Veteran Sergeant does True Scale + Blackstone Fortress

[Volt]

 

 

But that's based on the supposition that the muscles are not repositioned to mitigate such damage.

...

 

There would have to be nothing close to the ribs. Like some kind of super magical vacuum layer to prevent a hernia from happening. Only unlike a normal hernia, where intestines slip through the ligaments in the abdomen, this would be a bone hernia.

 

http://www.cfmis.com/images/inguinal%20hernia.jpg

 

Imagine this is farther up in the ribcage, and instead of ligaments those are overlapping layers of the rib cage, and say a gallbladder or part of the liver slipped through (or even a geneseed organ).

 

Now when that marine tries to bend down, he'll almost certainly tear into the caught organ and cause nasty things like bile leaks, which even with an Astartes' anatomy will probably lead to an extremely painful death. Plus I really can't tell if you're serious when you suggest that they completely remove all muscles on the torso, probably even having to play around with the ligaments and muscles anchored to the arms just to semi-fuse the ribcage. All you have to do is simply remove the cartilage from the ribcage and extend the sternum.

 

 

Layered armor like the mark 3 is the only way power armor will ever work in real life. The exoskeleton will have to be able to be stripped out and replaced frequently, if not after every battle. The mark 3 takes it's visuals from the Lorica segmata. In reality if would need the overlapping plates to assist with movement. The under suit would have to be a nonnewtonian gel layer that somehow provides continuous pressure across lines of non extension, because the armor itself won't be capable of being sealed for vaccuum. Solid armor like the mark 7 marks the least amount of sense because each piece of armor would need to be made to the exact specifications of the wearer, and even then it would suffer the same issues as our current space suits, wear a catastrophic breach requires the wearer to instantly go back inside the craft. A pressurized under suit can be sealed wirh duct tape, or if your high tech, the gel later is sheathed in memory cloth and can seal itself.

1) Vacuums aren't a problem thanks to Astartes secreting mucus to vacuum seal themselves.

 

2) MK III is rigid front armor built onto a more flexible layer of armor found in the MK II. You're talking about MK II Crusade Armor.

 

3) Power Armor chucks the rigid suit design. People tend to forget that it's actually powered by synthetic muscles, like those from the Crysis Nanosuit, which is probably one of the most interesting and frighteningly lethal reasonable power armor designs in history. Power Armor in 40k is nothing like the regid exoskeleton designs in the modern day, or those seen in Elysium. They're essentially wearing another layer of tissue under the armor plates.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Bryan Blaire
Hot-linked images turned into links

[Marshal Rohr]

1) the mucus solves the problem by providing a short term seal, not permanent. Also you could not move if it was just mucus because the pressure would be constant. A gel-bio suit is required for shrapnel penetration, concussive blast reduction, and positive pressure at around 1/3 of an atmosphere to keep the blood from boiling. Also, unless the mucus layer is actually bio-nano machines, it wouldn't be able to insulate from the cold, which is what kills you fastest, behind a slow burn oxygen leak putting you to sleep.

 

2) the flexible underlayer of the mark 3, is the mark 2, yes. My point earlier was hurried. Mark 3 is the most realistic because OF the strike plates. The layered nature of the mark 2 suit makes it vulnerable to shrapnel, blades, and bullet 'skipping' because of it's bell shape. The new legion mark 3 fixes the sillier bell bottom look, but the sloped layers of the mark 2/3 force bullet traps, but are also the only way to have armor that can compact downward during a crouch or hard landing. Otherwise you'd rip your seal everytime you landed.

 

3) the bundled muscles of power armor/crysis looks cool, but really you would want to wrap that around an exoskeleton. The exosuits from Elysium follow the stupid designs pioneered by the Japanese infatuation with robots that look like people and the DARPA style designed to just carry more gortex rain pants and those expensive sleeping bags the army issues you from point A to B. A true powered exoskeleton would wrap your body while you 'float' inside it suspended from your waist. It has to be from the waist because the hip is so funky you armor will always have to be designed as a torso unit and a separate unit for each leg joined at the lower back.

[Bryan Blaire]

Gents, appreciate the conversation, but it isn't appropriate for someone else's WiP thread or the PCA.

 

If you'd like, take the discussion over to Amicus.

[Volt]

Gents, appreciate the conversation, but it isn't appropriate for someone else's WiP thread or the PCA.

 

If you'd like, take the discussion over to Amicus.

Done, although I put it the AD section as it covers marines specifically.

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/299366-continued-discussionmusings-on-sm-pa-and-biology/

 

Linkie for the discussion to continue.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Volt

[Veteran Sergeant]

Hey look, ten pages. At least it was a fairly intellectual conversation.

 

I'll try to add more stuff eventually so we can talk about models again, lol.

[mustardParty]

Everything about these conversions is right.

[Veteran Sergeant]

So it's been a while. I haven't actually been not doing anything the whole time. It's just that I was heretically working on xeno scum. It was for a good cause so my Marines and Imperial Guard* could have somebody to kill that wasn't Tyranids.

 

So I'm back to the Imperium. How about some Steel Legion Ogryns?

 

 

I was excited to do some Ogryns. The new kit looked great, and looked like it had a ton of options.

 

Wrong!

 

The kit is a beautiful mess. The Ogryns are wonderfully sculpted, but each individual Ogryn is letter coded A, B and C, and will only fit together "properly" if you stick to the correspondingly lettered parts. Look at the outside of the box. What you see is what your ogryns will look like if you assemble them properly.

 

As if. We're doing these guys my way.

 

I'd always intended to cut off the hanging tank treads because I think they look silly. Turns out it wasn't an option. They'll only fit on the model if you use the Bullgryn arms. So I mixed and matched the arms to get poses I liked. This leaves all kinds of putty-filled gaps, but such is the price of freedom.

 

I was able to get two vicious-looking Ogryns with their weapons leveled to lay waste to some unlucky heretics or xeno-scum. But that left me with one more Ogryn to assemble and the two least desirable arms, lol. I'm thinking I may bite the bullet and buy another arm for this guy (one of the power mauls). But in the mean time, I swapped the ripper gun to his left hand and gave him one of the Ork choppas as a knife. "Dat's not a nife. Dis is a nife!"

 

Here's the Bone 'Ead. I made sure he was the tallest of the bunch. Next to one of the tallest of my Space Marines.

 

 

Then I realized that while I had saved a bunch of money by purchasing the Ogryns in bits (only buying the parts I needed), I had no bases for them. So these two beat up a Crisis Suit and stole his (already broken) flight stand base.

 

 

As a group.

 

Honestly I kinda want to do some more of these guys. There's something about Ogryns I really like. And something I really like about Steel Legion Ogryns. I would even do them up as really expensive props. Just to have them loading cargo or hauling off prisoners or something.

 

 

At any rate, check out the sweet, sweet xeno-heresy on my blog. I've turned this project into its own site: https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/

 

I'm going to try to flesh it out with more articles about the project itself, answering some of the FAQs I get on the various forum this is on. Check it out. Oh, and follow it on Facebook for those of you who are social. https://www.facebook.com/LeaveNoModelUnconverted

 

 

 

 

*You can keep that silly Astra Militarum nonsense. I'm not buying into the rebranding.

[Argent aquila]

way cool update!

[Sheesh Mode]

Veteran Sergeant you might like to see this. I was inspired by your idea and decided to make some truly awesome Chaos Space Marines here: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/299728-the-growing-tide-pic-heavy/

 

Keep up the good work, man. 

[Veteran Sergeant]

Another Imperial Guard* update. It's been a bummer to not be able to update this since most of my work has been on Xeno scum recently. It's for a good cause though. I needed more enemies for my Spess Mahrees and Guardsmen to kill and my friends just have Tyranids and Chaos.

 

So the problem with my Imperial Guard is that I hate the plastic kits for them. So I'm "stuck" with the metals. And let's be realistic. I have like 250 of them. I'm not getting rid of them and I'm not adding too many more.

 

But I want to add things in bits and pieces. The Ogryns were first, but second were some Squats. Not to actually be Squats. But just to fill in as regular troopers. Squats are basically Imperial Guard anyway. Flak armor, lasguns, check. I've had a bunch of the plastics lying around, and just got another small bunch at a good deal (just under $2 each) off Ebay.

 

I took a picture of the bag yesterday, but then I thought: "You know, enough talking about doing Squats, and time to do Squats." You should always do squats. Leg day is important.

 

Where was I? Oh yeah, Squats in the service of the glorious Imperial Guard.

 

 

So I only have three of them so far, two rifleme- err, riflesquats, and a squa(t)d leader or something.

 

 

I'd been putting off doing these guys for a while until I was really sure what I wanted out of them. After all, Ork Boyz and Space Marines are a dime a dozen on Ebay, but unassembled plastic Squats (from a kit that hasn't been produced for over 20 years) aren't, lol.

 

 

These guys were both fun to do, and a bit of a challenge. You see, the original plastic Squats were designed with this lasgun in mind.

 

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTEyWDE2MDA=/z/0Q4AAOxy2CZTbAiP/$_35.JPG

 

So the hands are very close together by default. But if I wanted to make them blend in with my Guardsmen, I had to do some creative cutting. Like usual, some wrist rotation was also pretty standard. The guy with his weapon raised was an arm modified from a heavy weapons arm (cutting off its padded shoulder), and the shoulder from a regular one.

 

I probably could have saved myself some time and effort by using the arms from the plastic Cadian kit, but I hate that kit that much. The lasguns are a split. One came from the Catachan kit, the other (with its icon filed off) came from the Cadian kit.

 

 

I'll probably go back to finishing my Orks before I hit any more Squats, except at the gym. Leg days are M, W, F. But plastic Squats will have to wait for now.

 

 

 

 

 

*I have not accepted the rebranding. Mine will remain Imperial Guard.

[Veteran Sergeant]

A bit of an aside to the project, since I've been mostly working on Xeno-heresy not allowed on this forum, but something I worked on. For those who enjoyed the original "Veteran Sergeant Plays... Dark Verngernce!", while my buddies played Advanced Squad Leader, I was busy assembling the Space Marine models from Deathstorm.

 

This is a cool kit, the Death Company Marines. For my taste, they're way too busy-looking and have too many details, but the basic kit is actually well posed, with some interesting bits that allow you to have decent looking miniatures without much scalpel time. In the end, I only ended up having to do some light conversion (arm rotations, weapon swaps) on a couple of the models to get some decent poses. I swapped in a couple of Sanguinary Guard legs I had lying around that I wasn't planning on using to give a couple models some more dynamic poses, given than they all have melee weapons and jump packs.

 

 

My buddy was not excited about the idea of painting this pose.

 

 

Though when we realized he looks like he's about to do a Macho Man Randy Savage elbow drop (but with a chainsword)), it was kept. The thought to paint him up tie-dyed was dropped as too difficult, however.

 

 

So you can look forward to Veteran Sergeant Plays... Derthsterm! in the near future. Potentially with scenarios from other Shield of Baal books.

[codyrstuart]

Long time lurker. Awesome work here, but since you had to mention Mach Man Randy Savage, a tie dye paint job is in order. Or at least more tassels.

[Veteran Sergeant]

So it's been a while since I've done any real work on Space Marines (Deathstorm doesn't count because they weren't mine and weren't scaled up, just some minor conversion work.) It's been kind of a bummer because I've been working on a lot of stuff, but the vast majority of it I can't share here (like my Eldar Corsairs for example).

 

I've had the idea for this model floating around in my head for a while. Probably a year. I'd just never actually gotten around to starting it because I burned out on building Space Marines for a while. I wanted an badass Apothecary. But I wanted him to look like he was a Marine first, and since I don't play, it didn't matter what he was armed with, and I like Bolters.

 

Did you ever worry your Apothecary wasn't badass enough?

 

Meet Senior Apothecary Donatus, 5th Company, Invectors.

 

 

He will be getting an apothecary backpack shortly, but leaving it off makes the details a bit more apparent. I put the tubes behind him to better protect them from incoming fire, and gave him a Company Champion's shoulderpad (befitting his rank as a Veteran and providing extra ballistic protection while he works on fallen Marines)

 

You can also see where I shortened up the saw and reductor to look like they've been retracted (so as not to get in the way and to protect them when not in use). The narthecium comes from the Grey Knight Terminators kit (my buddy wasn't using it), obviously with the hand and arm separated, and then mounted on the upper portion of a regular Tactical Squad arm. The legs come from the Death Company kit (my buddy was willing to trade for some Sanguinary Guard legs for his DC). He's also the first model without an aquila torso.  Can't remember where the head came from. I picked up a bunch of heads with antennas because I planned to use them for character models, sergeants and squad leaders. I think it's from the Land Raider Crusader kit. I don't much like the Apothecary head with the lamp on the side of it. Looks pretty impractical. This one looks like it's got all kinds of diagnostic equipment on it. Maybe a laser or something to help cauterize wounds. Let your imagination run wild. I just know it looks cool.

 

 

It's been so long since I worked on Marines I couldn't find my small drill bit, so his bolter is unattached, but eventually the barrel will get drilled out and converted to a Cerceus-pattern.

 

I've put him into the classic "advancing at the alert" pose that's not only one of my favorites, but popular among readers of the blog. This was accomplished, by, as usual, a clip and flip of the wrist.

 

 

He still needs a bit of cleanup, but this is effectively his final form. I was quite pleased that it came out more or less like I wanted it. This character ends up in a lot of the fluff that I put together for this project's back story, so I wanted his miniature to look every bit the part and do him justice. 

 

This model is also a bit of a tribute to the Navy Corpsmen I was privileged to know and serve with, and on more than one occasion are the reason friends of mine are still alive today.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Veteran Sergeant

[Sheesh Mode]

Thank you for giving me a solid example for my counts-as Icon of Excess bearers. 

[ShVagYeR]

Definitely going to give your technique a go just to see if I can pull it off. Very inspiring!

[Tyrannicide]

Finally, an Apothecary that still looks lethal. Nicely done, man. This log has influenced my thoughts on functionality in more ways than one.

[Daemon2027]

The apothecary looks really good, much prefer him to a standard apothecary.

 

[heretical comment]Also thanks for the link to your blog, inspiration for a Xeno project of mine[heretical comment]

[Veteran Sergeant]

Thank you for giving me a solid example for my counts-as Icon of Excess bearers. 

I look forward to seeing what you come up with. This guy is a healthy mishmash of parts. GKT narthecium and fluid tubes, DC legs, new tactical arms and gun, old tactical torso, Sternguard Crux Terminatus bit, Command Squad shoulders, LRC head, and (not shown) Ravenwing apothecary backpack.

 

Definitely going to give your technique a go just to see if I can pull it off. Very inspiring!

Thanks. Coincidentally, I've been trying to inspire my buddy who is planning to do Howling Griffons (he said he wanted to do a quarter-pattern. He's a big historicals guy). Yours were among the samples pictures I sent him.

 

Finally, an Apothecary that still looks lethal. Nicely done, man. This log has influenced my thoughts on functionality in more ways than one.

It's really something always at the front of my mind. Like I've said in posts in the past, I really want the models to tell a story just by looking at them, and the out-of-the-box poses just don't do that for me a lot of the time. Being able to suggest movement and attitude is important (one of the things that turned me off to the Fire Warrior kit). One of my favorite Orks is the one I've done who will eventually look like he's hiding behind a wall.

 

And if I can inspire others who are far more talented than I to do that, then bonus.

 

The apothecary looks really good, much prefer him to a standard apothecary.

 

[heretical comment]Also thanks for the link to your blog, inspiration for a Xeno project of mine[heretical comment]

 

Glad you like it. The xeno projects are coming along. They're just not as exciting as the Marines because the kits are a lot more limited in potential. Not sure which project you're referring to, but if you want more pictures, let me know in a PM.

[ShVagYeR]

 

Thanks. Coincidentally, I've been trying to inspire my buddy who is planning to do Howling Griffons (he said he wanted to do a quarter-pattern. He's a big historicals guy). Yours were among the samples pictures I sent him.

 

 

Haha that's cool. You should warn him that if he chooses to do a quarter-patterned army, he will occassionally want to kill himself or at least toss the hobby out the window. :D

 

I turned word into action and came up with this: 31mm Alpha Legionnaire. It would be great if you had a look and left some feedback there. :)

[Veteran Sergeant]

I'll make sure to let him know. And I checked out your thread. Very nice work. Heck, you got one done and painted. That's way more progress than I have made recently. 

[Veteran Sergeant]

I realized I never posted my tutorial here.
 
My two primary demonstration models will be this Apothecary here:



And the Section Leader with auspex


 
Step 1: Preparing the models<

Well, the first thing that needs to be done is to decide what you want to do with the model. In the case of the Apothecary, I liked the posture of his legs, so I was only going to be extending them, rather than a full rebuild. In the case of the section leader, I was using the old "squatting" legs from the old Tactical Squad kit, and wanted to do a fully new pose with him. This meant cutting the feet free of the model.

With these projects, I'll typically work in batches. You'll need to allow time for all the components to dry and set once you've glued them anyway, so doing them in groups of 4-5 may cut your downtime significantly. You can see with the ones below, I've removed their feet. The difference in the poses you can achieve can be dramatic since the foot will no longer be anchored to the leg in a static position.



However, if you're using specialized legs, or if you're simply happy with the pose the legs are currently in, you can leave them alone. In the case of the Apothecary, his legs came from the Death Company kit, and I was happy with the way they were standing. So I moved on to the next step, which was inserting plastic card spacers.

I use 1mm thick card on the legs. One in the shin, one at the hip. If you're keeping the pose, you might want to do a mid-thigh cut, but I've found I like the waist cut better. It gives a lot more options later.


For the torsos, I use 1.5mm thick plastic card, cutting it into strips to line the outside of the torso "ring".  Cut/file the outside edge smooth, then, using a rounded-tip hobby blade, scrape the inner side into a rounded shape. Adding another small square inside (or some putty) will allow more contact points for gluing the torso to the legs later.

This will add length to the torso. Now, I add a lot of gear to my Space Marines because aesthetically I like them that way. If you aren't going to be adding pouches and grenades, you will need to invest in some Green Stuff to model out their belt lines.
 
Step 2: Re-assembly.

Carefully, using hobby snips or a hobby blade, cut the excess down around the legs. Then, even more carefully, use the blade to trim it as close to the contour of the leg as possible. Once this is done, you can file it smooth if necessary.

Once you've shaved down the plastic inserts, you'll want to use either Green Stuff or Liquid Green Stuff to fill the gaps.



Now to prepare the pose. What is your Space Marine doing? Is he aiming? Is he patroling? For the Apothecary, I wanted him to be holding his gun at the "alert", which means with the muzzle pointing slightly downward, but ready to be brought up for firing. I felt this gave a certain "attitude" to the model. So how do we accomplish this with the lackluster arms provided in most Space Marine kits? With a knife of course.

Any time you're posing a Space Marine (or any model for that matter), you want to be considering range of movement. At the very least, try the pose yourself. If you can't do it comfortably, why would the Space Marine? If you're trying to impart a swinging motion with a melee weapon for example, try a couple swings while watching yourself in the mirror. Make sure you know how that weapon is used in real life too. You swing a top-heavy weapon like an axe or a hammer much differently than you swing a sword which is balanced closer to the grip.

My Apothecary looks like this:
 


So, how do we get there?

Sorry I didn't take any in-progress pictures of the arms. That was an oversight I'll correct in the future. For now, I'll get as good of shots as we can for it. Fortunately I couldn't find my small drill bit for the barrel so the boltgun isn't glued in place yet.

Here's a basic diagram of the arm cuts.



First, we're going to clip the arm just below the "under shoulder" that the shoulder pad attaches to. Once this is done, we can rotate the arm to do whatever we want, from an aiming pose, to the "alert" pose. This cut is fundamental to pretty much all the Space Marines I do, and is the base of posing. Think about your own body. Almost all of the directions you can move your arm start at the shoulder.



Second we're going to clip the wrist and flip it around so that the wrist soft armor is sloping up, instead of down. Sounds confusing, but an upward slope will obviously give us a downward angled hand.



Now, since we've fundamentally altered the way the right hand sits, the left hand isn't going to sit flush on the bolter. So it needs to be cut free and rotated. You can see this best on the Section Leader:



The Apothecary doesn't make a great example because I had to cut the whole forearm off that model to replace it with the Narthecium anyway.  Here it is on another model, and you can see the far more drastic angle that the cuts achieved.
 

And there you go. You've now made a 30-40 part model:

• Legs – 11 parts
• Torso – 6-7 parts
• Arms – 2-5 parts each
• Head
• Pack
• Weapon (my Cerceus Pattern Bolters are 3 parts, but you don’t have to go that crazy)
• Gear (I use anywhere from 10-14 accessory parts per model) 

 

 

And make sure to check out my blog for a more holistic accounting of my hobby stuff, including xeno scum, narrative battle reports and humor.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Veteran Sergeant

[Argent aquila]

Wonderful tutorial, will definitely keep this in mind for projects!

[TDF]

The Horus Heresy summary was fun, but five Legions on Isstvan III?

[Veteran Sergeant]

The Horus Heresy summary was fun, but five Legions on Isstvan III?

Good catch. I thought I'd caught all the small bits.

 

An interesting bit of trivia though, in all the early versions of the Heresy, it actually was five Legions at Isstvan V, the fifth being the Thousand Sons who had joined Horus after the Space Wolves razed Prospero. They weren't written out until the Collected Visions version of the Heresy.

[Veteran Sergeant]