To done...?

OK, so I just Purity Sealed 90% of my son's 'nids, which was on my To Do List. It's nearly enough to be ticked off in my book. The only things not varnished were the Gargoyles, the new Tyranid Prime, the Hive Tyrant and the Mycetic Spore. The can is nearly empty and as it's been sat for nearly a year I thought it was long overdue, but I was a bit concerned about 'frosting' which is why I'd left it. I can't say I got away with it. Some of the Mechrite Red on the bases got a bit 'chilly' but most of the other bits are on the Bonewhite so it doesn't show up so much

So a big tick for me... except now that they're protected I need to do the very last bit, gloss varnish all the claws and talons. So after giving myself a tick for completing a job I'm now going to add in a new one, typical! More ebay stuff coming up tomorrow!

Dark Angel odds and sods update

While I'm doing the AoBR tactical squad I'm also painting a couple of other figures. I'm deluding myself into thinking these are test pieces but as I'm doing them at the same time as a squad of 10 how am I supposed to implement what I learn from these on the on the full squad? We've got an original lead [pb] Rogue Trader Marine with his overly square bolter, tiny legs, cloven toed boots, Mad Max hair and an eye-patch. I used Milliput to creat a respirator mask [back in the day], it's not great but it's better than the sculpt on the face that was there. Sadly because of his tiny legs he looks a bit puny now despite something menacing about him, he looks 'bad-ass' but next to the AoBR figures he ends up a bit wimpy.

Advanced Space Crusade Scout. You know I've got loads of these, I don't think I'm ever going to have more than one squad and I've got a set of five that I've taken the Mohican off. Although it fits the Deathwing Native American motif I think it's a bit rubbish. Saying that having one to mix in may add a bit of spice to the otherwise dull pose of the Advanced Space Crusade Scout. Of course the lollipop stick bolt pistol cowling had to be done. It's now a bigger muzzle than your standard Marine issue bolter!

And here's one of the White Dwarf freebies, a flamer marine to go with the Missile Launcher Marine I also got free. Nothing much to say on this guy but as flamers have such a devestating effect on Termagants I'm happy I have him even if there's still no real pay-off during battle with this weapon yet. One day he may very well come into his own...

Dawn of War - Soulstorm

You may recall my recent obsession with Dawn of War. Dark Crusade has been filling my evenings and been both pleasurable and more recently a pain. What can I say I think the only race I enjoy fighting are Necrons because they move so slow you've plenty of time to build your force to bring the might of the Imperium down on them.

Anyway I've been keeping an eye out Dawn of War - Soulstorm and there have been a number of half decent offers but the other weekend I had to nip into my local town to drop off some bits at the charity shop. There's loads of charity shops where I live, they get special business rates, so I believe, so there are around a dozen but mostly I drop my stuff of at Barnardo's. Not sure why I choose that one, but I have a Gift Aid card filled out so it's better to know they're getting a few extra quid than going to another charity shop where I have to fill in the forms again. Whilst I was there I noticed a copy of Artemis Fowl that I thought to pick up for my son but when I turned back some bozo was hogging the book section so I decided to just get on with my shopping.

I nipped to a local hardware store to pick up a 1mm drill bit to drill out some bolter barrels. I'd got a 2mm one recently because I like the idea bolter shells are massive but one of my AoBR bolter barrels had split so I decided to invest in a smaller bit. What surprised me is that you don't really need a pin vice to do this sort of work in plastic. In fact I'd say it would be far clumsier to do so with one.

Next stop was to the local art shop. I wanted to pick up some finer brushes for line highlights but on the way I passed Age UK a charity shop I'd be hard pressed to ever say I've entered but as I'd been blocked by one guy already I thought I'd just have a look what they had to offer. So it was that me and the littlest nipper perused the shelves and typically there was also a collection of Playstation 2 and PC games and what's this Warhammer 40,000 game? Well it couldn't possibly be Soulstorm the sole remaining title I need to complete the set... surprise, surprise indeed it is! And what extortionate price might it be? £2.50 you say, well it is for charity. So I did my bit for the old folks maybe they get a blanket, or Horlicks or some't and I've got my game.

Short story long, but on a side note I also dropped the Tyranid Prime and his head snapped off! Hopefully my patch job should save him but I may end up having to pin it with a heat weld, time will tell.

The art of 40k - Gary Harrod

As a child obsessed with Games Workshop there was certainly one aspect that fired the imagination above others and that was the imagery. I'm a visual person, I'm reasonably adept when it comes to all those things 'arty'. I was one of those kids at school who 'can draw' and have since gone on to be creative in my working life, or would do if the Powers That Be would let me, but that's verging on politics.

I have a very strong sense of aesthetic and certain artists in the GW fold became my Favourites. I wasn't a big fan of comics at the time because the cheap colour half-tone patterns of that age never appealed to me and I never really got into 2000AD. However, the imagery in White Dwarf and the Rulebooks was more than enough to sate my visual augmetics. In particular Adeptus Titanicus conjured up images of a scale I don't think have been witnessed since. It managed to capture all the gritty weirdness that John Blanche could throw at the 40k-verse but also the smooth detail of Kevin Walker all ticked off by Aly Morrison's tiny little battelscapes that had so much detail - from the smallest Guardsman to the tallest titan, awesome.

So I'm going to share some of my favourite artists and some of my favourite images along the way, I hope you don't mind, it's all grist for the mill and inspirational too. First up, my all time favourite, Gary Harrod. Trying to find any more than the two images present is nigh on impossible. I'm pretty sure I have an image somewhere of Horus/another Chaos Marine/maybe even some marine from the Blood Angels/Drinkers chapter raising a chalice from a font made of skulls that may have been his work but these two will have to suffice. How I grew to love this guys work above all others based on so little printed output is beyond me but his name was always on the tip of my tongue if someone would have asked me who my number one was [nobody did].

I always envisaged this picture as Horus himself, well it was on the AT page titled Horus Heresy so it had to be, right? Anyway I don't need anymore evidence of the fact than that his eyes are glowing so he's definitely a bad'un. I love the levels of contrast, the stark highlights versus the deepest shadows, awesome.

One of the really cool things about Adeptus Titanics was that the original prototype models for the Warlord Titans were used both in the phtographs and the artwork. there was something really cool about the chunkiness of the amour, weapons and heads. Something the plastic end-result never quite captured. I still prefer them to the new 'boxy' style of Warlord Titan but it was those original ones that fired the imagination. A few years ago I came across a website where the owner had a number of these beasts but I can't find the link so they got out into the wild.

The picture itself does very little and yet so much. I can't quite explain why I like it above all else, the style of the head the overabundance of missile firepower, it just speaks to me on a primal level.

Meanwhile, from my googling it turns out Mr Harrod went on to work for a number of computer games magazines and companies and now runs an independent design studio for print and digital media. So if he needs an occassional long-distance weekend freelance designer, I have capacity ;) Check out his website though.

Anyway I'll have a look for some of my other favourites and once they're wound up maybe look at some of my bestest pictures too, thanks for the indulgence.

Tactical squad update

I may be about to commit an unforgivable faux pas or not. Have I shown these already? For the life of me I can't tell but I can't seem to find them in my searches and I have another update to follow so thought I'd better just guarantee they were out there to prove I have made some advances. So the Tac squad had a basecoat of Orkhide Shade. I can't quite recall if this was at that point or after I'd done a Dark Angel Green drybrush. Now I say drybrush but the way I put it on it was more like a 'drybuff'! Everywhere it went seemed to get 'polished' so I haven't ended up with the usual dusty look most drybrushing results in.

Following on from this, though I have no pictures, I did a Badab Black wash and it removed any shiny quality and really started to generate that 'dark' in the Dark Angels. Not that I'll probably ever use this Space marine Captain but he's going to get painted up in the process.

The big deal, once I've resolved the DAGreen will be all the other bits . Had wanted a white edge round the the shoulder pads, leading up to the Tac Squad Arrow, but that isn't 'Chapter Approved' and may well end up being less dark than I wish. I'm thinking of going aged gold on the chest Aquila, sommething that can be toned down. I'm looking for whatever aged metals I can get, no shiny polished metal for these guys.

I also have to decide on which company. However as I have some of the Information from Imperial Armour 2 which details the Siege of Vraks I can choose from the 1st and 2nd [obviously] but also the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th companies. However, they do feature combat squad Boreas, which is 10 men so why not appropriate these guys and my Deathwing can also be Squad Arbalan, so I kind of know who each of these Marines is. Of course one of the real reasons for doing this is the Vraks Devastation force also included 12 Tarantual Sentry guns, so it's always a reason for keeping them included in my army.

Another shot of the Captain, subtly different but still worthy of showing nontheless.

Space Marine [the computer game] musical score

I may have mentioned in the past my favourite band - Pitchshifter you may or may not have heard of them but I've been a fan since the early 90's and have grown to love their industrial breakbeat electronica, so much so both my kids have middle names of Clayden after the two brothers who formed the band. No need to call social services the wife was fine with it too. Anyway back in 2002 a friend of the band, Sam Hayles took over designing their album covers [a job I'd love to have but he does it better ;) ] his first one Psi
is here:

But he also did their best album a live CD and remix compilation called Bootlegged Distorted Remixed and Uploaded

You can find more of his work, including the awesome playing card designs and other band album covers on his website www.doseprod.com Anyway, what's this got to do with the price of Termagants I hear you ask. Well I've been friends with him on Facebook for a while and my interest was piqued when I saw this status update:

Finishing editing up a video to be put on Youtube with several images of upcoming game Space Marine with musical score by Sonic Mayhem ! Awesome music.

And so I give you the 14 min compilation of the musical score:

I also found out that ex Pitchshifter guitarist and all round good-guy Matt Grundy also designed some tie-in components for the game. I guess I'm the only designer out there not asked to contribute :(

More weekend progress - 'nids part 24 - DiY Mycetic Spore pt2.

It's been quite a while since I made any effort on my son's Mycetic Spore. I've still got two Plasma Hatchers which I think are awesome and all those haters off them need to get a grip. A few quid for a perfectly acceptable model of the correct scale for a unit type not currently made by GW. Seriously, everyone should be using them. But I'd already started with my idea below and I made a bit of progress over the weekend on the base.

The base was just a piece of hardboard cut to the same shape as the Trygon base. I used layers of the black styrene foam used in Pizza trays [FYI: that stuff is cool for carving and doesn't melt as much under spraying]. I carved it to the desired shape as per my sketch. I then got some DAS air drying clay and sculpted the crater. It struggles to 'stick' to the underlying structure [which I'd read about on http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/] but a bit of pressure and some water to smooth everything over helps. I used a tiny pine cone to roll some texture into the clay, but will probably add sand to it as well. I sculpted some gouges with a coffee stirrer. It could be better but as it's another job that's been long in procrastination the limited progress is greater than the actual sum of it's parts.

Here's a reminder the pot-pourri 'thing' I'm using. I've cut some bits of card to use as the Chitinous parts. I may not go the tiny plates route and go with four or five large plates. Card base with either DAS clay or Milliput to sculpt the correct shape - that's the next sticking point. The base needs a hole drilled into it and the Spore will be screwed onto it to stay solid.