Praetorians Done!

Finally!

I'm happy with how these turned out, considering I could spare a few hours a week to paint in the last few months. They're a solid tabletop quality, but certainly not my best work up close. Oh well, they still look stunning.

One thing that didn't turn out that well is the light that's supposed to shine from the orbs on their backs. Shining light on those rib things on their backs. That OSL work is really hard to see at tabletop distance. It's not very good OSL mind you, I did it very heavy handed in order to make it pop more; I don't think it worked out that well anyway.

The tails hold up great. The texture is still a bit grainy after priming, but it doesn't really show in dark gray. Had I sanded the tails first they'd be smooth.

Oh, and there's a lot of fine white dust on the models on these pics. I was sanding some white stuff yesterday while these were on my desk - oops! I didn't see it until after taking the pics. I will brush it off the models.

Anyway, on to the pics. Thanks for looking!

Triarch Praetorians Assembled!

They're finally done! This took a long time to get started with.

I took some in-progress pics but lost them when my phone died, so these will have to do. Hopefully you can see the entire conversion. Here's what I did:

• Modeled and 3D printed snake tails to replace legs
• Cut all butt-balls off (the three spheres they normally have hanging below their back)
• Removed the central spine column on the back. It will expose the sphere that is sealed in their back, and I plan to paint some nice OSL there, with the sphere casting light on the ribs around it.

Shoulderpads seem a bit spotty because they've been covered in liquid green stuff and sanded. The kit is really bad when it comes to seams on the shoulderpads between where the back and the front meet, so that took a lot of work. It will look great when painted.

Attaching the tails wasn't easy. This 3D printed plastic, whatever material is it, does not react to plastic cement. So I used green stuff to fill up the torso cavity, attached the tail into the green blob (there's a small notch at the end of each tail), and used superglue. It seems to be holding quite well.

I think I'll basecoat these and start painting immediately. I usually undercoat larger batches but I'm really looking forward to this.

Onto the pics, and thanks for looking!

Praetorian Tails 3D Printed!

The package arrived! They look great.

The sprue is very thin and bends easily. That's ok, it's only there to keep the parts in one piece. The tails themselves are firm. I can apply some flex to the tip of the tail by applying pressure to it, I have no doubt that these are going to hold the torso and other bits in place. There are no blemishes that I can see, and the surface is pretty smooth. I think I'll basecoat these a bit thicker and paint them as they are, with no prior sanding.

I think I nailed the size. Especially considering I'm going to remove those balls hanging from Praetorian backs.

You can read here about why and how I designed these.

And if you like what you see, I also made them available to buy here.

Here are the pics, and thanks for looking!

Triarch Praetorian Snake Tails in 3D

Pretty much since I started collecting Necrons, I had the idea of making Triarch Praetorians into snake men instead of people with glowy butt-balls.

Glowy Butt Balls? Really GW?

As usual, people had this idea before I did. There's another person who did this, and please take a look. It's easily one of the best Necron armies ever made.

That is definitely the direction I wanted to go in. I looked into different ways to make this work, including buying PVC pipes of different diameters to bead around a brass rod, using tape to build up a taper, nothing came close to the texture I wanted. I wanted to create snake tails that resemble the texture and feel of Wraith tails:

So I started learning how to model things in Blender, to eventually have them 3D printed!

Here's what I made. This is a fully straight tail, about 6cm long with a ~1cm blade at the tip, tapering from 5mm down to 2mm.

And here is the armature I can use to bend the model above. Blender even has an engine that will make the entire tail bend naturally based on these 4 control points you see on the side.

And here is one of the tails, put on a 32mm base for reference. I was afraid that the tails are going to be too long, but they ended up being a bit too short. Oh well, not a big deal I think.

And finally, here's all 10! I sent the order to Shapeways already. These tails will run me about $30 with shipping, printed in some high def material. Hopefully they turn out ok. It will be a few weeks before they're done and delivered.

EDIT: They are done! Here's how they turned out.