BCK's Thread of Stuff: Super Heavy

[Cryptix]

God, looking at that bare metal makes me shiver.  You're a braver man than I, is what I'm saying.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I still get a little shiver myself, knowing I might be destroying an OOP figure but I have a decent amount of confidence that I can pull this off. Also expecting another love-hate letter from Subtle Discord about this sort of thing. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Plan B on my side project. Original idea was to keep the upper chest area with the aquila on it, but it was proving real difficult to blend the Mk IV style chest piece into it, so it had to go. Refresher since we're on a new page now. 

 

 

I had already glued on the power fist and sculpted in the soft rubber in the shoulder joint before I decided to Dremel off everything left below the decorative cord and it got a little chewed up and will have to be redone. Upside is that I'm much happier with this foundation layer that's marking out the shape of the new chest armor. 

 

 

Started on the Mk IV leg shape with the leftover GS as well. Not bad for the small amount of hobby time I had today. 

[Grotsmasha]

I know it's an "old model, new head" issue, but I think trying to drop the helm further or bringing up the gorget (sp?) will help the model out a bit.

 

Cheers,

Jono

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Grrr, nothing is going as planned lately. The arms for Culln looked great until I tried to get shoulder pads on them and a few other things I've tried to do with the character aren't working. The GD99 replica is also not cooperating and last night I had an idea for an alternate way to approach the replica instead of trying to sculpt in the tiny confines of that figure. 

 

 

One of the ideas I had for my Astral Claws story project anyway was to use primaris figures for the "improved" marines that Huron had Valthex working on to help expand the chapter into a Legion-sized force, so why not do the replica this way?

 

When blown up this large, I can now see that the knees require a bit more work, but I think the removal of the knee pad rim and covering up of the odd thigh armor is a few simple things that makes the figure look a lot less primaris. I'll probably be reducing the size of that collar as well. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

More work on Huron with the new plate on his chest and a thin layer of GS over the old loincloth. 

 

 

I'm starting to lose my affection for the lion shoulder pad. It's too big and the more I look at it, the less I like my sculpting job. I'll finish it and hang on to it for the conversion event, but I want to replace it with something else later. As for the loincloth, I was considering making it chainmail as a little nod to Huron Blackheart. Or should I just make it cloth?

[lamby]

Chainmail would look good, and add a contrasting texture to the otherwise smooth armour.

 

As for the lion - it's just too large - there's some decent Lion faces in the old High Elf chariot kit, or the Stormcast Eternals - if you didn't want to sculpt a newer version, then one of those options might fit.

 

The rest of Huron looks great!

[ElDuderino]

Maybe chainmail with cloth underneath? It's used on some chaos models and looks pretty cool. Great work on Huron otherwise, the lion doesn't look too large to me. Damned impressive sculpting as usual!

 

As for the primaris, I'd fill inte vents on his ribs and try to remove the raised area around the aquila, that would remove much if the primaris flavor

[Bryan Blaire]

I disagree that the lion is too large, but realize it could be really irritating and I haven’t held it in my hand. I would toss a vote in for chain mail, or if you really want to be a masochist, maybe scale mail :devil: ?

 

I like the work so far on the Primarisized GD99 model - new Kill Team idea?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The lion is already gone. I was proud that I managed to pull of something that looked pretty good, but overall it just didn't work out. 

 

I like the work so far on the Primarisized GD99 model - new Kill Team idea?

 

Probably not going to bother with a space marine kill team since it's mostly primaris. 

[DuskRaider]

What? No! The lion's head really fit Huron well. It was ostentacious, it fit his ego well. 

 

So what now then?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I'll see if the lion head idea can be salvaged but I'm not going to spend a too much time on it if it isn't working.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

As for the primaris, I'd fill in the vents on his ribs and try to remove the raised area around the aquila, that would remove much if the primaris flavor

 

Altering the chest was already planned.

 

 

I'm going to use a new version of that same Tartaros arm but I just wanted to see how they compared once the GS on the chest was cured. I'm digging it. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

[Elzender]

You know, the chest was not really convincing me until you added that new plate, now it looks fantastic!

Regarding the loincloth, while the chainmail effect is unquestionably nice, I am not really seeing it, for me the original chain+cloth tabard was really fitting.  Are you going to sculpt a new "belt buckle", so to speak? That could actually make the loincloth look more integrated to the armour and might change my mind on it. Do you think you could try to make the end a bit irregular, as if it sustained damage and some chain links had detached?

Otherwise, as a suggestion, maybe you could try leather pteruges like the cataphractii shoulderpad, or something akin to the limited edition Ultramarine herald?

Sad to see the lion shoulderpad go, but it is true that in this incarnation it protruded too much, I look forward to future attempts with a reduced profile.

 

Sorry if this message seems a bit too critical, because I actually like very much how the Huron miniature is evolving and I really think you can knock it out of the park with this one.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Yeah, after work and looking at the chainmail, I'm not feeling it. And I have considered a different belt but no ideas have come forward yet. 

 

In the meantime, a little more work on the Primaris GD99. 

 

 

Not going to be an exact duplicate, but I'm happy with how it's turning out. 

 

*edit* Just noticed his pistol holster was about to fall off. D'oh!

[Augustus b'Raass]

The size creep is incredible. I remember the GD99 captain being a pretty big guy compared to normal marines....

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Yeah, the primaris are quite a bit larger than the old 2E marines. Here he with this boss for another comparison. 

 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Huron gets a new belt, loincloth, and trial shoulderpad that perfectly shows how the huge honkin' Deathwatch one was needed to balance out the cataphractii shoulder pads. 

 

 

PGD99 gets some pose tweaks and more work done on the powerfist arm. 

 

[Bryan Blaire]

I really think you do need the larger shoulder pad on Huron. While I am all for some asymmetry, I think there has to be some amount of balance with it unless you are going for wildly chaotic with the model. Looking at the lower profile of the left pauldron, would it be off-putting or look wrong to use only a single layer of the Cataphractii pauldron on the right shoulder, or to thin down that Greenstuff plate tremendously? I did like the chain "loincloth" more, I just think it would have suited him more being a bit rougher along the bottom, as if some rings had been removed in different segments, but I do know that would have been relatively hard to pull off, since just forming the ring appearance distorts the Greenstuff.

 

I really like the rest of the model, he's looking great! You did a fantastic job sculpting the cloth, and the chest plate and legs look awesome. What happened to his flamer hand?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I tried for something like that with the chainmail but couldn't get it to work as well as I wanted. The smaller shoulder pad was just a test and won't be staying. As for the flamer hand, I didn't notice it fell out when I was taking the picture.

[Pandoras Bitz Box]

Ok, once again, well late to the party. Thread is awesome. I will have to trawl through this as well as the others I like that are over a hundred pages long. Anyway, this is kind of off topic... well, its off the IMMEDIATE topic, but you are openly inviting GS questions so this is in that category. You have been doing this longer and better than me so this seems like somewhere fun to hang out and air these thoughts.

Smoothness. People ask about it all the time I'm guessing, thats why you have a link to two videos at the beginning of t thread. I've seen those and my ways don't differ hugely from yours, I use grease from the nooks on my face for my tools, I only really use 2 metal tools and I have 2 silicone shapers, one of them is like your preferred choice. Your stuff is smooth, like SMOOOOOTH, it looks machined, which I'm guessing is mostly down to patience and experience, but most of these shapes are convex. I have encountered with my most recent project, some tricky areas that involve trying to smooth an area that is relatively large compared to, say, the fold on a cloak (where you said you use your conical tool, one I have been meaning to acquire)... but because its convex, using the flat tool would leave those marks where the sides apply more pressure than the middle.

Here are the examples of what I was trying to emulate and what my effort was...

Now... I'm not unhappy with how mine came out. I could put it down to my own unique take on that style of corruption... but in a exercise of learning and development, ideally if you aim to copy something, your copy would be exactly, all you need are the skills, tools and time. I haven't really gone all over mine scraping yet to tidy it, but the my effort to coppy the smooth cracking plates on the armour looks a bit piss poor with a direct comparison.

I'm just wondering how you would have tacked this problem? would you just use the conical shaper instead of the chisel one in order to smooth out the areas?

Anyway, loving the work you have going on here, seeing this is driving me a bit quicker towards the next step in my practice, trying to scratch sculpt something.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Pandoras Bitz Box

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks for the compliments, brother.

 

Now, the answer to your question depends on how fast you work. I don't know if you did the entire raised scar area all at one time or in separate sessions, but with how fast I can work here's how I would do it. 

 

 

1) I would put the GS on the model and use my fingers to pinch it into the sloped, mountain-like shape and then start smoothing out the GS with my flat chisel size 2. If I got to an area where it was too large to effectively smooth the GS, I would switch to my smaller chisel size 0 and keep working.

 

2) If there was an area so tight that even the size 0 chisel wasn't working, I'd switch to the taper point size 2 and start moving it slow circular motions to keep smoothing and switch to the size 0 taper if needed. 

 

3) To create the cracks and inner corruption scars, I'd use the chisel #2 to gently push into the slope to mark the border and once I was happy with that, I'd either switch to the chisel #0 or  my one metal tool with the thin edge on it to refine and sharpen the edge. For the inner scar, I'd use the taper point to add some visual interest detail to the scar. 

 

If you're not comfortable doing all that in a single go, I would do steps 1 and 2 but not bring them to such a sharp point and then after smoothing take the taper point and carve in the channels for the inner scars and tidy up the edges. Once that was cured, I'd roll out sausages/snakes/whatever of GS, lay them into the channels, use the small chisel to pull the sides up to a point, and then distort them with the taper point. 

[Pandoras Bitz Box]

Oh thats really interresting! I hadnt considered making the whole over all shape in one go and then putting in the crevices that divide the bit pushing through the armour from the armour itself. I did them in two passes but I did them in the reverse order to what you've suggested, I laid down all of the potrusions first the tried to continue the armour up the sides of those bits. I may try that.

 

Hmm... I might experiment with some of this one one of my Tzeentch tanks. Awesome, thanks for that. 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Pandoras Bitz Box

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

When I get home from school I'll see about doing an example of my description for you.