BCK's Thread of Stuff: Maybe not eldar...

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Had to take a break from hobby for that annoying life stuff but while I was busy putting pins all through this absolute unit of a Goliath, I began to wonder how he compares to non-Goliath gangers, and well... 

 

 

Seems like that would be a downright horrifying thing to see coming at you with a big ass hammer. 

[Lord_Ikka]

At the same time, if she raises her weapon to shoulder-height it is pointing directly at his crotch...

[space wolf]

Are you sure you aren't building a thunderwarrior?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I'm building Tyfen from the Acid Reign backstory for my Eschers. 

[lokkorex]

I'm very curious how the phase 3 models head will turn out! That guy will make even ogryns pause!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Reconstruction has begun on the extended legs and here's a better size comparison to a normal size Goliath and Escher.

 

 

Bought a few bits off eBay last night for the big guy and should be here soon.

[Bryan Blaire]

Oh damn, that dude is an awesome monster! Those stims have done him some massive good. He's come a long way since his early swagger days. :D

[space wolf]

excellent work!!!

[_GingerBat_]

Oh boy, he's been juicin' huh? Lovely work, though I will admit the fact his crotch is now at his old pec height is quite funny to me

[Lexington]

Boy done ate his Wheaties, he did.

 

Looking really solid, especially love the musculature work on the "Juve" version of the character.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

After waiting for some bits from eBay to arrive, already going through one round of GS on the legs that I didn't like and mostly scraped, and a a few hours of drilling, pinning, and tweaking the pose... I think I have Phase 3 about 90% locked down. Still want to tweak a few things before the final greenstuff work starts (like the right arm and position of the hammer), but here he is. 

 

[Lexington]

Love the use of that Slave Ogryn mecha-fist. One of my favorite new bits!

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I bought a left and right because I wasn't sure which one would look better, so I got a spare kicking around. :)

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

For those of you who might have read my partial write up for my House Escher gang Acid Reign (more is coming soonish), it's pretty clear I'm a big fan of mythology basing this tale on the Greek stories of Typhon/Tyfen, his mate Echidna/Aketna, and their triplet daughters of Medusa/Miduza, Stheno/Sithena, and Euryale/Ryalee. The  three phases of my Goliath I decided pretty early on to be Tyfen, and being the father of a number of monsters in Greek mythology I figured he could use a fried. Maybe a three-headed beast of a wolf using a thunderwolf from the much loved Thunderwolf Cavalry box as the base. 

 

With all the praise I see heaped on this kit, it was shockingly difficult to find bits sellers that had a full wolf and none of them had individual heads for sale to easily pick up the extra two I would need. Planning out some of the engineering first, I knew I was going to have to widen the body of the model to accommodate two extra necks and heads and that's where Oyumaru comes in. The thunderwolf body comes in two halves and I cut the front part away from the rear legs here in preparation for making a mold of each half:

 

 

Another potential issue is that the central 'core' of the body should be bigger than normal so there's room for the extra heads and this is where knowledge from some failed Oyumaru castings from the past came in handy. How? I put my molds between two blocks of plywood and apply pressure with a C-clamp to make sure all the detail gets pressed into the putty, but if you apply too much pressure the mold will begin to flatten out and it stretches the casting which is normally something you don't want. I'm going to need two castings of each half; two normal sized ones to go with the plastic halves from the kit because that's where the legs will attach, and a stretched one of the core of the body. Here's the normal castings with normal pressure from the clamp. 

 

 

And intentionally distorting the mold with a lot more pressure. 

 

 

You can see the GS/Milliput putty mix squeezing out of the mold in some areas and how the edges of the mold are starting to bulge outwards in spots. 

 

And to finish off the post for now, the first castings of the two halves that will hopefully mate up to the plastic halves from the kit. 

 

 

 

[StratoKhan]

What a beast. Intrigued by the 3 headed wolf. 

[Hungry Nostraman Lizard]

Wow, safr, I don't really know what to say to that except that I'm flattered and happy to get your mojo for the hobby going again.

 

And here's what is probably the last update on Goliath Phase 2 before he's done because the end is sight now. I think. Maybe. 

 

 

I had to replace one of my desk lamps this week and the pictures keep coming out with the mini looking very shiny and I took several with the lights in different positions and it's all the same. *shrug* The thing on his left shoulder is something to help him breathe; either a filter or oxygen to augment what his respirator does, but it's made from a thin rod of styrene and due to the dark background it's grossly overexposed and almost appears to be glowing. 

Okay, but how dare you be this talented.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

It didn't come easy or quick, HNL, I've worked at getting better at my hobby for a long time, but thank you.

 

 

Update time!

 

So, you ever hear that saying about how a plan never survives contact with the enemy? My plan being, of which I was absolutely certain would be No Big Deal, was knock out the new torso for the three headed wolf the same day I was doing the oyumaru molding and casting of the thunderwolf chest parts. That was the plan, and it did not survive contact with the enemy, that being the reality of the bizarre anatomy of such a monster. For days I've been trying to figure out a way to get it to work and finally came up with something yesterday. This is a very preliminary look at it, and even though it's not quite what I originally had in mind, I think it's going to work out. The red circles in the top pic are to show where the other two heads will mount since it might not be real obvious at first glance. 

 

 

The yellow and light green stuff is straight Milliput and a 60/40 mix of GS and Milliput respectively. I noticed my Milliput was getting a little old and starting to harden and I'm burning up a lot of it on this project because it won't be good for much longer. 

[Majkhel]

It does seems to work as you intend now. I'm almost certain you will need to widen the rear of the wolf too. The front is already starting to look massive (quite appropriately).
This is gonna be a real MONSTER :D

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Oh yeah, I definitely need to widen the rear legs section section of the wolf and it will happen... soon.

 

I needed a break from Tyfen and his puppy and started on something I meant to do a long time ago. Remember this guy?

 

 

The leader of my Crimson Sons scouts, Vall, for those who don't. I had intended to build the entire scout squad back in the day but time and interested moved on. Ever since the primaris reivers came out, I've thought they would make good marine scouts (definitely better than the old short marines scouts) and I want to start working toward finishing that scout squad. Fun bit of trivia is that this figure I made was never intended to be Vall, but since he was the only one who got finished, that's who he became. And the beginning of the new reiver-based scouts:

 

[StratoKhan]

Not bad as a start! Compared to that older Vall model (which looks amazing by the way), the new guy is looking quite chunky.

Are you planning on embracing the chunkiness, or do you plan on slimming down the reiver based scouts (which would be a lot of work I think)?

[Hungry Nostraman Lizard]

Words cannot explain in detail how much I loathe those 'phobos' models. Curious to see what changes you do to them.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Words cannot explain in detail how much I loathe those 'phobos' models. Curious to see what changes you do to them.

 

I've seen a lot of hate about the Phobos armor since it came out while I thought it looked kinda cool. A lot of it seems to do with the legs, I think? I know you just said you can't properly put it into words, but I am curious. 

 

Not bad as a start! Compared to that older Vall model (which looks amazing by the way), the new guy is looking quite chunky.

Are you planning on embracing the chunkiness, or do you plan on slimming down the reiver based scouts (which would be a lot of work I think)?

 

Don't get me wrong, I love that original Vall model, but in the back of my head it's always nagged me that it looked too slender to be an astartes even if he is in lighter scout armor. I do want to tone down the chunkiness from the model and have removed quite a bit of mass from the chest armor but the figure still looks too... squat? 

 

 

I may lengthen the torso to see if that helps with the proportions. 

[Ryltar Thamior]

I absolutely recall your Unification Wars efforts, and I am absolutely here to see them turn back up - interested to see how you make use of the relatively recent kits (primaris and otherwise) 

I get what you mean about the original miniature being a bit short for a stormtrooper astartes, but I'd just presumed that as he was one of the 'firstborn' prototypes [if memory serves me - It's been awhile since I looked at that log and the conceptual development you and .. I think it was Hyenidae (?) did; which was a great influence on some of our own efforts in that era] , and therefore that it was a case of the early testbed not having/being able/needing to grow to the full size of the later models of initiate ; perhaps lacking some enhancements for such growth, perhaps going about things in a far different way and producing comparable strength and toughness in a much slimmer package with better and denser over the more easily grown bulk. Or perhaps he's just a 'runt' [not that I'd tell HIM that] 

I suspect that viz. proportions and 'squat'ness, it's going to be difficult getting over the latter iwth the legs you've chosen without reposing them to be more upright and lengthened - assuming you're attempting to go for the more 'neutral' straight standing stance of the original conversion. 

A tall and lean miniature would be cool and would carry forward some of the proportions and aesthetic of the original, and help visually distinguish from the more 'conventional' astartes [both whatever you might build/have already built for the period, esp. in truescale .. *hint* ; and also from the phobos-armoured base miniature in general] - wuold definiitely feel a bit more 'bespoke' creation. 

For that, the major thing you'd probably want to do, is bring in the shoulders and the upper arms somewaht from their current 'broad' positioning [part of which is due to the mockup not being closely affixed - but only part, especially as applies the right shoulder of the miniature] . perhaps getting closer to a 'human' set of proportions in some eways, in comparison to the marine-like proportions of unnatural breadth across the shoulders to anchor massive gorilla arms to. 

Personally, were I somewhere closer to your ballpark for convertorial skill, I'd probably have attempted to make greater use of necromunda enforcer parts - the arms, for one, and the sniper rifle for another ; although that may be a bit undersized even as the basis for a converted weapon , as compared to the phobos silhouette; and you'd ptentially find th arms too thin to represent Astates muscle-mass in any case . 

Goliath body and arms would be another way to go - but would probably be *too* bulky for what you're going for , in terms of width, height, and overarching burlyness of physique; AoS blood reavers would suffer from similar issues albeit perhaps not quite as extreme. 

Dangit, now you have me pondering getting back to my own proto-astartes endeavours. 

Anyway, look forward to see how you 'update' the Phobos to the battlefields of twelve thousand years afore. 

[HvitrValdyr]

Scout looks good so far. I’ve used Phobos marines for the same thing. I use unarmoured arms and no power packs to help convey the idea of lighter armour. On one I replaced a torso entirely with a 30k torso. I had to add a spacer to give it the necessary height to match the others but it is a lot less bulky. Whatever you decide to do I’m sure will work out well. Your work is always top notch.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

@Hvitr Looks good, brother! The bare arms look really good with the armor. 

 

@Ryltar - You're right about the chest being too wide and the arms being too large in the power armor, and I've tried to cut the sides of the chest armor down some in this update. While I do really like the look of the Necromunda enforcers, the torso just doesn't look at all like scout marine armor and more like riot police gear. In fact, the first time they were previewed, their chest armor instantly reminded me of the football chest and shoulder pads I used to wear when I was younger. I do think their arms might be worth trying out though. 

 

Here's the update with the sides of the chest shaved down a little and the torso lengthened a little bit. 

 

 

And a comparison of the extended torso to the first pictures. 

 

 

Definitely need to do something about the arm size. Either find replacements or see if I can cut them down.