Epic 40k Ork Snakebite Clan

Recently I have been filled with desire to work on an old bucket list project of mine, a nicely painted Epic 40,000 force of orks.

Epic 40,000 Ork Snakebite Clan

I intend to play some games with them using the open source NetEpic rules (with some house rules tweaks to it to get rid of the templates as they tend to slow up the game and effectively reduce the available table space).

At 24 stands, the Snakebites are the most numerous Clan, with Goffs in 2nd place at 23!

Working on some scenic items to build up the battlezone thematically alongside the army would be ideal also.

Boss Nobz

To begin with, I decided that I would work on a Snakebite Clan as I have never in all my time painted a single Snakebite, and now I would paint 105 of them at 6/7mm (Epic scale is in fact a bit wobbly with sizes often dramatically different for infantry models – your average person would probably never notice it anyway).

Snakebite Boarboyz

As the Snakebites are supposed to be staunch traditionalists, I wanted them to have a lot of browns, green and metal with a smattering of primary spot colours – like classic fantasy orcs really.

Da Snakebite Boyz

The banners were done by carefully cutting out GW Ork transfer sheets to fit. The Nobz got a bit more attention than the boyz. I converted the Epic Ork Warlord to carry a power klaw cut from an Ork dreadnought. In game terms you have 4 identical stands but to my mind the whole Ork Clan should have the Warboss as the focal point, so there he is!

Snakebite Warboss and Nobz Bodyguard

As there are not a huge variety of models available, I decided that I would make my Snakebites unique by sculpting a special Ork to represent them.

My first 6mm sculpt of an Ork – clearly I am influenced by Aly Morrison’s large head Marauder Space Orks (Trish Carden made the ones with the Normal sized heads for the record)

I did a quick and dirty casting in lead from this – the detail is not quite as crisp as the original but more than adequate to express the idea in miniature.

While I was working on him, I started working on an Ork for when I get around to doing the Goff Clan. I think he is adorable so far <3.

Back on the Brian Nelson/Kev Adams influenced mode for this guy

So that’s a solid 600 points of stuff to begin with. I am looking to add some Squiggoths to this lot and perhaps some Stompas (as they move at about the same speed as the infantry).

Croatyl the Halberdier

Here are some pictures of a painted prototype home casting I made from the green for our currently running Bizaza Frog People Kickstarter.

 

He is pretty shiny so I had to take pictures outdoors to get a decent image.

I couldn’t resist mucking about. 🙂

Project Hybork

This is my own sculpting with the hands chopped off and replaced with weapon hands taken from GW Ork plastic kits.

They are compatible with standard ork/ork fittings and are multi part models with separate legs, arms and heads.

I plan to do a private crowd commissioned casting run for these guys soon, organised via Facebook.  Let me know if you are interested in getting in on the action.

Knavecon Sheep

I figured it’s high time I followed up on the sheep I made for our Oldhammer game at Knavecon 2014.  Here they are in all their painted glory:

Baaaaaaaa!

And this was the original green for the little fellow.

The green

And with a slightly more careful paint job, the final ones got a pretty flat, devoid of highlights and shading paint job in the end:

A nicely painted prototype

Here is a scale comparison with my favourite scaling model.  As you can see they have been designed for the smaller people of miniature gaming (such as halflings), with an emphasis on cuteness over realism:

One of the Emperors finest protects His flock from the predations of xenos scum

They may someday even be used as nasties in a killer sheep scenario….

And remember RT aficionados you may think you are save but do not underestimate a sadistic GM

The final part of this project will be to take 2 of the little blighters and re-sculpt the legs to look like they are being carried and then send them along to the next stage in the production line to Mr. Saturday who will proceed to incorporate them into a commemorative fimir raider model to mark the convention.

Imperial Ork

I have been a little lazy on the posting front of late, but rest assured loyal readers that I have not been idle!   Here is a little creation I have wanted to do for more years than I can care to remember.  Presenting the proto-Imperial Ork:

 

Imperial Ork

Imperial Ork – rear detail

Imperial Ork beside Imperial Guardsman

Imperial Ork – without the shoota

 

The 1989th – valuing diversity and the violence it empowers

More ass shots

And from the side

Now this is very much still a work in progress, as there is a good bit more work to do before I consider the project a success.  The parts are designed to be compatible with the “Standard Orkoid Template” (SOT) as I may see fit to actually cast them up for a  small number of interested parties – can’t see much demand for them myself, it’s a pretty specialized concept.  Obviously the face is a GW part and will be replaced by a suitable Ork mug of my own devising and the arms and legs will get a more appropriately uniformed look.  But compatibility with other ranges is key here, creativity to the modeler and painter must be afforded in the design, and some people will prefer the “Rico’s Roughnecks” look of this bare armed guy – he does look badass!  I am looking forward to creating more bits and bobs for these chaps.  They have some serious Rough Rider potential so expect to see one with an Aussie style cowboy hat.  Goggles will pretty much be de rigeur for these boyz. but expect some variation in goggle design largely because I love sculpting goggles – blame World of Warcraft for that.

Unpainted glory front

Unpainted glory rear

The greens look like this at the moment:

 

Torso Front

Legs Rear

Legs Front

Torso Rear

 

Greens showing helmet

Of course the other thing they need are some suitable kustom laser guns – the human versions are far too weedy and safe for these guys.

Roast Mutton – Designing Sclupting and Casting a Halfling Scale Sheep

As part of the preparation for Knavecon 2014 we ended up going for a Mordheim participation scenario which calls for livestock.  Last Saturday I attempted to buy some cheap plastic animals to be said livestock.  I was looking for the kind of plastic pigs, cows and sheep that we had as small kids.  This proved to be a tall order as I could not find a single diminutive creature to fit the bill.  Seeing as I had already spent half the day going around the city I figured that it would be a better use of my time to just sculpt some tiny critters and cast ’em up using Gildeo Siligum to create the mould and Prince August Model Metal lead/tin/bismuth alloy.

The finished Knavecon Sheep sculpt

After getting to this stage I had some issues with the moulding process as the legs were a little too long to get a good 1 piece casting what with the hard to ventilate air pockets.  When I feck things up I just chalk it up to experience and move forward, such is the way of learning the ins and outs of casting.  Like all things the more experience you get fecking things up the less you feck it up in the future.

 

First “failed” casting efforts

in order to get a decent casting I ended up chopping off the legs and creating two moulds, one for the torso and one for the 4 legs.  The legs are simple and generic in design so that it matters little which side of the body they attach to – I basically cast as many as I could and put them in a big pile ready for cleaning and sticking to the sheep torsos.  Sticking the legs on is a little tedious, this would not be a desirable feature of a full production model!

First quick test paint job with the rest of the flock beginning to take shape

So the end result is pretty good given the short time frame for execution of the idea.  As sculpts go it’s a little bit rough in places (although still way better than many so called professional sculpts I have come across over the years) but as I am under pressure to churn them out quickly they are perfectly fine for the job.  If I ever make some production animals I can obsess over the minute details then!

In terms of design she is specifically tailored for the vertically challenged races such as Halflings.  Obviously I favor caricature and slight anthropomorphic feel to my creatures over realism.  It makes more sense to me for animals for a fantasy game to be more like kids toys or TV shows than to be realistic looking.

I like to spend as much of my time wargaming in side splitting laughter as possible and cute characterful models really help.  If this kind of sculpt is not bringing a smile and a chuckle to the audience then I am not doing it right!

All in all how could I not be happy with how this one turned out?  Now to get busy making a flock of them for Saturday!

Sculpting a Venator Head – Part 2

More WIP shots of the sculpt in chronological order.

+++++++++++++++++ NEXT SITTING+++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++ NEXT SITTING+++++++++++++++++++++

Now some quick and dirty test casts.  This will help to show up what I need to fix for the final master and give me an idea of how well I am doing.

Initial setup for moulding using a wee plastic box. Plasticine on the right is used to initially hold the object to be moulded

This is what the Siligum pressed onto the Plasticine looks like

Minus the Plasticine, and reversed into the plastic box

Carefully applying Vaseline with a sculpting tool to stop the siligum sticking to itself. You can use siligum to fill in any defects or gaps that occur, fill in the hole (just enough to fill it) and pop the model back into it for 10 mins. I had to do that for this models chin

 

Second application of Siligum. This container is great for squeezing! It came from a glasses repair set. Always keep an eye out for good containers!

Et violla! Castings with the flash lines visible. Not too much flash in this case, lucky me

Tidied up the flash and stuck on a hapless abandoned guardsman project

Slap a bit of paint on…

 

So not too bad so far.  I can see that I need to work on the cheeks and the nostrils to better define them but on the whole it defiantly has the right vibe/mood.  I have learned LOADS and gained a lot of confidence in doing this project so far.  I put this down to the fact that it is for another person so I focus better on it due to the mental pressure I create for myself.

 

 

 

Casting bases for my little traitors…

Apologies if this seems a little long winded today.  Being rather visual I prefer to avoid long winded texts in what is fundamentally a blog about pictures of the miniatures I paint.  Sometimes its just unavoidable, as in this case.

It is a wee bit of my technical process for making bases to measure, feel free to just look at the pictures though, I don’t mind.

😉

Convoy!

Epic 40,000 is played with lots of fun tiny models.  Traditionally in epic it seems to me that models were often unpainted as many of my contemporary players used the tanks unbased.  This is not any problem for the rules as it is generally obvious when something is in range or not.  I am from the “base the damn model!” school of thought – the best painters are I hazard to think.

It is better to protect that nice paint job you spent hours on with a sturdy base.  Basing makes painting much easier as I won’t paw my paint job with my trotters accidentally.  Basing is an opportunity to bring uniformity to your forces, or to designate one part of it from another, e.g. square base – infantry, round base – vehicle.

I had some years previously based my imperial guard Epic tanks using Warmaster bases.  This proved to be kind of not quite what I should have done with them.  What I should have done was used a round convex shape.  Round just works better for more shapes of model than rectangular.  The convex shape means the vehicle model can be placed driving up or down the slope and lurching from one side or the other.  This allows a formation of them to get away from the cookie cutter look of lots of tankmodels on planar bases.

For this project I grabbed a suitable shape to begin with.  The most apt thing I could find to hand was an old flying base which I had previously based with sand and spayed black for some abandoned project.  The epic tanks looked good on it and that was enough for me to make a mould.

Master model (with the bit of a pen that was super glued to it) and silicon moulds

I used the two part silicon stuff that hardens from a putty to set in like 10 mins or less.  It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right with this stuff but I like it because I can mould using hot led which is quite dangerous on a few levels but is very 80’s and rock and roll in my twisted mind.   This stuff is soft and easily damaged by carelessness but quite robust vs. lead. It can take a lot of castings (I have gone as high as about 20 but one could certainly do more).  However I found it important to let the mould cool down a little after about 4 castings or the lead takes too long to cool in the mould.

Siligum – comes in larger packs as well

I am not really a fan of resin as it’s not particularly dangerous enough to be exciting but more importantly I can’t bend the $%^! out of a resin casting should I wish to repose a casting a bit.

The base is cast using a high quality lead based alloy

A lovely texture base, exactly what I wanted.

Tiny Rhino

Tiny Land Raider

I promised you some Rhinos…

So now I am off to paint the buggers!

Next issue – Assault and Tactical detatchments!