Long time no post. Some of the more veteran members here may remember my Guardian project, making a "lighter" looking base unit for my Craftworld's forces. For old time's sake, I've included a few pictures from this older project.
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/WIP4.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/WIP5.jpgI originally got the idea for this crazy project when I was thinking about the representation of armour on Imperial Guardsmen. Their 5+ save is represented by a breastplate, some shoulder pads and often a plate covering the stomach area. Meanwhile, the Guardian's 5+ save is represented through a full suit of plate armour over what supposedly is mesh armour. Scratching my head, I pulled out my sketchbook and began brewing up some more fitting, and IMO, better-looking versions of a Guardian's kit.
With some skills that I've acquired from being a sculpture major at school, I'm setting out to create my own line of guardian models based on this "prototype" model. I mixed pre-existing bitz with a lot of hand-sculpted items in order to create the "pattern" models. To start out, I decided to build 8 base guardian models, each one only the torso and legs so I would still have a lot of custom-ability with my models once a begin casting them.
The initial models aren't done yet, but I've made some serious strides with them:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian10.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian9.jpgAll the models shown above that have legs I decided to use Wood Elf legs, since they have a similar style as to what I want to make my models look like in the end. However, they still are going to need a lot of sculpting to get them to look less like the Wood Elf legs and more like my Guardian's legs. The torsos are all mostly the standard Eldar Guardian ones, but I've been working on resculpting a few details to add my own touch and a bit of variety to them.
The ones that are just torsos I'm going to be sculpting the legs entirely myself. My original idea for this project was to entirely sculpt my own legs but i decided to take a few shortcuts and also save myself some greenstuff. However, I'm still going to be sculpting some of the legs on the models, as I have a few ideas for poses that the Wood Elf legs doing already cover (crouching, other running poses, etc.)
As for the process that's going to allow me to turn these 8 models into my Guardian teams, the idea is to make a mold of the master models. This will allow me to produce resin copies of my models which then I can model as I wish to make up the bulk of my Guardians.
While working on my guardians, I got a bit distracted working on the gun crews for my weapons platforms as well. My host has gotten pretty big and the guardians I did have before this were in pretty shabby shape, and lets not forget that most of them I built and painted some 5 or 6 years ago when I was still in high school. However, I did have 2 or 3 weapons platforms and i managed to add another few this summer. I always preferred the older platforms to the new plastic ones. The shield design always seemed much sleeker to me on them.
While I was working on my new designs for the guardians, I realized that I would want my gun crews to match their companions. The end result is shown below:
Brightlance Team:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian5.jpgStarcannon Team:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian7.jpgScatter Laser Team:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian6.jpgEML Team:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Guardian%20Conversions/Guardian4.jpgI still have a few models to sculpt in this batch as well. The Starcannon team in particular has a lot of work that will be going into them. Most of the models I again got away with using the Wood Elf Legs, but I still want to sculpt a few legs myself (again, some poses that aren't possible with the WE legs)
I'm also going to be working on magnetizing the platforms. I have 250 rare earth magnets on my desk right now that I'll be using throughout my army. As part of re-emerging myself back into the hobby, I've decided to update many of my models to make them better painted and cleaner looking in general, as well as making certain elements interchangeable, such as heavy weapons across the board. With any luck, my new system will allow me to be able to move a starcannon between Anti-grav platforms, to my war walkers, to my wave serpents, all the way to my Vypers even.
My second project that I'm currently running concurrently to my Guardian project is working on my vehicles. I have 2 falcon/fire prisms and 3 wave serpents that I'm working through all at once (assembly lining them makes it faster to get them all set.) I also have a Phoenix and a Nightwing looming that I've been working on now and again while i'm playing with the grav-tanks.
I began my latest indulgence into the hobby with the crew for my vehicles. I again wanted a more modern take on the appearances of the crew and I thought that I could always do with a little practice sculpting so I set to work on sculpting new crew members for every vehicle of mine. I may work on making a few master models at some point and making molds of them if I end up adding more vehicles to my list (which I can see, as I have 3 fire prism turrets to make and i've been eying the new Deathspinner model
)
In hindsight, these guys weren't exactly the best use of time since no-one really looks into the cockpits of Eldar vehicles but I figured it would be a nice touch to them.
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian22.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian20.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian18.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian17.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian16.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian15.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian14.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian13.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian12.jpghttp://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/Engines%20of%20Vaul/Guardian11.jpgsome of proportions between the bodies i've sculpted and the hands from the existing models are wonky, so I might try fixing some of them. The first pilot I cut out the arm so I could position it interacting with the main console. I may do this with more of the pilots, I'm not sure yet.
A lot of the silly-ness happening at my desk I've also put into my photobucket albums, so feel free to browse through them as well!
http://s912.photobucket.com/albums/ac325/outcastvalkyrie/Warhammer/I've got a bunch of concept sketches of what i'm working on, I'm gonna try to get 'em up in the next post.
For now though, I need some sleep!
-Valkyrie