Marine Captain conversion

My merry band of Corvus marines are going to need a commanding officer. Captains are popular, the ranks in the Space Marines seem to skip from Captain to Masters with no other ranks in-between.

This captain will be assembled from the following parts:

The head used is from the Victrix 1807-1812 French Infantry set.

The bandy RTB01 legs need cutting and pinning to allow the figure to stand up straight.

The right shoulder is a rogue trader power fist with a recent assault squad arm and force axe.

The left arm is a cut and re-positioned original with a helmet held in hand. These helmets seem to get lost in combat with astonishing regularity.

At this stage I'm just using pins (made from paper clips) and poly glue to hold it all in place so I add the beginnings of a cape on the back to brace his wobbly legs.

He will eventually have a heavy cape, tabard and some sculpted iconography and articifer armour details.

Beaky Marines update

I've got a few of the Rogue Trader marines finished now. In addition I kept some WIP shots of one of them.

Glueing and pinning stage.

After filling and finishing with Green Stuff a Grey undercoat is applied followed by Bestial Brown and Black (for any metals).

 

A beige is applied to the armour leaving gaps brown. The coating is intentionally patchy, this is just a base to improve the look of the yellow in the next stage. 

 

Sun Yellow is applied over the beige.

I use three different washes at this stage (Nuln, Agrax andBaal Red) before chipping the armour with the tip of a fine brush in black and white/yellow before finally painting any icons or markings.

The rest of the finished pics follow.

Chewie's ongoing conversion

Just a quick update, I've given the Chewbacca figure some more attention after a drastic 'knife job'.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Still not completely finished but I'm in two minds about whether the top half requires any Green Stuff.

Let the Wookie win!

Some more Star Wars goodness, I've started converting one of the Sandtroopers, a bit of simple Green Stuff work. A cape (possibly Jedi), a fur pelt (possibly Wookie). I'm imagining this Sandtrooper is a grizzled veteran of the 501st who kept the cape as a trophy after the battle of the Jedi Temple in ROTS, I may even give his armour some blue highlights to hint at this.

As the Green Stuff for the cape was so thin, it needed to be built up in sections.

A Grey undercoat always shows off the sculpted areas nicely

Still a work in progress.

I've also finished painting one of my favourite characters,R2D2. Dirty and a bit worse for wear, this is definitely Tatooine Artoo.

Finally I was a bit concerned that my Wookie was a bit on the small side.

Drastic action was required.

A bit of pinning and glueing and he's looking a bit more like Chewbacca, I'll fill in the gaps and maybe even give him a makeover.

Finally he's towering over Han and the others as he should.

Back to Fantasy RPGs

I'm fortunate to have a son who seems to have caught the gaming bug. I actually have another teenage son but it's getting increasingly difficult to get him to join in with any games we play. Not cool to be playing with toy soldiers with your Dad at that age I guess. The son that likes to game also shares some of my creative traits, this may have something to do with it. He accompanied me to Salute this year and we both enjoyed it. He had a bit of pocket money to spend and snagged himself a few goodies. Our newest shared gaming passion currently is the Pathfinder Fantasy RPG from Paizo. We bought the Beginner Box Set and the Core rule book recently and have been having a fun time in the realm of Golarion. Salute was the ideal opportunity to pick up some fantasy miniatures.

My sons current Pathfinder character is a Dwarf Barbarian, so he picked up a mini from Hasslefree, a Troll Slayer. He asked me to paint it for him so I obliged.

He also picked up a large mini from Otherworld, an Ogre Chieftain. This one he is currently painting himself.

He's taking his time on this one (which is a good thing) but it looks promising so far.

Finally I picked up one of Reapers Pathfinder Iconic range, Kyra the Cleric from the Leisure Games stand at Salute. I'm in the process of painting this currently.

I'm also using one of the two free Salute 'Jason' minis as a Pathfinder character as I've done a bit of converting work on him.

My son also spent some of his pocket money on Zombies!!! 2 Zombie Corps(e)

We've had the main set for a while so he snapped this up from Leisure Games at Salute.

Finished FT Intro Fleets

I managed to complete the painting of my NSL and FSE starter fleets for Full Thrust. Without further ado here are the pics including some step-by-steps.

No casting is ever perfect so I used Green Stuff to fill, modify and bind. I like to fill the engines at the back so it can be painted as a white engine energy bloom

Black undercoat, followed by a mid-gray dry brushing and then a black wash. Then I start to paint areas of colour leaving some black areas for engines, techie bits and windows. Space Wolf Grey for the FSE and Bestial Brown for the NSL.

 On the NSL ships I dry brushed the brown and then painted some panels with Bleached Bone. The FSE have two additional highlight colours of Codex Grey and Ultramarine blue. All of the FSE ships have a blue stripe of sorts down the centre line of the ship to distinguish them as ships of that faction.

The NSL ships have red and white areas added to their engine areas to distinguish them as part of the same faction, as well as some crudely painted NSL symbols on the largest panels of each ship. The FSE ships have an additional thin yellow stripe added to the left of the blue centre line area (blue and yellow being the colours of the FSE symbol). Windows are added by painted white squares or dots onto some of the darker panels, especially the ones that are sculpted as little strips. Finally panel lines (greeblies or aztecing for those in the know) are painted onto large areas (relatively anyhow) of flat colour to break those areas up. I haven't painted panel lines onto faction colours, however. Panel lines on Space Wolf Grey are Codex Grey, lines on Bleached Bone are Snakebite Leather and lines on Codex Grey panels are Black.

Matt varnished (Vallejo) and photographed on a printed background for effect.

95th Rifles character figures, sculpted

In my post about my converted French Sapper I mentioned some original sculpts to be used as Sharp Practice 'Big Men'. They are four 95 Rifles characters, completely original and not based on any existing fictional Napoleonic riflemen.

Sgt. O'Keefe sporting an unusual naval 'volley gun' and his C.O. Major Vaughn

Rifleman Haggis (christian name unknown) who is a bit of a 'wastrel' and Dan Hangman, ex-poacher and the company crack-shot

These figures will accompany the four Perry rifleman I shall no doubt be painting soon and the Perry Peninsular British that will form my 'West Essex Regiment', another completely fictional creation of mine.

More pics.

What a vivid imagination I have?