Rumplemasters Necron Army Creation - C'tan Shard Conversion (Part 1)

Hi people,

 

Hopefully some of you will find the following of interest, which is the first part of a series of posts where I document the creation of my Necron army.

 

Anyone who knows me understands my undeniable love of everything sci-fi and in particular 'robots & mechs'.  Fortunate for me Games Workshop has available entire ranges of spectacular sci-fi kits and offers an opportunity to create some truly original conversions. As I frequently attend tournament and campaign weekends at Warhammer World Nottingham I wanted all of the parts to be sourced from GW kits to prevent issues arising when playing on their magnificent tables.

 

With my love of everything robots / mecha, it seemed the logical decision to begin working upon a Necron & Tau army. From my experiences with designing and building my Serpent Guard I wanted to take this army a step further and try to customise / convert as much as possible. After all I want to try and secure that 'wow' factor when my army is deployed upon the battlefield and all going well is presented in the display cases during the events at Warhammer World.  

 

The benefit of converting a Necron army is this is a relatively new codex and the majority of the kits are plastic. Plus they're an alien race of robots so I'm not restricted to conventional 'human' design and I can let me imagination run wild!

 

To begin I looked through the GW range of Necron kits, trying to find a feature that would inspire my imagination. I found this in the 'Triarch Stalker' kit. The spidery and multi-jointed limbs and that huge scythe grabbed my attention instantly.  I popped to WHW and made my purchase of a Triarch Stalker kit along with a set of Necron Canoptek Wraiths. Once home I clip off all of the components and lay them in front of me in a jumbled mess. This is where the fun begins. With blu tac in hand, my beautiful wife at my side, stinky dog at my feet and of course the essential strong cup of tea I begin to pick pieces up and place them next to each other, trying to picture in my head what this could be? Soon I have something looking like a chest, perhaps this could be a spine or a neck? Maybe this could be a hip joint etc etc. After a couple hours of repeating this process I have the following:

 

It's very loosely held together but it's taking upon a life of its own now. I realise this is going to be a BIG model once I'm finished. It is categorised as a monstrous creatures so it is going to be mounted upon the larger 60mm base so it should be okay. The pose here oozes lumbering giant in my opinion, with the sweep of the torso, the elongated neck and the long limbs of the legs. It would be pointed out to me later on however that this design is reminiscent of the Geth constructs from the Mass Effect universe. Seeing as how I played this game for countless hours that is not a mystery to me.

Here I am assembling the foot design. The toes for the C'tan Shard are from the Wraith kit.

Discussing the design with come friends of mine, they pointed out that the head was a little off so I began exploring a different method of assembling a face. The above is the design I settled upon.

 



Here I have assembled the torso, legs and head. I added in the curved spine to the rear to bulk out the body as it was looking at little too slim.

 

The legs were also looking a little too slender so I added some bladed tips to the lower joints which detracts attention from this.

Here I have begun constructing one of the hands. I wanted the shard to originally only have three fingers but when I installed them upon the hand it looked very weird. I feel this is a much better design.

I still wanted to integrate that massive scythe from he Triarch kit into the Shard conversion. I decided that he/it could be wielding it as a weapon, hence the above and below shots.

 

Here the arm is installed upon the weapon.

I'm installing the arm here. As someone pointed out on my Facebook page he seems to be doing a little dance!  This is not the look I wanted to portray.

Here I have installed the weapon arm. I love the look from this angle.

I began thinking about how to mount this conversion. I wanted to continue the theme from my Lychguard conversions and constructed this whilst on a break at my parents.

Nearly finished here, a little it of filling and sanding to go.

The C'tan shard installed upon his base.

And finally an overview shot of the C'tan Shard upon its base. I still need to fill some gaps and clean up mold lines etc but I'm really happy with the model so far.

More to come,

Rumplemaster

Blood Angel Furioso Dreadnought Conversion (Part 1)

Hi peoples,

Lots of interesting projects and exciting changes coming along in the background over here at Rumplemaster headquarters.  Hopefully I'll shine some light on this later in the year?  ;O)

For today I thought I'd share some of the WIP shots for those who are interested in one or two projects that I have recently been working upon?

For some time I've had an idea to create a Blood Angel army that has fully succumb to the 'Black Rage'. I want the models to have varying levels of Vampiric attributes which will have taken effect very slowly. Seing as how Space Marines live for thousands of years only the oldest and most venerable units / characters will have extreme physical changes. This leads me on to the Furioso Dreadnought armed with the deadly 'Blood Talons'. I envisioned a creature of pure rage entombed within the impenetrable body of the dreadnought, leading the charge into battle via drop pod assault.

This is the first fitting of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Vampire Count Ghoul King from the Terrorgeist kit into the sarcophagus of the Furioso Dreadnought. I split the Dreadnought kit down the middle and removed the lower portion of the sarcophagus to be replaced at a later time.

I chopped the legs into sections to make posability a little easier. The current plastic kit does not make dynamic posing as simple as it should perhaps.

Fitting the shin guard.

Installing the torso to the leg assembly. I wanted the pose of the dreadnought to reflect his rage being projected towards the unfortunate foe that is before him.

With the claws splayed open I feel it is the finishing detail that empathises how much this guy is going to enjoy ripping his foe apart! If only Blood Angels could field the Lucius pattern drop pods!

Here I am beginning to develop the base for the Furioso. Typically I never have a design in my head, I just look at the model it is to mount and begin letting my imagination go wild. I decided that I wanted to base this army upon a merging of two themes that I have used before, industrial and volcanic. Hopefully this will allow for some nice OSL to be applied in the painting process.

With a strong frame installed I begin adding some cork sheeting.

Here I am adding a section of pipework from the 'Hirst Arts' molds and a length of styrene tubing.

The finished volcanic rock formation and pipework.

Here I am applying a coating of 'Winsor and Newton' Black Lava Texture Gel'.

The effect once dried.

And from a different perspective.

 

The finished model installed upon his base.

Here is a view of the Furioso without his torso installed. I left the two halves separate on purpose to make it easier to paint. I have added a bunch of conduits using the 'Green Stuff Industries' tentacle maker.

I absolutely love this conversion. It looks so different to the standard Furioso and it creates the basis for a theme to run through the entire army. Now the only thing left to do is to paint paint paint. Sadly my compressor died so it looks like it's going to be good old fashioned brush work for this chap.

If you would like to see a 360 degree video of this model plus the other projects I'm working upon please view the following:

http://youtu.be/oRynGNPSmRQ

 

More to come,

Rumplemaster

Chaos Space Marine Serpent Guard Heldrake Conversion

Hi peoples,

I've had a few people ask for some WIP shots of the Heldrake I converted for my Serpent Guard so here we go:

I began developing the base to create a solid structure for the design.

I used an old kitchen roll tube to mount the Heldrake upon and installed stiffening ribs beneath it.

I used a section of styrene tube and wrapped around the lip at the top of the tube.

Next I established the circumference of the tube with a sheet of 0.25mm styrene which was an inch deep.

Once I had split the sheet into equal sections I made multiple copies, enough to cover the tube from top to bottom. I wanted to add rivets to the plates so created myself a jig as shown above.

I then marked out and drilled holes into one of the plates to use as a template.

I then drilled through this template into the jig.

I clamped the remaining plates into the jig and proceeded to drill through.

Here are the first batch of drilled plates ready for adhering to the tube.

I adhere the first plate into place.

And then continue adhering plates until I completely encase the tube.

Here I am caping the tube with a section of 0.5mm styrene sheet.

The beginnings of the Heldrake. I wanted to be able to remove the Heldrake easily from the pipe so I drilled holes in the tail and the leg.

I then add magnets to the pipe to correspond to the magnets in the Heldrake.

Both were held in place with greenstuff and superglue.

Here I am beginning to create the shoulder mounted Hades Autocannon. The barrels are lengths of styrene tubing, the mount is one of the legs from the Heldrake kit and the body is from the Forgefiend / Maulerfiend kit.

This is a blu tacked assembly of the autocannon. The jaw over the barrel is created using one half of the Heldrake head and half of a head from the Terrorgeist kit from Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

Here is the finished assembly. I have installed a small magnet in the mount.

This is the first fitting of the autocannon onto the Heldrake.

 

Here you can begin to feel how large a conversion this has become.

Next I began adding the pipework to the base. I use sections of styrene tube and cast joints from the Hirst Arts molds.

More structure is added and a representation of a concrete base.

Here I have used one of my Serpent Guard miniatures to gauge the scale of the conversion and walkway width.

And that was the conversion pretty much complete. I was attending the Vidar's Fate tournament in a couple of days after this shot was taken and I wanted to reveal this beast then so I went about laying down some paint.

Here are shots of the completed miniature:

 

 

And here is a link to a video of the Heldrake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1hCDy4-tFs

You can also find more of my work on my YouTube channel and Facebook page.

More to come,

Rumplemaster