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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 3:18 pm
Posts: 40
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Hi 
I'm finally back, after taking a temporary hiatus from sculpting due to rather *cruelling* university work this semester 
You may or may not recall that some time ago, during the SOB diary thread, I posted a collage of WIP sculpts, which among other pieces included an epic scale Genestealer...
Well, with my exams for this semester finally over, and me having regenerated enough to grab some tools, by the end of last week I decided to finish that one...
Before heading right off to the pictures, allow me a short introduction to this project...
In 40K scale Genestealers are certainly among my all-time favourite models, but I never really warmed up to the almost 2D "cardboard cutout"-looking Genestealers in Epic. While I realize that with mass production ?(and mass assembly...) in mind GW couldn't make them multipart models and were thus forced to take that route to represent them, I was not to be constrained by such considerations . . . so I started work on a proper 3D version.
The model is based on images of the Inquisitor 54mm version, whose design I like better than the 40K scale ones (in particular the latest release...).
I wanted to make it multipart, so as to be castable (someday - I still haven't got around to even actually try and cast any of the others, maybe during the holidays, though I fear that my casting supplies might have gone the way of the dodo...).
The result is a model in eight parts, nine if you count the base, which comes seperate with a hole to fit a peg under the left foot (claw, whatever...).
Almost the entire model was made from an approximately 60/40 mix of Green Stuff/Milliput Superfine White, over an armature made of plastic. A few small parts were carved from plastic and then glued to the armature or attached directly to the moist putty.
So much for the introduction, may I present to you, without further ado,. . .
PICTURES!
As usual, I have taken a number of shots of the finished model and arranged them in a kind of collage. I will now go over them and say a few words about each in turn.
Pics #1 through #4 show the individual parts.
#1a and #1b show both pairs of arms, from both sides. It may be a bit difficult to make out in the pics, but the 3 large talons of the large claws, as well as the individual fingers of the humanoid hands were carved from thin plastic (the bottoms of throwaway plastic cups, since I still haven't got myself any plasticard...). The "membranes" (or whatever you would call them) in the arms' ?were sculpted first, then the outer armored shell was sculpted over them, leaving them to be seen in those small oval areas.
They were done by applying a small sausage of putty over the armature and then pulling and pushing with a thin needle to create ridges. There are 2-3 individual ridges to each arm segment, though they are a little hard to make out in those shots.
2a and 2b show the legs, again from both sides. The small talons on the back of the legs are carved from plastic and pressed into a small blob of putty on the lower leg. When that was try, I first filed it into shape using a very fine-grained piece of sandpaper and then applied a tiny amount of epoxy glue at the joint, to make sure the plastic thorns wouldn't slip or break out of the putty base.
The peg beneath the left leg goes into the hole in the base to provide stability during assembly (and by god, was I glad of that when I arranged that beast to take the photos...).
3a and b show the head and torso from different angles. ?Not much to say here, I think. The holes for arms and legs were made by pushing the arm/leg joints into some (not too freshly mixed) putty, it's surface moisted with water. Then I allowed the putty to cure (naturally without the arms/legs in place...  ) filed off the excess that had gotten squashed to the sides and did some sculpting around the holes.
#4 is the base with aforementioned hole. Since i don't own a sufficiently small drill I just cut a wide hole with a sharp pointed knife, filled it up with putty and then created a properly sized hole by pressing the peg into the putty. I then let it cure and filed/cut off the excess.
I plan to make such a base for every epic mini I sculpt from now on, rather than sculpting them attached to a base - that ought to make for easier casting.
Pics #5 and #6 show the assembled beast in all its glory -assembling it, however, which I did provisionally, using small blobs of the brown component of brown stuff instead of glue, ?was *not* a glorious affair at all - as a matter of fact it all but reduced me to a drooling heap of misery before I finally managed to force it into a halfway decent pose without it collapsing or tilting way to the right.
Pic #5 shows it towering over some poor catachan, who must be feeling rather miserable right now - all the while looking rather tasty to our friend, one would imagine 
By the way, as you might have noticed, the miniature is attached to the base facing the wrong way, so that the whole thing tended to flap forward on it's face all the time in a rather undignified manner. Rather then changing it's facing, and thus risking utter collapse ?of that most carefully achieved pose (see above) - not to mention putting myself into a delirious screaming rage and rather discomforting the neighbours - I just "glued" it to the wood with what remained of the brown mass.
#7 is a comparison of size and shape with the standard Epic Genestealer.
I tried to stay as close as possible in size, and I think my version ought to be pretty much perfectly in scale with any epic Tyranid force (though fielding it alongside regular 'Stealers might look funny , I guess).
Cheers,
Drasannar
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"...and they taught me terror. How to use it and how to face it."
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