I am working on a Lustrian themed Vampire Counts army and my fluff piece include creatures known as Quatlixa. Normally when a tainted pool has a spawning the stunted Lizardmen emerge gasp for air and die within minutes. When the pool is suffused with Necromantic power they emerge as the Blood Servants of Vengeance or Quatlixa (aka Saurus ghouls). I used a Skink body, a Saurus head, claws from Reaper bits and a lot of greenstuff. Before I belt out 20+ of these guys I would like to get some constructive criticism. Where I did good and what can be improved, etc.
Not sure is skink or saurus... Think it needs a head crest so I can tell which it is supposed to represent.
I like the idea, but I'd be tempted to use all parts from the same model type. To me, having all different parts makes it look like it's a frankensaurus. But if that's what you're going for - spot on The other question I'd be asking is, at which point do the dead skinks come to life? Are they already decomposing? Lastly, aren't ghouls on 25mm bases? The stat line are more closely matched with Saurus, so I'd be inclined to go with saurus warriors for ghouls. I love the idea! And you can justify almost anything with the words "south lands"
It is intended to represent an emaciated and stunted Saurus. I use mostly 5th ed models, so I generally remove the crests from my newer Saurus models except for unit champions and characters. It's a 20 mm base size for ghouls just like all Vampire Counts Core. I'm not sure I call them comparable to Saurus. They have WS 3, S3, T4, I 2, A 2. That SEEMS similar to Sauri but the lack of any save at all makes them much weaker. To differentiate the ghouls from my zombies I wanted them to be emaciated Saurus rather than Skinks (I have lots of Skink zombies). I can't fit a Saurus on a 20 mm base without chopping a leg off and taking off a chunk of tail (my small number of Saurus zombies have those alterations). Thus I decided head swapping and greenstuffing was my best route. The difference between a zombie and a ghoul is that zombies are corpses brought back to undead. Ghouls are creatures that are neither dead nor alive. Normally spawnings exit tainted pools then expire within minutes. The Quatlixa are cursed to be constantly dying forever. They maintain their half life by eating the flesh of the living. I was not aiming for a Frankensaurus look. That's a future project when I get around to my Abyssal Terror (I'm thinking Ripperdactlyl and Chaos Spawn). Hopefully I can make my ghoul look less Frankenstein-ish after painting it.
I can see what you're going for, I reckon it is headed in the right direction. I'm not sure over the arms though, I think if I were going for a stunted Saurus look, I would use the Saurus head on the skink body and use the skink arms. Then do what you've done and add some detail on the spine with the spikes that make the skink body look more like a saurus and probably leave it at that. For the look of the unit the only other thing I might suggest is to use a couple of regular saurus in there as well to break it up a little and give the impression that the pool produces some random results, it also ties the others to the fact that they are supposed to be stunted saurus and not malformed skinks.
Non uniform models is a good idea. I think I would need to make some filler bases to fit in full sized Saurus that but I have a very healthy supply of extra 40 mm bases. I guess I don't have to have the arms or spikes all be the same either.
more pictures and give the poor thing some paint. It would make it an easier time to help you. Overall though it currently looks fine, I'd just wish I could see more.
I like it, i think we should name them "the spawning of freddie". Personally, Frederick (long for Freddie) seems to be quite whimpy around the arms, and his tail seems abstract, but i think that really catches the mood well. As was suggested above, make spikey spines on at least 1/4th of the models, to get a better Sauri feel, most people personify the saurii with the newer models after all. The spines to my taste, is a bit far apart, if they were a bit closer, it'd give more a feel of malformed, than giving it complete long spines, but having double the normal lengths in between. Perhaps, in cases, you might want to just make a shallow bump as the spikes, to seem like a not fully grown spike I really like the model though, he gives me a ghoul feel already, but you asked for critiwhat what, so that's what you get
Okay, I painted it. I couldn't make up my mind on the color so I consulted my friend's color wheel. I mocked it at first, but now it breaks every impasse. Since my other undead Lizardmen are blue and green I checked blue green against the color wheel and reddish orange was what came out. Fairly straight forward, I took some reddish orange paint and mixed it with graveyard earth (I use Graveyard Earth blends in most of my VC units and will need to buy a new pot of it soon.) I did the spikes, claws and teeth, with the bone paint, whatever GW calls it these days, washed Devlin Mud. I used a a mix of purple and grey for the tongue and washed the mouth with Bedab Black and the scales too. I gave him bright red eyes but did not aim for glowing effect. I apologize for the marginal photos. I can blame the camera or my photography skills, these were some of the better ones I could get. I'm fairly pleased with it, the model was fussy to convert but the painting was very quick and simple. I have enough bits for about 30 or so the Carpe Noctern recommend size. I figure I should be assembly line batches of ten or so. I'll try some with spines closer together like VampTeddy said. I'll experiment with getting a Saurus sized model in there somehow D43mOnSp4wn. I certainly have a surplus of Saurus bits to experiment on. Of course I'm ADD when it comes to modeling. I am also working on painting some living Lizardmen Skinks, slowly piecing together my Corpse Cart, assembling an Empire army, pondering a color scheme for my zombie Cold Ones and working on zombie infantry frequently. Obviously it needs basing, but that's something I prefer to do in groups. I have a few swamp based zombies. I plan to incorporate the swamp basing technique into some or maybe all of my Salamanders and maybe a Skirmisher unit or two. But mostly my LIzardmen are unbased. I need to come up with a good dry jungle floor base to use for both my Lizardmen and Vampire Counts models. EDIT: I'm going to try a few with Saurus arms and see how that goes. Hopefully it will looked like freakish deformed gorilla arms and not sloppy modeling. I'll aim to have a few different styles up to showcase here in a week or two. I'll keep checking for comments here. I think I'll go about half with spindly arms, and the rest either Skink or Saurus arms. Not sure if a single model would look good with asymertrical arms. Might try to make some of the model's feet bigger too.
I think the asymmetry would work on a single model, based on the idea you pitched I think you should be looking for as non-uniform as possible across the unit.
What kind of camera are you using? I'm using my phone but your pictures are quite blurry. I'd love to see a clear picture from the side of it
Conventional wisdom on the Carpe Noctern forum is they work best in units of 30-40. This will take a while... I have about a dozen headless Skink bodies in various states of production. I have a large portion of my undead bits box waiting to do more. It's frustrating because I sometimes accidentally knock off spikes or tail extensions while doing further modifications and the arms take a lot of glue and green stuff to stick. As you can see, one of the models below has gorilla like oversized arms from a modified Saurus bits. The following pictures are what I used for a last minute Conversion entry in Carpe Noctern's Golden Bat Competition. I also I entered my unit filler from the Skinkathalon in the Painting Category. Wish me luck. WIP pictures are also required for the Golden Bat Conversion Category
I know it will make things take longer time, but have you consider pinning the green stuff? I find that it really help with them accidentally falling off. What I do is first drill a hold, and then put glue and a piece of binders that goes almost as far outside the body as what I want to make, then I put the green stuff on it. Does take time, but makes less chances for accidents to happen.