hardly tell the difference between it and black, hence the name.
   
   
   
4. Then give the highpoints a touch of Navy Grey.
   
   
   
5. Final highlights with Codex Grey.
   

And there you have it, a nice simple, muted black.

Flames
15-18min each

1. The paints:
   
   "Fluro Orange" - (60:30:10 Bad Moon Yellow: Fiery Orange: Skull White)
   
   
2. You've got two options. You could carefully draw flames on to the armour, agonising over every stylised curve and get something which looks like it belongs on a Boy Racer's car, or you can be smart and realise that flames are random.
   Take the Blood red and draw some random curves on the armour.
   
   Remember - straight flames are boring!
   
   
3. Then start joining them up and filling in the base of the flames.
   
   
   
4. Go over the centre of the flames with Fiery Orange.
   
   
   
5. Finally get the Fluro Orange and add tiny little triangles at the base of the larger flames.
   
   
   
6. The final step is to go back over it with greys, making the tips of the flames a little less blunt if they need it, and/or touching up the armour where you spilt - but that can be left till the end.

Bone
~1hr 15min each

1. The paints:
   
   "Caramel" - 1:1 Snakebit leather : Bronzed Flesh, iirc.
   +Edit: Nowadays I use Calthan Brown instead of Bestial.
   
   
2. Basecoat with Bestial Brown
   
   
   
3. Go over it with Caramel, leaving a bit of the brown in the recesses.
   
   
   
4. I use watered down Bleached Bone. I sort of dab this on where I want the highlights and kinda smear it across the rest of the model giving the whole lot a bone tinge; then add bit more on the highlights so I have a solid coat of bleached bone there.
   
   
   
5. Final highlights with skull white.
   

Metals
20min each

1. Paint the metals with Boltgun Metal
   
   
   
2. Give them a wash with watered down Black Ink
   
   
   
3. Add a couple of highlights with Boltgun Metal and, if that isn't enough, Chainmail.
   

Browns
~12 min each

1. Basecoat Bestial Brown:
   
   
   
2. The belt pouches etc where highlighted with Snakebit leather.
   The parchment was coated in Graveyard Earth.
   
   
   
3. The pouches were give a final highlight of "Caramel", and the parchment was highlighted 1:1 Graveyard Earth:Skull White.
   
   
   
4. Final highlight of Skull White.
   

Reds
10min each

1. Gun casing and Eyes were done the same way. Basecoat with Scab Red
   
   
   
2. Highlight with Blood Red.
   

Flesh

I hummed and hahhed for a while about how to paint the seargents face, then ended up going with SilverTabby's excellent tutorial, with slightly paler tones than normal.

Finished models

I also eventually expanded these guys out to a full 1250 point army.
WIP thread
Final pics

[Sheep]

This is ace. Thanks for the inspirational tutorial.

[BFeeder]

I'm suprised there hasn't been more replies to this, excellent tutorial juckto, I'm actually tempted to break open the gs and give it a try.

Might I also suggest the usage of the two skull backpacks from the Dark Angels veteran sprue, as seen on the two right-most minis here as they seem to fit the theme quite well (although I think there may be some DA iconography which will have to be filed off the back of them). It will make life easier for the lazier ones amongs us (ie. me ).

[Xenith]

Very nice! Will definately be having a go at this at some point in the future, unless I win the lottery and can get the forgeworld ones...

[sccojake]

very nice work. I had been tossing around the idea of doing a Legion of The Damned squad, but didn't have any idea as to how to go about making the models look right, this is exactly what I would need. Great work!

[MotherFuhrer]

Brilliant! I plan to use your flame method with my Salamanders. Great job.

[misterjustin]

I hadn't checked out the tutorials in awhile and was quite surprised to find this. It's a brilliant tutorial and thank you very much for posting it!

[tubby131313]

I love the tutorial and have started making a squad they don't look as good but who cares.

Where did you get the sergeant?

[Xenith]

All of those models are from the assault on black reach box.

[juckto]

Simple conversions


Skull backpack

Right, let's start off with something simple - exchanging backpack vents for skulls. This hardly needs a tutorial, but hey, baby steps.

1. Get any old backpack and a couple of skulls. Here I've taken one from an ork's topknot, and one from the chaos accessory sprue. Technically you should get 2 from the same source so that they match, but I'm not too concerened.
   
   
   
2. Trim the backpack. I reccomend making the first slice a little bit wider than you need, then carefully trimming it back.
   
   
   
3. Once you have the skulls cleaned up, take a straight slice off the back of them. Line it up to see if it looks right, and carefully shave some more off if you need.
   By changing the angle of the slice you can get the skulls to look out, or down. Heck, you could even slice the sides of the skull instead of the back and get them to look forwards or backwards.
   
   (At this point I noticed that the two skulls had quite different jaw lengths, so trimmed one up).
   
   
4. Glue it together - as you can see, I went for skulls looking "Out".
   
   (Yes, I know I made a bit of a mess on the right hand side.)

Skull bolter

Another simple conversion.

1. Take your bolter and trim off the biddy bits above the barrel, they'll just get in the way. I also shaved off the emblem on the side cause I figured it would be obscured by the skull when I finished.
   
   
   
2. Get your skull and trim most of the jaw off as indicated so that'll sit back on the gun.
   
   
   
3. Next we want to gouge out the centre of the skull to wrap it over the bolter. So turn it upside down and make two cuts as shown to start your gouge.
   Don't cut from the direction this photo is taken from! Cut from the base of the skull inwards and downwards.
   
   
   
4. Start scooping plastic out out until you have the correct depth. You may want to trim a little bit off the top of the bolter too, but I would be very wary of that. Gouge too much out of the centre of the skull and it doesn't matter - trim too much off your bolter and you'll ruin it.
   
   
   
5. Glue it on.
   

Bone hand

This conversion relies on the paintjob to really come to life.

1. Simply cut some grooves in the marines hand parallel with the gaps between their fingers.
   
   
   
2. Paint it to look like bone. Told you it was simple
   

Skeleton heavy weapons

Although I did this for a dreadnought arm I imagine the same process could be adapted to most vehicle or devestator weapons.

1. First get a hold of a skeleton upper body. I got mine from the Vampire Counts Skeleton regiment (very nice sprue btw).
   
   
   
2. Trim the arms right back to the hand.
   
   
   
3. Take the ribcage and cut a hollow in the centre. Dry fit it to the melta until you get a comfortable fit.
   
   
   
4. Glue it to the weapon. You will probably need to take a notch out of the neck to get the skull to look forward.
   

[misterjustin]

Skull rocket for the win. Nice work - especially the really simple bone hand idea. Brilliant!

[Zug_zug]

Absolutely amazing. This will be extremely helpful in painting almost any space marine color scheme.

[juckto]

Simple Greenstuff conversions


Spine shoulder

1. Cut a groove down the centre of the shoulder pad
   
   
   
2. Roll a tube of gs out and lay it in there.
   
   
   
3. As with the spine bolter in the first post, mark the gaps.
   
   
   
4. And start working at it.
   
   
   
5. Complete
   
   Personally I'm not too pleased with the finished product. But practice is practice.
   
   
6. Edit:And painted
   

Bone backpack

1. Take your generic backpack.
   
   
   
2. And shave the top armour plate off. Remember to score the plastic underneath to give the gs something to grip to.
   
   
   
3. Roll some thin tubes of gs out and lay them across the backpack
   
   
   
4. Use a knife to cut a little way into the ends of each tube. These will form the nubs on the ends of the bones.
   
   
   
5. Use your sculpting tools to shape it into bones
   
   
   
6. Edit: And painted
   

Spine bolter

Simple greenstuff conversion.

1. Grab a bolter. No trimming or shaving required.
   
   
   
2. Roll out a thin tube of greenstuff and lay it over the top of the bolter.
   
   
   
3. Get a blade and mark out where you want the joints to lie.
   
   
   
4. Start picking away at the excess gs in the joints, trimming the tube to shape. I used the tip of a sharp blade.
   

Skull knee

Replacing knee caps with skulls - this conversion really frustrated me. 4 out of 5 times the skull didn't come out looking how I wanted, and the fifth time I would manage to smudge it with a unwary finger while I worked on the other knee.
So I advise allowing one knee to cure before starting on the other!

1. Take your model and ...
   
   
   
2. ... lop his kneecaps off! Mwahahaha. Poke the exposed surface a little with your knife to give the greenstuff something to "grip" to.
   
   
   
3. Reform the knee using gs and poke out two holes for the eyes, about halfway down.
   
   
   
4. Trim underneath the cheeks. Make this a tight angle.
   
   
   
5. Get the blunt end of the scuplting tool, and press it lightly against each temple and the brow.
   
   
   
6. Using the edge of a blade, press on each side of the nose to seperate the upper jaw/nose from the cheekbones.
   
   
   
7. Do a better job of cleaning up the skull than I managed to . Sigh, looking at it now I should have just left it at the previous step.
   

Bone trim

Simple idea - replace shoulder pad trim with bone shapes. Unfortunately my one didn't turn out great. Okay, but not great. Perhaps with practice ...

1. Take your model
   
   
   
2. And shave off the trim on the shoulderpad. In hindsight I reccomend shaving it all off, not just patches as I have done below.
   
   
   
3. Slap on some greenstuff. Don't worry about neatness.
   
   
   
4. Scuplt the greenstuff to shape. Femurs, rib bones, humourous, whatever.
   

[COG]

Ace job
especially love the last one with the skull exposed.
Btw the maugan Ra model looks great
i did a coversion with a metal HB and it took a bit but looks pretty sweet.
just wish i painted mine up already

[juckto]

Not-so-simple Greenstuff conversions


Skull rocket

A homage to Doom I and II.

1. Get a small skull, I used one from the end of a banner pole iirc, and stick it on a piece of rod (use a drill).
   
   
   
2. Plop on a hunk of gs, roughly conical.
   
   
   
3. Use a sharp edge to sculpt the gs into a flame shape. Start near the skull and move your blade back and out. But don't be afraid to experiment - if you compare the pics in step 2 and 3, you will notice I smoothed some gs back onto the skull.
   
   
   
4. Drill a hole in the barrel of the rocket and stick the other end of the rod in there.
   
   
   
5. Paint it!
   

Skull helmet

1. Grab a skull and a marine head. I was lucky enough to find a skull which still had an eyeball in one socket.
   
   
   
2. Then I promptly cut away the wrong side of the marines helmet and had to search around for a skull that had an eyeball in the other socket.
   Anyway. Use a sharp knife and make clean straight cuts into the helmet, you don't want to be messing around with it more than you have to. Instead, cut the skull larger than you need then carefully trim it down to match the helmet. If you try and trim both to match each other you're sure to run into trouble.
   
   Yes those red flecks are blood. Haven't done much converting in a while and my callus thought it could soften up.
   
   
3. Once it looks good, glue it in. I decided to keep the mouth grill on the helmet, but in hindsight I should have cut away more so I could have more skull showing.
   
   
   
4. Use some greenstuff to fill any gaps between skull and helmet, then reform part of the helmet over the skull.
   
   
   
5. Once the gs has cured a little bit use your knife to cut into this reformed helmet to give it a jagged edge.
   
   
   
6. Edit: And painted:
   

Ribcage pauldron

I quite like this conversion. Pity I screwed it up slightly.

1. Get a model with an attached shoulder pad, you'll need the bulk underneath it.
   
   
   
2. Because the second step is to gouge out the entire surface.
   
   
   
3. Then I strongly reccomend you look at a real ribcage for guidance.
   
   
4. The next step is to fill the shoulder pad to the brim with greenstuff and, using a blade, sketch the ribcage into the gs.
   Make sure you get the centreline in the correct place!
   
   
   
5. Cut away the triangles in the corners and centre, then start working on the gaps between the ribs, scuplting them to shape (I used my thin blade). Here you can see I had the right hand side complete.
   
   When I started on the left I realised my centreline was offset, and while I fixed it up the final product ain't so great looking - the ribs managed to get flattened and squarish.

Exposed skull

This was a lot easier than I was expecting it to be.

1. Take a model with a bare head.
   
   
   
2. And lop some of it off. Once again, poke the surface a little to give the gs something to grip to.
   
   
   
3. Replace it with a ball of gs, slightly smaller than the original. This will be the exposed skull. Allow it to cure overnight.
   
   
   
4. Get some gs and roll it out as flat as you can.
   
   
   
5. Cut a thin strip of this out and wrap it around the edge of the head, and use a sculpting tool to smooth it into the original skin.
   
   
   
6. Then use a knife and play around with the upper edge, making it a bit ragged. Just make sure you don't smooth it into the lower bulb.
   

Spine sarcophagus

1. Cut out the original sarcophagus. Leave the wires on the side.
   
   
   
2. Using some plasticard cover up the hole from underneath. This gives you something to build up from.
   
   
3. Roll a thick tube of gs out. I got it nice and smooth by using the flat of my stanley knife blade instead of my fingers
   
   
   
4. Lay the tube in the sarcophagus. This will be the central tube of the spine.
   
   
   
5. At this stage I decided to add some guitar wire. Chances were that most of them would get covered up by subsequent gs work, but I thought any that remained would look pretty cool.
   In hindsight I strongly recommend going back and adding another layer of gs to smooth it back to tube shape.
   
   
   
6. Then roll out some more thick tubes and lay them across the central one. These will be the segments of the spine.
   
   
   
7. I then proceeded to sculpt it to resemble the rear of a spine. After a lot of work, I gave up because i) I was putting the rear of a spine on the front of the dread which, let's admit it, is just odd; and ii) it didn't look nearly as cool as I had imagined.
   Anyway, this is what I had before changing it to be the front of a spine:
   
   
   
8. So after lopping off those knobby bits in the centreline I smoothed the spine with a bit more gs; then started adding the wires and tubes back in, tucking their ends into the gap between the spine and the edge of the hole.
   
   
   
9. +Edit: And painted:
   

[Ryan_M]

Nice, good job on both the models and the tutorial.

[Brother Alexos]

for vehicles would you suggest making most of the ornamentation in skulls from chaos sprues or vampire count skeletons?

[juckto]

If you're just talking skulls, I suggest the chaos sprues. The skulls look a tad more eviler.

However the vampire skele box gives you a whole lot of ribcages, arms, etc which gives you a lot more opportunities for interesting conversions.

Personally I got the skele box because 1) my bitz box was running low and 2) I had already planned several conversions which I knew needed a lot of skele bitz.

[Xenith]

If you're looking for standard marine meltas and lascannons, may I recommend the Iron Warriors bitz pack - the weapons there are covered in skully goodness. Especiallythe melta.

[Snakes]

this tutorial has helped inspire me to add a squad (or two) of these guys to my army! I'll keep this one favourited!