Toxic's 3rd Company Ultramarines

[Toxichobbit]

After having decided to join in with the E Tenebrae Lux challenge, i thought it might be a good idea to make a WIP thread to chart my progress. I've pledged to paint up a Librarian, Techmarine, Tactical Squad and Assualt Demi-Squad. That's 17 Marines altogether, not a lot for 10 weeks. However, i'm a slow painter who is easily distracted by my xbox, so getting these done will actually be a real challenge. Anyway, here's some pictures of the models in their initial stages, a mixture of unpainted, primered and basecoated.

Librarian

Techmarine

Tactical Squad

Assualt Squad

I'll add the last two Marines from the Assualt Squad soon, when i get around to ordering some of the other Mks of Assualt Marine from FW.

I'm already wondering if i've bitten off more than i can chew - i'll have to find a way to hide any distracting stuff or something :). Wish me luck!

[Kierdale]

A good start. There's quite a mix of models in that tactical squad...and is that an original Tigurius?

[Toxichobbit]

Thanks Kierdale. Yeh, i like my squads to have a mix of armour Mks and models from various sources if possible. It makes them both more interesting to paint and to see on the tabletop. That is indeed an old Tigurius. I've had him since just before they stopped selling him in GW stores. He was converted to be a generic Marine Librarian, as i was doing Salamanders at the time. Since then i've switched to Ultramarines (mainly because i can't stand the black skin & red eyes of the current Salamanders) and decided to include old Tigurius as one of my Librarians because the model is awesome and he's kinda coming home. Now i wish i hadn't filed off the Ultramarine symbol on his breastplate - never mind, at least it's clear that he's not Tigurius anymore.

Right, an update on what i was up to last night. I've finished off the armour on the first of my Tactical marines. This one is a test model, i'm quite pleased with how it turned out, although there's definately room for improvement with the blending techniques. This is the first time i've tried more realistic lighting on a Marine, rather than the usual GW style edge highlighting. I think i prefer the difference - what do you guys think?

Also, this guy has no shoulder pad rims for company markings, so i'm not sure exactly how to mark what company he is from. The ways i've thought of so far are red studs on the left pad, red edging on the tactical arrow on his right pad, painting the entirety of his left pad red (except the studs), leaving him clear of company colours and letting him be 3rd company by association with the rest of his squad (he will have squad markings). I want to steer clear of anything on his kneepads. Because his legs are already quite busy with all the pipes and studs, i like the blank area that the kneepads provide. Any thoughts?

Photoshoped red left pad

Tactical Sergeant and Terminator that i painted last year using edge highlighting for comparison

[Dosjetka]

They look quite good mate :) I really like the blue you're using and your blending is quite good (better than mine anyway)!

 

Ludovic

[Toxichobbit]

Finished the test Tactical Marine. He came out quite good :). Still not decided on where to put the company colours though, i think i'll wait until the squad is finished before i decide.

Also got a chunk of the Techmarine done. Just his arms, hammer and servo arm to do now.

C&C welcome :).

[Toxichobbit]

Just a small update. I decided i didn't like the pose on the Tactical Sergeant, so i've re-made him. I've always liked combi-weapons held in both hands, so taking inspiration from a couple of threads on these forums, i did a bit of re-posing and had the Sergeant firing from the shoulder rather than from the waist. I'll probably change the poses on some of the bolter marines in the squad as well, to give some more variety and interesting poses. Anyway, here's the shot of the re-posed Sergeant. He still needs a bit more cleaning up, but i'm hoping to get that done today and make a start on painting him.

[Kierdale]

Looking very, very good!

[Dosjetka]

Lovely :lol: The Sergeant's pose is definitely cool!

 

Ludovic

[AlexCrute]

Mk5 armour is a beautiful brutal thing, and looks very nice in blue indeed.

[Toxichobbit]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm fond of MkV as well, it is indeed really brutal looking. I've got a few friends who don't like the studs (neither on MkV nor VI), but i think they add a nice area of interest and some texture to the marines. I probably wouldn't like an entire force all covered in studs, but for a few of the guys mixed into each squad i think it looks good.

The Techmarine is almost finished, he just needs a bit of tidying up - especially the industrial wiring, basing and a chapter symbol adding to his left pad. I've also started work on a standard bearer that i've been wanting to do for ages, although he won't be finished for a while because he's not part of the challenge.

[Toxichobbit]

Another quick update. The Techmarine is finished now, just in need of basing. I'm almost done with the heavy weapon Marine from the Tactical Squad as well - hopefully i'll have pictures of him along with the finished Techmarine and the first Tactical Marine all based.

I've spent a lot of time browsing various WIP blogs and as a result feel that a lot of my Marines are too boring, either in or close to the stock GW bolter at waist pose. I've decided i want my Marines to be a bit more individual, with each one having something defining about him. Some of them will still be in the stock poses, as i've got quite a lot of assembled Marines already and don't want to pull all of them apart. That being said, starting with the ETC Tactical Squad, i'm going to try and have about 75% of the Marines per squad in more interesting poses and/or with armour variants and interesting details, be that honour badges or bits of interesting gear. I kind of made a start on that with the Sergeant i re-posed earlier. The next Marine i'm working on is a bit more ambitious, with plenty of cutting and re-posing plus a bit of sculpting work (just tubing, nothing adventurous just yet). Here's a shot him, very WIP at the moment. I promise the bolter will make sense when i'm finished.

[lokkorex]

wow! really nice looking army you've got going!

 

i frickin love the techmarine with thunder hammer, when i get around to bying that model, i'll give him the same loadout.

[The Yak]

I really like the way you have painted that first tactical marine and Techmarine, They're very good (your older stuff is non to shabby either may I add).

I quite liked the look of the photoshopped red pad too but I think you are doing the right thing in waiting to see how he looks with the rest of his squad.

Good luck with the next batch

[Toxichobbit]

@ lokkorex - thanks :P. The parts i used for him was the right shoulderpad from the vehicle crew (it has a little plug for wires or something) and the thunder hammer from the Iron Hands set (bionic hand plus the hammer itself has a cog & skull symbol very similar to the Ad Mech symbol worn by Techmarines). I thought these parts were a bit more in keeping with a Techmarine's overall style than a normal arm & shoulder pad.

@ The Yak - cheers, that means quite a bit coming from someone who isn't a fan of the Ultras. Even alongside just part finished squad mates, that first Tactical Marine is starting to look a little odd without any red on him, so that red shoulder pad might still happen. I'm deffinately going to wait though, he's finished for now, i can always go back later and work on him some more, preferably when i've finished the rest of my vow.

So, earlier i posted a very WIP shot of a Marine's legs with a bolter in a weird position. I've been feeling surprisingly inspired today and have kept going with that conversion right the way through to completion. Normally i'll do part of a conversion then put it aside and come back to it a couple of days (or weeks) later, so actually getting something done from start to finish in one day is quite and unusual event for me. But you don't really want to know about that, what you really want is to see what the hell i was doing with leg-bolter boy above.

So, here's the pics of the finished (probably) conversion. I went for MkVIII armour (Errant) as it's probably the most uncommon armour Mk now that Forgeworld have covered II - IV (i don't count I as Marine armour, it's Thunder Warrior stuff imo). Hopefully that combined with the pose will give him a nice unique feel, something that i'm very eager to carry along to the rest of my force, if possible. The sculpting work isn't that good, but i'm not too fussed as i can probably cover up any blemishes with paint, plus it's my first go at sculpting anything properly, my past attempts have just been gap filling. Let me know what you think.

[The Yak]

He looks great. I thought you were going to have a bolter mag-locked to the leg which is a great idea in theory but always looks odd due to the size of the bolters. Having him carrying his bolter in that position looks excellent and is a breath of fresh air!

[Andrew J]

Fantastic posing. Really dynamic. Much better than the static poses of stock GW marines. Keep it up!

[alejandrinus]

Very nice poses and kitbashing, and Green stuff work on the last one do the job very well. Also your painting is very good, and one of my favourites is the assault sergeant with the hammer. And for the company marking in the mkV you could do a shield shape or circle in red under the mini U marking, hope that helps and waintg for more :)

[roooooot]

My god I love that last posed marine.

 

All this stuff is fantastic, I'm glad to have you on my side!

[Kierdale]

That marine is really nicely posed! Very natural looking.

I like the knife sheathed over the shoulder too!

[subtlebrush]

Really awesome job on the ol'Smurfs!

Can't wait to see some more from you.

[Toxichobbit]

Once again, thanks for all the kind replies. It really helps keep me motivated to know that people like what i'm doing. Hopefully one day my stuff will be as much of an inspiration for someone as others on this board have been for me.

Anyway, i re-posed another Marine today. The idea with this fella is he's roadie running from one piece of cover to another, moving fast and low to minimise his profile as a target for enemies. He's not as low to the ground as i would have like, but i guess when your wearing as much armour as an Astartes, some compromises need to be made. Still, i think the pose emphasises what i was going for enough, even if it's not perfect to what i orignially envisioned.

You'll also notice he's carrying a lot more gear on him than my other Ultramarines. That's because he's probably going to end up as a Mantis Warrior (approval pending in another thread), rather than an Ultra. However, at some point i intend to do another Marine in this pose for my Ultras, as i really like the idea of it. Hopefully i'll be able to improve on this model some with a more natural pose closer to what i originally wanted.

The pose actually looks fairly simple to convert, but in reality was a real PITA. This is entirely due to one thing - notice which hand he's holding his bolter in. GW don't do lefty Marines with the bolter across the chest pose, so it required a lot of chopping, re-posing and a little bit of putty work to get it looking natural. I'm hoping to add more left handed Marines to my forces in the future. I think now i've done one, the process of doing more will be a lot simpler. He's almost finished ready for undercoating - i still need to do a little bit more cleaning on some areas. I also want to add some detail to his bolter to make it even more indistinguishable to a bolter held with the opposite side facing outwards. My play is to use one of the small Imperial Eagles from the FW brass etch sprue, cut in half vertically and placed towards the barrel end of the gun casing, where the decoration on a bolter traditionally is.

Anyway, i hope you like him, even if he is likely going to be wearing green & yellow chapter colours, rather than blue.

[The Yak]

I thought he looked rather practical for an Ultra! Hey go for it the Mantis warriors are cool!

 

Just don't get to sidetracked as you have got your vow to complete mate. I almost joined the Badab war thread when the star phantoms became available. I was trying to justify that I could achieve both my Raptors and another army. In the end I decided against it as I always tend bite off more than I can chew.

 

I would love to see your Ultramarines finished as they look so cool

 

Cheers

[Toxichobbit]

Yeh, that's a very real danger. I'll try and just keep any Mantis Warrior stuff as a side project, just something to do when i need a break from blue. On that note, here's what i've been doing since the last major update. I haven't been doing many WIP shots recently, so it might seem like i haven't been doing anything with my Ultras, but as you can see here, i've actually got another chunk done.

Firstly, i did a bit of tidying up on the Techmarine, getting rid of a bit of green on his left shoulder that you can see in the pics earlier in the thread and adding the chapter symbol. I've also got the Librarian done. He took a lot more work than the normal Marines, so i'm glad he's done, rather than being left towards the end where i might have to rush him. The yellow isn't quite as striking as it looks on the photos. I don't have a decent set up for taking photos yet, so i'm just using the flash on my camera, which is causing some of the blending to look more stark and less smooth (especially the shadows) and colours on the whole to be brighter. Hopefully one day i'll be able to take better photos to replace these ones, but for the moment your at least able to get the general idea.

After some fiddling around, i decided to go with an industrial ruins type of basing scheme. It's mainly grey rubble of various tones, with bits of rusted machinary and sulpher dust to break up the monotone colour. I intend to be more varied with the stuff i add to the bases, these are just the first few, more of a trial than anything else. I'm planning stuff like half buried leaking oil drums, industrial piping (both smaller rubber and larger metal), bits of floor grate, drainage covers, rusted barbed wire, small water filled craters etc. Basically, small points of interest that fit in with the overall theme of the bases.

Librarian

Techmarine

1st Tactical Marine

Finally, here's a WIP shot of my next Tactical Marine. I'm really looking forward to doing the weathering on the barrel of the multi melta. I love little touches like that, which add realism to models.

2nd Tactical Marine WIP

[Death Spectre]

Regarding your 1st tactical marine, as I understand it the company can be specified using the left knee-pad either being painted in the company colour or having a numeral, or both. I'd suggest that approach. Looking through the old Index Astartes book is quite cool in that it shows lots of different ways to denote the same thing, and it allows each marine to be subtly individual.

[The Yak]

Nice Librarian! I much prefer that model to the new one. I have the old codicer with force rod model somewhere, seeing your model has made me think of stripping it and including it in my current force.

 

The Techmarine looks really crisp. I think the red of his armour looks great, especially alongside your 3rd company markings.

 

Thumbs up for the bases too.

 

Cheers