Armor up

I've been working to try to improve my sculpting level at this scale. So far what you see is my 2nd or 3rd version of these modifications, with substantial improvements every time. Going back to my sculpting classes, which I wish I had the opportunity to have more of, I tried working with making rolls of different sizes as a fundamental part of my work and it really helped. The only thing that frustrates me a little is that this black stuff can have a hard time sticking to the miniature sometimes. Oh well, I'll have to get some green stuff later on.

  

Terminator Sergeant

Alright, I did this guy up today in about 2 to 3 hours. Basically the same treatment as before, except the legs were ok so I left them as is. The changes are a little more subtle, but in terms of body language that can have a huge effect. I also changed the torso armor a tiny bit since it complements my pose, see if you can tell :p

Who knew you could look this good!

Alright, here's my next entry, I hope y'all like it.

What you're looking at is made up of exclusively 1 Terminator model from the Black Reach box set. The only thing I added was some black stuff, crazy glue (works extremely well with black stuff because of the porosity), and 2 copper pins I made from wire. No other models were involved in the making of this one, no extra bitz, if anything it actually gave back some bitz.

Basically cut off the left leg, waist, and head. Cutting through the waist took a lot of pressure. For the head, first I cut below the chin, then scribed a bit with the knife, did the same on the inside where I saw stress marks, put more pressure at the neck, went all the way through the hood :s at least it made my job easier.

 Tried to paste the hood and chest parts together but it was very delicate and kept coming out of alignment. Finally said screw it and pushed some black stuff into the torso, put the chest in with partially attached hood and aligned it there. I molded some black stuff around the neck area to keep that stylish line, then put some more on the back of the head and pushed it in place, molded the excess and sculpted a ribbed duct on the neck area like what you find on the back of the knees.

So there it is, I think it looks a lot better, and here he is next to an unmodded one for comparison.

Choppin'

Alright, so I got to work on my black reach models. Wanna save the best for last so first up the dread-
I didn't like the limited options or the blandness of the power plant, so I chopped the bottom off (not so simple to do cleanly). If you have one of these and thought about doing this, you probably thought "Well, it would work but I'd have to do some other work such as..." and yeah, that's exactly what I did.

First up I removed the unsightly seam from the arm, just a couple passes with the micro weld- I cleaned it up after this pic with metal tools

As usual I drilled the multi melta barrels, but actually tried something different and did a little bit with the bigger  head and then did the rest with a smaller diameter.

Cleaned up the molded in plastic between the bars to give it a more dynamic look-

Here you can see where I added some "Black Stuff" and added metal pipes, also hard to see but drilled the ports up there.

And here's the clean up of the bottom half.

Basically I used the front part as a guide to cut the bottom off taking care not tu subtract anything because of the angles, then I used that front as more or less a place to cut the back part off, though I cut that a little higher so that it doesn't mess with some details in the molding. Gonna pin it later after it's painted and glued together (since it seems it'd be easier to paint before gluing on the bottom)

Alright and now my work with the Ork warboss. I actually modded some other boyz but I'll leave those for a later post-

Basically changed the head up, also used the putty to redo the neck, and made the claws a whole lot nastier. The putty wouldn't stay so I made a core out of some clamshell plastic I had, just cut it to a rough shape and put the putty around it, let it dry and then went to work at it with my files (diamond files make for some good scratched up effects, as if it were real metal that was worked) and hobby knife.

Furious!

Alright so my army is getting into more modern times now. Here's my next entry. As usual, nothing is painted yet since I haven't ordered any paints yet, but I will soon.

So in the first pics you can see my dreadnought's arm flamer. It was a simple matter of starting to drill, trimming at both ends of the shroud and then where the barrel ends at the receiver. I also drilled all the heat ports. Then I took some pipe I had, which I think is actually glass with an amber hue and some weird metallic core... anyway I broke off a piece a little bigger than the size I needed, and used my diamond files to smooth out the ends.

Next up a heavy bolter, with the usual drilling involved

Then the right arm with the rubber polycap for the joint, these I found and were just the right size

Also I found the polycaps and thought it'd be a good idea to install them after I already glued the arm pieces together. This is why I don't like to glue unless it's absolutely completely necessary, and it made me have to cut into the plastic, which meant the holes lining up was more a matter of estimation by marking the center with a fine tipped marker instead of the certainty of having one behind the other.

 Power plant with the ports done. I'm still considering putting another pipe inside of these. Also, micro weld helps smooth out any flash or differences in alignment that may result from drilling, as the ports in the original mold weren't radial to the center, but instead were all arrayed perpendicular to the plain of the mold lines.

Magnetized hip. I drilled and amplified the hole for the magnet so I could reduce the distance, I also put a screw in the hip, had to cut out a bit in the inside for it to fit well, then sanded that too to also reduce distance.

The pose is held by pure friction, I did some talc and CA glue paste on top to make sure the magnet doesn't go anywhere and covered the bottom with pure CA and let that sit.

And here it is posed, no major components are glued together right now, I find the grapple mags on top can be easily held by pressure, the claws do need help, and the feet... I think I want to do something so that I can pose it in different bases.

Overall this was 2 days on and off work, but I still need to order some switches. I plan to have a battery in the power plant, that would power an LED, to which I can connect some clear colored tubing to take care of all the lights that are supposed to be around the torso and some sort of metallic structure that holds the plant in place by the same hip magnet. The magnet BTW is neodymium in a tall cylindrical shape which I got a couple years ago, so that helps in terms of multiple function modular components. I'd also need something for the flamer... maybe a contact that can sit at the center of the polycap. It already has a hole in the center so I can run some wire through that.