++ From the Abyss - A Word Bearers Log ++

[ElDuderino]

This was a very welcome surprise, I absolutely love your word bearers. Can't wait!

[Noctus Cornix]

Good evening, brothers and sisters, misguided and the enlightened. 

 

Hey guys, been a hell of a long time, hasn't it?  It's been over three years since I returned to the fold of Chaos and about eight months since I worked on any of major project for my Astral Claws. I suppose some explaining is in order so I'll provide a bit of a 'State of the Warband', shall we say? Without going into any great detail, about four years ago my life essentially became a biiiit of a wreck. I lost my teaching internship, my fiance, and subsequently my entire life's plan. That was, to be honest, one of the major driving facts that had led me to actually dropping any major project work for a long time, and I admit it's been hard trying to pick anything back up. Originally I had hoped to start fresh all over again with a brand new log for my Word Bearers, but the departure of many close friends on this board and a general decline in activity on the Work in Progress thread had me feeling less and less motivated to push for that.

 

It's been a rough few years, but I genuinely believe that my life has been improving and I've been growing as a person from what I've learned. I've taken greater responsibility for my actions and have slowly been developing a greater sense of self-respect and discipline, I am anticipating to graduate with my Masters degree in Medieval Literature this December, and, hopefully by next July or August I'll be moving to Japan to teach there for a few years. I've always wanted to go there ever since I was a little lad and I'll honestly kick myself in the ass if I don't do it while I'm still young. There's always been so much that I've wanted to do but I continually held myself back for the sake of uncertainty, but I'm slowly building up the realization that some times I need to just say   it and do it anyway. 

 

So, here I am now. 

 

I wanted my return with the Word Bearers to be some dramatic rebirth with a novel's worth of writing and something that would wow everyone and nothing I could think of honestly meshed in my brain or felt like it lived up to the expectations I had set up for myself. Nothing is perfect and it's an idiocy to even think that, so why should I keep myself from sharing what I love? Concerning my projects, I have three major projects. There are, of course, my Word Bearers, my Astral Claws, and a third project that will remain a secret for now, but suffice to say I have not given up on my  Astral Claws and intend to continue them when the time is right, but for now I just need to sort of relax and focus on loosening these weird expectations I have for myself so I can just share with you guys and so I can get back to the Astral Claws when the time is right. 

 

So, to stop myself from rambling on any longer, here is this gent. No, I don't really have a name or much of a story for him, save for the fact that this is a Horus Heresy model and that he is the High Chaplain of the Chapter before his.... Enlightenment, shall we say. 

 

But, as always, I hope you folks enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vazzy]

Looks great my man! Glad to see things are going well! High Chaplain looks awe inspiring for sure!

[Noctus Cornix]

Thanks, brother Vazzy. It means a lot to me. :)

[Noctus Cornix]

Righto, time to keep on trucking. Not a Word Bearer this time, but I wanted to share a commission piece I had done for a close friend of mine. I mean, the character in question needs no introduction, really, but it was a blast to paint this guy. As always, I really hope you all enjoy this and I hope to hear some feedback.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Excellent work on Dorn.

[Noctus Cornix]

Excellent work on Dorn.

 

Thanks, Bjorn, glad to see you're still around, brother. I was really happy that my friend enjoyed it.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Noctus Cornix

[Dosjetka]

The transitions on the skin could be smoother and the scrollwork on the back of the cape is missing some script but overall you've done a solid job, Noctus. :tu: I'm curious to know which gold paints you used, if you don't mind sharing.

 

Also, good to see you back at it and that your life has a taken a turn for the better. I hope it stays that way for ya.

[ElDuderino]

Man the chaplain is gritty! Love it. Does this mean that heresy models are to be expected?:)

 

I have to agree with Dosjetka, while the gold is lovely the skin seemss bit harshly highlighted. It does however look quite good from a distance, it might simply be a case of too much zoom:)

[Noctus Cornix]

The transitions on the skin could be smoother and the scrollwork on the back of the cape is missing some script but overall you've done a solid job, Noctus. I'm curious to know which gold paints you used, if you don't mind sharing.

 

Also, good to see you back at it and that your life has a taken a turn for the better. I hope it stays that way for ya.

Hey Dosjetka! Glad to see you're still kick, mate! Yeah, I know the skin could have been a bit smoother. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out as I had hoped but my friend seemed to not mind it so he didn't have me redo the entire head. 

 

Well, as for the Gold I gotta say the only gold paint I used was literally just Retributor armour. I applied a layer of the gold, an agrax earthshade wash, a Nuln oil wash, and then cleaned up some details with Retributor gold again as a highlight. That's honestly all it was. I tend to prefer my metallics not to stand out too much and I really enjoy that gritty look it has. Shall we say, I'm using a lot of that gold recipe with one of my other projects 

 

 

Man the chaplain is gritty! Love it. Does this mean that heresy models are to be expected?

 

I have to agree with Dosjetka, while the gold is lovely the skin seemss bit harshly highlighted. It does however look quite good from a distance, it might simply be a case of too much zoom:)

 

ElDuderino! How ya been?! Yes, you can expect a lot of heresy models.  I'm not gonna be more heavily leaning one way or the other between 40k and 30k, but you should see a healthy mix here and there.

 

Man, it's great to be back, lads. I have to make sure I get through this week in taking care of a lot of work this week, but once everything starts to settle in I will hopefully start spending more time and pick my way through everyone's projects that I've been missing out on.

[Pearson73]

The gold of Dorn's armour is reall well done.

[Vazzy]

Excellent work Noctus! Always enjoy seeing you do primarchs!

[Noctus Cornix]

Excellent work Noctus! Always enjoy seeing you do primarchs!

I know, right? I think this is like... what, the fourth Primarch I've done and posted on this site? :P

[Noctus Cornix]

So, in trying to keep with a relatively constant flow of updates, here's a bit I've been working on. Here's another recent commission completed for another friend. This one is actually my rendition on Devram Korda, one of the Chosen of Abaddon from relatively older lore. 

 

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll56/kitiara666/agramarexilio/devramkorda.jpg

 

I tried to keep as relatively true to the art work as possible without going overboard and ensuring my client was happy with the results. Rather than just painting him like any normal Black Legion marine, my friend is doing a Children of Torment Warband, which means they're all Slaaneshi and he had me paint Korda according to the color scheme from the 6th ed Black Legion codex. The only major change was a request from my friend to give Korda a white helmet. This was his personal bit of lore because he wanted to say that white helmets are a special signifier for a Legionnaire who has personally slain an Imperial Saint. So, without further due, here's Korda.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, this next model is for me and he's still in the WIP phase, but I wanted to share what I have so far to gauge thoughts on it. This guy is gonna probably be my Diabolist for 30k, but I'm still largely trying to figure out how I want to kit him out. At first I was pretty pleased with the initial results, but I quickly enough remembered hat Diabolists have the Daemon special rule.. so I felt that he might be a bit too clean for having the daemon rule and that auto 5+ invul save makes having a boarding shield completely pointless. Regardless, I would really appreciate some feedback on what you folks think of him. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Korda's model is well done.

[KrautScientist]

Those are some wonderful new models! The High Chaplain is an inspired take on that FW model -- although I have to admit the animal skull helmet look doesn't really do much for me. The rest of the model is really well done, though! Dorn is looking really cool as well!

 

That Devram Khorda conversion is just wonderful -- I don't think I have seen him tackled in model form before, at least not that faithfully -- fantastic work! No do the rest of the guys from that piece of art. You know you want to ;)

 

The Diabolist seems to be coming along well. I will say that I associate that helmet design with the Sarum pattern - and hence with World Eaters - and I am wondering whether a different helmet might work better in actually making him look just a tad more daemonic (one of the Warp Talon heads, maybe). Also, something like a flaming crown might be cool? Anyway, just throwing some ideas your way here...

 

Looking forward to seeing your next update! :)

[sparrow2z]

Great conversion on the diabolist! That being said, I'm not sold on the shield; is it worth playing around with a different left arm? I know it's cliche, but I imagine him holding a head or a corpse...

[Elzender]

Wow, that gold on Dorn is fantastic, the shading is impressive (specially on the left arm in the last picture), and reading how simple it was to achieve makes it even better. About the face, other than the right cheek, I really like the marked facial features, very fitting of Dorn's stony character.

 

About the diabolist, I am liking it a lot. Maybe you could try to source some Gal Vorbak bits (mostly arms) to give him some daemonic mutations? Maybe not the most obvious ones, but ones that showed cracked armour or some subtle mutation.

Otherwise, maybe changing the left arm to be holding a tome, some kind of chaos reliquary or some profaned head/corpse, as sparrow2z suggests?

[Noctus Cornix]

Evening, gents. Another bit of a delay from me again. Sorry about that. Life has been.... hectic, at best. Now that I've graduated, my life is pretty much consumed by the efforts of trying to find a job. Nothing yet, but things are starting to look a bit promising. 

 

With the dawn of the new Chaos release, of course you know I have to get in on this. From this point on, my Word Bearers will be receiving pretty much a full reboot. I'm taking my Chaos in a new direction and everything is going to be updated to reflect my new vision. 

 

That being said, it's still in the formative process and it will be a while before I can reveal anything solid. I'm essentially starting from scratch with my boys, down to the basic Chaos Space Marines. I've been waiting for an overhaul of the Chaos line for years now and I will take advantage of everything it has to offer. 

 

So, without further ado, allow me to at least give a teaser of what's coming. So far all I have is a single 10 man Chaos squad (mostly built), a Rhino (unbuilt) and a Helforged Contemptor Helbrute. I want everything in my army to match with a similar aesthetic and I'm very much someone who adores the fleshy, mutated look of the recent line. So I knew that I had to make my Dreadnoughts feel like a Helbrute. I was incredibly inspired by Morskul's Helbrute in Eat some Worlds and I wanted to follow in the style of his mad genius. Given that Contemptors were pretty common during the Heresy, I wanted this to use the Contemptor's profile and stats rather than just a normal Helbrute. He's honestly the same size as a normal Contemptor and a little bit wider, so I'm very happy with the results. The model is still very much a work in progress with a lot of much needed greenstuffing, but I think what I have so far was worth showing off. I posted him up next to one of my Chaos Marines for reference. Please let me know what you think, guys!

 

 

Enjoy.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Helbrute's customized rotary cannon looks great! What does it count as in-game? Assault cannon, Hades autocannon, heavy Onslaught gatling cannon, Punisher gatling cannon, something else?

[Noctus Cornix]

The Helbrute's customized rotary cannon looks great! What does it count as in-game? Assault cannon, Hades autocannon, heavy Onslaught gatling cannon, Punisher gatling cannon, something else?

 

Glad you like it. I was planning on using it either as a Butcher Cannon or a Kheres Assault Cannon.

[MagicMan]

Looks sick ! 

 

Really dig the Helbrute. Is it a Maulerfiends legs with the Helbrute body?

[Noctus Cornix]

Looks sick ! 

 

Really dig the Helbrute. Is it a Maulerfiends legs with the Helbrute body?

 

Yep! Maulerfiend legs with the Helbrute body. The one from Dark Vengeance, specifically. I unfortunately have yet to get my grubby paws on any multi-part Helbrutes. I'll likely pick one up for the next time I make one of these big boys.

 

Just because I wanted to show it off, here's a size comparison between my Helforged and a regular Contemptor from the Betrayal at Calth set. I'm thoroughly proud of the results. He's a bit taller and quite a bit wider too. I'm debating as to whether a tabard from the plastic Daemon Prince set would be a good idea or not for him. What do you lads think?

 

[Bryan Blaire]

I actually like it just the way it is!

 

If you do want a loin cloth, I would definitely use the chain mail one from the Daemon Prince kit.

[Pearson73]

What a fantastic idea, the additional bulk and height make him incredibly imposing. I think he looks fine without a loincloth, however adding one would also look good, allowing some trophies or perhaps personal heraldry to be added.