Mekkin' things happen

While working on other larger projects, I sometimes need 'something different', some fresh air. You know, I guess it's the same for everyone, a palette cleanser, anything that gives you the sense of completing things. Whatever.

Fortunately (fortunately?) I have tons and tons of standalone projects that can serve that purpose. My choice for today is this Ork Mekboy:

Do I look classic enough for you?

 It belongs to Knightmare Miniatures ranges, which keep on producing real beauties. This is the reference:

You can see the original has a huge mechanic claw. However I haven't been able to find it within the lead mountain. It will probably appear some day when less expected.

Anyway, I'm not such a huge fan of such a huge claw, so I think I would have replaced it even if I had found it! Delving in the bits box I found this:

I can't remember who gave it to me or what was the original mini

 I thought I could make it work.

Well, not this way!

Maybe like this!

It's but a plastic stick, a flamethrower nozzle and an axe blade. An Ork flamestick. Yup, I just made it up.

Painting wise I tried orange. It's been quite a long time since I last painted an Ork, specially these flak vests, and I thought it would be a touch of colour.

I liked it. Something different from the classic Clans

 Then I messed it up a little. I tried a yellow and red chequered pattern on the borders of the vest:

And it clearly didn't work

 So I had to go back to the most classic b/w checkers. Well, long story short, this is it:

Huh, I miss da claw

I should have painted the whole vest in checkers :D

Do you know the one of the Mekboy and the Commissar...?

BONUS!!

I also had this other mini rolling over the bench for some time, a commission for Shadespire Underworlds, as part of the Stonecast:

Huh, there's more foliage than stone here

 It's the special anniversary mini, Knight-Questor Larissa Shadowstalker (of course I had to look it up!), with a head swap to keep the masked statues theme of the band.

Man, I'm complaining the maintenance crew

Oh, I totally forgot how to play this game. Shame on me

This is it for now. I'm currently working on the minig town, so I expect to have some presentable progress anytime soon(-ish) and more stuff. Let's keep on working!

Set in stone

Second Shadespire post in a row. Just finished the Stonecast :P

You will see it's all pretty much the same as shown in the previous post, so I can save you the tedious details and aim for the mere pics.

First to come, the Farstriders. My pal and I had an issue about the eagle one of the guys is handling. We didn't fancy the idea of a stone eagle (yeah, it's magical, it can fly, it can whatever. But neither of us envisioned it). A mechanical bird (kind of Clash of the Titans) would have been out of place, and we didn't want a 'real' bird. So that left me just a single chioce:

Don't worry. That eagle will be eventually used somewhere. Now I need a new project for it

You can see I took the crest out and I only used the Stormcast upgrade bits. The most obvious change, however, is about the crossbow/bolt thrower/ugly thing they bear as a long ranged weapon.

It's damn awful

I really didn't know what to do about them. Replacing them with real-shaped crossbows would have meant repositioning the whole arm or more extensive conversions. And it would have left me with the crossbow rope conundrum. So I tried to do something with their strange gun.

Still ugly, but bearable

I cut and placed it horizontally and also cut out a little part from below. At least I can look at it and don't feel my eyes aching now.

Painting wise I did the same than the previous batch and added the same kind of ivy, so no surprises:

Lurking through the ruins:

But that's not all! I've also finished the Cursebreakers -Stonecast edition:

Only muscles of stone can wield that hammer

You may remember that other hammer too

That's a 40K Grey Knights hand

Some colour and texture later...

Another family pic:

This is all I've done, the three warbands as one:

The good thing is that the monochrome palette has allowed me to make such a quick brushwork. Given that, I'm satisfied with the results. I don't know what I will do next, but I guess it will be regular living creatures for a change!

Stonecast for Shadespire

Yeah, I know, Shadespire is so last year, now it's all Nightvault. Who cares. I don't think I'll be changing the label now. This blog is oldschool and I'll take the consequences. Shadespire it is.

Another commission for this game. The sigmarites of the core box!

It's like the third kit I convert. I'm starting to run out of ideas

However, some things can still be done

Spears, spears everywhere

Right. You may remember I used a WH40K Grey Knights halberd for my own band. The idea got stuck in my mind, and I thought that a band with halberds/spears would look nice. Come on, the pose of the first guy is asking for it!

My pal asked for something totally different than the previous stuff I had made before. He wanted living statues, in the fashion of D&D animated armours. There are some references of other people out there on the internet, but I chose not to look for them and make my own way. I asked my pal what kind of stone would he like to have and just looked for stone references. Seriously, my browser historial is now something worth seeing. Ahem.

Not a geologist, but it looks like stone to me

Oh, yeah, these rocks rock!

A bold boulder. Ba Dum Tss

Bases were an issue. I didn't want them to look exactly like the statues, to avoid confusion. They needed to be chromatically different, even if they were (necessarily) similar.

I made them slightly lighter and with some more colours embedded

The final steps involved some ivy. Not only it reenforced the old statue idea, but it also fit into the own bases theme. Autumn, decay, life struggling over death, among these strange rocks.

That idea is reflected in the colours. The stone itself, the leafs. I tried to show quietness and ease, but some strenght and menace at the same time.

I think we haven't been introduced yet

Are our houses made of flesh then? Hmm, that's quite a debate

You may have noticed the back banner on the boss belongs to another set of Sigmarites. That's because I'm also converting other kits in the same fashion for the same purpose, so I'm sharing all their bits at the same time! You can expect more statues coming soon!

Big boned Sigmarites

After the Shadespire Sigmarwhatever I finished a couple of weeks ago, I tried to find nice ideas for my own warband. I wasn't lucky.

First of all, I made some conversions with the weapons; I wanted them to look different and cool, and not to repeat what I had just done. But I didn't find what I was looking for. I was too short-sighted and only thinking in getting an Oldschool looking. So it was all about this kind of heads...

It may work, but I wasn't getting that 'ooohhh, this is it' vibe

Testing all my Empire heads

Then I saw it. Pure coincidence, but I found what I was looking for, although I hadn't known until then:

Ooohhh, this is it

Stormcast Eternal warriors are heroes from beyond time and space, reforged by Sigmar himself and brought to life again and again to fight the eternal war. But in the city of Shadespire mighty Nagash struggles with the very fabric of time. The whole fluff was too tempting. What if something has gone slightly wrong? What if these powerful warriors fight beyond expectations... but in the reforging process something went terribly wrong and they are encased in their forgotten armours, condemned to serve in this unsettling appearance? Say no more, I had a warband.

Leaving the heads and background apart, you can see the conversions I made. All the weapons come from the 40K Grey Knights sprues. They work fine on these models and give them a pretty distinctive looking. The sword and halberd were easy, but the two handed sword was kind of tricky, and I had to make some additional work on the wrists.

After many experiments (many! I could flood you with pics of failed ideas) I came to this:

Mr. Brightskull

I was quite tempted to use the large shield with some sculpted motif (as in the Knights of the White Wolf). But I really didn't want to repeat essentially the very same mini, so I used the other sword.

His twin

What's that?

This is my first attempt with the GreenStuffWorld's Chainmail Plate. I still have a lot to learn, but the possibilities are endless...

How do you know this was a male skull, eh? Are you assuming my gender?

So next step was taking the brushes. My most obvious reference about what I was intending to do was, of course, the amazing Corroded Plate Tutorial at Gardens of Hecate. All the work Ana does is out of scale in awesomeness; if you are not familiar with her blog, please go there. Right now, I mean.

I used the materials I had at hand; no pigments and no special stuff. I lacked the patience to go to the shop and wait for days; I wanted them painted now. My steps are really simple. So the results are obvioulsy way worse than Ana's. But I can live with that, of course.

The base layer is a mix of black, dark brown and silver (all Vallejo).

First wash, using leather brown.

Second wash, with a mix of dark brown and German camo green (Vallejo again). That gets you a true matt looking.

Third wash, generously apllying a mix of dark brown and orange. Make them look dirty. really dirty. BTW, note to self. If you are painting any heraldry whatsoever, do it before all these steps; that way you'll avoid to repeat the whole f@#%ing process. Ahem.

They don't look that impressive, do they? Well, after this, I used the base colour again on the armour and then applied a black wash between plates. That's it. The rest is just paying attention to skulls, clothes, etc., etc.

So in the end...

Mr. Rustyskull

I'd love to live in Castle Grayskull

That thing on the halberd? Well, I'm going to the supermarket, you know

What do you mean if the shield is mine?

Yup, the chainmail is mine too

The armour is not hollow, I was already big boned when alive

I'm not fat, my chest has just slipped a bit

I have to keep up my bones to wield such a sword

This is going to be our next black metal album cover

So this is it! Two Sigmar warbands. Now I must start to think about the Khorne guys, both my friend's and mine. That will be another day, I still have tons of other ongoing projects. No idea of what will be next...