I never have posted in this thread before, but now I have take some - umm, well, acceptable - photos and thought it would be about time to show what I am working on, too (besides my Sir Ragnar quests, of course).
Let me begin with the simple part. As some of you may know, I'm building a vampire counts Warhammer army. Easily distracted as I am, I' working on several units at once. My girlfriend gave me the coven throne as a christmas present, and painting it is the main project for the moment. However, I'm experimenting with blacklight colors for ghosts and wont waste the coven throne until I have worked out the technique.
Here are some pictures of what I did yesterday:
This is General Korne from the Dark Venegance box, in the process of fantasyfying. The armor of the chaos space marines is just too impressive to waste them to science fiction. I removed everything that looked to "technical", grenades, flight pack etc., cut away his head and hollowed out the collar piece. I also trimmed the cape, shoulder pads etc. a little bit, where the plastic cast looked too plump. I remodelled the shoes of the armor to look more medieval. I also cut half of the points of the chaos stars, bacause they would not fit well in a vampire army.
To the right you can see (not very sharp) the left arm, which is the most converted part. I cut away the blaster and carved the hand so it looks like pointing at the enemy. I cut away the middle part to straighten the arm and to remove the space-style "ripped hose" inner armor, replacing it with green stuff chainmail. In the middle you can see the skeleton head he will ultimately get.
This model will become the champion of my grave guards.
Here it is one step further- basecoated black, brushed silver, ornaments painted gold, blackened some of the seams and rust painted on. Next steps will be green oxide on the gold parts, highlights and details of the relief of the armor, then the outstnding details (gems, fabric).
Any tips, critics, ideas etc. are welcome.
Well, this was the simple part...
Now for the real stuff...
What am I working on?
I have a dream, a dream that was pretty much triggered by this website, the dream of creating my own line of models.
Naturally for me, I started with skeletons. Ever since I started to integrate tin miniatures in my fantasy gaming in the 1980'ties, I thought of a method to give skeletons a real chestcase with real ribs. Now that rapid prototyping becomes more and more afforable, the time seems ripe.
Here are some of my very own skeletons in the process of painting:
(You can zoom in to see more details)
These skels are not converted from available ones like the one I did for the figure exchange - they come this way!
You will notice that these critters have no heads and arms - I call this the "bare bone skeletons" edition. As Greed Workshop and other companies produce very nice skulls and a great variance of arms, and my main concern was about the "block-like" look of the ribcage and pelvis of the available skeletons, I intend these to be completed with third party heads and arms, which will also provide a greater choice of variants. To better show the details, here's a closeup:
As you may imagine, these are a bit more delicate than GW or Reaper stuff, but I have experimented a lot and they become more sturdy and handable with every new version. The ones shown can be taken up and handled without problem, but single ribs may still break when handled too much, e. g. during painting.
The two guys with the big weapons in the background are form an earlier series, wich turned out too small, so the GW parts look somewhat misproportional. I finished them anyways, because they were all I had at the time and I wanted to present them on a convention. Here's a closeup:
When taking the photos, I take the opportunity to also show you my working area:
Well, this was a lot of writing. Spent enough time with hobbies now. Have to do some serious work...
