Sunday, February 20, 2011

Swarmlord Part 1

While the primer was drying on the Tyranid Prime, I decided to stay in the swing of the pinning and get on with putting the Swarmlord together.  As most people do, I used a new Hive Tyrant model for the base.  I ordered the monster swords from Paulson Games as they're a really good fit for this kind of conversion.


There was a minimal amount of cleanup to do on the pieces, and I was very happy with the sizing.  I wouldn't like to say whether they're made specifically for this but I'm glad for the happy coincidence!

I'd looked around the net at a number of Swarmlord conversions, and I can see the main difficulty that people were having was the posing of the arms! There's only one bonesword arm in the metal kit (I used it for my Tyranid Prime tee hee), and unless you're a GW staffer who can go just grab four Hive Tyrant kits off the shelf like the chap in this posting, then you're not about to spend a whole bunch of mad cheddar on four Hive Tyrant kits. Other people have used four scything talon arms but they always look like a four armed pensioner doing the funky chicken. I was standing there, imagining myself in the pose when it occurred to me that a natural challenge pose would have the lower arms outstretched and the upper arms bent yet relaxed. 

For the lower arms, I took the scything talon arms from the sprue. And cut them to pieces.

 

Yes, I cut them to pieces.  You can see that I cut them at the bend in the arm.  My objective was to turn the arm around and make it straight.  The only thing was, when I turned it around, the "cuff" just before the wrist was wrong, and the hand/sword would not have been in a natural pose.  So I switched the forearms from side to side. 

 

You can see the left lower arm in the picture above right.  You can see that I then pinned the arm together after doing a rough measure on how long the arm would be if it were straightened. I then applied copious amounts of greenstuff to fill the gap and I somewhat smoothed it and shaped it.  I'm a mechanic, not a sculptor so I know it won't be my best, but at least it's not Venus de Milo!  I then pinned the cleaned up boneswords for a test fitting.  

 
I cut down the left arm for one of the shooty weapons and used that as the left upper arm.  Then I tried to cut down one of the right shooty arms to use as the right upper, but... they have two forearms for holding the weapon.  Poop.  I gave it a shot with some carving and greenstuffing and just wasn't happy with the result.  A friend of mine donated to me another sprue.  I cut down the same left arm from the second sprue, and cut it's shoulder joint off.  I cut off the shoulder joint of a right arm and pinned it to the left arm.  A little greenstuff to make it look right and it's awesome!  You can see it in the next picture.

 

What's left is to get the gaps filled.  I don't plan on gluing the arms in place until the rest of the work is completed on the body.  If you go and look in the Tyranid codex, or on the GW link I posted above you'll see that the Swarmlord has two prominent horns on it's head, mandibles from it's cheeks and a split tail.  As I don't plan on gluing the extra talons to the base, I will use them to make it's mandibles.  The second prominent horn will be made from a scything talon or something.  The tail will be more challenging.  Apocabitznow.com had a tail in stock, and it's on it's way to me right now (right, Tobin? lol).  I will be carefully filing, pinning and greenstuffing it in place.  I don't know what's gonna be more harrowing - drilling holes in it's face for the mandibles or doing the tail.  Until next time!

Tyranid Prime part 2

Wow, that was frustrating...

I had some different fun with this chap and found that it wasn't exactly the walk in the park that I envisioned it to be. It took some practise to get the pinning down.  The biggest challenge I had was drilling the hole in the arm in the right place, so that it went on the right way.  The left arm actually has two holes drilled into it, which became one big hole.  That hole ended up being packed with greenstuff and the arm being glued in place.

But here he is, in all his primeyness.  A Prime primed in Army Painter's Skeleton Bone spray.  Actually, it has a base coat of Dupli-Colour auto primer to get some grip on the metal.  Didn't turn out too badly for a first attempt.  He's on the shelf now waiting for me to start the next part - blocking in the reds.

 

 

I'm not sure that I'm taking commissions yet but if you wanna talk, drop me a line! :)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

It's been a while! Progress. Tyranid Prime construction.

It's been a long time coming.  I put these nids away for a long time and largely ignored them while I got on with Real Life.  I've kinda moved over to their construction for the most part and have actually got a bunch base coated.

I have 60 genestealers. Apparently not a lot? And loads of gaunts and about 28 plastic Maccragge spore mines - I would like more plastic ones, they're easier to deal with.  I have a couple of Trygons to build and I recently acquired a Carnifex with which to make the Tervigon using Chapterhouse's conversion kit.  I sincerely hope that they're able to make more after that nasty IP business is done with.

Most of my stealers are 2nd ed Space Hulk, the blue plastic ones.  Got most of them from eBay and a bunch from Craigslist.  Some new edition ones too, so it's a good mix.  I don't think I've paid full retail for a single piece of this army - I've either got it free (yes, free!) or used or at a discount.  Way to stick it to the man!

What I've been doing mostly is getting the small base models to a base coat stage.  I've primed them all lightly with white then gone at them with Army Painter's bone coloured spray. Must say I'm impressed - I got a lot of coverage from one can.  My intention after that is to block them in using a colour scheme similar to Hive Fleet Kraken, but not quite then dip them in Minwax.  My good friend Doc has done similar things with his nids and has had great results - his army really does look top drawer. It's been an inspiration, but I really don't want to have a copy of his army.

One of the used models I acquired was a very sorry looking 3rd ed Hive Tyrant.  It was in pieces in a safeway bag with some VERY badly painted stuff that I got from the strangest fellow you'd expect to meet.  Another story. It all went in Simple Green and the Tyrant managed to fall apart which made me smile.  One arm only was pinned on.  Very strange.  I must say as an aside I like the patina that Simple Green gives the metal models. You could almost drybrush it metal, wash it black and clearcoat it if you were doing a bare metal army! It would work as an alternative for Grey Knights.  I digress.

Given the slender nature of this chap, and the shape of his head I decided that he would be my Tyranid Prime, Alpha Warrior, whatever you wish to call it.  I have a mass of nid bits, and also got a new Hive Tyrant to make into a Swarmlord.  So I donated the new HT's lashwhip and bonesword and some scything talons from the bits box.

This has been my first real attempt at putting a model together with pins.  The greatest success was getting the tail to mate with the body.  I filed the ball flat off the tail to avoid trying to mate it with the socket and pinned it, throwing a flat piece of greenstuff between and trimming that off as it squeezed out. I tried a similar technique with the "collar", head and legs and it did take some messing around to get them to go together.  I had to file the socket on the right leg in an effort to make the leg sit against the body properly.  I'm so glad casting quality has improved - the new Hive Tyrant was a joy to assemble, if a little top heavy.

I packed the bottom of a 2" base with greenstuff so I could pin this wobbly chap to it, and put some on top where his feet would go to even the ground out for him.  You'll see cling film between his feet and the base for now while the greenstuff dries.

The left arm is setting up right now.  Hopefully the rest of this model goes together fairly well, setting me up in good stead for putting the Swarmlord together! :)