Iron Hands Clan Lyaan

[ninjaturtlethug]

Hello everyone, Ninja here, don't let the name fool you, I'm a pretty mature and likable person. I started a blog on this website to help motivate me to complete projects. I've been in the hobby for about two years now, and though I haven't finished many models, I've been taking my time, and I've learned a lot about the hobby in that time.

I've recently learned that my blog doesn't allow comments, so I'm just going to post my models here instead, in hopes of some more interaction. First up, I'll show you my first models ever, the space marines of the AOBR box.

These are my first models ever, so my hand was not as steady and my patience not as long, though I did pay a lot of attention to detail. Next up, the Terminators.

With these models, I attempted some line highlighting, but the result was pretty sloppy and unrealistic, and caused me to dislike the idea of line highlighting for a while. Now for the AOBR Dread

With him I continued to line highlight, the sloppyness was somewhat negated by the size of the model, and I attempted to bring the lenses to life with some rudimentary highlights, a techniques I have only slightly improved on now. On this model you can also see that I've drybrushed a lot on grey on these models. Which only served to cause the model to look unpainted in areas, with the primer showing. The final piece of the AOBR models, the Captain

I've actually finished his power sword since the time of this picture, but I am currently in the process of painting the AOBR models again to help improve them. Some time in the future I will show the finished captain. Despite the lack of details having been picked out on this model, and the fact that I'm not too impressed with him, I still get completented on him, (although when I show my librarian they quickly forget about the captain.)

In the future I plan on creating some highlights on his cape, and picking out the details on him a lot more. As well as placing the decals and maybe converting some bionics. Thats all for this post, sometime in the next couple weeks I will have more for you. If you are impatient you can check out my blog for more pics. Keep checking back! I hope to have a new project completed about every month.

So these were my first models ever, I learned how hard black really is to paint, as there is no good way to add shading to the color black, and drybrushing black looks pretty awful, While line highlighting has to be very carefully done to look right, and even then looks a bit goofy and unrealistic. My next post will have my second attempt, a second tactical squad I bought so that I could finally play with a legal army. Hope to hear your comments and criticisms.

Ninja

[Son of Carnelian]

They look good in general, with a nice amount of control and a good color scheme. I would recommend going around your bases a second time with a flat black and tidying those up. It will add to their overall appearance greatly.

[tyrannosaurus]

You could try edge highlighting with a dark blue, seen that before and it looks good - if you stick with grey I would suggest a lighter grey, and try to get your edge highlights a lot thinner. Good start though :jaw:

[ninjaturtlethug]

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll have to give the dark blue highlights a try, I recently used a medium gray, in very thin lines and while it helped the eye "see" the model and was an improvement, it still didn't have the realism I was looking for.

After finishing the AOBR models, I needed to finish a second squad of troops to play with a legal army. I bought an Iron Hands boxed set and decided to really take my time with these guys. This was also my first attempt at converting models, which added to the length of the process. I finished painting them after about 4 months, and am right now touching them up and varnishing them to make them final.

You can see my first attempt at bionics on the middle model, on his left leg. I used plastic pegs from the game "battleship", some guitar string, green stuff, and some brass rod. It turned out decent for a first try.

I also tried a new paint scheme, adding some red and a bit of blue. I hoped that if the details popped out more, the lack of highlights would be less apparent. It worked a little, I think that next time I'll leave out the blue entirely and maybe tone down the red a bit.

Above is the rest of the squad, the sergeant in the middle has been magnetized to swap out his wargear. I'm hoping to save a lot of time and money down the road by doing this, although it meant the sergeant took about ten times as long as any other marine to finish. (and I don't even have any combi-weapons yet)

Here's an extreme close up of the sergeant, with a powerfist and Bolter. It took extreme close-ups like this to make me realize that I still wasn't paying enough attention to detail, you can see a few areas I simply forgot about.

Hope to hear from you all, more to come next week!

[ninjaturtlethug]

With the 2nd tactical squad you see being my first attempt at converting a model, and my first attempt taking my time, the 10 Marines took a while to finish. But I learned a lot from them. Now I needed a way to transport them, so I bought 2 rhino's

In the future I plan on buying a couple Razorback sprue's and some Whirlwind bits so that I can customize them on the fly, but my budget prohibits that at the moment. Anyway, for my first attempt at vehicle's they turned out decent. I decided not to use line highlights because as I've said before I feel they look unrealistic, but the eye has trouble "seeing" the model without them, so from here on out I'm going with line highlighting, at least untill I find something better.

When starting these models I decided the paints I had been using were not doing the job I wanted, so I decided to use GW paints, the end result was much better I feel.

next week I'll post my librarian, which I feel is my best work yet.

[ninjaturtlethug]

The next model I finished, and the one I am most proud of, is my librarian.

I converted him using a metal Librarian model, and swapped out his left arm for the left arm of a techmarine. Then I took the large claw from a servor harness and sawed off the claw part, attaching in its place half of a bolter and a scope. Then I took a pointing finger from a left hand, removed it, and added it to a bolter arm. (after removing the bolter and index finger.)

I added an extended tail to the servo skull by using a piece of guitar string, nothing new there. And I have it magnetized to use as a wound counter. When it's attached he has both wounds, when it is gone he has one left. The idea is that he is commanding the servo skull forward, and it is moving over his shoulder towards its destination.

I learned to wet blend on this model, and I'm lucky it didn't turn out horribly, I also worked harder on my lenses, which are improved but still could come a long way. In the future I hope to dremel out his face and add a head with more bionics, but that will be a while down the road.

C & C welcome! More to come.

[Kisada]

Pretty cool to see you progress like this. Keepit up!

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

That librarian is very cool. You should definitely keep him around for a long time.

[ninjaturtlethug]

Thank you very much you two!

[Lachdannan]

Cool looking librarian.

 

These are coming along well. Can tell your painting is getting better.

 

Keep up the good work.

[Grimdarkness]

Please please paint sum eye dots on your bare head marine.

[ninjaturtlethug]

The latest model I have finished is a landspeeder. Like other models in my army it is fully magnetized.

This is the typhoon variant, with a heavy bolter. When I make other speeders I want to find a way to hide the crack near the floor. I'll probably add some extra armor plating there. This is also my first attempt at line highlighting, and though its not great looking, it is an improvement.

And here is the armor busting variant, I probably won't actually ever use an assault cannon on a landspeeder, but who knows, when 6th comes out it could be a whole different story. if you look closely you can see I've added a heat staining effect to the barrell, it was suprisingly easy and effective.

C&C welcome as always!

[ninjaturtlethug]

The bad news, is that I've run out of models from my past to show. But the good news is that I received more models than I can build in a year for christmas. While time constraints while searching for a job while working full time will prevent me from pushing new material out very fast, at least I've got models to build at all.

While waiting for my Christmas gifts, I decided to repaint one of my tactical squads and finally get them to "finished" status.

First is the group shot, you will notice that I got rid of most of the blue, added some line highlighting, decals, and tidied up the paint jobs as a whole

Here are a few pics of the sergeant, with different loadouts.

You can see in some of the pictures, the outline of some of the decals, which frustrates me. Does anyone know what I can do to prevent this in the future? My first step is to gloss varnish the model, then I glue the decal on with some micro sol, and set it in with micro set. After it's done drying I will gloss varnish again to seal the decal, and then varnish the whole model flat. After adding the flat varnish is when I notice white area's of decal, it looks as if they are not flush with the model around the edges.

larger decals turn out even worse, any pointers?

Lastly, here are some close-ups of the bionics I added, I carved the left hand of every model to look like a skeleton hand, representing their initiation to the chapter. other limbs were replaced here and there as well.

The last pic is blurry, but basically I would saw off one of the major limbs, and then add battleship "hit" markers, guitar wire, and rod to the area I chopped off. It looks ok.

C&C welcome as always!

[CyderPirate]

These are coming on really well, the land speeder in particular looked like a big leap.

 

If you want add a bit more variety to the basic troops, here's a few places you can get other mechanical bits:

 

http://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=17

 

http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main...products_id=101

 

http://blightwheelminiatures.vendder.com/

 

Oh and nice job with the decals, they really round out the minis.

[ninjaturtlethug]

Hello all,

I finally found the time to convert and paint this bad boy.

This is Venerable dreadnought Doltius. He has been converted mostly from plasticard and gears from a watch. I hijacked Bannus's Idea for his center lens, which is made out of the face of a hunter killer missile. I had a varnish mishap that cased him to frost up, so now he has 4 coats of varnish on.

The trailing cables are made from guitar wire and green stuff, and are bent to represent them swinging as he turns to face a threat.

The extra little servo arm is a really simple conversion. I just added the small servo arm from the techmarine kit.

Let me know what you guys think!

[HJL]

Its amazing how far your painting has come alone in such a short time!

 

Nice dread.

[Kassill]

It's awesome to see someone start out decent, then watch their painting get better and better! That Librarian is spectacular! :blink:

[Lestat]

Just scrolled though this thread and I am amazed at the improvemnt you have made in such a short space of time! The first models posted were probably the same stage we all are when we start this hobby. But with some practice and perserverence, you have turned out some pretty decent looking models and some very interesting conversions.

The dred reminds of HAL for some reason................. :confused:

Keep up the good work!

[empchildrenbob]

they look really good!

[ninjaturtlethug]

Thanks for the good remarks all!

 

It does look very similar to HAL now you mention it, which is good because my ultimate goal is to make these Iron Hands look as inhuman as possible. That's why I used the standard dreadnought chassis for my venerable dread, the "head" on the ven dread chassis is too personified.

 

I felt I had a lack of inspiriation for this dread, but after converting it a couple ideas popped into my head for my next dread.

[ninjaturtlethug]

I've finished the optional weapon loadouts for the dread. Here are a couple more pics.

Below you can see my first attempt at freehand painting, I kept it simple, next time I will probably try my hand at some shading.

Working on a couple converted heavy weapons at the moment.

[BassWave]

Love the last dread and the librarian! You do our Chapter proud :devil:

[lokkorex]

wow, your skills are improving very fast! like your converted dreadnought, he looks suitably iron hand-ified.

[The emperors chosen]

Very impressive! There is noticeable improvement, and I congratulate you on it! I can't wait to see more of your stuff :)

[ninjaturtlethug]

Thanks guys, I'll keep coming back if you keep coming back.