Space Marines, shoulder pad moulding and the Tally's (inevitable) first hit of the year...

So, I ran into someone I hadn't seen on a train the other day, and we ended up discussing GW. Despite the conversation involving a lot of fist-shaking and cries of 'I know, they want how much for three figures!?', I came away with a refired enthusiasm for 40K, and some half-formed thoughts about painting up a 600 point skirmish force of Space Marines.

as you may or may not remember, a while back I mentioned that I already had plans (and the bits) for a custom Space Marine chapter - but then I thought to myself 'hey, Space Marines with metallic colour schemes look pretty snazzy, no?', and after a little playing around on an online Space Marine painter I came up with this colour scheme:

Fairly similar in concept to the original scheme, but with the addition of dark metallics and the two-tone helmet, purely because I think that they look quite striking. As you'll see later, I decided to keep their chapter logo as a book (due to my profession and general nerdity), which started me thinking about what sort of Chapter they'd be. Maybe they're a mysterious Dark Angels successor chapter, or have a higher occurrence of Librarians like the Blood Ravens? With all these ideas and more bubbling round in my head, I couldn't decide, and in the end decided to run them as vanilla Marines, maybe try out a few different chapter tactics to see how they feel, and worry about fluff and background until later, so for now, they shall be known as my Nerdmarines (TM).

The proof of the pudding is in the eating (or in the case of our hobby, painting), so I set about digging out a test model from one of the old starter sets:

After a quick clean up, having his bolter drilled out and a few dabs of glue, he was ready for basing and gesso-ing, and left overnight to dry.

Finding myself with a couple of hours spare today, I thought I'd see about giving him a lick of paint to see how the colour scheme looks when used in anger... Before I managed that though, I remembered that a while ago, I'd bought some Grey Knights shoulderpads with a mind to making a press-mould of a book themed chapter logo (because hey, it's easier to make uniform than trying to freehand something), and thought I might as well have a crack at it on the test marine (since if I like the results, he's going to be part of the force, so he might as well match his brethren). Unfortunately, I'd apparently had a tidy up,or they'd grown legs and wandered off, but I eventually managed to hunt down the sprue:

Once a suitable donor was selected, I carefully shaved off the ridge to make it match a standard Space Marine shoulderpad (the idea being that the mould will slip snugly over a standard shoulderpad, reducing the potential for misaligned insignia)

 And then carefully shaved and filed off the sword, to leave me with just the desired book:

As is traditional, I mounted the part on a square of plasticard (for ease of handling and to provide a flat surface for the edge of the mould):

 And then (after eventually finding my Blu Stuff after a ten minute search, as apparently my wife had also had a tidy up), following the standard instructions, I set about making a one-part Blu Stuff mould:

Which came out looking like this:

And with a little trimming to make it easier to handle (and more likely to actually slip over a plain shoulderpad) it ended up looking like this:

As I'd already undercoated my test marine, I set about scraping off some paint (so that my dinky green stuff book would be able to stick directly to the miniature rather than getting a less secure hold on a layer of paint):

Which was the point where I realised that, trying to dry fit my newly made mould onto the newly nude shoulderpad, having already glued my marine together, his bolter was massively in the way. Rather than trying to cut him apart (or more sensibly, just going and getting another marine out of the box and starting afresh), I set about making a new, skinnier mould, that would fit inside the shoulderpad's outer ridge, rather than covering it in its entirety:

(luckily, my slightly wonky cutting on the right hand side won't negatively affect the results, as it's only the raised book that will be transferred, the outer edge is purely for alignment purposes...)

A little (incredibly cold and dried up but still just about workable with a lot of kneading and swearing and prayer) Green Stuff later and we have a result!

He's currently sat on the radiator to cure, but I'm pretty happy with that result! Once he's had another dab of gesso he'll be ready (again) to test out the colour scheme on (although I'm not sure how I'll paint the book - should I paint it like an actual book, or metallic, or some other option?).

As you may have guessed from the title of this post though, that's not all. As usual, I made myself the vow that this year, once the tally reset over the New Year, I'd paint some miniatures before I bought anything new, to give myself something of a positive buffer (before Salute hits and the tally takes a nosedive). Somehow though, yesterday I found myself in Games Workshop with my wife, buying toys:

I think the logic was that she'd bought herself a new bag because it was (literally) shiny, and I said 'hey we have that in my hobby too but shiny-bloody-itis is usually more metaphorical' and the Starbucks we were in was just around the corner from GW and so yeah I bought these. I'd been looking to pick some Fenrisian Wolves up for a while now, to use as Dire Wolves in my Song of Ice and Fire Project (as they're quite frankly just the nicest dynamically posed wolves on the market, and not badly priced all things considered), and I picked up a pot of the new Technical Paint 'Nurgle's Rot', as an incentive to myself to paint the Nurgle Path to Glory warband that's been sat undercoated for a number of months...

Which, with a heavy heart, leaves the tally for 2014 at:

0 vs 5 = -5

I think what I really need is another WOMP...

Experiments in one part moulding...

So, having finished a handful of Lannisters, I thought it prudent to knock together some Starks for them to brutally hamstring. After putting together a couple of archers, I started thinking about some sword and spearmen. Now, I quite like the style of the shields used by Stark troops in the TV series: 

and thought they'd make a good jumping off point. I found an old GW shield with a wolf's head, and cleaned off a viking shield to attempt to transfer it to:

(the hole is because I thought the easiest way to clean the boss off was to just drill out the whole thing and reconstruct it later). I stuck the donor shield to a square of plasticard ready to make a one-part mould:

And then... had second thoughts about using the viking style shield, and ordered some hoplite shields to try out instead.

Somewhat disheartened, I turned back to the rightful heirs to the Iron Throne - the Lannisters! With a bit of fiddling, I managed to convert a pair of spear-holding arms to be wielding a pike:

But then, rather than actually going on to integrate this part into an actual miniature, due to my tiny attention span sound tactical thinking, I decided I should probably finish up some straightforward hand weapon and shield warriors. I got as far as sticking a head onto a body:

rather than doing some detail work tidying up the join, I focused on working on carving away what remained of the miniature's original shield. Much cutting and filing later, it was time to make a new shield - aha, this post has come full circle! Again, I turned to the TV series for inspiration:

I like the image of the oval shield for Lannister House Guard, although non-House Guard troops will probably get more traditionally medieval looking shields. So, in order to get this effect, I needed an oval shield (from some plastic Romans, cheers John!) and a lion - I dug out a Bretonnian shield from my bits box, and we're back on the path to making moulds!

Huzzah, Blu-Stuff!

Which made a mould:

Which was trimmed down for ease of handling (both in terms of width, so that I could line it up to the receiving shield, and depth, so that the detail part of the mould would actually touch the receiving shield!):

And then filled with liquid green stuff:

Now, despite how straightforwards and working things have appeared thus far (due to the magic of post-production), this is where the wheels started to fall off... This one wouldn't turn out, so (despite the claims that nothing sticks to Blu Stuff) I tried again with some vaseline as a mould release agent, but still no dice. As the detail was fairly shallow, I tried a thicker layer of green stuff, reasoning that if I could actually get it to transfer onto the shield I could then cut it down and tidy it up...

However that plan relied on it turning out...

I thought maybe thinning the mould would make it a little more flexible (as Blu Stuff makes firmly fair moulds, not the flexible rubbery type I had envisioned when I originally ordered it)

But that didn't work wither. Somewhat frustrated, I turned to Google to see if there was a readily available ready-made lion shield that I could use... and was reminded of a lion shield (with deeper detail!) in the Advanced Heroquest set. Much dragging out of boxes later, and I have one in hand:

Cue more making of moulds (note the filled mould in the background - I thought I'd try letting a filled mould set before trying to transfer it)

(spoilers - the detail was still still too thin to be of any use)

[Brief diversion] - while all this was going on, my wife to be got silver ink on my copy of the LOTR SBG rulebook that she was using to lean on, and trying to wipe it off only made things worse:

To cut a long story short, the new mould was then trimmed, thinned, greased, filled, clamped to the receiving shield and left overnight to set. 24 hours later, I expectantly open the clamp, to find:

Sadness abounds.

Aidez-moi wise internet personalities, where am I going wrong?

100th Post, Post-Salute Post Post and the Lannisters I'm working on...

So, 100 posts! To celebrate, I've finally gotten round to changing my blogger profile pic to this:

Because as much as I love Sam & Max (RIP Lucasarts) it says more about me and my tiny attention span...

I even considered changing the header image too (as it's been a while since I painted any modern zombies) but I still like that it plays on 'Dead Lead Project', as it's a blog about dead lead (as in the miniatures that I will likely never get round to painting) rather than necessarily just miniatures of dead things. Any road up, on to more miniatures that I've acquired since Salute that I will definitely get around to painting:

The Dog handler from Warlord Games that was ordered at Salute as they'd run out (and even came with an extra dog) for my Stark force, and a bundle of bases from em4... the 40mm variety of which don't fit into the War of the Ring bases from Games Workshop that I hope to eventually use when I've painted enough miniatures to be playing anything bigger than a skirmish scale game:

Except for upside-down, when they fit perfectly. Curses. Oh well, it's better to realise something like this now than once I've stuck horses to them, and I suppose I can scavenge some Terminator bases from old 40k starter boxes...

A selection of bits and bobs from the Perrys that I forgot to pick up at Salute and some Blu Stuff, 2 part mould-making wonder goo (more on this later...)

Some mushroom men from Ral Partha, to go with the Hasslefree Agarix I picked up at Salute - these are especially dinky though, so I might need to convert some sort of Ogre-sized Myconid to balance it out...

A bundle of knights and a priestly type from Forlorn Hope Games, who seem to have more em4 miniatures than em4 do, for use as plate armour wearing Hedge and foot knights...

From Hasslefree, I got the metal Boudi that I wasn't able to get as Salute, and added a 'not Ramona' as well to take the sting out of paying for postage (and also because I made the mistake of reading other people's blogs when they included lists of things that they'd bought at Salute, more fool me...). It also came with a free dinky homunculus, to make up for the fact that the order was delayed by various shows, who I'm sure I can find a home for somewhere in the multitude of generic fantasy drawers (and should be pretty quick to paint, as he's so tiny!)

And last but not least, a delivery from Foundry, of the two packs that I wasn't able to pick up at Salute - the archer command (for commanding my Lannister archers) and King Ronnie's Court (as I wanted the jester to convert into Shagwell, of the Brave Companions / Bloody Mummers). I also added a pack of armed Medieval peasants to take the edge off of the shipping charge (better than it used to be, but still not ideal if you're only picking up a couple of packs), as I'd like to build a warband of the Brotherhood without banners at some point (and handily a couple of the miniatures in the archer command pack look like they'd be suitable candidates). Speaking of which, I could do with getting some LOTR Ruffians miniatures, especially the chap carrying the noose (Spoilers - the Brotherhood without Banners are fairly keen on hanging people). Foundry even threw in a free knight, which was nice.

Unfortunately though, this takes the tally to:

8 vs 339 = -331

What can I say, it's been better... Only 8 finished models this year though, that's a bit of a sting... I hope to change that (if only a little) though as I'm still working on the generic fantasy miniatures I need for D&D, as well as having built these:

My first Lannisters! Perry plastics with a metal knight from Forlorn Hope / em4 to give them some variety (and also so that there's at least one miniature that I can paint really, really quickly as he's entirely armoured), these chaps have since been gesso'd ready to start painting:

Finally, I've also been working on something else. Although I'm not sticking slavishly to either the books or the TV series for my Ice and Fire Project, I'm quite enamoured with the armour worn by the Lannister House guards in the TV series:

Plastic Warriors of Minas Tirith will furnish me with near enough armour, but the helmet is another matter. So, stealing inspiration entirely from Mr. J over on the LAF, I set about making my own:

Cut the head off of a plastic Uruk Hai (originally painted about a decade ago!) and shave it down so it's less recognisable:

Take a tiny square of plasticard:

and cut it into a crest shape:

and gently file until it's the desired shape:

 

Attach it to the trimmed down original crest of the Uruk helmet, and realise that you've been over-zealous with your scraping and filing. Don't worry overmuch though, that can be easily fixed with the addition of a glob of Liquid Green Stuff that can then be re-filed.

To ease casting (probably), attach the head to a pole. It's the sort of thing you see done all the time, so there's probably a reason for it (I jest, it's to provide a channel for the milliput to get pushed into, and will also form a handy neck on the cast head that can be trimmed down to the required size)

Many failed attempts with Blu Stuff later, such as attempting to cover the entire head and cut the Blu Stuff into a two part mould (for some reason I was expecting it to dry to a rubbery finish, but be warned, it sets pretty firm):

we have the first half of our two part mould:

I had it  end around the crest for ease of removal later. After some careful cutting to tidy up the edges and put in a slight slope to help align the two halves of the mould, we have this:

An incredibly unpretty mould. Looks aren't everything though:

As it works! The pictures pretty much as out of focus as a picture can be, so you'll have to take my word for it. Now it's just a case of cranking out some more of these and cleaning them up before I start working on push moulding some Lannister Lion shields, and then it's go-time on Lannister House Guard conversions...

I was also going to write an aside on my plans for my Ice and Fire project, and how I see the composition of each House's forces going, but I think that this post is already long enough that it  might be an idea to save that for another day...