The Cloven - Beastmarine

[horrain]

Hey, this is my first attempt at writing an article detailing a conversion that I've worked on, so please bear with me, this was originally written for horrain.com but it may possibly be helpful over here as well.

 

Beastmarines for those unfamiliar with my army, are  herd of genetically divergent humans who are fiercely loyal to the Imperium, but due to their genetic mutations are treated with suspicion. So basically they are beastmen in power armour, but due to the nature of there existence have to salvage the majority of their war gear and thus look pretty beat-up, cool glad we got that cleared up ;)

 

So now onto the actual tutorial bit of this post, for this build you will need a complete beastman model, either a gor or bestigor, unfortunately the ungor models are a bit to small, but make awesome scouts. A complete space marine from the belt up. For extra credit any additional gubbins you have laying around will come in handy, largely due to the salvaging nature of the herd.

 

Once you have your supplies collected you need to cut the gor/bestigor in half, just below the nipple.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/4884991632_a78c26c0c8.jpg

 

When I'm doing this step I like to use the razor saw mainly because it lets me be pretty accurate where I make the cut. If using a knife be careful here, as the plastic is pretty think you run the risk of slipping and doing yourself an injury.

 

Once you have the top cut off, you'll want to remove the overhang from the back of the beastman, on the original model this bit was its overly pronounced shoulders.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4117/4884992098_40120c4a26.jpg

 

For this I used a pair of plastic cutters.

 

Next you want to start shaping the back of the body section. Basically the goal here is to round off the stump so from the models belt it goes strate up, and towards the top curves into meet the front of the model.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4102/4884390323_fdd3dd0b78.jpg

 

The idea is to basically make a ball and socket join, much like on the standard space marine legs. Leave the front of the model along, further into the build we'll discuss how to get it to line up nicely.

 

Next up is to grab a standard marine torse, both from and back. We need to cut off the belt, and by extension the tummy plate, bit with the power cables. This is because the beastman model already has a belt sculpted onto the model, and it looks a bit odd having two belts.

 

The front of the torse should end up looking like this...

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/4884391699_b43fd8eb35.jpg

 

When I was building this model I forgot to take a photo of the back part of the torso, but I just but above the belt line and it should all line up with the above section.

 

Once you have your torso shaped you can now start trimming the body's front section to match the shape of this armour segment. This set is pretty hard to take photos of, but the process is basically lining up the torse on the body, and marking which bits need to be gone, then cutting them off.

 

The end result should look like this...

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/4884392421_39822ce806.jpg

 

Now once that's all done you can go ahead and glue the body to its base, glue the torso together and then onto the body. Because the marine torso is largely untouched arms and the backpack should fit with no issue, for this model I used regular arms from the space wolves sprue, but you can also use arms from either of the gor on bestigor kits, as the scale between the two sets of arms is pretty much identical.

 

Once you have attacked your arms and backpack your model should look simular to this.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4884393007_4c5c11f819.jpg

 

How we run into our first problem, you'll notice a large gap between the models spine, and the backpack, this is because of the marines armoured arse <_< Now we  can't leave our beastmarine in this state, because well its pretty ugly and or comical depending on your outlook on life. This is where the extra credit gubbins comes in handy.

 

Personally I like to glue a shield in this gap, as it looks pretty cool, and helps bring the beastmen back to there fantasy roots. Though one of my Wolf Guards is carrying his combi-weapon in this void.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/4884393535_b33d7290a1.jpg

 

In this case I have used a square shield from WFB goblin kit.

 

Now the last stage, here we need to give this guy a head, on the gor kit you'll notice a bunch of different horns, unfortunately using all of them is pretty tricky, as there are two main types, the straight horns, and the ones shaped like rounded goat horns.

 

The problem with the rounded horns is that they are tricky to fit due to the marine shoulder pads, so I tend to not use them, unless the pose allows. You'll more than likely need to only use the straight horns.

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4093/4884394175_b18710b4b8.jpg

 

This guy is the leader for my Long Fang squad, so I have used bestigor parts over the standard gor.

 

Hope that you enjoyed my first tutorial <_< Any comments of critiques on the style and quality would be awesome.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

horrain

[Pig Of Sparta]

Nice one horain, a great tutorial for a great idea. Definately something I'll be trying at some point!

 

cheers

 

James

[Lestat]

Nice tutorial!

I am so tempted right now to use this and start a Plague Marine army - the beastmen parts would add so much flavour to Pappa Nurgles followers!

[Asmodeus' Swordhand]

Absolutely awesome conversion. Saved for reference and will definitely by used sometime. Thanks :D

[Brother Nihm]

Very nice!

 

He looks so much cooler than mine :P

 

You should submit this as an article for the Librarium.

[elohimalpha]

Looks fantastic! Do you have any painted examples?

[horrain]

Sorry about the belated reply, below you can see a painted example of this conversion.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4123/4876580486_d291416a5d_z.jpg

[elohimalpha]

Holy cow, those things look amazing! I'm really diggin' the Rune Priest and Wolf Guard - so brutal looking! Really great stuff.

 

I like how clean/simple the armor is - really shows off the blood-spatter/gore

[BigMek]

Very cool tutorial, I'm really tempted to "loot" this idea, they look absolutely great.

[ShotgunFacelift]

Thanks for the detailed "how to"

 

its more and more tempting now that I've seen them painted.

Plus I could use the extra bits for space wolf conversions....... hmmmmm

[MaleOpener]

Love the idea and the models.

 

Great job!

[Peacekeeper]

Very nice, I will definitely be making a few of these when i get the time

[mstersmith]

Thank you! I plan to use this. I love mixing fantasy models with 40k.

[Brother Elochai]

Definitely a great tutorial. I would like to see a tutorial that takes space marine legs and replaces their feet with hooves or maybe somewhere up the tibia and fibia.

 

On a more comical note, I would like to see a DIY for space ponies.