BCK's Thread of Stuff: Symphony of Destruction

[Daemon2027]

Had to catch up a bit. I felt exactly the same with the Death Guard, at first I loved the idea but once the codex hit I lost enthusiasm. The kits are great though.

 

I love seeing you back with the Vostroyans, they are possibly my favourite guard faction, and I love the work you do with them.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The hairspray chipping technique can be a little more labor intensive than a lot of 40k players are used to, but it's not that difficult to do and it makes very realistic paint chips because you are actually chipping the paint. Essentially, you put down the color you want the paint chips to be first, then you coat the area - or the whole model if you're doing it all over the place - with hairspray and let it dry, then put the base coat of the model on top of the hairspray. Since the hairspray dissolves in water, you brush on some water to the area you want to chip and once it soaks through the paint to the hairspray, you can then use a brush or whatever you desire to start removing the base coat and creating the chipped paint. I would search YouTube for some tutorials where you can see it in action. Also, while I have seen some people do this without an airbrush, it is much, much easier and produces smoother end results if you do have one. 

 

My airbrush is an Iwata, though I don't recall which specific model and I left it at my friends' place because I'm going back over tomorrow night so I can't go check it right now. 

 

@Hydra: Thanks! And yeah, the play style of the Plague Marines was a bummer. :(

[Chandrian]

o gods...last time i was here you had just started Typhus...now i see the Vostroyan have come marching again!  Always loved your conversions on them and it was a main reason for me buying a few back in the day and trying to hack them apart...might have to dig them up...again..

I've always been a fan of the typical Red Vostroyans, there is a guy in my area how has painted his green..but that always made me think they were more a Nurgle army! 

Random thought, if you haven't read it already Rebel Winter by Steve Parker was a really good Vostroyan novel that might get the blood boiling even more for you!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Yup, the Vostroyans are marching again, and I have read Rebel Winter! I found it at a Half Price Books some months ago and might read it again to refresh my memory. 

 

Speaking of the Vostroyans...

 

 

For years, I've been trying to find a good recipe for the tank color and seen all kinds of wildly different recipes, many of which were supposedly official. A long time ago, I read that the studio painters used the Ogre Flesh spray can (no corresponding color in a paint pot) and not a mix of something for the tank color and this just happened to be right after GW quit making it so I never got a chance to test it or see the color with my own eyes. The most logical recipe I read was 50/50 mix of Kommando Khaki and Graveyard Earth, and I tried it, but it wasn't even close. 

 

For a refresher, here's a shot of a Baneblade in the studio color at what I'm guessing is Warhammer World. 

 

 

This looks a bit too bright compared to the original pictures I saw in White Dwarf mags back when the Vostys were first introduced with Cityfight and I'm betting whoever took this photo was using a flash. 

 

For years, I've had a paint color sitting on my desk and just tonight did it occur to me that it would be a damn close match if it had a dab of some white or off-white added to it. I desperately looked for something I could test it on and found an old chaos Rhino, then lightened the paint a bit, thinned it down, and ran it through my airbrush. 

 

 

It's just the right mix of grey, off-white, and a hint of a pale green. It's... beautiful. 

 

 

I'll need to experiment a bit more and nail down what the ratio is so I can reproduce it consistently, but once I do that I will gladly share it with the community. I know a lot of other people have been trying to figure this out for a while. 

 

And this changes everything with what I was planning on doing with my Vostroyan figures and their paint scheme. Now that I have this knowledge, it's going to be the traditional red paint scheme with the... whatever that color is for the vehicles. I had considered making them a different regiment with their own history, but if marines in this new Imperium can get a primarch back and improved marines and plasma weapons, Vostroyans can get a helmet upgrade. 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Sagentus]

That tank colour looks like a slightly lighter version of rakarth flesh ... look forward to seeing it on a Russ or baneblade :) I recon you're right about the colour scheme, the red is iconic for vestroyans. Like you said, if the SMs can get updated weaponry why cant they have new helmets 

[hushrong]

Happy to see the Vostroyans as they are so iconic. Looking forward to seeing them in red and the newly achieved Vostroyan off-white color for their tanks.

 

The helmet upgrade will be a nice touch. I wonder if the face plate with goggles from the scions box could be done up with their traditional hat.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

After a few tests today, I present my recipe for the Vostroyan paint scheme!

 

You will need the following from Privateer Press Paint line, or P3 as it's known. 

 

 

For years, I'd had that Trollblood Highlight color sitting on my desk and used on a number of things but it never occurred to me that it would be a good base for the Vostroyan vehicle color until a few nights ago. I emptied and cleaned out a P3 bottle of the old, original metal colors that were problematic so I could mix up a large amount of this at once, and added several glass beads, some of my acrylic airbrush paint reducer (thinner), and a few drops Liquitex Matte Medium than I thinned with some water before I put the paint in. 

 

The ratio for the paint is 4 parts Trollblood Highlight to 1 part Menoth White Highlight, and using an eyedropper I added 10 drops of Thrall Flesh to reinforce that slight hint of pale green. If you're not mixing this in a large amount, I would probably skip the Thrall Flesh because it would be difficult to add such a tiny amount to a small batch. 

 

I plan on getting a Vallejo style dropper bottle to put this stuff in at a later point for ease of putting it into my airbrush. To make darker and lighter tones of this base color, simply add more Trollblood for shading and more Menoth White for highlighting. 

 

To show how the concoction looks, I sprayed a Russ I bought already assembled a number of years ago. 

 

 

 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

For a long time I've had a little crush on the Stygies Destroyer Tank Hunter because it appealed to my appreciation of tank destroyers from the real world. This adorable fella here:

 

 

Tank destroyers mostly came from the arms race of the second World War where it became much cheaper and faster for Germany and Russia in particular to use the chassis of an existing tank, remove the turret along with it's heavy, expensive, and time consuming to manufacture control system  -- and with the weight saved from all that -- there was now room for more frontal armor, a bigger gun, and more crew compartment space. The Russians and Germans both tended toward heavier and heavier TDs with more armor and bigger guns as the war escalated while the Americans went a completely different way with very fast and lightly armored TDs with turrets.

 

There was always something very menacing about the German and Russian TDs that I loved and the Stygies Destroyer has attributes of both blended with the 40k aesthetic. They even put the laser destroyer in the same place as the Russ hull weapon mount even though the actual kit has a complete replacement for the front armor plate and gun mount as if it would have saved money and time to slightly modify an existing Russ chassis instead of building something completely new. Sadly, FW hasn't carried the model for some time and I'll have to build my own, to which I have already started pulling apart one of the assembled Russes I bought a while back. 

 

 

Another sad fact it that all the neat FW tanks in the Index have been rendered obsolete by the AM Russ from the codex so this will be a labor of love more than making it to play in games with. 

[Dantay VI]

Looks like you have found your muse with the Vostroyans :)

 

Are you going to use a vindicator cannon as a base but with an extended barrel (thinking the cut-down shadow sword cannon would be too broad)?

 

Will this be the little bro to the tank destroyer you were working on a year or so back?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The other tank destroyer I was working on might come back for this, and no, not using a vindicator for the base. Early last year I bought some robots, one of which was a Thanatar-Calix who came with some miscasting problems on the top side of the heavy lascannon and got a replacement, so the original one is going to become the laser destroyer on my Stygies. With the barrel removed and turned upside-down it'll be practically impossible to see the bad areas on the Destroyer. 

 

Here's it is loosely pinned to the breech end (where you load the gun) of the Armageddon Basilisk I chopped up for that other tank destroyer conversion. 

 

 

 

The part between the gun and the breech block is a spare road wheel from an old Russ kit and will be dressed up with some detail to help blend the parts together. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Did some major surgery tonight and the Stygies is starting to come together. 

 

 

I'm fairly certain the heavy lascannon from the Thanatar-Calix is longer than the original laser destroyer so I decided to cut back on the the length of the breech block (sounds weird saying that about an energy weapon) that sticks out of the front. And the top will get built up some more, I just need to give the plastic cement some time to do its thing and it was getting late anyway. 

[Sagentus]

This conversion is epic, its a shame there isnt rules for it. Maybe use it as a class as model? Really keen to see how it ends up :--) 

[NightHunters]

Lovely.

I too have fallen for Stug design, granted on a rhino chassis a la sabre tank hunter but same same really!

Looking forward to see this progress!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Sagentus, there are rules for it in the FW index and I've already read of a few people using ones and getting good results with it.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

More progress. 

 

 

Obviously there is a new front armor panel because 1) the original is a mess of gigantic blobs of superglue from the original owner and 2) the hole for the body weapon mount left a lot of empty space around the laser destroyer and I wanted to snug the armor closer around it. What's the red box for in the top pic? That's where I plan to put some new armor plating to cover up the superglue mess as well as the two doors that just shout "There's no armor behind these doors, shoot me here!". 

 

There's also a little bit more of a slope to the front armor than the original and the overall shape of the crew compartment is going to be different from the original Stygies and more influenced by the WWII Russian tank destroyers like the SU-85, SU-100, SU-122, etc. 

Edited October 17, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Vazzy]

Loving this dude! Seriously great work! That style of tank destroyer is amazing to look at, and the profile created by your conversion is  gonna be awesome on the table. 

[Punk possum]

Wowsers I go away for a few years to reflect on my hobby enthusiasm and almost everything changes. But some things remain wonderfully constant, I have spent the last 3 days catching up on what you have been up to since I last checked in around 3 years ago 129pages! So much brilliant stuff and so many inspired ideas. I'm really glad your back to doing Armour did the shadowsword elephant ever get finished? I searched for it but couldn't find anything. Also for your Vostryains I rather liked the tsarist imperial green, more than the studio red I thought it was a neat reference to the historical inspiration behind the design concept. So long story short I love your work and the way you show the thought process that goes into it and I m a big fan of your tanks thank you for sharing.

[The Traitor]

That is one sexy looking tank! I really like how you usually base your conversions on real world references, and pay so much attention to that kind of detail, I think that might be ones of the many keys to how awesome they look.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Loving this dude! Seriously great work! That style of tank destroyer is amazing to look at, and the profile created by your conversion is  gonna be awesome on the table. 

 

Thanks! I'd like it to be a little longer, but I'm really not an amazing scratch builder by any means and will be covering up a lot of my mistakes with filler putty. 

 

So much brilliant stuff and so many inspired ideas. I'm really glad your back to doing Armour did the shadowsword elephant ever get finished? I searched for it but couldn't find anything. 

 

Wow, that Shadowsword was before I started this thread because I had several different wip threads going at the same time, and no, I never finished it. I recently dug it out and I had no idea what the hell I was thinking 5 or more years ago when I started chopping on it and I don't know if it can be saved. 

 

That is one sexy looking tank! I really like how you usually base your conversions on real world references, and pay so much attention to that kind of detail, I think that might be ones of the many keys to how awesome they look.

 

I've said plenty of times I'm sure, but the more realism you can add to the fantasy the easier it is for your brain to accept the more wild aspects. That, and I'm a huge nerd for WWII armor. 

[Dosjetka]

The TD is shaping up nicely. Is it going to be painted up in Vostroyan colours? Also, what will you be using for rivets?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Either the plastic rivets from Tichy or using a punch and die set. I'm considering hex bolts for the extra armor on the side, similar to the spaced armor from the Russian KV-1 turret. 

 

[Sagentus]

Would have been great if GW had made rules for this tank. Loving how its looking so far, keep up the great work!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Side armor added and decided to change up the lower glacis plate. 

 

 

Just a little more to do with the scratch building and then I'll start putting detail on it. 

[OakRiver]

Inspiring work

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

As is tradition with me trying to photograph something painted red, it never comes out properly and a lot of the shading on the tunic is washed out. 

 

 

No idea what happened in the first pic with all the red in the background, but you can actually make out most of the shading on the tunic in that one. 

 

I had intended to do the helmet in all bare metal but I thought I'd give it a try with the helm being red and the armor plates and bling in the metal colors. Whatcha think?