On the Workbench - more Inq28 converting!

Greetings all, this post should have gone up while I am floating in a pool on holiday - assuming Mulder can be trusted to push a button in my absense that is. I thought I would share with you all the progress that is being made on the last few members of my Inquisitor's retinue for our Inq28 campaign.

We saw the early progress on the Ogryn in the last On the Workbench. Since then the leadbelcher arms arrived! I had to carve off the gnoblar from the shoulder (could not get a pair of the great cannon arms for love nor money) but after some smoothing with fine sanding sticks you really cannot tell it was there. With the arms in place I could finish off the vest by killing off some undercuts and adding a ridge to the edge where the fabric ends. Then it was time for the firepower. The multilaser I was using came from the sentinel kit but just wasn't quite hefty enough. So I sliced up a guard lascannon and added the multilaser barrel to the cut end. Some shaping and carving to merge the bracing strut at the bottom and it was there. I added a large battery pack by slicing the top off a meltabomb and gluing it where the cables normally go on the normal lascannon. The meltabomb handle made a nice carrying handle on top of the multilaser. I'm going to hold off on attaching the weapon until I've painted the torso. Mrs PVP noted that he looked more like a biker than anything else and so that is his new identity! A sort of Ogryn "Hell's Angel". A more interesting paint scheme than my "sort of a catachan" feel I was going for at first...

Remember the autogun from last time? Well, its got it's home now. This chap is made from Victoria Lamb Miniatures legs, torso and arms (can't recommend her highly enough, great models, free worldwide shipping for very cheap orders - $10 - and got here from Australia within a week). The converted autogun was carved to fit and an Empire head gave the right tone. This fella will be an Imperial Guard demolitions/engineer type, hence the underslung grenade launcher, and will mostly be working in the retinue as an "obstacle removal expert", no door is safe!

For the Interrogator I wanted to have a bit of the 40k madness creeping in. He's not ready for a rosette yet and I figured he could look a bit weirder than the hired members of Inquisitor Vandemar's retinue. I started from an Infinity model, used a Cadian bionic arm - cut and straightened - to replace the ultra high tech left arm. Replaced the power sword with a Tomb Kings Khopesh - a brilliant weapon designed to do lots of different things from parrying, tripping and focussing evil cutting power - and added a rolled sleeve to hide the join. Finally I carved away the metal head and replaced it with a haughty cadian command HQ head. I hated the hairstyle and knew I would be changing it, but to what? Then I remembered an old conversion that Jakob Nielson did with a dude with a huge gun, a top hat and a judge's wig. The legal wig thing seemed to work for the lunacy of the 40k universe so I thought, why not? I chose the more restrained barrister's wig rather than the full on judicial and it was only half way through the process of sculpting it that I realised it was basically just a powdered wig from the 17/1800s. Seems to work.

The last figure for today is the bike mounted version of the crusader conversion. I've chopped most of the extraneous bits from a scout bike to make a slightly more civilian version. I hacked off the legs at the hips and the boots. Built leg armatures out of wire to allow future sculpting to replace the legs. I need to thin the handlebars a bit, Charlie from the Beard Bunker pointed out they were as thick as her arms at the moment... The same head replacement with an Elysian helmet finished her off for now. I still need to sculpt the legs and I may well replace the left hand as the original sculpt is really not intended for gripping.

There we go! What I've been doing on my lunch breaks! I think I've finally used the putty I've been sculpting with long enough to do a review on it so expect on later this week. But one last thing before I go:

See, haven't forgotten or quit. Last time we talked about this I was 21st 8lb (302lb) and 44% fat. So far I have only managed to change my diet, the weather/finances have meant that going out for a run or similar has been a non-starter and I can't really afford a gym. However, even with that I am now...

19st 13lb (279lb) and 38.3% fat

There will be happy 12st people out there who do not realise why being 19st will make me really, really happy. The fact is that I do not think I have been this weight in more than a decade. At my worst I was 24 stone and a whale. Being in the "under 20st" catagory, even by one pound is a cause for much merriment! With winter finally deciding to leave the UK alone I will be able to exercise more and this rate of progress should increase. For now, huzzah!

TTFN