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Thanks all. I still haven't decided which hammer to go for, but luckily I don't need to decide yet as I need to leave it off to paint the model's chest. The rest of the Salamander is done though; here he is with a quick spray undercoat, along with his trusty cyber-saur.

 

WIPs28.jpg

 

I should say btw that I quite like including the carved faces from various dwarf bits on Salamanders- Nocturne seems the sort of place that would venerate ancestors with intricately-wrought effigies along the lines of the Mask of Aganemnon or the ceremonial masks used in Africa or pre-conquest Mexico. An Astartes might bear one on his armour either to comemorate a particularly illustrius forebear, remember a lost comrade or, in the case of articifer armour of a dreadnaught chassis, to reference the last user of the equipment.

 

Edit: Got the base colour down on him now too; first I painted him leadbelcher with a nuln oil wash and some mithril silver highlighting, then I gave him a nice coat of green ink, which seems to have given a nice vibrant colour. I've previously gone for more of an olive-shade for the XVIII but this should hopefully look fairly fitting.

 

WIPs29.jpg

could always bulk up the anvil hammer....... tongue.png

they both look good in the end, i also think the saurus warrior head on the hounds' body looks fantastic! What did you use for the dog base? i'm in the market for some animal bitz....

A little bit of progress; I'm very conscious that I haven't done the Rogue Trader yet, but I can't resist putting some paint on the Thousand Sons! Irritatingly, the colours on these pictures aren't quite right; I've also just got a new phone and the camera desaturates everything for some reason, so I've tried tweaking the levels in photoshop to compensate, and it hasn't quite worked as well as I'd like. Suffice to say the reds are a lot more 'red' in real life, but hopefully it's enough to give you the broad idea...
 
FIrst off, Jahandar Arzani, Sorcerer Librarian of the XV Legion and Catechumen to Captain Amenhotep, with his tutelary Iset.

WIP5.jpg
 
 
Then we have another one of Amenhotep's acolytes, Selene Ivanova, a mortal psyker hailing from one of the Lunar enclaves;
 
WIP4.jpg
 

...and where would any self-respecting Son of Magnus be without their collection of random occult bric-a-brac?
 
WIP6.jpg

Actually, the magic bric-a-brac is going to have a slightly more elaborate form of transportation- of which more later! Should have a little taster of that shortly, but in the meantime, here's another Son; this is Khamose, who isn't much of a psyker and defintely isn't overcompensating with his khopesh...

 

WIP7.jpg

Both Thousand Sons are truly excellent conversions, exuding a terrible kind of dignity! When it comes to the paintjobs, I think the second model works a bit better than the first: Maybe it's just me, but the combination of metallic red and silver on the first model's headdress and shoulder pad generate too much of a "candy wrapper" effect for me.

That said, the warbands you create continue to be extremely inspirational! Great job!

Thanks all, glad people like these. Completely see where people are coming from on the sorceror too- I think a lot of the problem there is actually my attempt to correct the colours on the photo, which on reflection makes everything look very oversaturated. I'll try and take another picture soon now I've got used to my new camera, which will hopefully put things in a better light.

 

On the 'candy cane' front, I take the point. To be honest, I'm not sure how else to do those bits; the stripes are very Egyptian (and XV Legion), and I chose to use the red and white as they fit with the legion symbol. The alternative was using gold somehow, but I felt that there was enough of that on the model already, and using more would blend in with the trim. I suppose I could have added a third accent colour- purple?- but that'd make him a little too garish... Open to suggestions really.

 

Now, a bit more progress- and a bit of an essay (sorry) that goes into what I'm planning with my Sons. 

 

I've been wanting to do the Thousand Sons for some time, and one passage that really stuck with me over some time regarding the Legion was the bit in ADB's Aurelian novella where Lorgar finds himself on the Planet of Sorcerers and gets chatting to a horribly mutated, but still entirely conscious and rational, Son. I thought it'd be quite fun to try and replicate that combination of nobility and complete physical degeneration, so my original concept for the team was a group of Sons who were not present at Prospero but who were gradually getting afflicted with the Flesh Change, leading to a desperate search through the Galaxy for a cure. I rather liked the idea that the leader of the group had pulled a Guilliman, and, having suddenly begun to gone all tentacley, stuck himself in stasis to prevent any further mutation. This would allow me to explore all that brilliant Egyptian mortuary imagery by making a sarcophagus.

 

The thing is, such a sarcophagus needs to be moved, so some sort of floating platform would be needed for it, perhaps monitored by some mortal attendants. As is often the case, I thought of a bit that could form the basis of the whole conversion and things progressed from there. My inspiration was these brilliant wings from the Tomb Kings Necroshpinx set and realised that they'd make perfect side pieces for what I had in mind. I found some cheap ones on eBay and made a speculative order; when they came, I found that they were a bit longer than I anticipated, and would make the platform an awkward size, too big for a single sarcophagus to rest on, but too small to fit any other attendants around it.

 

This was the point when mission creep set in. Fiddling with the wings. I realised that If you placed them end to end, you'd have something very interesting; not only would it give you a classic winged solar disk of occult iconography, you'd also be able to fit a whole group of people on the platform with its inhabitant; and this and would nicely mesh with the rich tradition of Egyptian funerary barques.

 

And so the Barque of Neter-khertet was born! At least in theory. Before going any further. I opened up photoshop and made a mock-up of the sort of thing I was considering. This was what I was going for, broadly; the below is a very general outline of what things could look like, using pictures ripped from the bits websites and resized to give me the potential footprint of the project (I've shrunk this one for the purposes of the post- no point filling your screen with loads of blank space).

Plan.jpg

 

With a concept solidifying in my mind, I began to think about the background a bit more. To me, there's no point making any model without a sense of where it fits in the universe, motivations and so on. This makes anything you make far more interesting and much less generic. Practical considerations also have to play a part, and fairly quickly I realised that making convincing flesh change mutations was going to be very difficult if I wanted to keep the standard I was hoping to achieve. While there are plenty of mutated bitz about there I could use, I was having difficulty working out a mental image of how the afflicted Sons should look, and how to tie them all together. On top of this, given the current lack of preheresy bits for the Legion it's hard enough to make some XV legionnaires in the first place, without then mutating them out of all recognition.

 

With all that in mind, I decided to abandon the flesh change idea, and make my Sons in their full preheresy glory. To justify their situation, I came up with some new background (more on which later), that casts the Sons as refugees from Prospero, using a bit of forbidden (and badly understood) archaeotech to escape the destruction of their homeworld. This would let me focus on the barque and its crew without having to puzzle about where to stick all those gribbly bits.
 

Today I've been painting the catafalque that will take up a fair bit of the barque, It's evolved from a sarcophagus because I rather liked the idea of modelling and painting the inhabitant, and has also served as a good test for the "true metal" AK paints I mentioned a few posts earlier. The catafalque started life as a plastic soap dish from a hotel, turned upside down and with various bits stuck to it (first photo). I then did a quick undercoat of brown, before adding the first layer of "true metal", the 'old brass' colour (second photo). At this point it looks rather dull. I then highlighted using the rather brighter 'gold' colour (photo 3) and then did a quick experiment, mixing it with some acryllic silver. This worked surprisingly well, and so I drybrushed it on (photo 4) to add a bit more interest. Having done that and waited for everything to dry, I did a light wash of reikland fleshshade and then added a few silver details (photo 5). Finally, I added a banner I'd already painted for the purpose and did some text (last photo). I'm using historical Hieratic script to represent Prosperine text, so if I did it right, the banner should hopefully read "Amenhotep, son of Magnus"

 

WIP8.jpg

 

 

Any self-respecting catafalque needs some grave goods, so here are Amenhotep's weapons and helmet. I like to think that the canopic jars are occult grenades with bound warp-predators trapped in there... (I need to go over the symbols on the top down view again to make them blend in a bit better- at present they're a bit stark).

 

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And here's (a rather WIP) Amenhotep himself, showing why it's not always a good idea to plug yourself into interesting looking bits of golden archaeotech...

 

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Wow, the planning you have gone through, the realisation the project had to change, but the forging ahead to creat something amazing, lus the research to get the right script. Plus it looks fantastic.

 

Also, nice foreshadowing of future events, with the whole, careful what golden apparatus you plug yourself into thing.

Regarding the 'candy cane' issue, perhaps a bone shade that could be replicated on the staff hilt, a milky/metallic grey with the scarab icon, or a different (lighter/darker) matte tone of red ? Looks okay personally, and easily identifiable.

 

As for this funeral grav-barge, sheer genius. I hold no love nor interest for the 1k Sons, but you've continued to excel with this concept.

 

Just don't forget the RT posse !

Firstly regarding the stripes I'd consider the purple as that is what is used on the cover of the novel Thousand Sons

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_GrRBMt6-NvA/TdzDiHL0_hI/AAAAAAAAEH4/56AZSnFMinU/McNeill-HH-AThousandSons_thumb5.jpg?imgmax=800

Now as for the rest of your post......
MAGNIFICENT!

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