Musings of a Metal Mind: Tyranids

Showing posts with label Tyranids. Show all posts

Monday, February 28, 2011

More Commissions: Tyranids

Just a quick post to show some more commission work (and to get us through post #99): Tyranid Warriors, along with angry little cohorts, the Ripper Swarm. I'll bet from that last post you were expecting more Dark Eldar, weren't you? Well, check back at or around post #101.

I both did and didn't want to go all out and make their weapons pulpy, squishy organs of death, because I felt it might detract from the overall model. Being as how they are the aforementioned organs, I did my best to make them pulpy/squishy without going completely overboard. I wanted them to have appear more hard with the membrane at the end, sort of like a... well never mind.

I was sorely tempted to leave them eyeless, like the Xenomorphs from Aliens, but with the lighter Hive Fleet Leviathan paint scheme, it just wouldn't have worked out. Plus, I needed to stick to the conventions I'd already previously established with his Genestealers and Gaunts. One thing I changed, though, was not weathering their chitinous plates up to white; that made the Gaunts look too speckled and dirty, and their masters have a cleaner, more refined look (although I still couldn't exactly see them preening themselves like birds).

As with all newer-version GW models, these do have their expressive qualities, although I'm still quite alright with the inorganic approach I took to my own.

I don't know why, but I quite enjoyed painting these little bastards more so than their larger fellows. There's just something about a swarm of little minis on a larger base... I suppose it's because it's a bit to a diorama than just an individual mini. Oh well.

Next time, the 100th post!

Friday, May 28, 2010

More Macragge Madness....

Finished off that Macragge set. Above are the Gaunts, painted in Leviathan colors. What? You say Leviathan wasn't at Macragge? No worries, neither were the Angels of Flame. My hat's off to you people who paint the Gaunts by the hundreds. All those curves and spikey bits are a tremendous pain in the ass to keep consistent. I dropped the red claws and guns b/c frankly, it looked gay in the color guide and I liked the menacing dark bits better.

Some new-school Genestealers romping into combat alongside their wimpier brothers. I was tempted to push for the grey-pink paint scheme worn by the classic Space Hulk stealers (hey! I never posted mine, did I? Huh, better fix that ). God only knows what Tyracron version will look like. I could do head swaps on a test model and paint it with metallics, I guess...

Nasty little spore mines. I suppose I should think about some for my Harpies to shit all over the enemy too. Not that they'll be around long when the Harpy does a wing-over and dives into close combat.

The nasty Tyranid land features. I stuck with the dark carapace/purple flesh look (black drybrushed with purple and washed with Necron Abyss) If you did a whole battlefield like this, it'd be awful grim, not to mention those unearthly fleshy bits. Yeesh.

The crashed Aquila lander. Poor Aquila, just broke up as it slammed into the ground. Really a nice bit of terrain as far as GW stuff goes. I was tempted to paint stencil numbers on the wings, tail and all, but with painting burn streaks and dust weathering, you wouldn't have been able to see them anyway. As an aircraft design, it's kinda meh, but then, Forge World needs some better aircraft designers, because honestly? Theirs are shit. There, I said it.

Another Aquila shot. from this angle, it looks rather forlorn, all chin-down in the sand. Really what I needed for these photos to really carry off was some sand-color felt, but oh well. You get the idea.

The Imperial doodads from the set. That engine core-thingie looks way too intact for having just come through a crash. I guess Imperial stuff really is hardier than it looks. I started jonesing for scenery whilst painting these last bits, and might undertake a project to dress up either the 40k or Dark Heresy table sometime soon.

Here's hoping they don't entirely nerf the Sisters and Grey Knights when those PDF's come out...

Monday, February 22, 2010

First Out Of The Factory...

Yep, there they are; the Doom of Malan'tai and his buddy, Tyracron Warrior 01. The first two models in the Army of the Void Dragon. Yes, I'm aware that DoM's base is a bit bigger, but he's also a special character, after all. Strangely enough, like Deathleaper, he isn't a synapse creature, and so doesn't merit the ubiquitous White Hat of Independent Thinking. Oh well, he'll still be snacking on Eldar with the rest of them before long.

Yet again, hindsight is 20/20, and if I'd bothered to think about it, I could've gone the extra mile and found some way to cast the Alien Queen's body in clear resin (preferably in two parts) so I could stick a little light inside there. Don't get me wrong, I love the light effects in DoM's chest and aerial vents but seeing him light up would've been super-cool. Failing that, it would also have been good to have a mold of an out-of-production part. Of course, that part has also been in my bits box for years, too. I had considered putting green bits on the ends of the bright lances, but that might've made them too long and brittle.

One of the techniques I ported over from another project was the use of painting glows on the area surrounding an area, the product of some controlled "messy drybrushing" while painting the rib vents and back sections. DoM has to look extra-unearthly, after all, considering he drank an entire Eldar Craftworld dry. How he did that by himself while not being a synapse creature is beyond me. I guess he just lurked and drank until the place was empty....

I thought of painting the glowy sections using a "reverse highlighting" technique, but the recessed areas in the chest were a bit too deep, and would've been in shadow no matter what I did. The Tomb Spyder head looks fantastic, but for the mass-produced Zoancrons, I'll use Destroyer hover-skirts and the more spindly Necron Warrior bodies. Given that Tyranids are typically hexapods (that's "six-legged" for those of you in Rio Linda) I probably should've given him four more Wraith arms, if I could've found them in the first place. Also, since DoM, like Deathleaper, isn't a synapse creature, he doesn't get the White Hat of Independant Thinking. The synapse-only white cranium will also help me pick out synapse creatures on the battlefield visually, since I've never used the 'Nid codex before. Don't tell my adversaries! Shhhh!

I'm generally happy with the way the Tyracron warrior came out. He's cheap, parts-wise, and easy to mass-produce without a ton of conversion work. I plan on making six to nine of them, total, with different weapons loadouts to keep things visually interesting. The gauss coils on his weapon got the same glowy treatment as used on DoM. I'm kind of glad I didn't use the 'Nid legs now; a three-wound model should be burlier than a regular one. Also, as I've said before, they offer the potential of more dynamic poses.

The bronze-gold on his carapace came out brighter than it actually is, and also, much yellower; I used Dwarf Bronze to give it a reddish tint. Seeing as how he's a more elite creature, his color scheme is more along the lines of an Immortal, rather than the boring metal of a simple Termacron (or Necron warrior, if you prefer). I toyed with the idea of making both the Tyracron and DoM vastly different, but then they would have stood out too much from the existing models I'm using to fill out the horde. Now, a teaser image of the forthcoming Deathleaper:

That's right, I found more Alien Queen bits. It seems nothing I built with her remains lasted very long (come to think of it, I bought that model way back in the Battletech years). Deathleaper will be getting some parts from those Cryx warjacks too; namely those wicked-looking scything talon things. The mass-production model Lictors will be more Tyranid Warrior in terms of parts, but I might recut the legs to be more sprightly and sexy like Deathleaper's. Maybe I'll start calling the character models pseudo-C'tan, since they're individuals with their own names and weird abilties. Hmmm.....

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Universe Wants Mechanical Tyranids...

..... and this picture proves it. More cool-ass pics of this metal bug and the story on IO9 . In case you were curious, it's for sale at 4,500 pounds sterling. The people who make it are here and sell all manner of crazy-ass junk-sculpture robots.

I think that proves that there are people out there as crazy as we are, and that you can make substantial amounts of money from our particular brand of crazy.

Happy Tuesday, people.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Tyracron Update....

Okay, so I caved, clipped the Tau legs (gently, gently) and stuck the 'Nid warrior legs on there. He looks more athletic, but.... now more buggy. Hmmmmmm.....

One thing that disappoints me (beside the cricket-style pinions on the back) is that the 'Nid Warrior legs are capable of only one posture, which means that all of the poses are going to be variations of the same; left leg forward, right back, with the right shoulder forward. You can tell I'm going to have to either live with the awkwardness here or break up/repose the model. Boooo.

The Nid legs may look better, but the Tau ones offer better possibilities. Hmmmmmm.....

(PS, yes, he is stuck into that pad by his head-horn. It was easier to turn the whole thing towards the desk lamp and shoot it sideways rather than unclamp the lamp.)

Friday, February 5, 2010

Making Megatron Proud....

As someone set the East Coast Weather Dominator to "Hoth" today, I thought I'd a do a bits box delve and work on my proof-of-concept model for the Tyracron army: the Tyracron Warrior. Seen here with his trusty Gauss Spitter, this thing took a little time to actualize, but it paid off.

I started with the obvious, first: I cut away the tail from the crotch piece (the Necrons don't have tails) and then glued on the 'Cron warrior gun arms and Nid talons. The legs were a pain in the ass, b/c the Nid legs are too... buggy. I needed more "athletic robot" looking ones, and cut a pair of Tau battlesuit legs to fit the bill. The head was another story. A Necron head is too small, and the Nid torso, as you Nid modelers know, has that horn nub in front in lieu of a neck. A Necron head there or in the vast pit immediately behind it looked silly. Likewise, shearing away the little head of a scarab to use him to bulk out the Necron head looked equally dumb (remember Londo from Babylon 5?). Then I had that familiar impulse, and set to work. I sheared away the top of the Necron head, bored out the Scarab's head, and attacked both to the newly spare tail I had lying around. Voila! A serpentine biomechanoid-looking head.

There are some issues with the Tau feet; I need to stick 'em on there at another angle and make sure it has the structural integrity to keep him up. I thought about giving him some kind of power spines or something like the Doom, but decided that sort of thing was for the bigger Tyracrons.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

"Eating souls? Hey, that's OUR thing!!"

I went and threw this thing together in about half an hour of frenzied modelling this morning from things I had lying around the bits box. I had been thinking about it for some time, but for some reason this AM I just had to go ahead and do it. The head is your standard-issue tomb spider body, the body an Alien Queen from the ill-fated Leading Edge miniatures Aliens line, the tail a coat hanger ringed by plasticard tube cut into segments, and the tail a tomb spider claw. The metal bits took some drilling to pin together; deep-ass wells with a large bore hand drill, again using coat hanger stubs cut with a pliers-wire cutter. Man, there is just something therapeutic about drilling holes in things. Anyway, I like the way it's shaping up, but God knows what I'm going to do for adornment bits. This thing feels close to the point of building itself, as so many models have done.

So according to the fluff text in the Tyranid book, this super-Zoanthrope just devours an entire Eldar craftworld, souls first. This is something the Necrons were doing to the entire galaxy before the Slann went and upgraded everyone to psykers, waaaaay back before everyone went and started using stone tools in the 40k universe. This bit of background, as well as the ribcage-motif prevalent in all Tyranid designs spurred me into this Tyranid-Necron conversion thing, which is shaping up to be the Project of 2010.

Also, I'm bloody tired of waiting for them to upgrade the Necron Codex.

Friday, January 29, 2010

A Matter of Scale

You'll remember how utterly thrilled I was about the Warmachine Cryx plastics? Well, my overexuberance got the better of me and I ordered 3 of them. The package arrived today, and upon opening, I was crestfallen to behold just how damn SMALL the things are. They are not, as hoped for, the size of Carnifexes. They are the size of Tyranid Warriors, maybe Hive Guards. So, to sum up:

(pictures are copyright Privateer Press and Games Workshop, used without permission)

That is truly how each would look side by side, based on the size of the bases that come with the models. That little Warjack is incredibly well-detailed for its size, but otherwise, it's far from being as big as I needed it to be. Maybe if I took the torso, mounted it on a Sentinel pelvis with Sentinel legs, and then added a Destroyer hover-skirt (cut in half, with each half glue to the shoulder) to bulk out the body, we might be getting somewhere. I tell you readers, I'm this close to getting a stock Carnifex off of eBay just to be sure of the scale, because this is downright confounding. The thing must be absolutely immense.

The plus side of this is a wealth of parts. Elsewhere in this blog is a borrowed photo of the smorgasboard that comes with one of these kits. Multiply that by three and you'll get an idea of what I now have to work with. The downside of that is that given their scale, they're suited for Warrior size and little else. Oh, I'm sure I could bulk the thing out as conjectured above, but I doubt that would even but up to the huge-base-overflowing bulk of a Tyrant or 'Fex.

Is this project scuttled before it begins? Never say die, true believers. Something will cobble itself together yet...