Wip Diseased Flagellants

I don't tend to show too many WiP shots on here, (Instagram is my vehicle for that) but I've particularly enjoyed the creation of these first few Diseased Flagellants for my Lost and the Damned Nurgle Army. In advance of creating these, I arranged all my bits and selected those that would best fit in with the theme of diseased flagellants - so vaguely humanoid, bloated, undead, spiked balls and flails etc bits were set aside. And then I started to build..

Here's all 7 with their leader.

Some Plaguebearer, Nurgle, Flagellant and Bretonnian bits here

Poxwalker torso, Empire head and Mantic ghoul legs

LotR Goblin body and a plague cart head (probably my favourite - it really has that pathetic aesthetic that I like)

Flagellant torso and bits with a beastman head

Cawdor (?) torso, flagellant head and poxwalker leg

Mostly flagellant bits with an old Chaos Knight banner. Not sure where the head is from for this one, but I like the sadistically stitched facial features.

After the initial build and greenstuffing was complete I then tried something a little different - applying texture straight to the conversion prior to painting. To do this I used some Agrellan Earth for the cracked texture (usually on skin), some Typhus Corrosion and Astrogranite for the texture where the rust will go and some pva and bits of static grass for, well, grass and hair and matted matter on weapons. We shall see how they look when painted... I also used this opportunity to go dark with my photos, so you will see a first time in using a black back drop and decreasing the brightness and saturation when editing the photos. makes them a little more grimdark. This will be a unit of 49 (so Nurgle going 7x7) but will include a war altar/shrine in the middle. I'm introducing a new model a day for advent on Instagram, if you're interested in seeing more there (makingasmallerworld) or wait here until I've got all the conversions made up for an update. All the best!

A Halloween Night Horror

I've had this mini in my collection for a very long time and decided, on the eve of Halloween to paint it up (there's also a competition on the Night Horror and Gothic Horror Facebook page which helped motivate me). 

I've tried out a black background for my photographs for the first time too, for added spooky darkness.

This old Night Horror wraith came to me broken, the scythe was missing and so a suitable old, rusty replacement sword was located (I think this is from the Mantic skeleton sprue) and I placed the sword where the hands would be, trying to make it look like it was being held by the unseen, supernatural force of the wraith. 

The paint job was so easy. Primed black, zenithal through grey and a touch of white from above and then several washes of nuln oil to make the zenithal blend together. Then quote simply a few highlights of grey/blue on the robes and a final glaze of a black. Gloss varnish applied inside the jood. The rusty sword was boltgun metal washed with bestial brown and then part bestial brown and part ryza rust. Edge highlights with chainmail. Perhaps 30minutes all in including the base. 

Makes me want to gather all my other undead and see if there is a start of a quick army there....

21 Pestigor (220pts)

 This unit has taken me a little longer than expected to complete, even though half of the models were already painted. The other half needed to either have their conversions completed or, started from scratch, so it was quite the involved process. But it had reminded me of of how much fun it is is to make multiple, themed kitbashes, as I always prefer this to the painting stage. 

The theme here is clearly a Nurgle Pestigor unit, so I've rotted these models up by including elements of plaguebearer models and also through adding the usual green-stuffed bloated bellies, sores and postules from water filter beads. Adding lots of additional horns was important too. But I also wanted to explore the part beast part man aspect more deeply and not just go down the goatman route that GW has developed. Therefore I've really tried to use a wide range of bestial parts from my bitzbox to make each of these chaotic creatures; from horse heads, to spiders legs, to cow torsos there's quite an eclectic mix. I've generally used the regular beastman torso to have some unity to the conversions and also because I had a load of them to use. Here's the completed unit:

And now you'll have to excuse my exhaustive photos, as (for me) it's quite nice to see each of my creations individually:

This was one of the first conversions for the project and is more man than beast. I like the idea that some have evolved less fully from man to beast, or the other way round in that the beast has only started showing more human physiognomy. This one has a zombie torso and flagellant head and of course some extra horns and a belly.

A Lizardman is a beast man. A cold one head and tail merged with a plaguebearer body and a clawed hand. The legs are left over from the classic Palanquin rider

Flyman. One of the Nurgle sprues includes this fly head and it's been added to an old metal savage orc torso. Nice big sword. I considered adding wings to enhance the fly aspect.

More of a traditional GW beastman, here I wanted to play with a more dynamic pose. The plaguebearer body, zombie arm and extra horns help create a mutated character.

Ratman. of course a Skaven head was added to the plaguebearer torso and a foot to the beastman legs. He's a musician (of sorts)

Again a traditional beastman where I was focusing on pose and creating that Nurgle appearance through mixing familiar kits.

More man than beast, I thought he might have the skill to use a blunderbuss. His hat hints at a former life as a soldier before mutation changed his facial features and his gut.

Here I wanted to experiment with a different type of head, I think its a Mantic ghouls(?) and a different pose with the raised spear. A grisly collection of heads and a Nurgling friend are present.

I've had this troll torso in my box for a while and quite liked the idea of using it as the basis for an enlarged beastman to add some height and bulk. To contrast with that a small warrior's head was simply added and of course an additional horn.

Birdman. The usual combo of legs and torso, but the head I believe os from an old Bretonnian helmet. In retrospect I'm not so keen on the shield, I prefer the simplicity of a wooden shield for these creatures.

The banner bearer. The creature is mostly cow from the Giant sprue, with a zombie torso and a warriors head. The banner design is one that I freehanded from a Fighting Fantasy book.

This one I actually rolled up on the Lost and the Damned attributes table for some competition some years ago. Extra arm, sorcerer and flaming skull head were three such attributes and here's my response to that. I do love the scythe and hour glass combo.

The leader. Simply because the conversion gives such an imposing presence. Beastman, zombie, deamonette and chaos warrior bits were used and quite a bit of greenstuff to bulk him up. I like horns and scythes it would seem.

The next few are the more recent conversions that I made from scratch to complete the unit:

A metal horror's legs, beastman torso and some Mantic ghoul pieces make this little fella.

Mostly beastman bits, but I wanted him to be a skull collector, you can see his collection around his waist.

Orc, Gnoblar and Kroot bits fused together makes a pretty unique character. Extra hand weapon always seem to equate to extra cool.

I think the base of this model is from the Foresaken sprue and I've just added a plaguebearer arm and some horns. This one is more spawn like but I do like the contortion of change that he seems to be showing.

Horse man. Why not use a horse head, especially when I seem to have more than I need. I've tried to blend it into the model by green-stuffing decaying skin over part of it's face and into the torso. The arm is a metal orcs.

A personal favourite - cowman. Using the head pointing up from the banner bearers body and then creating a double handed weapon stance I can almost hear the braying.

An old minotaur head with a tentacle and extra horns, chaos does let you experiment with different scale when kitbashing, so the enlarged head is an option.

The kroot head makes an appearance as does a spider leg for an arm. This one has quite the dynamic pose.

So the army continues to grow, here's a current group shot. If I add the 220pts of this unit to the army, we're now looking at 4625 points. 

Some chariots next (although there will be a short Orctober interlude)

Kit-bashing Beastmen

I don't often show many Wips, so I thought I'd change that as of now as a break from painting all 21 Beastmen for my Nurgle army. These are the last 6 for the unit (the others are all painted) and are all kit-bashed / bitz boxed from my stash. One of my favourite aspects of the hobby is a good rummage for different parts and working out ways of combining them into a unique mini. Here's my most recent endeavours:

There's a bit of greenstuffing to fill the gaps and add some texture and you might notice some small poxes which are super glued balls from a water filter (also useful for sci-fi rivets). 

Most of these are plastic based parts which are of course the easiest to join together with a bit of poly cement but the challenge of pinning and joining metal to metal or plastic is also a satisfying moment. 

I think my favourite one is the first, with his little metal legs, multiple toes and shrunken head, but I've tried to add a bit of detail and interest to each. Let me know your thoughts, I'm intrigued to know your favourites and why. 

Cheers! 

A Great Unclean One (based on the LatD illustration)

There's an Oldhammer project happening at the moment which is to create something from one of Tony Hough's amazing illustrations. Now a lot of his work is 40K based and therefore not for me, but having scanned the wonderful images in the Lost and the Damned, I came across one of his illustrations of a Great Unclean One, on page 12. It's certainly an illustration which I'd seen before but it's not until I have a ulterior purpose that I actually stopped and studied it properly, even more the case when I'm about to create a sculpted version of it. 

Now I'm not usually one to post wip photos, but I'm particularly happy with this as it's taken a fair amount of work, thought and observation. 

Part of the thought process for this type of project, is about what materials, parts, bits, models etc to use. I already owned an incomplete classic, 3rd edition Citadel GUO and I had the head of one of the more recent ones (from some old project many years ago). Now it's a head I don't usually like but I could see a resemblance to Tony Hough's drawing, both in terms of the wide shape of the head, the wide, toothy grin and the shape of the horns. Hopefully you can see that here:

To complete the scene I needed a couple of naked admirers and found these courtesy of Hasslefree miniatures. Both have had head swaps, the female heads being snipped away and a skull and a Tyrannid(?) head replacing them.

With the miniatures all gathered it was time to do some cutting and sculpting. The classic GUO legs section was far too narrow for what I had in mind, so I sawed through it, off centre in an area lacking in details, in order to space and then bulk out the gap between. I then wanted to change the pose of his left arm so made a snip at the wrist, so as to reposition it. I didn’t own a right arm and looked briefly on eBay but wasn’t willing to pay £15 for one, so decided to fully sculpt that appendage. As always Nurgle sculpting, thankfully, is quite forgiving!

The next stage was to start to put it all together, to see whether I could actually realise my intentions and keep it as close as possible to the illustration. This involved a fair amount of careful drilling and pinning to join respective parts together and to make a solid base for all the sculpting to follow. Here you can see that I chopped off the original horns and inverted them so that their shape was more reminiscent of Hough’s illustration and removed his goofy bottom jaw so the head sat more comfortably on the torso without any sign of a neck. You can also see the armature for the right hand here. I had the torso of the GUO ready to go without any changes (yet). The left leg had to be substantially repositioned, so an admirer could fit on his thigh, this created quite the gap and quite the forward step, but I figured I could reduce the space by extending the belly outwards to fill the gap.

Thus began the process of sculpting. I started off with milliput to bulk out the model and fill all the gaps (sorry no photo here, I was in a sculpting frenzy and didn’t want to stop the flow) and then green stuff for the details and texture. You can see that I’ve added a plastic tongue (from the Giant set?) and lots of postules made from dried seeds, pushed straight into the wet green stuff. At this stage I had to make a crucial decision - do I sculpt over the lovely mouth belly to maintain the Hough homage or do I keep it exposed for nostalgia sake? Obviously the former won out. Here you can also see me experimenting with the GreenstuffWorld green stuff roller to create some of the ribbed intestines protruding from his open belly.

There are lots of little details in the illustration that I wanted to include in the sculpt, so I will share those here too, as these are intrinsic to trying to capture Hough’s style of work. When an earlier wip photo was shared on the Oldhammer Facebook page, it highlighted that the illustration seems to be quite renowned for the uzi toting Nurgling that hovers in the top left corner of the picture. So I found an old spore (?) model and sculpted over it to create the Nurgling. The top hat is made from a plastic tube off cut and a circular bit of plasticard for the brim. The uzi is the nozzle from a gun off the Gaslands sprue and a snip off a cable tie:

Here you can see, in more detail, the lounging admirer. A greenstuff tongue was added as if to lick the man breast and some hair and spikes adorn her head. Her left leg also had to be snipped and repositioned at the knee to both fit on and to represent the illustration. You can also see a tendril wrapping itself around her other knee and the completed belly, sans mouth.

A close up of the head shows some tiny rolled maggots infesting his horns as well as a four legged, hairy skull creature on top. I was really pleased with the sculpting of the GUO’s head, I think I hid the goofy, quizzical look of the original sculpt and created a more sneering, malevolent look of the illustration. You can also see the sculpted bile coming from his mouth, this will be added to with some stringy UHU glue after painting. 

I had to think carefully about how to create all the webs and strands of organic goo that drape off the GUO. I had a eureka moment when the vacuum cleaner got clogged with a long, thin piece of string, so used it here, soaked in pva to make it solid. I also found some tiny roots from some moss that I had in a baggie and used them to dangle from his right hand. 

And from the back, not quite so much detail here, but you can see some beads squished into the milliput sculpting.

The last part was the base. Now this is me breaking my own rule (to a degree). I’ve never really appreciated display plinths, much preferring models to be properly based, but I was given this wooden one and decided to use it here. I’ve compromised by also basing the model on a round 60mm base and then magnetising both so that he can be separated from the plinth. It seems to be a sound solution...

Both bases required some added detail and interest, so I got to work with the greenstuff roller and made some more worms to scavenge around in the foreground and hit the bits box for a range of organic looking bits. In fact I delved to the very.p bottom of the box and pulled out some interesting shapes of off cuts and unwanted pieces, including bits of horn, a pouch, some sort of lip thing and bits of resin skull. On the left is part of a GW familiar, on the right a resin chap with gas mark that I was given at a meet up, sorry I can’t remember who. Obviously there is an old Nurgling at the forefront because it’s just too cool and a mistake of Tony Hough’s not to include one there!

So there we go, the model is made. I’ve just undercoated him today with a zenithal undercoat of grey and white and my intention is to monochrome him (adding a dark wash for shadows first) then with just some washes of very subtle colour, in an almost illustrative style. Hopefully my skills are up to the job, we shall see!