Ed's Heresy Kill-Teams: Custodians and ruins

[EdT]

More corridor stuff; sorry!

 

First off, I weathered the base section and painted up the cabling that'll go in the recesses. I'm quite pleased with quite how filthy the deck plating now looks; I still need to add some dried blood and stuff, but the main addition on this part now will be things like spent shell casings and other debris, which should provide a nice contrast. That's for later though....

 

 

 

I've also been painting the bulkhead door. This is nowhere near done; the base colours and scuffing is on, but I haven't added any weathering to dirty it up yet. When that's there, it'll look considerably different.

 

 

 

Finally, I've been making some broken glass, and this might be worth describing in more detail as it's a nice effect that's easy to do. Previously I've mentioned how I want the utility ducts at the bottom and top of the corridor wall to have some glass, preferably damaged by the fighting. To do this, I first cut up some strips of clear plastic to fit the wall sections. It's the fairly rigid, transparent stuff that comes with packaging on electronics products; I used some that came as a sleeve on a box of aftershave I had for Christmas. The photo below shows how the strips fit in the wall sections; the lowest one shows how when you turn the piece over, it looks perfectly fitted.

 

 

You can stick these strips in using superglue, and any frosting is a bonus; it helps with the weathering. After putting in a strip more or less intact, I went at it with a file and pins, scratching it and sticking the odd hole in there where the glass has been broken. Wiping superglue on the reverse side also works quite well.

 

Having produced an intact one, I wanted the other two to be more badly damaged. This was easy; I just chopped up the plastic with some scissors and glued them into the wall section so it looked like they'd been broken. Here's what I came up with!

 

 

Combined with some damage on the struts, I think it looks quite good, and the leftover plastic you've cut off can be cut even smaller and repurposed as broken glass on the floor later on. Now I just need to let everything dry and I can stick it all together before finishing the weathering. Or at least that's the idea...

[Brother Dallo]

Now that is a FINE looking door.

On a slightly off-topic note, EdT, is your name referencing some variable "E" changing with temperature? The inner mathematician made me ask.

Dallo

[EdT]

Ha, I'm afraid my username is nothing so esoteric- my name's Ed and my surname begins with T, so...  I should probably have been more imaginative!

 

An update on the corridor; things finally got to the point where I could stick it all together, so here's what it looks like with weathering in place. I'm quite pleased! Here's the whole thing;

 

 

And here are some detail pics. You'll notice that a cheeky cultist has painted some forbidden symbols on the door using some bodily fluid of some kind...

 

 

 

I'm pleased with how grotty the green colour scheme has got once the weathering went on, and also like how the glass has taken the gore and rust, while still remaining vaguely transparent. The base has still got a fair bit to go and isn't finished; next I need to add the various bits of debris littering the ground, trailing cables and the like. But we're getting there!

[Brother Dallo]

Mwhahahaha! Now I know your true identity, Mr T! :p

 

The corridor is looking great, though I have a slight nitpick. In the first picture, it looks like you've left the insides of the straws unpainted. Either that, or painted them all bright colours. If it's the latter, fair play, but I think if you're going to put in all this effort, you may as well paint the insides of the straws, even just plain black.

 

Hope this is useful. Keep up the fantastic interior décor.

 

Dallo

[GhostMalone]

:cuss me that's good

[Brother Sgt. Steine]

Really nice Ed.

 

Love the weathering and grittiness.  Looks like a mock up for a video game set...  Love it man.

 

BSS

[Lord Tharand]

Again, this looks great!

[EdT]

Thanks all. I just got it finished last night, so here it is with all the assorted debris, broken glass, trailing wires etc I wanted to add.

 

 

 

 

And because I couldn't resist adding some models on there but the Terminator isn't done yet, here's a quick diorama featuring one of my previous kill-teams. I really like how putting an astartes in a scenic setting really gives them a sense of scale.

 

 

[Pict Capture DR/742-18Y-002] Legionary Hamilcar Bast of the 7th Company, XVI Legion, and an unknown subject, captured during the insurrection aboard the Grand Cruiser Anake. Rembrancer's note: Unknown subject's clothing, pallour and presence of cult paraphenalia suggests membership of lower-deck fleet Basilitheist grouping (Ref:Alpha/6/Lectitio_Divinatus).

[Argent aquila]

Way cool!

[HighGothic]

That's so awesome... I just wish I could make scenery now!

 

One tiny thing though, I think there might be a bit too much on the floor, it looks too cluttered

 

Apart from that, it's great!

[KrautScientist]

That corridor may be some of your best work yet -- and all in a thread rich in amazing sights! Stupdendously awesome!

 

I'll be perfectly, brutally honest, though: Using a bump in the floor to excuse the Terminator's wonky right foot still seems like a bit of a hokey compromise to me. That said, this diorama has every chance to become your best piece yet. Never a dull moment in this thread! :)

[EdT]

Hi all,

 

Sorry for the radio silence the last couple of weeks; I've been a bit busy, and also had a bit of a creative drought with the projects I want to get finished. The Thousand Sons Barque is proving frustrating to finish off, and while I got the underside done my cunning plan to do the bow and stern of it didn't work as I'd hoped . More thinking time is needed there- I want to make sure it looks bloody good when it's done! The MK1 Terminator is also moving at a snail's pace; I'm finding it difficult to summon up the enthusiasm to paint it having done the base coat. It could be the foot issue, as Krautscientist alludes to, but if I fix that it'll be a lot of work to repair, and I'm not sure I can be bothered at the moment.

 

Basically, what I needed was a palette cleanser; and after I realised that it's actually now been a couple of months since I put together a Marine, as opposed to terrain or scratch-building, I decided to raid the bits box and put together a Kill Team. I had an aborted attempt at doing some Iron Warriors a while ago, but this time I had a much stronger concept for them; these guys are sent in to the thousands of fringe warzones in the Heresy that never see any Astartes in order to tip the balance in favour of the Warmaster's forces. As they're not expecting to come up against Legion opposition, they're lightly equipped, more than a little complacent, and aimed as much at purging malconents and waverers within the Traitor ranks as killing loyalists.

 

I've really tried to personalise these guys, and have written up some individual background for each of them. Here are the first three; I've painted all the bare heads seperately (the two on the left show my attempt at the sort of olive skin tone you might find on Olympia) so I may swap them around at a later date...

 

 

 

I have some fairly detailed background for the force's leader too; here he is tacked together to give me a sense of his eventual pose (the combi-melta will be on a chain). I'm particularly pleased with the helm, which gets across the bull motif I was going for while retaining the practicality the IV Legion are known for.

 

 

More soon hopefully! The idea is for these guys to have just waded through a muddy field to take an enemy strongpoint, with bodies strewn around and a small group of highly intimidated traitor militiamen looking on.

[Dosjetka]

That corridor section is just insane. I love the grimdark, gritty feeling throughout the whole piece. Wow!

[EdT]

Thanks, that was my first foray into building something like that and I'm really pleased how it turned out. I was rather worried my colour scheme would be too bright for it, but the weathering sorted that problem right out!

 

Quick update; I've been making casualties to be littered around my Iron Warriors. I bought a set of excellent Tox Troopers from Anvil; I wish the guy who made these would license some of his other sculpts for resin! You get ten in the bag; four are going to be Traitor militia being intimidated (and dwarfed) by the Astartes, while the remainder are their dead loyalist former comrades. I enjoyed making these guys; they'll be fun to paint too, even if they'll be slightly lost under the tread of their killers and the mud of the bases they're on.

 

[Argent aquila]

Excellent work all 'round, those tox troopers are quite unique.

For the loyalists, do you think you could work the aquila onto or paint 'em slightly different to better pronounce the loyalties?

Or maybe a hand print mark ala. Lord of the rings white hand of Sauroman style?

 

 

Keep 'em comin'!

[Dantay VI]

The corridor looks absolutely brilliant and I am blown away by all the kill-teams you have done.

 

Your current group of marines are off to a very promising start and I love the helm you have used for the leader... Although it kinda reminds me of Emperor Zurg from Toy Story a little bit... Ina very cool kinda way.

 

And those Tox roopers made me thnk of DkoK with Nurgle helms... so cool

[EdT]

Thanks both. I love the Tox Troopers myself, and particularly like how they manage to be very distinctive but retain an economy of detail. They're also satisfyingly slight compared to astartes, which is a bonus. My only criticism is the resin they're cast in; it's a little more brittle than I'm used to, and this did lead to the occasional bit pinging across the room while I was doing some conversion.

 

The plan is to paint the traitors in a different colour scheme to the loyalists, the logic being that the Iron Warriors have jumped into the middle of a war between pro-Imperial and pro-Warmaster coalitions on the same planet, and while both sides are using the same equipment they're from rival nations that have varying uniforms. I love the idea of a crudely-painted Eye of Horus on the armour of the Traitors, and may adopt that! The only issue is that the figures are so slight there's not that much room to add something suitable.

 

Ha, I hadn't seen the Zurg thing before, but now you mention it... The original helm is one from the Chaos Knight kit; as you can seem it originally had two sets of horns but I felt that was way too extravagant, so I cut off the bigger set and just left him with some smaller, practical ones. It's faily bullish as is, but I thought I could emphasise the look with the paintjob; the photoshopped pic below gives a sense of what I was thinking.

 

[EdT]

Hi all,

 

So I made some progress; not on the Kill Team, so much, but on their scenic base. I mentioned previously that the plan is to have the team in the aftermath of an action having just taken an enemy position; I think that Trench Warfare really suits the look of the IV, so I can copy the basic technique I used to make the muddy mess of these bases.

 

 

That's all well and good, but for a larger scenic base I can't just pile on the mud, as it'd look flat and boring. There needs to be something underneath to establish the basic contours of the patch of ground the team are standing on (and also allow depth, letting Astartes properly sink into the ground), and my experience of doing the Rogue Trader base (I know I still need to finish that...) showed me that plaster or filler isn't neccesarily the best material for something of that size. I thought I'd experiment with something else; so I went with papier mache pulp.

 

All you need to do this is paper, water, PVA glue and time, so it's practicaly free; but as Milton Friedman would tell you, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and as I tore up the newspaper the Borough sends out every month to tell us residents how wonderful it is, I realised that my massive Council Tax bill actually means I've paid a lot for the materials...

 

 

Local politics aside, it didn't take me very long to rip up the whole paper into small bits, dump it into a bowl and then pour some warm water in to cover it. I also added some salt; this is meant to reduce the chance of it rotting while drying.

 

 

 

I then left the mixture for a bit. I think technically to do this you're meant to leave things to soak overnight, but I found that after a few hours I could mush things up together to begin turning the paper back into pulp.

 

 

After a while like this, I poured out as much water as I could without losing any of the paper, and then started picking lumps out and squeezing them dry. You don't want to remove all the water, just most of it; when it felt about right, I squeezed a big load of PVA glue in there and mixed it all together. The result was a sort of thick paste, as shown below.

 

 

When this was ready, I took a plastic tea-tray that I bought from the pound shop, and started pressing the mixture into it. As I went, I used my fingers to press the surface into the sort of topography I wanted the final base to have. Obviously the mud will go on top of this, but this is the opportunity to prepare things like shell holes and (not that I did it here) trenches.

 

 

The one negative of doing things this way is that it takes a very long time to dry; even leaving it on a radiator, the mixture took around 48 hours to properly set. The one advantage of this is that you have plenty of time to work out where everything goes and make sure that things can be placed properly; here's a photo of the Kill Team and the other bits of scenery dry-fitted on top, to make sure things weren't too crowded. As you can see, I decided against giving the team seperate bases, although I easily could have done; I'll just fix them directly onto the base this time round.

 

 

Once I was happy and things were sufficiently dry (ie still malleable but not sopping wet), I glued all the scatter terrain (casualties, posts, tank traps, etc) in place. There will be barbed wire too, but I'll add that when I've given the thing its spray undercoat. Here's a little detail that I quite like that hopefully shows how this is gradually turning from a mess of pulped newspaper into terrain.

 

 

As this is papier mache, it's not waterproof, but that can be remedied with some varnish. Now that it's bone dry I've sprayed on a thick coat to seal things up; this process will be completed when I spray some paint on top. Next step is to paint the scatter terrain and then add the mud to cover things, which should give a nice sense of depth to the whole thing!

[malika666]

Man, really loved what you did with those Tox Troopers, kinda curious what you'd do with the rest of Miniatures of the North's stuff... :)

[EdT]

They're lovely models aren't they? He's got a good cottage industry going there. I love Miniatures of the North, and bought some of the House Crowmantia a while ago as some potential Word Bearers Auxilliaries. I just wish he'd get more done in resin; know you can contact him to get them in metal, but I like being able to do conversions like the ones on the base. And speaking of which...

 

 

I got the scenic base more or less painted. No weathering or gore yet- that'll go on when the mud goes down- but the rest of it is pretty much done. The dark brown areas are where there will be standing water, so I'll avoid adding mud there and instead use some of my Vallejo Still Water to give those patches a gloss finish. I think the big shellhole with the dismembered body has the potential for a nice effect with the blood from the body mingling with the muddy water...

 

Here are two close-ups. When the mud is added everything painted in will be half submerged, which should give an awful lot of depth to the thing.

 

 

I've also made a start painting the Kill Team itself. Here's the Apothecary so far with the basecoat down; I've used AK Interactive True Metal for these, and am really pleased with the results. They've taken a bit of getting used to, but provide a lovely shine.

 

[malika666]

That true metal stuff is pretty interesting! I'm checking the stuff out on the site, but I have no idea how big those tubes are. So how much do you get in a single tube?

[Quixus]

Wow the board looks great. My only nitpick is that the ground looks pretty porous and as such the blood from the corpses would seep into the ground and not create such pools but rather coloured mud. Or if the corpses are supposed to be fresh, the blood could look less coagulated.

[EdT]

Oh, don't worry- the ground is nowhere finished yet! All that's currently there is the foundation over which the real mud will be slathered on; eventually it'll look like these bases, but on a much larger scale

 

 

Speaking of which, I've been doing a little bit of work on the standing water. It's slow progress as you can only put down a thin layer each time and it takes quite a while to dry; still two or three to go, but it's getting there...

 

 

I've also done a bit of work on the Apothecary. The red and yellow is curretly looking overly colourful; when the hazard stripes go in and the weathering happens, everything will be a little more gritty...

 

 

Everything metallic on these guys will be using the AK True metal; below is a photo of the tube for comparison purposes. You get a lot for your money and a little goes a very long way, which is good as the tubes are quite pricey; the "old brass" colour has probably got the most use so far and the tube hardly looks squeezed at all. Although these paints are probably designed for large scale coverage and work quite well at this, they also do perfectly well for detail work using a small brush, and are at their best when drybrushed on another colour to represent scuffing of paint allowing the metal underneath to show through. As somebody who's used to acryllics, having to use white spirit or another thinner to wash my brush is a bit of a pain, but that's quibbling really; the only other downside is that sometimes washes don't take to it perfectly, but this is pretty rare. I think they're a really nice addition to my paintbox, tbh; and perfect for doing the IV.

 

 

 

[Tyrannicide]

Well, like everything you touch, you're perfectly capturing the core of the IV Legion. I've always enjoyed reading your methodology and picking up new tips.

 

Have you considered a small blood spill into the puddle of the unlucky fella that got sawn in half?

[EdT]

Thanks! I'm really enjoying doing the IV, and hopefully when I publish the background you'll enjoy that too. I've put quite a lot of thought into the individual Legionaires.

 

Here's the Apothecary- Lukias Andronikh- more or less done, minus weathering (which will be extensive). In the inset you can see his helm, which will be at his feet; I'm quite pleased with the hazard striping on the cheek. There will also be a diagnostic servo-skull buzzing around nearby.

 

 

There will definitely be a blood spill, btw. What I want to do is build up a few more layers of the muddy water, then when I add the last one I'll do the gore straight afterwards. If I apply it generously it'll drip into the wet layer of 'muddy water' below and hopefully look like it's mixing together quite naturally.