Heeding the call…

Alright, everyone: There’s quite a bit going on at the moment, so let me give you a rundown of my current projects. Most of these are chaotic in nature — in more than one sense, I suppose 😉 Anyway, here goes:

1. The Call of Chaos

In a rather uncharacteristic move, I have decided to join the VIIth Call of Chaos over at The Bolter & Chainsword, vowing to paint four new units for my World Eaters before January 15th. I am using this occasion to force myself to finally get a couple of things that I really want to see finished painted, but make no mistake: I am such a huge hobby butterfly that participating in a vow like this is quite a challenge for me. There’s a very real danger of failing this thing, so if you have any fingers left, keep them crossed for me, okay?

Anyway, which models are part of my Call of Chaos vow, you ask? Well, let me walk you through them. The first two should already be known to you:

First up, I am finally going to complete the Forgefiend I built and undercoated what feels like ages ago:

Since then, the poor thing has remained completely untouched, and it’s definitely time to change that!

The next model is a character I am really looking forward to seeing finished:

“The Doomwall”, my World Eaters Terminator Lord in Mk 1-ish armour. I am still extremely happy with this conversion, and I hope I’ll be able to make the model look even cooler when painted!

But I am not limiting myself to models you already know for this challenge: I will also paint two model’s you haven’t seen yet:

First up is a Chaos Dreadnought/Helbrute that I recently converted, using the AOBR Dreadnought as a base. I wanted another Dread because I’ve built so many different interchangeable weapon arms for my existing Dreadnoughts that it only felt logical to have another model that could make use of them. Plus I really enjoy converting Dreadnoughts for some reason. Anyway, here’s the model:

It actually took me quite a while to wrap up this conversion, because the AOBR Dread is a rather limiting base model to use. I also couldn’t get too crazy with the pose, because the model needed to be flexible enough to be able to use all (or at least most) of the extra weapon arms I had built. I kept messing around with various parts, but the model just refused to come together — as it turned out, what I needed in order to finally make this Dread happen was an idea about him as a character: I needed to figure out what kind of guy he was.

In the end, I decided that he is a former Breacher Sergeant whose calling is still reflected in some elements of his ironform — the Mk. 3-ish helmet, the shield on his left arm recalling a stylised boarding shield and the melta, for example. And that was the spark of inspiration that made the whole thing happen.

One thing I am pretty happy with is the brutal looking siege claw on his left arm: The standard powerfist was just looking so boring, so I just tried adding some spiky bitz from the wheels of the WFB Chaos Chariot — and I think the result really works!

The final part of my Call of Chaos vow will be an old acquaintance, in a way. Take a look:

It should be pretty obvious who this is supposed to be, right? 😉 As it happens, the model was actually built for the latest Painting/Converting contest over at Throne of Skulls: The theme of the contest was to take one of the Khornate characters from among the 40k and WFB universes and build a better/updated/reimagined version of them — and what better character to choose for that than dear old Kharn the Betrayer?

Since this is going to be a piece for the contest, above all else, I took the liberty of truescaling Kharn a bit, and I think he wears it well 😉

Oh, the head was, once again, very kindly provided by my fellow hobbyist Belphoebe, by the way. Thanks a lot, mate!

So, like I said, I’ll be trying to get these painted until January 15th. I am slightly scared. Wish me luck, boys and girls! 😉

2. The art of chaos

And while we’re still on the matter of The Bolter & Chainsword, I am supremely happy to announce that I am one of the winners of a recent challenge by fellow hobbyist Greyall. If you don’t know his thread, you should check it out right away: Greyall does incredibly detailed and intricate drawings of (Chaos) Space Marine characters in black and white, and he held a little conversion challenge where all the board members could enter one of their converted models, and Greyall would draw a number of them. I entered my conversion for Lord Captain Lorimar…

…and guess what: I am one of the chosen few. I am so happy! Especially since the competition was absolutely amazing. Definitely make sure to head over there and check out those models! Anyway, I can hardly wait to see Lorimar rendered in Greyall’s trademark style — this will be SO awesome!

3. Creeping Rot

Like I said, I am a hobby butterfly of the first order, so I couldn’t resist opening yet another can of worms…literally: You’ll probably have seen GW’s recently released Putrid Blightkings. Well, one look at the models was enough to decide that I needed a box of these, and I finally picked them up late last week.

So far, I’ve only spent a bit of time with the models due to having been super buys last week, but allow me to share some initial observations:

• the level of detail in this kit has to be seen to be believed! Seriously, those guys are every bit as spectacular as they looked in WD Weekly
• the amount of bitz you get is equally impressive: Even after building five complete models, you should have lots and lots of leftovers for the rest of your Nurglite conversion needs: The amount of heads, rusty weapons and armour plates alone is staggering!
• the kit is pretty flexible, and you’ll be getting quite a few very different looking models out of this one — however, the kit is not as flexible as many “classic” multi part plastic kits (most of the (Chaos) Space Marine range comes to mind), due to the way the models are put together. This is not a problem per se, but it does mean you’ll need to plan ahead in order to convert these guys…
• …speaking of which: (Chaos) Terminator parts will work great on these, from a size perspective.

This last point is pretty important, I think, because many people planning to use these models in 40k seem to be unsure as to their actual size: I’ve seen speculations that the Blightkings are Ogre/Ogryn-sized, and I’ve snapped a quick comparison shot for you:

As you can see, these guys are definitely NOT Ogryn-sized. In fact, they are slightly smaller than Terminators. In my opinion, that makes them useful as stand-ins for Chaos Terminators (probably what I am going to do), true scale Death Guard Marines or something of the sort.

In fact, I have made a few – very early – attempts at “40k-i-fying” the Blightkings:

Nothing huge so far, just messing around with a few 40k parts and seeing what works. A more involved conversion was trying to add a breastplate to the one Blightking in the set that normally HAS to be assembled with a bare belly:

That did take quite a bit of cutting (and the model still needs some serious gap-filling).

But those are just a few brief initial impressions — I guess you may expect a more in-depth writeup about the ins and outs of this kit at some point in the near future 😉

4. Pretty pictures

To wind up this post, let me share one more thing with you: Since messing around with pictures of my models and some image editing software turned out to be so much fun (see my last post), I gave it another try and tackled some more involved photomontages.

First up, a picture of the Hellrazor in action:

I used both Pixlr and Photoshop to create this image, and while there may be a lot of stuff that can be improved, I am still reasonably happy with the outcome.

I also found this very interesting post over at Tyler Mengel’s blog and decided I needed to try something similar. So here’s a composite picture of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt having some fun on the plains of a conquered Hive World:

Once again, both Pixlr and Photoshop were used in the creation of the image. I also found out that Pixlr is great for quickly obscuring rough areas noticeable seams between different parts of a composite picture.

Granted, I still have much to learn, but I definitely like where this is going!

 

Anyway, so much for my current chaotic projects. I’d love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!