Headswaps 101

I realised the other day that it has been an absolute age since I last did any kind of tutorial, fortunately an opportunity has rather presented itself...

My client has two of these rather handsome totally-not-Hugo Weaving figures and we were debating which head would go nicely on the spare. We had a few options and none of them were really going right. Fortunately, I solved that problem the other day:

Yup, we suddenly realised that the head that I sawed off the Cadian officer would make a somewhat compelling option on there and I figured I'd take some photos on the way. These days, you see, we have lovely cleverly designed head swap systems both in plastic and metal. But back in the day, this is the only way we had:

First off, poor ol' Hugo gets decapitated. You could use clippers for this, or a fret saw, but the razor saw is quite simply the best choice for this job. It's farcically thin but stiffened by the ridge down the back. If you don't have one I urge you to buy one. Sadly, most are designed for woodworking and have rather large teeth, you need one with tiny teeth like mine.

So we've now got a decapitated Hugo and a head orphaned from it's body. I cleaned up the head, removing anything that was connecting to the torso, collar or neck of the original. Make sure to trim the jawline as it'll look very fat compared to it's original sculpt.

Sadly though, the angle is horribly wrong for the simple option of "just glue it on". That's not going to help at all. Instead, you need to fabricate a new neck. Best option is a long pin.

Just like the normal pinning process, you drill into both halves and use a bit of paperclip wire to bridge the gap. However in this case you want to do the exact opposite of the normal process and cut it to length in order to hover the head above the shoulders. Position is important here, best option is to treat it as the spine and drill in to both the skull and the torso roughly where the spine would be. Aim the hole toward the crown of the head and you won't go far wrong. It's then just the normal posing conundrum of "where exactly should this head's eyeline go?"

Yeah, ok, slightly disingenuous. It isn't just posing. There's rather a lot of neck to fill in there. At this point it's time to break out the sculpting putty of your choice. I tend to use ProCreate as the final grey colour doesn't jar with the plastic/metal so it's easier to see that you've got it right. Green often retreats visually and can leave you thinking that you've done something wrong. Often only when you prime the model can you be sure you've got it right. For people who do it all the time, they learn to compensate for this... I hardly ever sculpt, I use grey.

And there we have it! Original flavour Hugo on the left, new Captain Snooty McMonacle on the right. Sadly, his head is slightly overscale for his body but only slightly. Not the worst we've seen by a long way. Painting will come soon, but for now, that's all folks, more shinies to come soon.

TTFN

Night Gobbo hordes, now in pairs...

Hi folks, remember these lads? Well, they're back and they brought friends, another fifty of them...

These are the Blood Moon Bruisers, the second horde of Night Goblins for my army. There will be a third, for my part I feel that units of this size are the natural strength that gobbos should be fielded in. They should feel like hordes anyway, it's just nice that the rules now reward this kind of deployment. The painting method is no different to the original unit (follow the link above) just with the new paints. Happily, with night goblins the black clothing is the unifying factor across the army so you can rather radically change the spot colours between the units. The third mob will be bone moons, so yellow, red and bone. This means the 2.5k workometer is getting verrry close to done!

Of course, this being me I can't just leave it there. Oh no. So here is the almost inevitable 3k list. I've got the models - except the trolls - already so it just needed a little more work :)

One of the units in this lot is the Doom Diver Catapult. I didn't have one to hand and while I rather like the current model but, it is a lot of money for what it is... and they aren't Night Goblins. To most people this wouldn't matter but I'm a theme obsessive. So, with my army based in Hochland and wanting it to be Night Gobbo and forest gobbo all the way I created... this:

Yup, it's a Doom Diver Clown Cannon! A looted mortar plus blind optimism creates a kamikazi goblin delivery system. I've got a couple of the classic doom diver models from the land of eBay and converted up a couple of crew.

The parts are just balanced together to make for easy-paint sub-assemblies. The crew are converted with empire cannon/mortar parts.

With this fella I also added the mushroom-plugged jar from the fanatic sprue. I figure this has the fine ground powder for the touch-hole while the barrel is for the main powder. Dread to think how "goblin precision" plus black powder works out...

Obviously, painted pictures soon! Until then

TTFN

WIP Black Crusade Part 2

Hey folks, quick work in progress update for the Black Crusade project:

Stage one of painting was to paint the entire models with my Jeffrust, follow the link for the method. This gives us a nice solid rusty base to work off. The next stage was to paint all of the coloured armour panels with AK Interactive Worn Effects Fluid. This stuff takes the place of the hairspray technique showcased here. It will allow us to create a chipped and worn effect in the paint later on.

Once dry the Worn Effects is painted over with a layer of Vallejo Grey-Green, this is the perfect Death Guard in my opinion!

Once the Grey-green is dry you can gently rub at the paint with a wet, stiff brush and the tip of a cocktail stick. This reactivates the worn effects and removes the paint to give a nice worn effect.

More later! For now, head over to Black Crusade and consider donating to the project if you want your hands on these bad boys. Don't forget that the Iron Warriors are still for sale and will give you ONE HUNDRED entries in the Black Crusade draw.

TTFN