K0rtmer's echo chamber: mechanising the vintage DG

[K0rtmer]

Hi.

As my hobby endeavours get progressively more random, and my available hobby time is on a compounding downhill trajectory, I've decided to consolidate everything into a single thread. Not that I've posted much the last couple month, or anything. I don't think I've even been to the B&C much. Just quietly chipping away at . With perhaps some new energy to share, everything shall go here. Unsorted and raw.

I've managed to complete a fair share of my Oldhammer rescue backlog. Most importantly, I finished the Rhino. Couple pictures follow, most of completed models, but I intend to log further raw progress here.











Also struggled through seven identical plastic plague marines from back then. Fantastically boring:







Project Space Crusade was a real challenge.





I made a couple bases for them. Basically plasticard and a couple old aquilas. Getting the dreadnought on an actual 40k base was significantly difficult. That thing's feet are one with its original square base. Lots of cutting, gluing, and swearing involved.







In the meantime I've got the loyalist boarding party stripped, cleaned, magnetised, and have a first couple coarse base coats from my very cheap airbrush down. My wife thought they look like 'Space Police', which is an idea that I approve of heaps, hence the blue colour. Not sure if I want them to be Ultramarines or something else. Any feedback or -forward is appreciated.





While the loyalists haven't been touched in a long time, team Chaos has seen completion.















I honestly struggled through these. There's something about painting the exact same model a couple times, to some standard, that makes it hard. These weren't just as bad as the seven exactly identical plague marines above, but nevertheless numbing to paint. Didn't really enjoy. I'm taking a break from Oldhammering for a while. These are up next in the pipeline: stripped, cleaned, and awaiting basing, with the exception of the random trash I picked up the other month. Couple more plague bearers aren't shown, as is my Rogue Trader-era Chaos dreadnought.

Edited April 2, 2021 by K0rtmer
=] Do not dodge the Swear filter [=

[K0rtmer]

Apparently I can't squeeze as many pictures in one post as I would've wanted to. Hence the double post. My apologies.

While I'm supposed to work on my Gue'vesa Kill Team for a tournament later this year, I was offered an opportunity to build and paint up the Skitarii part of the new KT box for a local retailer. Which is awesome, because I enjoy the privilege and get to keep the models. Hence I'm now stuck with Skitarii. These are real WIP.

I've pushed a single one beyond blocking in base colours. Coming along more or less as planned. My wife thinks I should be painting something like a radioactive glow effect on the rifle. Undecided. Again, any feedback or -forward re: these would be much appreciated. Let me know what you think.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Brother Kortmer

[Jolemai]

Stunning :wub:

[Markus_]

OOP Death Guard and renegade models have a special place in my heart and you've done a great job on them.  Excellent painting and modelling.

[DuskRaider]

I'm with Markus, those old Death Guard models really bring me back to when I first started. I'm so glad to see someone still giving them love!

[OakRiver]

So much awesome nostalgia :D

[Lord Commander Eidolon]

Loving the trip down memory lane! Great to see those Space Crusade models see some love, as well as the original Death Guard plastics -- I've one or two of those that I'll have to salvage!!

 

Keep up the good work!

[Shovellovin]

Echoing others' appreciation of you rescuing these old models. The end result is worth it but I empathize with you getting burnt out on painting the mono-pose models. I remember getting burnt out on painting the 2nd edition 40K box 20 years ago. 

[Elzender]

May I suggest painting the loyalists as Crimson Fists? It would complete the throwback to the Rogue Trader boxset with them on the cover.

[K0rtmer]

I'm with Markus, those old Death Guard models really bring me back to when I first started. I'm so glad to see someone still giving them love!

 

Loving the trip down memory lane! Great to see those Space Crusade models see some love, as well as the original Death Guard plastics -- I've one or two of those that I'll have to salvage!!

 

Keep up the good work!

 

Yeah. I started with Hero Quest and then Space Crusade in Germany in the 1990s. Went into Epic from there. I've had a blast getting my hands on the models, big nostalgia. But building and painting them was much more boring and much more difficult than I anticipated. Not much detail, a lot of simple surfaces on the dreadnought. I stripped it down and started over three times before calling it done. 

 

Echoing others' appreciation of you rescuing these old models. The end result is worth it but I empathize with you getting burnt out on painting the mono-pose models. I remember getting burnt out on painting the 2nd edition 40K box 20 years ago. 

 

'Burn out' is a strong word, but I hear you. A mate of mine painted the 20 gretchin for a second-edition grot Kill Team. I can confidently say that would've killed me. 

 

May I suggest painting the loyalists as Crimson Fists? It would complete the throwback to the Rogue Trader boxset with them on the cover.

 

Fantastic idea, thanks heaps for that input. They shall be of the Crimson Fists chapter. Might tone the blue down a little bit, perhaps give it some subtle purple hue. Will do some research on the original colour scheme before I depart on that. Next stop are the Skitarii, then Gue'vesa. Then Crimson Fists. 

 

So. Glow effect on the Skitarii radium carbines, or not? – Please let me know what you think.

[K0rtmer]

Incremental, but important progress on the Skitarii. I felt a bit bored with having to plough through a deliberately basic, economic paint job for another nine models and decided to set myself a little challenge, to spice things up a bit: make the squad leader's greatcoat stand out a bit more. Putting big (or rather: long) decals on curved surfaces isn't exactly easy. Not for me anyway. Felt right and I gave it a shot.

It's far from perfect in technical terms. There's still a lot of irregularities, some of which I won't be able to fix 100%. In hindsight, I shouldn't have cut corners and skip the interim gloss varnish step, and perhaps I should have worked harder smoothing out wrinkles with MicroSol. Ah, well, nothing is perfect. Most mistakes I made won't show too well at more than a couple inches away, and I wasn't gonna win a Golden Daemon with it anyway.

Now I'm wondering: should I paint the lowest trim, below the line of checkers, orange again, like the rest of the coat, or should I leave it white as it is? - Let me know what you think.

[giacomo]

Can I ask where those decals come from? Nice job on those skitarii. Thank you.

[K0rtmer]

Can I ask where those decals come from? Nice job on those skitarii. Thank you.

The checkers on the Skitarii Alpha's coat? Home-made. Put them together in Photoshop (if memory serves correctly - MS Word, PowerPoint, etc. would do too) and printed them on standard decal paper. Note how I had to paint white under the decal: the print is only black on transparent decal paper.

I did that originally for my legacy Death Guard. Scroll up to the OP to see what I mean. The checkers are really only leftovers from that project.

More progress in the meantime. First five are nearing completion, about 80% done.

[Pearson73]

The Skitarii are looking smashing, the orange is a nice shade and the checks are very well executed.

[K0rtmer]

First lot of five 98% done. Only matte varnish and pigments missing, but it's way too humid to mess around with spray today. Until then, these are almost done:

[PowerHungryMonkey]

Really nice Skitarii but I have to say its the vintage stuff thats really got me excited. My first Plaguemarine army was made up of those guys and I really loved them. And the Space Crusade stuff... found that at a garage sale in primary school long before I knew what GW was. Good memories. Thanks

[K0rtmer]

In the meantime I've managed to make some fair progress.

The Skitarii are done. Some trouble with my matte varnish, leaving me with a situation where I might have to break it out again and touch up a couple things. Also no pigments have been fixated yet. I keep telling myself I'll do it when I have my workspace set up in my new house. Until then, these are basically done though. I'm overall happy with how they came out.

I got some feedback that my paint scheme isn't doing a great job at bringing out many details, and that it'd be better to somehow break up the bigger blocks of orange and blue-grey. A fair enough point. I was hesitating to go back and pick more details though, if only because I have very little hobby time at hand. Eventually I decided to paint the cog-and-skull symbols on all Skitarii chests white and silver - that did the trick with little extra effort. I think. - Here's the two lots of five combined.

From here I'll probably focus on Death Guard and Gue'vesa Kill Teams. Ok, Gue'vesa. I should really be doing the Gue'vesa next. Might be able to share a couple pictures with first conversions and kit bashes before the end of this week.

[K0rtmer]

First couple of Gue'vesa thrown together, if only loosely, for proofing of concept and trying out poses. Missing: HQ, bodyguards, exo-suits. Lots of mistakes to fix, mould lines to clean, etc. I'm in a hurry, so won't yet write up in much detail what the plan is. But you should be able to see where I'm wanting to go from just a couple quick pictures.

T'au overseers:

Does it work? Do these look, um, appropriate for Gue'vesa? Any feedback or criticism is most welcome.

[Markus_]

That extra effort did the trick, the Skitarii now have some contrast points to really bring your eye in. I think they look fantastic.

[K0rtmer]

Wow ... My hobby is progressing at an even slower pace than anticipated. Family life is busy. But, school holidays. Hoping to finish modelling the Gue'vesa before the end of the year. Therefore: please, comments & criticism. Any feedback before I glue them for good would be much appreciated.

Missing: one more Fire Warrior, one guardsman with heavy stubber, and the team leader (HQ choice - human in carapace armour). I'll try to update on these timely. Until then, please let me know what you think.

[K0rtmer]

With little actual hobby time at hand, I finished building the last of the Gue'vesa only the other day. On the upside, they're built and based now. Including four objective markers.







I even managed to prime them (and rectify the consequences of a very bad, yet entirely avoidable spray primer mishap involving a combination of inferior product and too high outside temperature and humidity - stupid, stupid me). I'll try to speed-paint them from here, and have made some progress on the first three or so. Once these are finished, I should be able to paint the rest as a single batch. I'll update, but probably not as soon as I'd like to.

[K0rtmer]

Brief update:

[K0rtmer]

Brief update. No weathering yet.

[K0rtmer]

Brief update. Sniper done, three riflemen in the foreground. Renamed thread to 'echo chamber' because I feel I'm talking to myself. LOL!

[Dosjetka]

You've got some interesting kitbashes/conversions in amongst that bunch of Gue'vesa. The chainsword on the Fire Warrior/Breacher made me laugh!

 

Not so sure about the red-white-green combo though. Looks like they'll be delivering pizzas in no time. :lol: More seriously, any particular reason you went with those colours?