July 30, 2009

Talon Light Warjack - New Big Daddy

The Big Daddy jacks getting discovered by the video gaming blogs got me worked up to get back onto finishing these guys.



I recently picked up the 40K ork gretchin pack and the tesla style prod thingy got me thinking it would make a great stun lance tip, so ordered a Talon to add to my merc jacks.



I trimmed off the original conicle spear tip then cut down the zappy part to fit. It needed something wider behind it so I tried a wire hoop 1st but didn't like so did it again with a bit of plastic tubing spaced slightly from the spear shaft.



Seems I've added a wheel to all my previous jacks so gave one to the Talon too. It's half of a snap stud with some added rivets.



I was surprised how much shorter the Talon was when he arrived or should I say how tall the Buccaneer is. So I decided to alter his feet a bit to make him a tiny bit taller and to match the aquatic jacks look a bit more.



I trimmed off the sides of the toes 1st, then glued on plastic sheet under neath with an edge all the way around. Then filled the notch between the toes with filler putty then sanded it smooth.



For the new diver face of the jack I trimmed off a bit of the hood and then glued on a left over part from a plastic kit. I dremelled back the front of the dome part to fit on a window.



then I bent up some wire hoops to make a face cage, this time going over his back as well like the proper Big Daddies



I finished off the cage with some nice bolts where the cage joined the shoulders. Then I cut plastic rod and made a heap of rivets to circle the face for that high pressure tank look. Also added a rivetted plate over the top of the head cause every jack needs that collar looking thing up top.



I detailed the inside of the forearms a bit with staggered holes then glued them in place.



Last thing to do was make a decking base from balsa wood and I also added a couple rats on a little barrel from Rackham from one of their scenary details packs i got recently.

Couple more angles:







Here he is with the Buccaneer.





Speaking of detailing the bases I thought it'd look funny to have a drunk passed out under the beer jack (Mule) so slightly modded this passed out monk mini from Shadowforge, just split his robe to look like shorts then added a belt and a mo and filled in the shaved bald spot.





the Mariner gets a little girl packing heat from Freebooter, I think I need to add a face cage to him to match the rest.



OzPainters downtime! Back on 1st August!



OzPainters hit the bandwidth cap - it should tick over on the turn of the calendar month. In the meantime, you can follow OzPainters on Twitter for status updates:

http://twitter.com/ozpainters

Update: The forums are back up.

July 22, 2009

Freaky week

So weird to browse through Kotaku AU yesterday morning and find out my Big Daddy jacks made the news, then see em on Destructoid, Game Set Watch, Kotaku US and Toycutter. Sure drove my page views up. So welcome anyone that has just discovered my blog.









July 17, 2009

Black Scorpion Pirate

Another older model, I really need to finish some of my many work in progress models on my desk. This fellow is a Black Scorpion pirate I did up for one of their online competitions, he earned an honourable mention If I recall correctly. They make some very characterful pirates at Black Scorpion and I've been meaning to get their new fantasy pirates to add to the collection.







July 10, 2009

Flaming Sword conversion

Another old mini, I converted this fellow for our D&D campaign. Good front line fighter with a kickass flaming sword. tricky part was finding a flaming sword, instead I found a Reaper mini with a cool pose and made my own. I wanted that chunky Iron Kingdoms look to the sword so made a new blade from plastic card and redid the cross piece with detail bits. I also swapped his helmeted head for a GW plastic one and sculpted on new hair. I was going for a Siegfried from Soul Calibur look.



Turns out sculpting flames isn't that hard as long as you don't overwork them. You want to keep large areas that you can paint later. Try and keep them looking fairly soft, and keep working in one direction to get the flame tips.



After I'd started painting I decided I didn't like the chisel tip to the sowrd any more so filed it back to a point instead.



Here he is with all down with lots of directional lighting was a bit of an experiment adding flame colour to the armour, I used orange ink to try and keep the colour transparent and let a bit of the metallic still come through.



Here he is facing off against a McFarlane Dragon action figure.

July 9, 2009

Aegis Defence Line - Arbite Thin Blue Line

Here's the defense line showing the AA gun and it layed out as a small fortress like line along with my old Adeptus Arbites manning the line.



















Warcraft Peggle



Link
So cool. In mini related news I cleaned up and assembled the new 40K Planet Strike Aegis Defence Line kit last night. It's a great set of 4 large barriers and 4 small one man sized barriers plus a quad auto cannon AA gun with base. I hate cleaning mold lines on plastic kits :( I'll take pics and post them tonight.

July 6, 2009

Fieldstone Ruin - Hirts Arts

A couple people asked where the background for the elf rogue came from. It's a small ruin I made on top of a dud CD, they make great bases for terrain. I wanted a small miniature display kind of structure so made it with 2 levels big enough to easily fit a base onto. The walls are from the Hirst Arts Fieldstone mold. It was drybrushed heavily and certain stones stained in various browns to add variety to the wall. The craggly long grass is from a hand broom. The angel statue from GZG via Eureka miniatures.