Conversions for Astronomi-Con

Getting ready for Astronomi-con here in 2 weeks can make you do devastating things to your army.  Above you can see the end result of the conversion work I did to a model I took to last years astro.  He's gone from being a small time Inquisitor leading a small squad of units to taking lead of a Grey Knight group, along with his trusty Deamonweapon he found during one of his adventures.

Here is a picture of what he looked like originally, now I just need to paint him up again.

Lizardmen Saurus Proof of Concept

Hey there everyone. So I put aside my school stuff for a couple of hours today because I really really wanted to at least start on something for my Lizardmen army because they had all been sitting in boxes.

So I pulled out a Saurus Warrior, and a Zulu model I had ordered about a month ago, and began working on a proof of concept for these guys to even see if what I was wanting to do would work. Well here is the progress so far. I'm also thinking about taking the backs of the Saurus and having them act like skins for the guy, or picking up some Dark Elf Corsair Capes and doing that. I mean they do all have scaly skin :)

So let me know what you guys think.

My "Mighty Beast" Teaser

So here it is, the Mighty Beast I've been working on. No not my Kantor Conversion but that giant tzeentch turkey. Hehe... so you can see this was the rough starting stage. Everything is pinned together, and I do mean everything. I had the unfortunant accident of tipping it over when I had simply glued it and it shattered. So I then spent the next day pinning the entire model so that I could throw it against a wall and walk away with it still in one piece.

The entire model has a single electrical wire running through it. This wire is very strong and does not bend very easily making it the perfect option for connecting all of the pieces together and using it to build up on.

As usual feel free to click on a picture to see it larger ;)



I then started to green stuff the chaos power coming out from the ground. This was really my first experience with working with green stuff as a modeling medium.



A closer image showing the chaos power twirling up around out of the ground about to burst through the chaos lords body.



Here you can see some of that energy escaping from the powerfist and forming a chaos spawns arm as the raw power of Chaos rips out from the ground.



Here you can see the larger image, I also ended up green stuffing around the wings to fill in the gaps.



Here that chaos power is bursting from the chaos lord and wrapping around the leg of the Lord of Change, from which the lord of change is actually being formed.



Another picture, with some of the chest plate being ripped open to let the powers of chaos out.



A closer up picture, showing the powers of chaos. I found that the key to working with green stuff was keeping a bowl of water next to you and constantly re-wetting your hands, tools and the green stuff to keep it from sticking.



With the model being so tall it was very top heavy with a very low center of gravity causing it to tip over constantly. So I went and got a bunch of fish weights, snipped them in half and used a hammer to squish them down enough to fit the base. It helps alot.



I then used some cement spackle to add even more wait to the bottom of the model. With this down the center of gravity is actually over halfway up the model making it much more stable.



Here's an Image of it primed. I was very excited to get to this point as it was almost a week getting there. I used new Krylon Primer, and found that you have to shake it very very very well before using otherwise it leaves little strings of paint. Luckily I found this out on a test model and not this one ;) But the primer worked better then GWs white and was not grainy at all.



So with it primed I've started painting. I'm hoping to get it done this weekend and I'll have more pictures once it's done. And then I still have the miniataur I'm going to paint for the contest. It's going to be a busy week but I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

-CKR

Lone Star Dallas: Avatar Painting Contest

Hey Everyone, just got done with another painting contest. This was for the Lone Star Dallas Avatar Contest. It was to show off the guy that represents your army on the field of battle. I entered 3 times :D Yeah I know... But they had 3 categories, Warhammer Fantasy, so I put in the Blood Thirster, then 40k and I put in my Wraithlord, and then Purchased Models, and this was ones that had been purchased with a receipt, so pretty much 3 weeks to buy build and paint. And for that one I converted Pedro Kantor into a Deathwatch Marine Captain. Look below for some more pics of the conversion and the model.

So here are all the bits I used for Pedro. You can see I'm using a different backpack so I can put a new banner on him. I also was able to get my hands on a Death Watch Shoulder pad (which was a little bit of a beating)



So Deathwatch fluff says that when a marine serves his time in the Deathwatch he takes his left shoulder pad and moves it over to the right side, leaving it painted in it's original state to keep the machine spirit of the armor happy. Well with Kantor that's kind of a pain considering it was attached to his arm. I ended up sawing it off, and then taking my drill and drilling out the rest of the arm from the shoulder pad.



So here's the right shoulder pad, the one that needs to be replaced with his left. I had considered sawing the arm off again, but it was starting to mess up the armor as I got going. So I needed up pulling out my wire clippers and drill. It took me about 3 hours to get off enough to be able to place the other pad on there.



Here you can see how I green stuffed the arms and pads back together. Note green stuff doesn't actually hold things in place, so after the green stuff had dried the arms were a bit wobbly, so I pulled them off and used super glue to actually glue them onto the body.



First time trying white as a base coat, I was actually really happy with what it did for my colors, but man was it a pain repainting everything black.



Here are pictures of the final model. For the banner I ended up printing a banner off the internet and painting over it. I'm very happy with the way the model turned out.







And I'm sure you're wondering what the final results were, well here's the list of the winners :D

•Best Overall Avatar: Mark, Chaos Space Marines Lord of Khorne
•Best Warhammer Avatar: Michael, Chaos Daemon Bloodthirster of
Khorne
•Best 40K Avatar: Josh, Chaos Space Marines Lucius the
Eternal
•Best Youngblood Avatar: Brady, Tyranid Red Terror
•Best Store-Purchased Entry: (name unknown), Deathwatch Space Marine

So for some reason they didn't take down my name when I dropped off my DW Kantor but here's the proof of me building him ;)

*Last Names have been removed to respect everyone's privacy on the Internets :P

Walker Model Contest: Other Participants

Hey Everyone, as promised here are some of the pictures from the event. I think I arrived to late to get all of the participants. I think there is maybe 2 or 3 missing but this will give you an idea of how talented the players are up here in Dallas.

I've Blurred out the names of the participants to respect there privacy but my silly picture phone seems to have done ok in taking pictures this go around.

This Wraithlord ended up getting runner up. It has some great blending and an ivory/wood feel. Also the designs on the head were hand painted and look extremely good. Probably the best piece I've seen him do.



I really loved the wet blood skin texture on this one. as well as the feel and look of the metal. It's a scary beast and I'd hate to see it on the other side of the battle field.



Looks like a mean Venerable Ultramarines Dread. That gaunt never stood a chance. I particularly like the wood work on the base, it came out very well.



These two were nice too, the bottom Orc dread could've used some base work but it was fun and colorful.

The top one was a possessed sentinal, there was a lot of conversion work to it and I thought it looked quite awesome.

Walker Model Contest: Wraithlord and the Winnner Is...

So I ended up winning the Ultimate Walker Painting Contest. There were nine models entered and quite a few of them had me pretty scared. There were some with some great conversions, particularly a possessed sentinal, and another wraith lord that I thought came out very nicely. I'm currently asking them for some pictures and there permission to place them on my website so you can see them too.

But I figgured that the images I had taken with my cell phone didn't do the model justice so I'd find a better camera and take some more pictures. You can actually see the detail now unlike the crappy blurry photos from before.

One of these days I'll buy a nice camera with a good micro lens ;)

Here are a couple more pictures and as always you can click on them for bigger size :)

Walker Model Contest: Wraithlord Final Painting

Hey Everyone, I just finished up the Final Paint Job of the Wraithlord for the Hobby Town Walker Painting Contest. I've got a couple pictures of the final Project along with pics of most of the process.

Enjoy

I started off with Snot green as the base color of the Wraith Lord.



I then went in and added a light Goblin Green to all the edges and then did a pen line of all the edges using Scorpion Green. This was the first time I've ever done the pen lines and was probably one of the things that took the longest.



After that I went in and started working on the other details added white to the sword and cloths.



And then because I got lazy and started wanted to concentrate on painting I went all the way to the final project before taking any more pictures. The gemstones were done by painting them black, then painting 80% of them Red Gore, 60 Percent Blood Red, 30ish % Blazing Orange and then a dot or two of Skull white.

There's a couple more Pictures below for you to enjoy. And once again sorry for the crappy camera phone pictures, one of these days I'll get a decent camera :D

BoLSCon 2009: The Swordwind's Sheath

Hi Everyone! I'm pleased to let you know that as of last night, about 11 pm I finished painting my army. Now I know you're going to say, "You can never be done painting", and you're right, but I was able to get it to a point where I was happy with it, and Wow does that take a bit of work.

Up above is my Jet Council, led by a Farseer and Autarch with 5 Warlocks, 3 with Destructor, 1 with Embolden, Represented by the Banner with the Biel-Tan symbol, and one with Enhance represented by the banner with the Swordwind's Sheath symbol I created for the North Texas Finals Tournament.

Let me just say thanks for all the help that everyone gave me as I worked on these models and painting them. And thanks to everyone who helped out fine tuning the list.

And if you want to see more pictures just look below :D

Above: My Farseer, converted from the High Elf Mage kit on a horse. The kit made it possible to get some nice flowing robes on the farseer, and I might go back one day and do the same with the warlocks if I can get some more warlock heads. I'm pretty happy with the way he turned out and if I get more time I'd like to add some more runes and the like to his cape.



The Autarch, he was alot of fun, I had a small problem with him and the Farseer, and that is I had needed to glue them to the bikes when I was modeling them to get there arms and feet right. (The Farseer I green stuffed but you get the idea)



Oh those Fire Dragons, how I love them so. This time I went back and ripped off the Exarch's Weapon Arms and Magnatized them so I can switch them out later. But I can see these guys raining fire death during this weekend.



DAVU Falcon, Hopefully these guys are going to stay alive and keep my objective safe.



Oh the Fire Prisms, I've had some fun with these while play testing and I hope that they can pull there wait this weekend.



And here's the army, the board is barely big enough for them all, but luckily it is :D And if you want bigger images just click on them like usual.

Hope you enjoyed and if you're headed down to Austin maybe I'll see you on the other side of the table ;)