Tactical Marines and Dynamic Poses

[Sun Reaver]

So I am in the midst of building my tactical marines and I forgot how boring their poses are. What are some ways I can make their poses look more dynamic? Does anyone have any pictures or advice on how to do so?

 

I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. 

[mateus of ultramar]

sadly the tactical box we have right now is pretty humdrum pose wise, but i like to mix the legs in from the assault marines kits and that helps immensely for running poses as well as some other bits from the deathwatch sprues and iron hands sprues for bionics, but on its own, not much can be done without greenstuff skill, which I dont have

[IamJacksUserName]

I like to cut and reposition legs into better poses. Usually just above or below the knee pad. With a little bit of green stuff you can reattach the legs into better positions. However, I also disassemble just about every part of a marine and green stuff the hell out of it until I am happy with the pose.

 

*edit* damnable auto correct!

[nurglez]

one of the main strengths of the marine range is the huge number of bits we have access to. Assault, tactical, devestator and command give you a range of poses and different arms/leg (playing chaos I get to steal from loyalist kits as well as chaos kits, bonus!).

 

Even among one set, I like to alter arms here and there (cutting just above the elbow, or at the wrist), although I collect chaos so can easily add in a bolt pistol and close combat weapon.

[Sun Reaver]

Thanks for the swift advice guys! Does anyone have a photo of how to make the cuts and green stuff or the finished result? 

[DarkMark]

If you're putting together Lammenters, checks Avatar , then you could dip into the Blood Angels' DC and SG sets for more leg poses. The new vanilla Tactical, Vets, and Sternguard boxes out very soon will add lots more options too. Sprinkle in some FW and you're gold.

[Fibonacci]

This topic came up about a year or so ago and now I can't seem ti find it.  There were some good suguestions with pics in it.  Bummer.

 

I do remember a couple of easy conversions you can try.  First is a marine replacing the magazine on his bolter. Cut the magazine off of the bottom of the boltgun.   Angle the right arm and bolter up slightly.  Place the cut away magazine in the cupped left hand.  It helps if you cut the magazine away from two boltguns and glue them together to make it longer; just trim away the edge on the upper half. It is a super easy conversion and looks like an action shot of the marine reloading his weapon.

 

The Second is the Holiwood sytle of firing an automatic weapon with the left hand holding the weapon down.  Cut the left hand at the wrist.  Spin it 180 degrees so that it is cupped facing down.  Glue the right arm holding the bolter parallel to the ground or even down slightly.  Glue the left arm so that the left hand is on top of the bolter.  Looks even better if you glue the torso on the legs so that the model is leaning backwards from the weapon's kick a little.

[Seleucus]

Apart from mixing and matching parts from various kits, as mentioned above, you can use a bolt pistol arm from the assault, commander etc kits, carefully remove the bolt pistol, leaving the hand on the arm and glue on a bolter. You then have a tactical guy firing one handed.

 

 Or remodel the legs:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/8844-modelling-reposition-plastic-space-marines/

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/186397-repositioning-space-marines-with-one-foot-up/

http://lostonfenris.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/the-joy-of-kitbash-part-4-reposing-limbs/

 

or arms:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/173333-modelling-reposition-arms-to-aim-bolters/

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/90308-modelling-left-handed-bolter/

 

or both:

 

http://blog.brushthralls.com/?page_id=4268

http://himonterra.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/more-reposing-marines-wip.html

http://himonterra.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/wip-posing-marines.html

 

general:

 

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Work_In_Progress/index.php?showtopic=4976

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Work_In_Progress/index.php?showtopic=5375

 

If you ignore the 'truescaling' of marines on the following thread in Work in Progress, there are lots of pics of tactical marines with reposes, different arms and other fairly minor/easy conversions that make them more dynamic or interesting:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/249349-leave-no-model-unconverted/

[Veteran Sergeant]

If you ignore the 'truescaling' of marines on the following thread in Work in Progress, there are lots of pics of tactical marines with reposes, different arms and other fairly minor/easy conversions that make them more dynamic or interesting:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/249349-leave-no-model-unconverted/

Hey! That's me!  lol

 

There's a lot you can do with a bit of patience and creativity, and a lot of it won't even require green stuff to do. Arms are fairly easy.

 

Cut the arm at the "under shoulder" and then at the wrist. That right away will start to get you a wealth of new arm positions. You'll have to file the wrist joints down slightly to get proper angles, but Space Marines already have gorilla arms, so this isn't a huge deal. If you're especially intrepid, you can slice the wrist joints themselves free, then rotate them around to give you different angles at the wrist.

 

I've got a few different tips and theories in that thread, but this seems to be one of the favorite models, and it's a good demonstration model since it has just about everything I just described (cut at shoulder, wrist joint sliced free and rotated, both arms fully modified)

 

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2012/5/28/371230_md-Conversion,%20Space%20Marines.jpg

 

People like this guy too, even though I'm not 100% satisfied with it yet.

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2012/4/20/355970_md-Space%20Marines,%20True%20Scale.jpg

His right arm? The right arm from the gunner on the vehicle accessory sprue.  

 

There are a ton of great arms out there. These guys are a fairly good example with the results you will get just by doing a basic two cut and file.

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2012/5/23/369431_md-Space%20Marines,%20Tall%20Scale,%20True%20Scale.jpghttp://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2012/4/15/354028_md-Auspex,%20Space%20Marines,%20True%20Scale.jpg

Though I did "cheat" with the auspex guy because his left hand I got from a buddy's leftover Grey Knights bits. But you can probably buy those fairly cheap online through bits sellers too.

[Veteran Sergeant]

I found a little writeup I did on another forum:

 

When posing, you just have to look at what's important to realism, physiologically speaking.

Think about the angles of comfortable, natural movement and the overall range of motion in the arms. It revolves around the shoulders, elbows and wrists. There is only so much you can do with shoulders unless you're going to be green stuffing or cannibalizing the various arms which have more complicated shoulder attachments. Some of the basic arms sit at different angles at the glue point. Might want to analyze the various arm bits you have. One handed arms seem to sit at a more distinct "outward" angle a lot of the time. Don't be afraid to mix and match arm bits as you cut them apart because most forearms are interchangeable; just keep track of them, lol. Fortunately for Space Marines, almost all good firing stances (in real life) involve shoulders being tight and tucked. So the elbows and wrists are where you need to concentrate. Unlike real arms, the armored arms of Space Marines are more or less cylindrical, so you can rotate them and revolve them without looking strange. Most of my arm cuts are made just below the "under-shoulder pad" that's part of the actual arm bit. At this point, you can rotate the arms pretty much at your discretion since the cut will be hidden underneath the shoulder pad, for the most part. If you're picky, you'll need to do some clipping, filling and filing to make them perfect. Depends on what level you're taking your project to. For table-top quality miniatures, there's not a whole lot of heavy work needed.

The wrists are the other point of movement in the human arm you're going to take into consideration. There are two basic ways. Clip behind the wrist ring, or just the hand and soft armor wrist. Behind the ring is easiest, and ideal for the "support" left hands since what you typically need to do is rotate the hand to accept the new firing stance, but not mess with the angle it sits lengthwise. The right hands are probably best cut just in front of the wrist ring, leaving the joint intact. At that point you can carefully file the soft armor at whatever angle you might need. For "one handed" weapon grips like the combi-melta, I suggest using extra Assault Marine arms with bolt pistols or plasma pistols you aren't using (there should be plenty of these lying around if you have any Assault Marines in your army). Can even use the melee weapon arms. They're just more of a pain to shave off sometimes and won't have "trigger finger" hands. The wrists on them are typically already angled where you want them to be, while the bolter cradle arms have this unnatural upward angle to them because they are designed for a "hip firing" look. Whoever modeled them watched too many 80s movies for inspiration. ;) Those wrists will almost always need to be modified, and at the very least rotated so that the weapon doesn't have some kind of oddball cant to it and sits straight up and down (unless your pose calls for a cant).

My own personal philosophy is not to try too hard to make them look down the sights. It just won't work, and will look strange when it does. The guns are too big, and the chests too deep so the heads won't tilt far enough over. Plus, they've got a little nubbin on the gun that looks like a sensor and supposedly awesome helmet targeting (another reason the models need helmets). The iron sights on the gun are like the targeter on the missile launcher. It's an aesthetic thing for the model which is anachronistic to the genre. I've contemplated shaving off all the front sight posts on my models. What you're looking for in these poses is a more aggressive look. Space Marines, with their powered armor, don't need to worry about marksmanship fundamentals. But they're going to use them anyway. It's instinctive at a certain point. As Scouts and neophytes they didn't have power armor. They'd have been taught how to shoot correctly, and by the time they've been practicing doing it a decade or more, every damned day, it's going to be automatic. Plus, it just looks better.