State of the Hunt, Week 32/2023: Greenstuff & Gamedev

Aw, man, I’ve let this blog lapse once again — I am so sorry, guys!
But hey, at least I do have something to share with you, even if it’s just a small project.
Remember this gentleman from my previous post?

This was a very early and loose mockup of my attempt to turn a leftover AoS Slaughterpriest model into another Eightbound of Khorne.

Now this particular Slaughterpriest is such a strange model, in many ways: The scale and anatomy seem so different that not only does the model stand out from the rest of the Blades of Khorne — it could almost be from a different line of models or manufacturer altogether. I also nearly did a spit take when I realised that the character’s looks is basically almost identical to the “Uber Immortal” from the film “300” (go ahead, google it!)

But it is a great source for conversions, with its almost Primarch-like physique, and it happens to be surprisingly close in stature to the stock Eightbound models. So let’s check out how this particular conversion has shaped up since we last saw it, alright?

The first thing to do was to clean up the overall assembly quite a bit:

This step also included the decision as to whih bitz would be used on the final conversion: I slipped in a weapon muzzle from the Forgefiend kit to approximate the “toothy maw” that appears above the head on the stock Eightbound models. The effect is a bit more pronounced here, but it worked well for the overall look of the model, so I decided to keep it. I also chose an old CSM champion backpack — which had always felt just a bit too tacky for regular models but ended up looking a bit on the tame side here, when compared to the stock Eighbound power packs 😉

Up until this point, everything had just been crudely tacked together with poster tack, so it was finally time to break out the GS — not normally my favourite step of the way, but it could not be helped…

As you can see, I started by sculpting a neck portion for the model — although “sculpted” is a somewhat misleading term in this case: I was feeling slightly clever, so I made a quick GS copy of some actual Eightbound shoulders and spliced them in. The stock Slaughterpriest neck portion was carefully shaved away directly above the pectorals, and the Eightbound shoulders and neck – which turned out to be an almost perfect fit – were added on top. This also had the added benefit of working together very well with the actual Eightbound head I used.

As you can see, the copy could have been just a bit sharper — but it’s certainly a lot better than anything I could have sculpted from scratch! Even the attachment points for the arms were better than expected, although still a bit dodgy. Since I knew the upper arms would end up being covered by the model’s pauldrons, however, I decided to leave them that way for the added benefit of being able to take off the arms and weapon during the painting stage.

So the next step was to put the armour back on and use some more GS to start and build up the model’s back. Here’s a first rough mockup:

And here’s what the whole thing looked like after I had built-up the back of the armour:

Look, it’s definitely not brilliant GS work, but it gets the message across. I used some GS cabling to hint at the armour’s – corrupted – underlying functions. And the whole thing works well enough with a backpack and the shoulder pads attached. Take a look:

So here’s a look at the mostly finished conversion:

All in all, I would say the model makes for a pretty convincing Eightbound, wouldn’t you agree? The leg armour is the one area where the model obviously diverges from “true” Eightbound — the Slaughterpriest is an almost ridiculously lean model to begin with, but at least it’s easy enough to suitably bulk up his upper half. On the other hand, this Slaughterpriest version already has a very gladiatorial look to it, which is definitely a good fit for a World Eaters army. That being said, I have seen quite a few conversions of the model where it never really ended up looking enough like an Astartes due to the difference in build — the Eightbound parts are pulling a lot of weight in this respect!

So here’s another look at th “squad” so far (no longer legal by 10th Ed. standards, I gather — but, frankly, who cares, eh?

In other news, one more thing before I tune out for today — and it has nothing to do with my World Eaters, the world of Warhammer 40k — or even with tabletop wargaming altogether. So what is this about?

Some of you might remember that I have mentioned cutting my game-design teeth using Media Molecule’s software “Dreams” on PlayStation.

I have, in fact, created several games & art pieces using the software, and if you have ever wanted to check them out, that is now easier than ever before, because Dreams is currently free to download as one of the PlayStation Plus Monthly games for August 2023 (for everyone who has both a PlayStation 4/5 and a PlayStation Plus subscription of any tier). The offer lasts until the start of September.

After that, the game will still be available for free to members of the higher subscription tiers. But if you fulfill the requirements listed above, you absolutely NEED to get this software. I am normally quite wary of endorsements like these, but I’ll make an exception here because I don’t think I have ever made a better investment when buying a game — and to get the same game, potentially for free, makes it even more of a no-brainer:

Dreams will offer you access to a massive wealth of fun, quirky, fantastic, often plein weird playable content including games, animation, music or everything in between. You’ll also provide you with a set of incredibly robust and playful creation tools that you may just ending up loving as much as I do…

And hey, like I said, you’ll be able to finally play my game CITADEL, eh? I am just leaving a trailer and some images here for your perusal 😉

Also, be aware of the fact that, proud as I am of my game, it is probably towards the lower end of the scale of what can be accomlished within Dreams, so if you thought that looked at least kinda neat, you’ll be in for a world of delicious, indie gaming slurry!

Full disclosure: This is NOT a sponsored endorsement. I’m just a fan of the platform & REALLY think you should take a look! 🙂

Anyway, that’s it for today! Let’s hope I’ll be able to get back to my hobby desk before long, and have something more substantial to share with all of you. Until then, it goes without saying that I would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

State of the Hunt, Week 10/2023: Blog for the Blog God!

Well, seems like I am back.

First of all, many thanks to everyone for the kind words and warm welcome after my short previous post! I am feeling incredibly humbled by your reactions, especially when I wasn’t really expecting anyone to still be hanging around this blog, checking for updates! I was also sorry to hear that people were actively worried for my wellbeing — I certainly did not mean for that to happen!

So what happened? Nothing much, really — or at least, nothing too different from what the rest of you will have gone through over the last couple of years. Two and a half years of a world-wide pandemic (and counting…) were certainly a challenge to get through with (most of?!) my wits intact. There were also health problems galore in my immediate family, a situation that is unfortunately still ongoing. But I did never make a conscious choice to step away from the hobby for a longer time — it just happened to fade into the background for a while.

In fact, I still vividly remember sitting in the garden during the late summer/early autumn of 2021, quietly tinkering with the World Eaters Rhino conversion that would end up being one of the last things I posted here on the blog before my hiatus. And suddenly, it’s more than two years later, and Eternal Hunt is now 11 years old, incredibly enough — and with little enough input on my part — at least for the last two+ years.

And now I am back — it was always clear that it would be a new World Eaters release that would draw me back out of hiding. And that’s exactly what happened. And I can assure you we’ll be looking at World Eaters kitbashes and conversions again before long, for however long this resurgence of Eternal Hunt may last.

But for today, I would like to take a small detour, if that is okay with you, and briefly look back on the last two years of my hobby hiatus:

So what have I actually been up to in all this time?

On the hobby front? Not much, to be honest. In fact, before the new World Eaters hit, my most involved attempt at creating something hobby-related was a kitbash representing a veteran bolter marine for my custom INQ28 Astartes chapter, the Golden Legion (I wonder if anyone remembers Praetor Janus Auriga, for instance):

As you can see, the model was based on one of the Easy-To-Build Primaris Marines. My aim was to build a fairly standard Space Marine (in a classic pose & wielding a boltgun), while also featuring some visual elements that would embody the look and feel of the chapter. I want the Golden Legion to read as a very knightly & somewhat ostentatious chapter, and they are also Imperial Fists successors, so the use of a medieval looking helmet was key. I chose the head of Rodicus Grytt, an Imperial Fists brother of the Deathwatch originally released in the Deathwatch: Overkill game set — does anyone even remember that? 😉

All in all, it’s a fun conversion, and one I hope to get painted one of these days, so Brother Laertes of the Golden Legion will be able to begin his life of service to the Velsen Sector. But I’ll readily admit that this isn’t a particularly impressive hobby output for such a long period of time — but I didn’t really build or paint anything else, to be honest.

At the start of 2022, an article of mine was published in the 4th issue of 28 Magazine, and I loved that! But to be fair, the article talks about the HeroQuest set that I painted allll the way back in 2019, so it doesn’t exactly qualify as brand new content 😉

Oh, and I backed Mike Franchina’s VERY intriguing “Trench Crusade Kickstarter”, which seemed like the best parts of Warhammer 40k Inquisition, the Mutant Chronicles and World War I aesthetic, all thrown into a blender, with some magic fairy powder sprinkled on top. Really looking forward to receiving those miniatures at some point in the hopefully-not-too-distant future!

Beyond that, I barely kept up with the hobby, only really following two of my favourite hobby blogs – namely Apologist’s blog and Between the Bolter And Me, and I tried keeping – vaguely – up to date on the lovely World Eaters army of my buddy Augustus b’Raass. And that was it — in fact, one of my first tasks, now that I am back, will be to figure out which hobby blogs & communities are even still going. For instance, I was really happy last week to find “The Bolter & Chainsword” still alive and kicking!

CITADEL

I think the main reason for my absence was that most of the energy I would have spent on the hobby actually went elsewhere — but where?

Maybe some of you will still remember my first fledgling steps in designing videogames, using Media Molecule’s design suite Dreams — I briefly posted about it, back in the day.

Now over the last three years, I have become an active member of the Dreams community and have been ceaselessly working on my various projects there.

Fair warning: This will have very little to do with the actual focus of this blog, so if you are only here for the little plastic people, feel free to skip the following.

But maybe, just maybe, some of you will be interested to find out where I have been burning most of my creative energy these last years:

So, my main focus has been to work on CITADEL, an ongoing game project very much inspired by games like “Journey” (by thatgamecompany) or by the games from Team Ico and Fumito Ueda (“ICO”, “Shadow of the Colossus” or “The Last Guardian”). These games have been a massive inspiration to me, and I wanted to create something at least slightly reminiscent of them. Hence CITADEL.

In the game, you join a pair of shadowy beings called “The Wanderers” and explore the ruins of a fallen civilisation, the eponymous CITADEL. This all plays out as a third person action adventure, although the gameplay is really rather simple: You can really only run, jump & explore, as the various locales and the story of the CITADEL unfold around you.

So far, two (of four) acts of the game have been released. Check out this trailer that should at least provide some first impressions of what the game looks and sounds like:

And here’s a small gallery of screenshots giving you a better idea of the game’s various environments:

Now if the game should look a little dodgy to you: Fair enough, that’s because literally all of it has been made from scratch. Yes, the underlying engine takes care of A LOT of the work that is required to make the game function at all, but all of the assets & music were created by me. And that’s how even a fairly dodgy game can come to feel like a momentuous achievement: In fact, to create an entire world like this, basically from nothing, really feels like you’re shaping the raw energies of a universe, if you’ll excuse the hyperbole. Well, it does during its best moments — there’s also a lot of cursing, playtesting and trying to get my dodgy programming to work, obviously.

But yes, it was easy to spend a lot of time doing this, and it certainly continues to fascinate me. I could go on, waxing poetical on the brilliance of Dreams and the community surrounding it, but I’ll keep the brunt of that subject for elsewhere. Like I said, video game design is not really the focus of this blog (that being said, I’d be very happy to answer any questions you might have on the subject — I just don’t want to cram it down your throats).

And surely enough, the game shares very little, if any, common ground with Warhammer 40k or miniature wargaming, admittedly. The most grimdark – and hence Warhammer-adjacent – thing I may have created so far is the Sunken One, as somewhat Cthulhuoid creature appearing as an opponent in CITADEL’s second act:

Isn’t he a beatuy? 😉

Anyway, in the – somewhat unlikely – eventy that any of you should own both a PlayStation (4 or 5) AND a copy of Dreams and would like to take a look: The two first chapters of the game are available right here:

https://indreams.me/dream/miVNpyuKwhP

https://indreams.me/dream/mryKJhppVcd

I would, of course, love for you to check this out and let me know what you think, so if you have the means to do so, I’d be excited to hear your thoughts and impressions of the game so far!

But over here on Eternal Hunt, chances are we’ll be returning to our usual menu before long: As you may already have glimpsed in my previous post, I have been hard at work tweaking some of my older World Eaters conversions — and putting the new Khorne Berzerker kit through its paces! So I think that’s where we’ll be heading for the next post. And who knows, we may even meet some old friends again — like Lord Captain Lorimar:

In the meantime, I’ll be totally honest with you, because I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver: Who knows how long I can keep this up? Maybe updates will be sporadic. Maybe there’ll be longer breaks again. These are tough times, and I am still a lazy bum when it comes to blogging. What I do know is this, however:

It was lovely to be welcomed back into the community, and if nothing else, I want to thank you all for it by sharing some new-ish work soon. So I hope you’re looking forward to that! I also hope today’s post, while a slight departure, wasn’t a complete turn-off.

And, in closing — how I missed writing these words:

Please feel free to let me hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!