BCK's Thread of Stuff: Symphony of Destruction

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks, Kolgrim. I wanted them to be chunky dreads and have a little texture to them, but nothing I tried to add texture worked out really well, so keeping it simple is the way it's gonna be.

 

Cobbled together a sketch for the second champion, armed with a pistol, stiletto sword, and a lasgun. I wanted a very action-y pose like she's charging someone at a sprint.

 

 

And this will be armpit #3 - all of them being the right one - that I will be sculpting for my Eschers.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your efforts deserve praise. The running pose looks great!

[Bryan Blaire]

Every single one of your Eschers has looked good, BCK!

 

They deserve the very best in 'pits you give them! :D

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks.:)

 

I'm going going to be cutting this one at the waist to twist her torso a bit more and make the pose even more energetic.

[Bryan Blaire]

I'm going going to be cutting this one at the waist to twist her torso a bit more and make the pose even more energetic.

:tu:

 

"For my next trick, sawing a woman in half... thank you for volunteering Miss!"

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Progress!

 

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

keep up the good work!

[Majkhel]

Really like her!

Twist of the torso and the whole front axis created additional dynamism. The difference in perception is huge. Twisting the arm and blade behind the head adds to the CHARGE! feel. Now she looks like screaming the lungs out behind that bandana when before she was more.... indifferent.

Sculpting of the muscles is also good!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

@Kolgrim: Thanks!

 

 

Really like her!

Twist of the torso and the whole front axis created additional dynamism. The difference in perception is huge. Twisting the arm and blade behind the head adds to the CHARGE! feel. Now she looks like screaming the lungs out behind that bandana when before she was more.... indifferent.

Sculpting of the muscles is also good!

 

It really is incredible how much of a difference a little tweak to a pose can make, huh? I spend a lot of time trying to find just the right pose for my figures, sometimes spending hours over several days just making tiny changes to see how they work. A little more twist in the torso and a shifting of the sword arm really brings that figure to life.

 

The leader of my gang has been getting some more progress as well, biggest of all are some filters added to her mask since it looked a little too plain. 

 

 

Still trying to figure out just how I'm going to give her a lasgun, for those occasions when she's not close enough to use the plas. 

 

And a little tip for anyone who does greenstuff sculpting and wants an easy way to see how your work holds up or if there's any glaring mistakes, is to simply desaturate the image and compare it the GS to the plastic. 

 

 

The contrast in the bright green color and the dull grey can be distracting and let your eyes move over a mistake or a problem area without even realizing it. 

[jaxom]

That is an awesome trick and I look forward to using it in the future.

[Gederas]

Wow, the new ganger is looking good. And the desaturated image of the leader... If you had posted that one first, I would have thought that was an officially-made model. Well done.

 

Also:

And this will be armpit #3 - all of them being the right one - that I will be sculpting for my Eschers. 

Well, we clearly know what part of the body is your favorite, eh Kage? ;) :lol:

[Nomus Sardauk]

Still trying to figure out just how I'm going to give her a lasgun, for those occasions when she's not close enough to use the plas.

The most straightforward method I can see would be to have the Lasgun hanging from her shoulder by a sling, like she's momentarily dropped the Lasgun and let it hang loose to draw and fire her Plasma at something the Flashlight just won't dent.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Well, we clearly know what part of the body is your favorite, eh Kage?

 

The whole thing? You are correct, sir!

 

 

Still trying to figure out just how I'm going to give her a lasgun, for those occasions when she's not close enough to use the plas.

The most straightforward method I can see would be to have the Lasgun hanging from her shoulder by a sling, like she's momentarily dropped the Lasgun and let it hang loose to draw and fire her Plasma at something the Flashlight just won't dent.

 

 

I considered that, but I couldn't find a good position for the lasgun to be hanging from a strap. I think I'm going to have a shortened lasgun in a holster on her back. 

 

 

For anyone wanting to get into converting and sculpting parts of the human body, I cannot stress enough the importance of having good reference material. It was mentioned previously in the thread but bears repeating that it can be very difficult to to sculpt the human body and have it look right because we're so used to seeing it all the time that we instinctively know when something looks off. It's the same reason human CGI in movies often looks bad (faces in particular) because the anatomy wasn't modeled properly and/or it's not moving the way it should.

 

Personally, it bothers me when something like that happens and as a result, I'm something of a perfectionist when it comes to getting these things right. Or as right as I'm able. If you're going to be sculpting musculature, gather some reference pictures. Back in the old days when I was wanting to be a comic book artist and the internet wasn't around, I'd gather pictures from magazines and keep them in folders labeled by subject. These days, I make collages of pictures and print them out to keep at my desk, and when I'm done, they go into a big binder in case I ever need to look it up again. 

 

As an example, I needed some specific reference of a woman with an arm raised high in the fashion of my figure about to bring down her sword, and it took a while to find what I needed. Thankfully for me in these days of instagram and all that, fit people are more than happy to show themselves off a lot and Pauline Nordin continued to be a useful resource. Here's a small version of the collage I made:

 

 

And the sculpting work fresh off the clay shapers. 

 

 

Parts of the arm near the elbow aren't finished yet because it's a small space to work in and there's a lot of different curved shapes packed into there and I didn't want to risk accidentally messing up work in one area while doing another so I'm going to cure the putty at this point and finish up later. 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

And on the opposite end of the spectrum from the gang leader and champs, who get the lion's share of the protein powders and HGH, are the juves. I have 2 in my list, both armed with a laspistol and a stiletto knife. I was a little disappointed to see that "Newcromunda" didn't differentiate juves like the original one did, so I decided to do it myself. Early progress of the process of reducing muscle mass pretty much everywhere, as well as cutting down the platform shoes to make her shorter - and yes, the blade slipped a little on the right foot and took too much off. 

 

 

I tried using one of the female Van Saar heads because it has a more youthful, babyface look to it, but for one thing it was too big; for another, it's nightmare fuel. 

[Cadius]

maybe Dark Elf Witches or Dark Eldar Wyches could be used for juves

[Marshal Rohr]

Dude. You’re absolutely nailing the muscles.

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Nice work it's getting there, really looking forward to the finishing!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

maybe Dark Elf Witches or Dark Eldar Wyches could be used for juves

 

I considered that, and might use some of those bits for the second juve. 

 

Dude. You’re absolutely nailing the muscles.

 

Nice work it's getting there, really looking forward to the finishing!

 

Thanks, brothers.

 

And the desaturated image of the leader... If you had posted that one first, I would have thought that was an officially-made model. Well done.

 

This time let's try that first, eh? More progress on the second champ. 

 

 

 

If you look at some of the previous pictures the right thigh looked considerably shorter than the left so I extended it and forgot to bend the knee back in towards the thigh, which kind of killed some of the momentum of the original pose.   Considering I had to re-sculpt the thigh a few times to get it looking right, I'm not sure if I want to do that all again. I also cut up the arm to add a laspistol but it doesn't look right and will either need some adjusting or I'll go back to the original arm. 

[rednekkboss]

Great stuff (as always) great figure work.

[Kolgrim DeathHowl]

Looking good as always patiently waiting the ending lol

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks, RNB. :)

 

Kolgrim, I work slow and I'm a perfectionist that's his own worst critic, but I am trying to get finished. It doesn't help that the friend I split the 'Munda box with is dragging his feet getting his Goliaths done, even after I knocked out my Orlocks in record time (for me).

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

While trying to find something to work for a lasgun on the leader, I tried one from the Cadian sprues, looked at the Catachan lasgun online and decided it wasn't much better for what I needed, and there isn't one on the Escher sprue that would be easy to separate from the arms holding it. But then I remembered there's a fething Necromunda-pattern lasgun! 

 

 

The body of the thing resembles a bolter more than a lasgun, which I tried to do at first, but it was too big for my Escher gal. Instead, I chopped up a Cadian lasgun and did some mediocre scratchbuilding to get something relatively close. 

 

 

I intentionally rounded off some of the hard edges and made it uneven because I wanted this IG-issue lasgun to look like it's been circulating in the underhive for decades or even longer, having killed hundreds (or more) people in its lifetime, and probably been used as a club to bash in a few dozen skulls along the way. Here it is roughly in the position I want on the gang leader. 

 

 

Instead of a strap, I think I might do something like a loop holster:

 

[Majkhel]

Nice catch on the Necromunda-pattern lasgun!

Of course, you know that the loop holster is not working for rifles? It gets all wobbly and is a nightmare to draw/store while on your back. There are those weapon catches, but they are placed on the belts, where access (and drawing) is easier. Usually they also work in conjunction with the strap.  

Also, this type of catch (wether just a loop or catch) would increase the bulk of what she already has on her back.

 

Have you considered placing the lasgun on the base next to the crate?

Edited October 22, 2019 by Majkhel

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The original idea was something like this:

 

 

But that was before I decided to make a custom lasgun and now I don't want to completely cover it up. 

 

The loop holster image I posted above isn't the best representation of what I was thinking (and I do know it wouldn't be that realistic to reliably hold a weapon of that size but realism in 40k is more of a guideline than a rule), though I didn't realize what I was looking for was called a scabbard, not a holster. So, something more like this:

 

 

We'll see it how goes, but it might just end up on the base next to the crate as you and others have suggested. 

[Jukkiz]

Maybe something like Sniper in TF2 has on his back?