Morlockwing

Morning all,

Managed to get some work done on the first five-man squad of the Morlockwing this weekend. Hopefully this will allow me to have them done for the squad contest at The Great Crusade. Not sure if Santar is going to make it - I have to order a Chaos Lord at the end of the week for him, so we shall see. Anyhow, on to ze piccies:




Mr Itsmyflag, the standard bearer - I'll need some smaller magnets to accomodate the banner pole.


Mr Waddyawant - possibly ending up as an apothecary:


Mr Claws - my favorite pose so far:


Mr Versatile:


and Mr Promethium:


A blurry pic of their shoulderpads as of last night. The interior detailing has been cut out and, assuming I find them thick enough, they'll be cut out and hopefully done tonight.


(by the way, I should have given them a brush-down before I took photos - they look a mess at the moment. I'm also going to have to get hold of some more super-fine sandpaper - I swear the armour plates don't look that bad in real life...).

They look absolutely fantastic. I particularly like the helmets. Did you just trim down the normal/standard helmet to give them the more "grey knights" look? Also, what work have you done on their torsos? I can see a fair bit of filing, and I'm curious how/why. To be fair, I'd really like to see anything you have on how you created these badasses. Amazing work!!

Thank you very much, I guess I can accomodate you...

As they're pre-heresy, you want to remove as much of the religious-purity seal-parchment-type stuff as possible - this is the time of the Imperial Truth and enlightenment, after all. On top of that, the Iron Hands aren't that much for ornamentation, considering the machine itself to be a thing of beauty. The symbols used on the standard terminators just don't really fit in with my visualisation of them.

While I didn't want to be too overt with the whole bionic shindig (the way I see it, even if you have a steel leg, you're going to want a full suit of Terminator armour to stick on, no matter how much you want to show off your bling...), so have kept it to wires (supplied by Dragonforge) and plasticard cog patterns to distinguish them from the vanillas.

The main plates that go over the torsos are .25mm plasticard cemented on then trimmed down to fit, with the cogs added on using plasticard strips - again trimmed down to fit, then sanded to match the breatplates. Any gaps were either filled with procreate lumps (again sanded down) or a bit of polystyrene cement was added on the join, allowed to dry overnight then, (you guessed it... ) sanded down.

The leather straps were plasticard strips again, with a slightly wider strip providing the toggles (or whatnot) at the end.

The helmets had the "nose" tab removed then were sanded down to follow the cheek-line to a point. They were also chopped up at the back and the bottom so that they look more recessed, and I can fit the collars on.

Erm, what else? Oh, all the arms are magnetised for versatility, and I really want some lunch . Catch you later!

Wow. Those are really sharp.

I was looking at them and was really confused at first. I thought they were some kind of plastic Grey Knight Terminator. Then I saw that you had taken a plastic terminator and done some crazy knife work on it and was even more impressed.

Great job on these. Can't wait to see them painted up.

Thanks! I'll have another couple of squads that will look practically the same, then the last two should hopefully look even sharper. They'll be new kits instead of Black Templar terminators, assembled with poly cement, then ripped apart to be cannibalised... That was not fun...

absolutely stunning. Great conversion work. I can't wait to see more! Keep us in the loop!

Loving it so far, especially the helmet conversions!

Thanks guys. I had a failure with the pictured shoulderpads - I used too many layers and it turned into a bit of a mess. So I went back to the drawing board and only used two layers. Didn't have much time for hobby last night, but did manage to cut out one shoulderpad and it worked a charm. I'll get some pics up as soon as possible, once I've finished the set.

Morning gents,

Got the first set of shoulderpads half done the other day, and thought I'd post up a few piccies for you to peruse.





He still needs some putty work, and I'll be working on the leather straps for the shoulders today (as well as four more sets of pads for the rest of the squad). C&C most appreciated.

And a big thank you for advertising me on the main blog, guys, I'm very flattered.

Here comes Mr. Claws and his friend, Mr. Pormethium!

I love your take on the whole pre-heresy theme with these guys. Pre-heresy armies always look so cool that I'm surprised more people don't do them.
There one thing in particular I like about pre-heresy armies though: have you thought about doing Personal Heraldry for these guys?
I don't know if the iron hands would consider that because of the whole machine infatuation thing, but some of the pre-heresy armies I've seen (both in plastic and on the cover of the Horus Heresy books) the individual marines seem to be allowed to display their own heraldry on one of their shoulder pads in place of the normal squad markings.

Here's some pre-heresy ultramarines I found on dakadaka.com:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/223333.page

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that idea out there. These guys look like they are going to look awesome no matter how you decide to paint the shoulder pads (although thanks to those shoulder add-ons, you would have a pretty sizable pallet to work with ) Mr. Claws and the gang would have plenty of space to draw pretty pictures on their armor!

And thanks for telling how you did those awesome heads. I wonder if that idea cold be extended to normal marine helmets...

And btw: if you like heresy era stuff, Bell Of Lost Souls has an entire custom-mini-codex they put out for playing heresy era themed battles. It's available as a free PDF somewhere on their site.

While they do like their technology and enjoy good relations with the Mechanicum, the Iron Hands, pre-heresy, do seem to have a more knightly feel - with such things as Gabriel Santar being the Equerry to Ferrus Manus and their general manner. The image below cements that impression.

The plan is to paint heraldry shields onto their groin plates (seen as I've removed their belt buckles). While painting their heraldry on their shoulderpads would look good from a gamer's perspective, any normal person would be unable to see it due to the terminator's height.



I love Apologist's work - his helmets are especially worthy of idea theft, but that will have to wait until I'm back on power armoured marines. Hopefully, I'll get to see them in person during the Assault on Gedren Prime event run by The Great Crusade in October.

While the Bell of Lost Souls Heresy-Era ruleset is interesting, it's a bit out of date now - being written for fourth edition. Plus, I think the Tempus Fugitives (the guys who run campaign weekends for GW in England) do it better. That's the "The Great Crusade" pack. The next event, which is in a few days, has a modified ruleset for "Horus Heresy" era, then the next two events will be the Siege Of Terra and The Scouring. While I won't be attending either the one coming, or probably the one after that, I'm hoping to have 3000pts of Iron Hands by the time the Scouring comes around.

Oh, and concerning the "knightly faceplate" style helms, they can be done. They're easiest to do with beakies, but can be done with the normal helmets too, though you're more likely to need to green stuff it a bit.

Cheers for the comments and good ideas!

Wow,I can see your pretty well versed in the pre-heresy stuff that's available out there, as you have once again provided some excelant links. I really must repay you sometime. I'm going to have to check those sites out; although they make me jealous of UK gamers... ah well.

The groinplate heraldry thing sounds like a good idea; no reason athletic cups can't be dual purpose. I looks like the guy in that pic has the chapter marking on the front of his shoulder piece, but I see what you mean about the height thing with those modded shoulder pads. someone standing in front of these guys would be too busy getting eviscerated to try and look at the top of that armor. I can also see why you wouldn't want to go too over the top with the heraldry too. Some of the marines in the cover art for the Horus Heresy books look like they'd have heraldry on the lining of their combat underwear (stitched there by their mothers of course to make the sorting on laundry day a bit easier).

And as far as the repaying you part, I found out recently that Black Library has all of the cover art for the Horus Heresy series available as wallpapers on their site:
http://www.blacklibrary.com/free-extras/downloads/wallpapers/horus-heresy.asp
I think the Fulgrim one has Iron Hands in it. Fallen angels in my new desktop

Yes it does, shame the Iron Hands look poop... I keep see-sawing between liking and hating the artist who does those book covers...

Anyhow,

Updates for you all. I've finished the squad to "tabletopish" standard and entered the contest over at The Great Crusade - with an hour to spare on the deadline. Sadly, my camera took some really poo photos before it decided to buy the farm... Not too pleased, but at least I got something to show you!

On to the piccies:

WIPs (most of the modelling done - they looked like this on Saturday afternoon):





And PIPs (as they looked on Sunday night around 11pm):




I'll be leaving them at this standard at the moment, and be concentrating on getting one of these squads done to this standard per week - giving me about two and a half weeks to get three characters done then start thinking about some proper highlighting...

Bigger, clickable pictures on my blog.

Enjoy!

I'm officially dubbing these guys the "new hotness." Proceed with yo bad self.

Wow... truly epic. That is what a terminator should look like; but alas, those of us without plasticard skilz are stuck with those elephant head... things.

Hello all,

Some new and better pictures for you all.

First squad:






Second and third squad WIP:


Power weapons (would count as relic blades if using Honour Guards from the Tempus Fugitives rules):


Chainfists:


More wolverines:


Standard guys:


Reaper autocannons sans heads:


I lost the heads one after the other as I was sticking them all on... <_< I'll either have to scour the floor (and probably move the sofa in the process) or grab some new ones from bits and kits...

I am currently behind schedule, but I do have an excuse - I ran out of the right size of plasticard strips from my variety pack, so will have to order some more in next week. While I'm waiting for that (and the shoulder pads/collar PVA to dry), I'll be dusting these guys and making a few final adjustments (rogue mould lines, unsmooth knees, etc...).

I also received my bases from Dragonforge and was astounded by the sheer quality of the casts - they look better than most of the Forgeworld models I've ever bought... I scrubbed them the other day and just have to remove some minor flashing around the lips before undercoating them, then the drybrush extravaganza takes off...

Brilliant work. Really, this is amazing.
The single barrel on the Storm Bolter is an interesting choice. I must admit that I really like it. That surprises me. I've always drilled two for mine and, while I could never put my finger on it exactly, it never quite looked right to me. The single barrel looks perfect. Thanks for a rather unexpected inspiration, given all the larger more obvious bits of inspiration in these photos.
Cheers.

Meh, when you have a gun as big as an autocannon you don't need to worry about aiming; so what's the use of a head? Seriously though, I wish you luck finding your lost heads.

And interestingly enough, the heraldry on the painted claws guy reminds me of the 18% grey metering cards we use in my photography class. I just thought that was funny.

I like you pose for the chainfist guy on the left. Were you not on a time constraint it might look cool to model on a crescent-shaped trail of blood on streaming from the edge of the chainblade to show the arc of his swing; or maybe just have something in front of him on the base to represent the fool he just eviscerated. Granted, that all might distract from the model itself, but it looks cool the way it is too.

Stunning! I love the way these look.

Glad you like them guys.

I'm having second thoughts about the storm bolters at the moment, following some feedback on other forums. I might look into cutting that block off completely then adding either two bolter barrels, or making my own out of styrene tubing. Will let you know how it turns out.

I have to say that I'm surprised to hear that. I quite like the single barrel as it is, and was even planning on emulating that (among other things).

bsmoove: while I do like the effect, I think for a combi-bolter, the double barrel look would be better. If (when ) I get around to some 40k terminators, I'll probably use this method.

Got some stuff done since the last update, though (of course) not as much as I'd like. Luckily, Real Life is beating a retreat for a week, so I should hopefully be able to post some piccies on a daily-ish basis on what I'm doing.

Literally just received my microstrip from Antenociti's Workshop, so I'll be adding straps to all the guys, as well as replacing the SB barrels tonight.

Pics up later!

Right, as promised, some piccy goodness for you.

Progress so far has been these strips and their buckle-thingies (technical term). There's 50 of each of them (one set of straps was (stupidly) added to the model before the buckles were glued:


And then the models themselves:

2nd Squad:




3rd Squad:





I've done some putty cleanup on the greaves for one of the relic clade-wielders and will crack on with that and looking at the storm bolters after I've done my laundry...

Cheers!

And another update for you guys. I've now stuck the leather straps to their groins with the groin plates on top and am just waiting for them to completely set so that I can bend some life into them.

I've also cleaned up the putty on the rest of the torsos as well as doing the second honour guard's greaves.

As they stand now:



Close-up of the honour guard:


I'm happy with his right greave - just a small amount of cleaning to do on the bottom edge, but am not so pleased with his left one - one of the cog-teeth came unstuck this morning so I had to reglue that and will have to file it down tonight.

Close-up of one of the Reapers:


I've added rivets to his torso using Ithmaril's method of drilling a hole in a sprue then stamping them out in putty. The bottoms need tidying up once the glue has set, and I may have drilled a bit too deep. Hopefully that will sort itself out when I reshape the stamp to try and deal with the rims left at the bottom of the rivets.

Here's a list of what's left to do to get these guys done:
- Finish putty work on autocannons and odd-jobs - such as the straps on the honour guard
- Go rivet-crazy on most of them
- Cut 100 straps and 100 "buckles" to go one their shoulders
- Finish off the shoulderpads and collars (which I can't do right now owing to having been IDed for buying craft blades... :huh: )

So there you have it. Now I'm going back to work...

Update!

Thought I'd show you the army I was supposed to be taking to Gedren. They were going to get a quick paint job to be ready in time, but now that I don't have a dealine, I'll be able to spend a little longer on them.

Army shot:


Primered Plate Mail (Army Painter spray):


Washed Badab Black:




Mostly Painted (older pic, crap(per) lighting:


I'm not too happy with that last squad - will have to rework them - they were based off a black primer. Hopefully it won't be too hard to make them match the other squads. Also not happy with the heraldry groin plates, so will be changing those.

Santar:




He's based off a chaos lord and has only had a primer coat in sub-optimal conditions (it was freezing).

Iron Father:





Same as for Santar, please ignore the rough primer... Missed drilling out the holes for his weapon. Not too sure about the mini-servo-arms on his chest due to practical considerations, but still, looks cool.

I'm quite seriously toying with the idea of replacing all their storm bolters with the vehicle-mounted ones...