Dustan's SpaceHulk - WIP - Now with Pictures

[Dustan]

Yeah he is actually a cunning 3 piece of doom who's design lends itself well to pit casting but unless you are doing a council of dead people why would you bother.

[Dustan]

Pretty good night for sculpting last night. First up The principal sculpting of fur is complete on the cloak and yes I will be giving him a haircut cause I go a little carried away with is long beautiful hair (Shining, gleaming, Streaming, flaxen, waxen). Also note the shield now with wolf skull and the slightly refined edges on the chest gem.




Also the 'finished' guy from yesterday gor a couple more wolf skulls and might just get a couple more.



I was thought i had worked on another but I think some of the fur has been sculpted on my brain, God I am glad that cloak is almost finished

[tabletop]

Those wolf skulls look great man, lovely sculpting! Can you make a blog post once you've done do you think? I'd love to see your new Wolf Guard lined up...

I spent most of last night dremelling chunks off Hirst Arts blocks because I've started building a new Mordheim house I hope to turn into an interesting post/tutorial.

[Dustan]

Cheers, I was a bit dodge about the skulls myself, basically I am making the dome more conical adding heavy set evil eyebrows and extending the upper jaw and putting a nose hole in the end. The hardest part is the eyebrows as they require a bit of symetry but all in all each skull is taking about 5-8 minutes to get it ok.

I can definately make a blog post, Depending on my energy levels it could be a week or 2 out, I am feeling good on account of having the largest ammount of fur out of the way but since I am making up the conversions as I go I don't know how far away the finish line is.

Once I get a few models down I will have a better idea but looking at it seems about a week (of slacking and playing xbox) of work will yelded 2 complete and 2 half done figures. I will admit the sergeant is probably one of the more complex conversion but hell I havent even scraped all the BA off the models. I guess the weeks not over yet.

I am going to get my rune on tonight and try cutting some of the flattened GS for the librarian, Hes going to need a few more wolfie details, maybe a conversion to the skulls but I could certainly see him finished (or near as) tonight... if cutting runes works.

[Dustan]

Only half way through the day and Oh god do I want to be home sculpting.

I have a book on runes at home and I found this on the interwebs.



I was also having a quick look through the wolves codex and it seems I can get close to 60 marines for 1000 points

[Dustan]

Noth having such a bad hair day now. Also he got his rune.



Some more skulls





It was a slow night for sculpting but a good night for removing BA details, all the marine pieces are now BA free

[Dustan]

Well I got a bit of sculpting done, nothing remarkable just some inside cape blending and a dew diamond gems which need refining.

I have basecoated 2 of the marines and as I was doing the commander i found a couple spots I intended to change but completely forgot (the left hip area and the shins) So those areas arent bassed yet.

I started on the stealers as well as the Brood lord. The one on the wall is almost ready for dipping, I need to finish picking out some base and face details and give it a once over for touch ups. The floor guys are step one which is the green, I am using a big flat 'tank' brush and since my snot green is running low I am using Tamia park green. its quite vibrant but the dip should sort it out.

[tabletop]

Nice! Your paint scheme is pretty much identical to the one I was thinking of trying . Are they going to get a green or brown dip those genestealers? Be very interested to see how they turn out post dip. The figures have a lot of deep detail on them, so I reckon they'll look pretty good.

Did you have much problem priming the dark purple plastic? I'm wondering if I should hit Griff up for a can of spray primer since I'll probably tear through the can I have left for these figures.

[Dustan]

I went through a near full tin of white knight flat white spray, its only about $8 at bunnings but you have to spray it out for a minute until it starts comming out smooth then spary a bit longer just to make sure. Its not a bad spray but you do have to lay it on kinda thick. I gave all the sprues 2 good coats then a dust coat to pick up anything I missed. I then had to dust them again after I cleaned all the mold lines though obviously it all depends on if you spray before assembly.

For manual touch ups I am ending up with 2 or 3 coats of skull white. its not ideal but I am thinking I might switch to a 2 spray undercoat, one car primer like i used on the spacewolves and then whit if the models are white. Grey is actually a realy nice colour to paint over in brights or darks.

I will be using brown dip, mine is of course about 50% clear varnish and I will be aiming for a finish similar or darker to the howling banshees which were also pure white on their under suits. Might be a redip involved but I will see how they look after the first.



All the bases were going to be dipped brown then get a coat of acrylic tamia smoke to realy darken them up and make them look a little mottled and patchy like the fire dragon helmets.

[tabletop]

Yeah I like painting over gray too. Do you have a brand name for your car primer spray? How much for a can of that?

I'm currently thinking I might try a bit of speckling with an old toothbrush, repaint the armor plates (I notice these new gene stealers have a back plate) and then dip the buggers. Currently I'm torn between green and brown dips, so I've speckled two old plastic Hormagaunts, one brown, one green and we'll see what happens.

Definitely got to be a dip over white, because to hell with painting each genestealer carefully by hand. The other option of course is bust out the airbrush for a base coat, but that tends to be fairly patchy on assembled figures.

I'm thinking redipping might be the way to go. You'll get a really nice glazed effect then. Have you redipped anything yet? Those Eldar figures just had a single coat of dip yes?

[Dustan]

Stu I still have the tin at home so I will check but it was an automotive acid etch primer, a real lung stinger so its a deffinate spray outside product. It was Garage treasure when I moved into the house so I have no idea how long ago it was $20 for a realy big can.

I havent tried double dipping yet, just painting over with smoke. I dont think I will be double dipping either (see Below).

First up I did a little sculpting to complete the wolf cloak guy. (sorry about the pics being blurry)


And I touched up and dipped the Stealer on wall model. I havent hit the base with smoke or Matt varnished him yet, maybe at lunchtime. I am quite hapy with how it has come out and hope they all come out looking like caramel, I love caramel.

[tabletop]

That does look really nice! I think I'll end up doing something -very- similar but probably with a green Zombie dip. The reason I want to use green is because I'll be brown dipping all the Blood Angels, and green Genestealers should contrast nicely on the board. Also I notice a fair amount of the board tiles have green lighting, so hopefully green stealer's will also work nicely with that.

Plus I guess they'll be an interesting comparison to your brown dipped stealers!

Goddamn GW metals always look GREAT when dipped too. Wish I'd known that years ago...

I'll wash and maybe prime and handful of stealers tonight, as well as finish off my sample Hormagaunts.

[Dustan]

I wish I was dedicated enough to wash my models before painting but to be honest I never seem to have an issue with paint sticking or durability, that stealer even took a bounce on the floor when the dip was wet *sigh*.

By the magic of Gimp (free photoshop) I present an artists impresion of what a reen dipped stealer might look like. The green skin hasnt been changed cause the filters  Iused kept making it go a funny but awesome colour so I have just changed the white as its going to be the predominant change. I also made guesses at the saturation and shade of green bassed on my failing memory of the zombies.

[tabletop]

Mmm, possibly a little too lime coloured. The green dip is darker than that, it's also a bit more diluted I think.

At any rate I'll dip a Hormagaunt tonight and post it!

[Dustan]

2 Updates in one day, wow =]

So during my lunch break I painted tamia acrylic smoke straight from the bottle onto all non stealer parts and wow =] so happy. After it dried I hit it with Moana Matt and heres the results. I will admit the lighting (direct sun) was not ideal and I had to auto level the photo to get it looking better, I will have to stop taking quick snaps on my 3.2mp phone camera and but out the 5mp digital cam and set up a proper shoot, The colours are acurate enough though.





I am a little sad to have lost the rich caramel colour to the matt spray but this is more what I imagined. The skulls on the door dont look quite that dark but its pretty close. I am more than happy with the result of the tamia smoke, its realy blacklined everything on the base and added a much needed dirty oily look to the metals. Thats one model finished and I still have to send away for my replacement.