Black Crusade 2012: Work in Progress

Hello to all you lovely people, thought I'd share with you my progress on the Black Crusade charity event. My contribution is some Death Guard Terminators, I've just finished the kitbashing so here they are:

All the models are based on Secret Weapon Miniature's Bone Fields bases which they kindly supplied to the entire project team. I don't post much about this phase of painting and modelling so I thought I'd write up my thinking as to how these were posed and why.

When posing a large, heavy weapon trooper you either want the model in a strong braced pose or manoevering a weapon. Firing on the move poses don't really work for weapons of this size. To add a little more visual interest and to mark the models out as Nurgle I added one of the severed arms from the zombie kit and a Puppetwars plague warrior head. Decided to use the one with half his head missing as the damage is on the left. In order to bind the pose together the eyeline of the head would have to follow the line of the gun barrels. With the head turned to the right to achieve this you will be able to clearly see the damage.

As an alternative to following the line of the gun, you can have the model posed as if scanning for targets. Or spotting a new close target and starting winding up for a strike with the axe.

If you are left with a fairly static pose and there isn't much you can do about it, resist the temptation to do something like having a weapon randomly waving in the air. Often looks more Saturday Night Fever than Last Samurai... Instead, have the warrior posed passively and use kitbashed (mixing parts from different kits) elements to add visual detail. In this case a Terminator Lord's chainfist and a shaved down Nurgle champion head should do the job.

When you do get a chance for some dynamism though, grab it with both hands! One of the advantages of the moulded bases is that you can put the model a few degrees off centre. Combining that with the walking legs adds a sense of motion. Having the storm bolter levelled and in firing pose with the head in the right position makes it look like laying down covering fire as it advances. Imagine the head glued straight forward on the torso, instead of firing it would just look like it was waving the gun around instead.

Another kitbash, the Terminator Lord lightning claws are massive and thus present their own posing problems. Instead of allowing the claw to swing all the way back I kept them in front of the hipline. This gives a look of a large model "hustling" rather than running. As this was to be the Aspiring Champion I needed a way to mark him out of the unit. A personal icon pole and the Terminator Lord helmet helped this.

My general rule with posing miniatures is that the position of the heads and waist joins determine much of the realism of the pose. Care must be taken with this to bind the position of the weapon arms with the rest of the body. Too often you see stiffly standing models waving weapons around like flags or not looking the way the guns are aimed. Daft, in other words. To help this, the head is ALWAYS the very last thing I glue on to finish the model.

So, posing over, painting next I guess! Until next time...

TTFN