BCK's Thread of Stuff: Maybe not eldar...

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks, Kizz!

 

And yes, the Inq28 thing really does let you go crazy in a way not much else in the Imperium side of the game can. I'd like to do a warband for each of the three Ordos and my initial thought was to go really dark and twisted for all of them, but now I'm going to give each one a flavor of its own. I'm starting with the Hereticus because the Inquisitor will be relatively young, of the monodominant school, and won't have anything really outlandish (for the Inquisition anyway), but I am still planning on doing some kinda freaky stuff inspired a lot by Karl Kopinsky's Hereticus art. There will be arco-flagellants, a penitent engine of my own creation, a very unique AdMech Magos (if I can pull off my idea), and some other goodies, but it will be the most 'clean' of the three warbands.

 

The ProCreate is similar to greenstuff but has some differences that I noticed immediately. First is that it's a lot more firm than GS, even before mixing the two colors, and requires a bit more pressure with the sculpting tools. Once it's mixed, if you've ever mixed GS and Milliput, it reminds me a lot of that - the work life seems a little longer than GS and it doesn't have as much memory as GS so when you get near the end of the work life, it's not as spongy and springy and can still take impressions from the sculpting tools, but at a lesser degree than when it's fresh. I almost always use a little curing oven on my sculpted bits so I can get more work done in a day and the ProCreate cures faster than the GS in the oven. It also cures to a harder finish and sands a hell of a lot better than GS, but unlike a GS/Milliput hybrid, it doesn't turn into concrete and you can still pull it off the figure if you're a hyper self-critical perfectionist that sometimes has to sculpt something several times to get it right. It also doesn't seem to need as much lubricant as GS and doesn't get nearly as sticky.

 

Something else I discovered a few hours ago is that despite curing harder than GS, it seems to have a lot more plasticity and won't break or tear as easily. Now, last night, as I always do when I have leftover putty, I fed the excess to the tube making tool. I didn't think much of testing it until I was looking at Sister Sneer again to decide just what needed to be reworked, and one thing that's always bothered me is where the GS tube over her left shoulder fractured when I was gluing it in place.

 

http://i.imgur.com/u0e9h8Q.png

 

I dunno how many people even noticed it before, but it's one of those little things that bothered me every time I looked at the figure. I decided to see how far I could bend the ProCreate tube before it fractured. Check this out.

 

http://i.imgur.com/duuzjLC.png

 

This is fully cured, by the way. That would have snapped in half long before bending it that much if it was GS, and I didn't even feel that tension starting to build in it like you would with a GS tube. I bent it that far three times, in fact - twice with my fingers and a third time to snap this photo, and still no breakage at all. If nothing else, it's amazing for this sort of thing. Now, if you're one of those that put the GS tubes in place before they cure it might not be that big a deal, but I can never seem to do that without crushing the tube or at the very least getting fingerprints into it, so I'm loving this.

 

I've only had some limited interaction with it so far, but it already feels like a really good sculpting putty and some of the qualities, like having less memory, not being as sticky, and sanding better than GS, would give it a lower learning curve and be more user-friendly for people who are just getting into converting or who really hate using GS.

 

A couple of downsides are the color, which can make it difficult to see exactly what detail you've pressed into it with your tools, and once it gets to the end of it's working life, it starts to get crumbly. The first night I worked with it, I went a good ways past the working life and when I tried to use the tube tool on the leftovers, it just crumbled like stale bread. It's also not as friendly to photograph as GS due to the lighter color.

[Dantay VI]

Ah, okay. I got the milliput to mix with GS. I am relatively new to the conversion side of things, besides doing the odd press mould or piece of fur.

 

Would procreate be a better alternative for a starter than the milliputt/GS mix?  I find it quite brittle which can e a pain in the bum sometimes.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I'd suggest giving it a try. I've gotten used to greenstuff after years of using it, but when I first got into converting, there weren't many other options for converting besides Milliput and that stuff by itself is an even bigger, messier nightmare to work with. I recently tried the GS/Milliput mix for the first on an Inq28 figure that I'll be introducing soon, and the results of mixing the two were not very consistent.

 

I do remember what a frustrating PITA greenstuff was when I first started using it and I definitely think ProCreate would be worth looking into. If I honestly didn't think it would benefit people knew to the sculpting stuff, I wouldn't suggest it. Now that there are several other epoxy putty types out there for sculptors to choose from, I plan on giving several a try to see which I like best.

[Dantay VI]

That's great advice, thanks. I have had an almost pathological fear of using greenstuff because it is so tacky, I found it a complete pain to work with, plu the long curing time meant it was too w=easy to damage what you had worked on or get fingerprints from mis-handling.

 

I also found it hard to get a nice staright edge with the greenstuff too

 

Unless I do my conversion work at home, I can only use greenstuff offshore rather than the greenstuff milliputt mix. Because Milliputt is an irritant I am not allowed to take it in my lugguage.

 

With any luck pro-create will not have the same issue. I'll need to see where I can get some of this stuff from along with a cable/tentacle making tool, as that also seems to be one heck of a useful item  

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Two of the hardest lessons for me to learn with the sculpting was not trying to sculpt multiple areas on the same figure at the same time, because inevitably, one of them was going to get ruined by accidentally touching it with a finger. I can manage a few small things at once, but I still obliterate stuff with fingers all the time, even if it's just one large area I'm working on. The other was figuring out how much greenstuff it would take to do what I wanted to do, and this plays directly into the difficulty with getting a straight edge with it.

 

Let's say you're wanting to sculpt a new armor plate and have a nice, even, straight edge on one side of it. Now, the way I do edges like this is to flatten the area out into the rough shape, smooth it down, and then start working on cleaning up the edge by using the flat of my chisel blade clay shaper, first on the top plane, and then on the side plane, if you get my meaning. If you have an excess of GS in that area, when you press down on the top, the GS will then deform and bulge outward on the side. When you go to smooth the side down, the same thing happens, bulging out on the top.

 

Besides that, if you but a big blob of GS on the figure and sculpt up your thing only to find you needed half or less of the amount of the GS you put there, you then get to experience the fun of trying to cut away the excess and not destroy what you sculpted in the process. I can't remember a single time I was able to salvage something in that situation and always ended up removing the whole thing and stating over with less GS.

 

Oh, and yeah, a tube or tentacle making tool (seen them called both) is invaluable. I tried everything from using guitar strings, to winding solder around thin copper wire, to the hell of trying to sculpt all the little ridges into a greenstuff snake and the first time I used my new tool for the first time, it was worth every penny.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

So here's my first little sketch of the Inquisitor.

http://i.imgur.com/hMnlgHC.png

I'm not digging the weird barrel shape of the gun and will probably modify it, and the arm position isn't set in stone. The butt cape will eventually be the lower part of a very witch hunter-y leather jacket.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

More updates on the inquisitor.

http://i.imgur.com/xUf849D.png

I modified the gun, gave her a little more muscle mass in the upper leg, and started working on boot decorations.

Since I can't really start on building the rest of the coat until I finalize what to do with the arms, I wanted to have a go at the hat. I've never done anything remotely like building a hat from scratch, and while I've some conversions that made the brim from greenstuff, they always looked way too thick and I couldn't think of a way to make a thinner one from greenstuff that wouldn't be impractically fragile. I tried making the brim out of card stock but that didn't really work and I couldn't find my really thin sheet plastic, so I used some heavier stuff and ran it over a sanding block until it was closer to what I was wanting. I may have also temporarily removed the fingerprint from that index finger in the process.

I used a couple of tiny dots of superglue to hold it to her head and started working on the crown of the hat, in the hopes that I can remove it without damaging it 'cause it's gonna be in the way of future sculpting. I dunno if the hat crown needs to be taller or if the height is good as is. Opinions?

 

The back story I'm building for her is that she's a relatively new inquisitor, originally from Vostroya, and was tracking one of her first major heretic cases to a backwater planet and underestimated what she was coming up against. It cost her the lives of many of her agents, as well as most of her right arm and severe burns to her chest and the lower half of her face. I'm going to give her a respirator or something over the lower part of her face, and you can see how her right hand is mechanical. She manages to recruit some new agents from the planet's extremely religious ecclesiarchy and military, as well as the service of a genetor of the Magos Biologis who happened to be there conducting experiments on convicted criminals and heretics to turn them into more efficient arco-flagellants.

The genetor fixes up the inquisitor with a temporary augmetic arm while vat growing a replacement and offers to come along to field test the new arco-flagellants as well as getting permission to scoop up any heretics taken alive (and after being thoroughly interrogated) to conduct further experiments on. Not sure of how well the new recruits will perform, she also pulls a few strings from back home and gets an elite squad of Vostroyan soldiers to join up.

[Fire Golem]

I prefer that second pose with the arm down, and I like the conversions you've made to the pistol. Cool fluff too. Inq28 has always intrigued me. I don't know if you play much, but do you know if there's a specific fan made Inq28 ruleset, or does it just use the old Inquisitor rules with smaller models?

[Olis]

Hold the phones. BCK is doing Inq28? This should be good.

 

Edit - also, that second pose looks awesome. That hat is good as it is, I'd say. ;)

Edited September 6, 2015 by Olis

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

@fire golem - No, I don't play. And as far as I understand it, Inq28 is simply the Inquisitor game converted to 28mm figures, which is mostly distance. There is an Inquismunda rule set out there that's much more fan made.

 

I'm pretty happy with the gun mod and I have to say I was really nervous chopping it up because it's the only one that comes in the Skitarii box, but everything seems to have worked out.

 

@Olis - heck yeah, brother! I guess I got tired of the marines and needed a break with something that really let me put my imagination to work. Doubly so since I'm also strapped for cash at the moment, so expect a lot of conversions done with figures from Warmahordes and other ranges.

[Quixus]

Inquisitor (Inquisitrix?) not-Adrastia looks great. Only in the frontal view the crown of the hat looks a bit wide IMHO. The angle of the cone and its height are perfect. I'm sure the fancy hat will get a proper buckle before it is finished.

 

I'll try to explain why I think it does not look quite right: If you look into a hat from underneath the opening isn't often really circular but elliptical, and I think you made the crown from a circular base.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Quixus

[Dantay VI]

Looks great, and I second the second pose. Looks more intimidating. She seems to be coming at you not in a fast and reckles way but in a calm confident manner, much like an apex predator, sure in their abilities...

 

Are you going to do the right side of the jacket pinned back gun-slinger style to reveal a holster, or do you plan to wrap the long coat around her? Also the gorget/ respirator on the neck is pretty evocative of te witch hunters, who would wear such things to stop vampires biting their necks and dooming them :)

 

For some reason I now cannot get "wanted... dead or alive" by Bon Jovi out of my head now.

[Sgt. Blank]

The work on the leg and the hat have already dramatically improved this model. I like the work you've done on the pistol too - I didn't think the original was bad but the revised version seems like a better fit with the theme. Looking forward to see what you do next!

[Daemon2027]

The pro create sounds and looks interesting, I may have to grab some. I like the work on the inquisiotor. The hat adds a lot of character, and I prefer the arm in the less aggressive pose. A suggestion on the other hand, the sword from the vampire model with one wing would look nice, is slim and long.

[GREY88]

So when you are finished with her can I paint her? :)

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Inquisitor (Inquisitrix?) not-Adrastia looks great. Only in the frontal view the crown of the hat looks a bit wide IMHO.

 

It might be just a touch too wide, but I filed down the hair unitl I felt it was about the right size for her head and then cut the hole in the plastic circle wide enough for it to sit on her head correctly. I had made it thinner and taller when I first put the putty on, but it didn't cover her head properly.

 

Looks great, and I second the second pose. Looks more intimidating. She seems to be coming at you not in a fast and reckless way but in a calm confident manner, much like an apex predator, sure in their abilities...

 

Are you going to do the right side of the jacket pinned back gun-slinger style to reveal a holster, or do you plan to wrap the long coat around her?

 

Yeah, I agree that this pose is better and the hat really seals it. The right side of the jacket will be open to correspond with the current butt cape, though even with my modification to the pistol making it shorter than it originally was it's still longer than her thigh, so I dunno how well a holster would work there.

 

The work on the leg and the hat have already dramatically improved this model. I like the work you've done on the pistol too - I didn't think the original was bad but the revised version seems like a better fit with the theme. Looking forward to see what you do next!

 

The male figures in combat roles are almost always muscular and buff, so why not the ladies? The model's original leg looked a bit scrawny, plus it had a really bad mold line that left a small canyon in the metal, so a few minutes with a clay shaper and it's all good. I'm also happy with how the pistol turned out and think it's one of my favorite gun mods so far.

 

The pro create sounds and looks interesting, I may have to grab some. I like the work on the inquisitor. The hat adds a lot of character, and I prefer the arm in the less aggressive pose. A suggestion on the other hand, the sword from the vampire model with one wing would look nice, is slim and long.

 

The ProCreate seems to be holding up for me so far. I've been mixing it like I did my greenstuff with more light grey and less dark like I would with the yellow and blue, but discovered that the ProCreate colors are reversed from greenstuff. More dark and less light actually makes the softer putty mix I prefer with the greenstuff.

 

I checked out the sword you mentioned and it looks cool, especially that basket hilt, but a look around at a few bits sites shows no one selling the guy in parts. :(

 

So when you are finished with her can I paint her?

 

Oh, I dunno, I think I want to do this one myself.

 

More to come very soon - already have some more putty curing on her as I type this.

[Lexington]

More updates on the inquisitor.

 

http://i.imgur.com/xUf849D.png

 

Geesum Crow, that is incredibly bad-assed. Love how you've managed to get the brim of her hat to a point where it just obscures her eyes from a head-on view.

 

One minor criticism - that hand really bugs me. I realize it's supposed to be mechanical and probably intentionally clunky, but I really think it clashes with the (relatively, for 40K) fine features/lines of the rest of the model.

 

Also, one thing I'd suggest is to try and get the left and right sides of the hat brim to pop upwards a bit, like in the concept art. Not necessarily sure it'd work (might be too stylized), but it could be an interesting bit of visual flair for the model.

[Flint13]

I dunno, I was just going to say I really liked how different the hand looked. Especially since it took me a second to realize it only has three fingers ^_^

[Firepower]

Hmmm...maybe some more doodads, whizbangs, arbitrary gears and tubing of some sort on the arm?  It's properly chunky in shape, but that tendency for exposed inner-gubs in 40k designs might be useful.  Nothing drastic, mind, just one or two small additions here and there.  The missing finger doesn't bother me a bit.

 

It's something of an abused motif in Warhammer, but really, who doesn't love the Solomon Kane design archetype?  It's just so badass.  Obscuring wide brimmed hats are the stuff of winningness, and you managed to land the diameter in the sweet spot between fedora and floppy. :D

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

 

Geesum Crow, that is incredibly bad-assed. Love how you've managed to get the brim of her hat to a point where it just obscures her eyes from a head-on view.

 

One minor criticism - that hand really bugs me. I realize it's supposed to be mechanical and probably intentionally clunky, but I really think it clashes with the (relatively, for 40K) fine features/lines of the rest of the model.

 

Also, one thing I'd suggest is to try and get the left and right sides of the hat brim to pop upwards a bit, like in the concept art. Not necessarily sure it'd work (might be too stylized), but it could be an interesting bit of visual flair for the model.

 

Glad you like it.   As for the hand, it's supposed to look 'off' a little because the new arm was just something slapped together real quick by the genetor. That arm is also going to be covered by a sleeve at some point, and may not look as out of place once that happens.

 

I dunno, I was just going to say I really liked how different the hand looked. Especially since it took me a second to realize it only has three fingers

 

There are hands in the skitarii box that have all five digits, but I liked the look of that one.

 

Hmmm...maybe some more doodads, whizbangs, arbitrary gears and tubing of some sort on the arm?  It's properly chunky in shape, but that tendency for exposed inner-gubs in 40k designs might be useful.  Nothing drastic, mind, just one or two small additions here and there.  The missing finger doesn't bother me a bit.

 

It's something of an abused motif in Warhammer, but really, who doesn't love the Solomon Kane design archetype?  It's just so badass.  Obscuring wide brimmed hats are the stuff of winningness, and you managed to land the diameter in the sweet spot between fedora and floppy.

 

For now, I'm planning on covering up the arm as the inquisitor doesn't like the look of it herself. My first attempts on the hat with brim with card stock really helped me nail down the diameter I wanted and I only had to cut one out of plastic.

 

Another little update with more work on the hat, bulking up the left leg and correspondingly bulking the coat covering the other half, starting to rebuild the armor on the chest as well as the belt where I filed it away to make room for the bigger thigh.

 

http://i.imgur.com/S7Yl0ch.png

[Dantay VI]

This is looking great.

 

I think you and lamby have a rare talent and creativity, which is a real credit to all of us here on B&C

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/289265-inquisitor/

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Yeah, Lamby does some great work. I've actually been thinking about trying his crazy method of hammering out a scale metal sword for this inquisitor. Also, I'm not sure you linked the thread you meant to? That's something that was closed over a year ago.

[Dantay VI]

Yeah, that sword was a bit crazy wasn't it.

 

And yes linked the wrong thing.

 

I have to type it out manually as the work computer is running some old unsupported version of IE and will not let me copy/paste stuff across

 

I'll try again: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/289365-inquisitor/

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Oh God-Emperor, manually typing out urls? I'm sorry. >_<

 

Lamby is up there with some really good Inq28 converters and kitbashers, and numerous times while poring over the work of these guys on various sites, I'd come across ideas I had that someone had already done. The challenge is to do stuff that's still cool and not a rip off of the work others have already done.

 

For my inquisitor, I think I've decided to do the left arm like this piece of art I posted earlier, but have now mirrored, 'cause the lower body pose is similar to the base figure.

 

http://i.imgur.com/oc7c0XG.png?1

 

Whatcha think? Hand cannon at the side, left arm out like that? I'd like to build one of those crazy thin rapiers with a real fancy basket hilt for her, but we'll see if that's within my abilities.

 

I'd also like to introduce another character for the retinue.

 

http://i.imgur.com/zFINihO.png

 

This guy is some zealot that joined up along the way, and like an attack dog, is usually kept on a leash away from the normal people. I wanted him to look almost comical or clown-like with the outfit, hence the huge pointed hood, but then he's also running at you full speed, screaming litanies of faith about bashing your skull in. The original idea was for him to be carrying something in his left hand that's essentially a license to kill heretics from the Inquisition, like a letter of marque for the privateers of old, but now I dunno if I'm going to do that, or something like the severed head of heretic.

 

You may notice his conversion work is a bit of a rainbow, and he was a guinea pig when I decided to try the ProCreate and a Milliput/greenstuff mix to see if I preferred one over the other. The first time I tried the Milliput/GS hybrid, I thought it was amazing. It had almost no tackiness to it at all and I didn't need to use any lubricant on my clay shapers. That was almost a problem getting the hybrid putty to stick to the figure, but it just took a little more work. The hybrid also took impressions from the tools with amazing ease, and it actually took me a little while to get used to using much less pressure with the tools than it did with normal greenstuff. It had a longer working time, and like Milliput is known for, it dried as hard as rock and sands very well.

 

The downsides are that the light color is difficult to see details in, and since it dries as hard as rock, you're not getting it off the figure once that happens (or your tools if you didn't thoroughly clean them).

 

Now, my first go with it was on this zealot's chest and left arm. The second time I tried the hybrid mix, I dunno what happened, but it was a sticky, crumbly nightmare, and I know both the Milliput and the GS were both mixed very well before putting them together. I gave it one more try with the pointy hood, and it was "ok", but not nearly as great as the first time I used it. The temperamental results of the hybrid and not being able to remove the work once cured if I didn't like it are what killed it for me. I finished up the right arm with GS and did the lower bib part of the hood as one of my first trials with ProCreate.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Dantay VI]

Yeah, the rapier idea sounds cool.

 

For the rapier, what about using a sewing needle. Thin, long, sharp. Just beware of the tip

 

They do sewing needles in various lengths and thicknesses, so it would save you trying to make one.

 

As for basket hilts, maybe hit the hobby stores. This sounds bad, but sometimes I raid my mums collection of bits. She does egg cutting and decorating (duck eggs into jewellery cases or clocks, that kind of thing) you sometimes get nice ornamental bead holders. I do not have pictures unfortunately.

 

As for the zealot.  What about a purity seal?? " I have a purity seal, it was given to me... ME. It protects me, the Emperor protects  me, I am  pure, I am holy, this says so.... You have no seal, you are not protected... You are not pure... You must DIE "

Edited September 7, 2015 by dantay_xv