Ed's Heresy Kill-Teams: Custodians and ruins

[Brother Dallo]

Awesome fluff for your Thousand Sons. The minutes thing took me a while to work out. It's 9^9 isn't it?

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Dallo

[Mitsman]

Wow!!!!! Fantastic work mate, this is incredible. The river of souls is quite spooky .

Mitsman

[Argent aquila]

Absolutely Wonderful!

Bravo!!

[Kriegsmacht]

Wow great model. The base looks awesome.

[Battybattybats]

Love the story :)

[KrautScientist]

Both the models and the story to accompany them are absolutely stellar -- it boggles the mind how you manage to outdo yourself with every one of your dioramas!

[EdT]

Glad people liked that- it's nice to have the thing finally finished! While as a scratchbuild it's nothing like as polished as, say, Blackadder's stuff (but then what is?), I learned a lot doing it. I'm glad it all came together in the end.

Now, back to the Mechanicum. I've spent the morning being industrious with the pilgrims' scenic base. Here’s my tester- I’m quite pleased with the result, although there are a few tweaks I want to make for the real thing.

 

 

As I've mentioned, the idea was to have an expanse of Martian wasteland for the pilgrims to traverse, with a small wayside shrine by the path to add a little interest. As before, my base for this was a tea tray from the pound shop, although a rather larger one than the one I used for the Iron Warriors- there are quite a few models to fit on and I don't want things looking too crowded. My first step was to stick masking tape over the handles to cover the holes there; once that was done I poured in a layer of plaster to work as a base. When that set, I worked out where to place the shrine; I wanted a mix of terrain, so I thought I'd make the area immediately behind it part of a dried up lake or watercourse of some sort. Having worked out the placement of the shrine (which is basically a toothpick container sat on a box for foot plasters- complex stuff) I added a few bits of detail for the dustbowl section and drew a vague line where I wanted the usual, rocky terrain of Mars to begin.




With that sorted, I then got some cheap clay from the art shop down the road, and made a ridge across the board. It also let me begin to integrate the base of the shrine into the surrounding terrain. None of this needs to be too detailed; the clay will be covered by particulate etc when dry, but it provides the underlying topography. As I mentioned before, I really liked the idea of having the shrine be surrounded by prayer flags, tibetan style; so I stuck some toothpicks into the wet clay to serve as flagpoles.




Plaster is cheaper than clay, so rather than build the whole raised area from scratch, my next step was to give myself a foundation by pouring in a layer  behind the clay ridge, using that as a sort of dam to keep the lower area as it was.



WIth that dry, I could start doing the proper topography. As the clay takes a while to dry, I decided to do this in two layers; I want the pilgrim trail to be slightly eroded by centuries of feet/tracks/mechandrites trmaping up and down it, so it'll be a tiny bit lower than the surrounding ground. Here's the first layer on. You might also notice that I've placed one of the fantastic resin Opus Machinae Forgeworld used to produce as a marker; the second layer of clay will be built up around it, so it looks a bit more set into the rock surrounding. This was an astonishingly generous gift from Marius Perdo, and will hopefully really set off the other details; so thanks again to him!



At present, I'm waiting for all this to dry before I can move on. But there's more! Earlier I mentioned the prayer flags; I basically used the  Brother-Chaplain Kage Tissue Cape method to make them, but with a few alterations. So, first off, I cut a load of 1.5 cm square bits of tissue, folded over so they were double-ply. I then measured out the length of chain I'd need, noted where the supports would be, and worked out how many flags I could fit on (actually it's one more than the photo shows- each section ended up with three flags each).



With that done, I hung the chain from the supports, and fixed each flag to it in the right spot with a bit of superglue. Once that was dry, I soaked each flag with my vellejo clear water, which I find does the same job as PVA glue but quicker and more effectively (at the cost of being a bit pricier). The soaking meant that each flag hung naturally from the chain and had some ripples in them; none of my other models have billowing capes so for the purposes of this base I'm assuming it's not a windy day on Mars. As an aside, this is also a decent photo of the detail of the Opus Machina Marius sent me. Isn't it brilliant?



With this dried, the next step was painting the flags. After an initial, failed go using stencils that I'll draw a polite veil over, I painted over everything and decided to do the detailing by hand. Genuine prayer flags have prayers stamped on them (well durr...), so I wanted to go with something similar, but with a Mechanicum twist. Using a micron pen (or in the case of the gold design, a toothpick) I added on my designs; a (presumably holy) circuilt diagram, a devotional barcode, and a QR code. Since this photo was taken I’ve dulled down the gold a fair bit. They look a bit rough at this distance but once the weathering goes on and they're surrounded by everything else, they should hopefully really add something to the shrine...

[StoneSentinels]

This looks like a great project! Really enjoy the slightly Tibetan look you are going for.

[EdT]

Time for a little progress update.

 

Ther other day, I added the second and final layer of clay. As you can see from the constrast between the semi-dry base and the wet top, it deliniates the pilgrim road a little better. You can also see the painted prayer flags strung up on the poles.

 

 

Once this had got to a certain level of dryness, I placed the various pilgrims in roughly the spot I wanted them to occupy when everything was done. As you can see, it's quite a full base! I did this to let me place the various scattered rocks and boulders (these were pebbles liberated from my garden and washed); I wanted to make sure that none of them got in the way of the models themselves. Having done a dry fit, I took the pilgrims off again and painstakingly took each rock off, coated its bottom in glue, and replaced it.

 

 

You can also see in the last two shots that I put some paint down on the areas meant to be dried up watercourses. This was Agrellan Earth, to give that dry cracked soil look. Unfortunately, as you can probably tell, the application was not a success. For some reason the Agrellan Earth didn't dry properly; in most places the crackle medium didn't crackle, and in the few places where it did, it also lost all adhesion to the plaster beneath and flaked off. I spent a while puzzling over this- I'd used the same pot for other things, so it wasn't a production defect- and in the end I came to the conclusion that the plaster base had absorbed some of the moisture from the drying clay, and this had buggered up the whole process. There was only one thing for it; taking my sculpting tool, I painstakingly scraped the whole thing off and took a vacuum cleaner to the resulting mess. This was also a good way of testing how well the rocks had stuck to the base...

 

 

Sure enough, once I got rid of the agrellan, I could feel that the plaster underneath was just a tiny bit damp; hopefully nothing that a few evenings left on top of the clothes dryer won't sort out...

 

This has given me the opportunity to work a little on the Noblewoman, who is the only pilgrim I haven't finished building yet. Here's where she currently stands (or sits); I've repositioned her arm so she has a dataslate of romantic poetry resting in her lap to pass the time along the journey. I'm not sure what to do with the other arm yet; I might straighten it to rest by her hip. Part of me is wondering about givng her a dainty mecha-parasol; perhaps a servo-skull with a lace hoop skirt, like a grimdark version of this? 

 

 

[miteyheroes]

What's more 40k than a cyber-cherub bog roll holder?

[Targetlock]

I don't like it, I love it :) the whole damn thread that is.

[Battybattybats]

Looking fantastic.

The Agrellan likely needs everything to be dry, sealed and with a layer of paint put down for it to adhere to before use.

A parasol is not a bad idea, maybe one with metal panels, strong enough to keep the martian sandstorms from scuffing her. I'd have her arm posed in the act of positioning it perhaps, or resting her arm upon it, but a mechanical arm connecting it to her hippoparambulator for sturdiness.

[EdT]

So inspiration hit! I've gone a slightly more grimdark route for my parasol- I wanted something a little bit less practical than a proper defence against the Martian sandstorms, and more geared to swanning around the promenades of Sarosh station, as well as, potentially, being an old toy from the noblewoman's youth. She's still a bit WIP, but here's Ella- she used to be a little girl in one of the Jovian habitats, but daddy said some nasty things about the foreman, so now she's a sun-shade. I'll paint her the same as the valet, so china doll paleness with red spots on the cheeks.

 

 

I figured she'd like to hold hands, so here's an early mockup of how she'll connect to her mistress. I think I'll make the whole thing a bit more delicate, but it works as a concept.

 

[HighGothic]

God, that really is grimdark.

[Brother Dallo]

Now that is GrimDark!! I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out Ed. Is Ella a reference to a certain song by Rhianna? Or just because she's an umbrella? Either way, that made me chuckle.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Dallo

[Ratboy1664]

That barge is just something else, WOW!

[Lord Commander Scrymgeour]

seeewwwweeeeet!

That is inspired! I love the tiny arm. There's something so 40k about asymetrical limbs!

[GhostMalone]

And I love this whole idea

 

Keep the creepy vibes coming

[Battybattybats]

Wow.
Well done! Well done!
And to think people found my Mechanicum Knight House Lady creepy with her floating container of soil hooks and blades, fleshless face and huge syringe servo-arm. Compared to your living umbrella my version of medieval romance in a Mechanicum knightly house looks positively quaint and comforting! You've produced one of the finest creepiest bits of grimdark i've seen and really captured the role of class in the feudal Imperium there.

[StoneSentinels]

Brilliantly wacky and gets better everytime I check in! Love the board and the techno shrine looks great.

[EdT]

Glad people like Ella- and yes, her name is a deliberate pun. I like the idea of her having originally been a cyber-playmate of the noblewoman, but while she's grown up, Ella is eternally a toddler. Seems like the children of Imperial nobility (especially the Martian-orientated segment) would provide a rich seam of body horror;  what happens, for example, to all the servitor-toys when their owner grows up? I love the idea that amongst the feral servitors of Mars there are ones like this and this, and that's not even getting on to the pleasure-servitors owned by their parents... 

 

Anyhow, I have some progress to report. The noblewoman is now more or less done, with the seat of her steed now sorted. The only bit of assembly left to do is to attach Ella, but I'll do that when she's painted as it'll be a delicate part. Obviously there's still some general smoothing and tidying to do, but I'm pleased with how she came out.

 

 

 

Now, there's also some progress on the scenic base; it's now got some paint on it. Having given it a few days to completely dry I was satisfied that everything was as set as it was going to be, so after a coat of black spray, I started drybrushing rocks and doing some detail. Here's what it currently looks like! The white stuff is my second attempt at cracked ground; having used a lot of my agrellan earth, I popped out and bought some crackle medium from my local art shop. For twice the price of the agrellan, I get about four or five times as much; although it effectively takes a couple of days to dry I can already see cracks beginning to form in some places, so that's encouraging...

 

 

I think the rocks and shrine are now more or less finished, but I won't do too much else to this before the crackle stuff is properly cured. I spent a particular amount of time on the Machina Opus marking the entrance to the shrine; as it was a donation, I wanted it too look as good as I could make it. Here's a close-up.

 

 

I tried to make it look like two types of marble, one light, one dark; the gloss sealant over it makes this a little less obvious than in person. I'm pleased with how it turned out, especially the way it contrasts with the weird shiny irridesence of the standing stone and its base. It's a lovely sculpt; when the particulate and weathering dust goes on, it should look right at home! I can't imagine the base without it now, so thanks again to Marius for that. I couldn't resist putting the prayer flags on too- the chain needs to be painted, but it's beginning to look a bit Martian...

 

[HighGothic]

That title tho

[StoneSentinels]

Wow! Its like you want me to give up on writing my dissertation and drool over your stuff! Especially that Opus, it is just amazing!

[malika666]

Get your ass to Mars!!!

 

This is going to be exciting!

[Kongou]

Quick update- the noblewoman's servitor steed has made a bit of progress and now has legs. It's still a way off completion; there's clearly some gap filling to do (which is nowhere near as obvious in person), and I can't reallly do anything about the side saddle until the relevant set of legs get delivered. Hopefully you get a sense of where I'm going with it though. It's based on the ironstrider chassis, of course- I couldn't resist the servitor enmeshed with the machinery!

 

The idea is that the servitor crawls; his arms have been replaced with the front legs as you'd expect, while the movements in his vestigial leg stumps are automatically translated into the movement of the rear leg. I see the noblewoman much more as a passenger rather than a rider, per se; medieval women didn't control their mount while riding sidesaddle and the same is true here. Instead, I imagine you enter a destination and the servitor sets off on its merry way.

 

is it just me, or does the steed remind me of this http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101030165608/ghostintheshell/en/images/e/e7/Tachikoma.gif?