support your local blogger - Blue Warp Studios

He's only gone and done it! My mate Liam has started a blog at http://bluewarpstudios.blogspot.co.uk/ I cannot recommend it enough, afterall I've been showcasing his insane talent and machine-like productivity for years. Lets face he scratchbuilt a Warlord Titan:

He scratchbuilt a beautiful Warhound Titan too:

He kitbashes all sorts of awesome models

And his painting is award winning, scooping loads of the certificates at Throne of Skulls

And he's insane enough to make his own life-sized Chaos Space Marine helmet too! And he shows how to make it in his blog!

Seriously, is that not evidence enough to follow his blog? Well once again it's a low rent blog, updates every couple of weeks or so and hopefully with more readers he may well dip into his massive collection and showcase all those other armies he has - Elves, Dark Eldar, Crimson Fists, Chaos Marines and many more.

Liam is a hobby genius so sign up now!

'nids part 114 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt9.

Not much to show in these pictures really, just my sand mix PVA'd in place.

I tried to put less PVA on the crests of the craters, doesn't make much sense that dust and sand would still be perched on the bits that have ruptured upwards.

Another use for that toothbrush - scrubbing the extra sand off the bases. Using 'sharp sand' doesn't half wreck brushes!

20 hours and 15 minutes to date, with the sand taking 25 minutes and we're on 20 hours 40 minutes.

Onto the 'female' towers. I hot glued lava rocks in place.

Then once done I applied PVA and tissue paper to make the membranous sack that the fleshy growths are bound by.

Then a selection of beads were PVA'd in place.

Anywhere that the holes were visible for the beads had extra drops of PVA added to clean them up. Next up some PVA'd string for tendril vines and we're done.

Another 40 minutes doing the flesh sacs and we're on 21 hours and 20 minutes time on the project

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. | part 7. | part 8. |

'nids part 113 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt8.

Bother! You sit down to write a blog post and don't have the paper with the time breakdown. Nevermind I'll push on and update the stats later tonight. Anyway, this was a nights work, mainly fleshy bits. Now all the 3 tier towers are done, only the 4 and 5 tier to go.

And the first base is done. Once again I went for DAS. Milliput may well have been more durable on the base. I edged my Bastion crater with Milliput for protection but the plastic crater was mounted on a card base. These bases are plywood so underneath the clay they'll be plenty durable. Once again the adhesive issue will have to be tackle but so far a bit of water on the clay makes the stick enough. Whether they'll remain fused to the wood base forever is experiment I'm running. Once I cut cracks in them I textured the surface a bit with an old toothbrush.

15 hours 21 minutes is the current project time to date. This took another hour and 30 mins so we're 16 hours 51 minutes into the project.

And the return of the two-fers, another nights work. First up I based the remaining 3 tier craters. I used a bit more clay this time and was happier with the results.

Being a bit more exuberant with the cracks gave it a more 'ruptures' feel. I'm not 100% convinced they're spot on but I can live with it.

4 and 5 tier towers have their fleshy bits done too.

I think they may have been done over a couple of nights but I did do the bases at the same time which did lead to me smooshing the fleshy bits and having to re-sculpt some of the texture.

Craters will have some lava balls for flesh sacs. Only three will be like this, for a bit of variety, these will be 'female' towers and the others will be male, with the towers 'polinating' each other

So, nearly done now. I have to sand the bases too, it adds durability and will tie the texture into my existing basing style

 16 hours 51 minutes into the project. All the work on these remaining towers was spread over three nights:

1. half 5 tier and 3 bases = 1hr 24mins
2. half 5 tier and half 4 tier = 50mins
3. half 4 tier and 2 bases = 1hr 10mins

This means I have 3 hours and 24 minutes to add on making 20 hours and 15 minutes to date!

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. | part 7. |

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah a new type of STC is found - Print and Play terrain cont.

Technically this should be a Free Radical Collective post, as I'm not going to make this but it's a simple block so there's not much that can go wrong [is there?!]. What you have above is an isometric render of the 3 storey tower block. There are two floors in the .pdf but feel free to reprint them if you want more floors.

You can choose to keep the stained glass windows or cut them out. Equally you can go at it with a craft knife or a Dremel multi-tool and make a ruin. You can even print an extra set onto card and add some of the decorative details onto the paper so it has a little more depth, your choice.

Essentially all you really need to do is print these, stick them to foamboard and cut out. I might suggest using A4 sticky labels for the printing, then either bevel the edges to 45 degrees or remove an interior 5mm strip so the boards can slot into each corner - simple!

To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 44MB in size [I make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg but what the hey?!]:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbQjF5ZEI1T0ZjMlk/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-JNwR7EHbnXAW_18d03Fr6w

There will be a wide version coming up next month and then I'll look at the marble version - great if you can put it on black card, I may make the tall one fore this ;)

Cel shade robotech awesomeness!

I saw this insanely great Cel Shade Robotech model the other day. I can really see Tau benefiting from this kind of treatment, but even Space Marines you could manage it. The great thing is the process is relatively simple. I mean the highlights are so simple, no blending or shading needed just making sure you choose the right colours, manage to keep your edges neat and your colours nice and flat. The hardest part is probably doing the black edges but even then with the varied line weight it's probably easier than line highlighting

I recall someone on BoLS once talking about using a painterly style to do their army, being bold enough to go beyond the accepted conventions of how to paint figures, using the Wii game Madworld as an example of how one could paint an army in a specific style or like Sin City, pause for thought at least

Anyway, for more pics point your cogitators here:

http://www.fg-site.net/archives/3021338 and here:
http://kotaku.com/80s-cartoon-classic-comes-to-life-as-incredible-model-1466494917

'nids part 112 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt7.

Here you can see how I capped the spikes, not quite the 'talons' I'd intended I really struggle with fine detail and I'm not sure DAS works that well fine. I'm not too upset though, the sculpting looks cool, if a little too like the roof of my bastion than the bone white bits they'll be painted as, still nevermind. All these spikes took a further 1 hour 10 minutes, taking us to 13 hours 55 minutes 

The next night I went all out on the flesh fibre bundles on two towers, this took a further hour and 26 minutes. 

Finding ways to overlap the fibres makes them slightly more interesting and I am finding myself trying to 'fill in' all the tower when I still want areas of the bonewhite structure to be visible. I'll try to take that into account on the other towers, four more to do, including the 4 and 5 tier towers, which is like another 5 three tier towers - roughly 3 hours 35 to go and then the bases...

15 hours 21 minutes is the current project time to date. I'm not sure whether you all think that's a lot of time but I'm still not doing more than 90 minutes in a sitting so unless it gets annoying it doesn't bother me. 

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. |

ebay sales I shouldn't regret, but kind of feel like I do

I'd been watching a couple of 'buy it now' auctions from the same seller for a few days on ebay. What really struck me was the Space Hulk Genestealers on offer. Sure they weren't the coolest choices out of those that came with the box but even standard stealers usually cost more than £5.50 for six! You can't even pick up five Termagants for less than £6 at GW so this, I felt, was a bargain.

So, when it came to pay day and they were still there I decided to snap them up. Indeed the bargain was even better as they're on 40mm bases to account for the Space Hulk metalwork they're mounted on. A set of five 40mm bases is £3, so I got £3.60 worth of bases. All I had to do was split them off the base, trim the mount down a bit and re-base them on 25mm bases. One stealer did snap at the ankle so I might just have him as a Ymgarl and cut him further down and have him emerging from dormancy. I'll also need to mix them up with more bits too, but still a bargain.

However, it didn't end there, as they also had a Warrior and 4 Termagants for £3.99. Again, taking into account five gaunts are £6 another bargain. he's even got the Deathspitter and both have their Rippers intact so I should be able to make another base with the couple I have knocking around. The other bonus, I have five spare 40mm bases to mount him on! I'm sure at this point you're wandering why I need more Tyranids when I said I wasn't going to buy any. Well with a new Codex coming out who knows what I might need but additionally I have started something I will refer to as Project X. It's a small expansion of my Tyranid force for a very specific reason. The current amount of figures I have was not going to be sufficient so if I can pick some up cheap I'll do it. Project X will feature here and there over the next 12 months, I just need to stock up on bits in case they're needed.

But I can't go Tyranid without some bits for my Dark Angels and £2.49 got me these Scout bitz. That's 5 scopes on those bolt pistols that I can graft onto my rather plain Dark Vengeance and Battle for Macragge Tactical Marines. There's also two Bolter straps, plenty of grenades and other equipment and not to mention a Heavy Bolter I can add to my Land Speeder that is missing one.

Add on the £4 postage and £15 is quite a good price in my book, except I then went and missed out on two more Macragge sets for £15 and £16, one was missing the scenery but did have a box of Tyranid Warriors and the other had a bunch of Eldar jetbikes. So you see it was a bargain but I kind of regret the other missed bargains too... Still we'll work with what we've got.