Blog Cults and Cohorts

This blog...is all sorts of wonderful and inspiration.

Thanks for letting us in to see your world unfold

 

Love how detailed the base came out.

And nice work with the design on the shield!

 

Time to commit some thread necromancy, and breathe some life into this painting blog.

Driven out of the hobby by my perfectionism a good 10 months ago I put it on the shelf for a bit. Recently however with the promise of having some more spare time in the coming weeks I thought I would just take some boxes off the shelf and shift them around a bit. And now here I am with a new idea, and you best believe its going to be something along the lines of a diorama.

This is what Im thinking:
Some kind of deep jungle sacrificial altar to Sotek - A model which would work really well with the lore of the red crested skinks having to carry out their ceremonies and sacrifices out of the temple-cities by the slann's demands, enacting them over ancient ruins and the overgrown long forgotten ziggurats taken back by the jungle over the centuries.



Either which way I go about it, I think the central piece of the pillar and the skulls surrounding the altar will be the same, however I was really considering the idea of having the altar sort of embedded in the ground, which really gives the model some height and makes it more unique in more ways than one

Spoiler: Sacraficial altar Idea's

Sort of like this, but I would most likely build it up a whole lot more, using more like 4-5 layers rather than the two seen here.

Though it may be hard to recreate with just the raw cork that Im using, I do think the finished vision of having it built up a lot higher, possibly with an overhang over the skulls and parts of the altar below would look really nice - especially with tree's on the top layer along with possibly rows of skinks looking down as skaven slaves are sacrificed below. And most importantly once the 'center piece' of the model is positioned which would be a skink prophet/Tehenhauin holding a gray seer head and reciting the prophecy standing atop the central pillar above the altar.





On a similar note, I also cleaned up and built some of the kroxigor models that I had got from Last Sword miniatures kick starter a while back - Some really high quality sculpts is all I can say:

Spoiler: Last sword kroxigors

 

Whilst building it up further, I saw the opportunity to use some further aztec themed ruin segments, sort of intergrating them into rock face to really drive home the fact this is more of a ruined abandoned temple by breaking up the symmetry and showing how it has almost been excavated.

Spoiler: Altar

 

Hoozzah! he is back!!!

Nice to see you around. I enjoy(ed) your projects.
This is quite something to create, good luck.
I'll be following eagerly

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Tree looks great Naz

 

@Nazqua did you finish the diorama with the tree? Or did I miss it coming through this thread?

I like the concept on the altar diorama. Keep going!

 

Thanks guys, As for the tree I have sort of put it on the side for now, although I would basically consider it finished apart from the canopy and the fact it lacks any skinks or models running along it as planned - But Im sure it will get finished sometime, sooner or later.

 

The altar's progressing well. The bulk of the time I have put into it has been building up each individual layer of cork and carving it - Probably still going to add one more layer as well as some additional bits on the 'entrance' to build it up a little more and make it look more underground, other than though I have also began planning out some of the finer details.




I've always found it useful to try and have a 'life sized' plan to work from and just note down idea's and see the composition of everything mapped out before truly beginning. In this case im going to have plenty of room to work with and to fill up with a mixture of mainly ferns and mushrooms in a similar way to by other tree diorama. This time however Im also going to be using some additional ruin pieces and stone slabs along with some really beautifully sculpted skulls.

Ontop of that I have sort of planned out where some of the skinks are going to go, some watching in and attending whilst others are down in the pit below jabbing the skaven toward the altar and their doom.

Spoiler: Planning out the altar

Like the skink prophet, I will be making use of some of my skink models from last sword miniatures, painting them up as true red crested skinks which fits their much larger, more muscular and taller sculpts - Of which I will have two either side of the prophet, and one down below carrying out the actual sacrifices of the skaven slaves.

 

Honestly Im feeling tempted to put an ark of sotek onto the central pillar thats just spewing out snakes down into the sacrifice pit below

 

Following my plan I laid out some bits and pieces to get a better look of what the altar will look like including the ark of Sotek - Although Im still not sure if I want to try and make the walls higher and make the entrance to the cove less wide.

Im probably going to finish it in its entirety before placing and painting the skinks, that way I can find the best spots for them ect.

The next post Ill make will probably be adding all the mud and ground textures, since I basically have the altar all planned out and there isn't much point continuing to go over small things.

Spoiler: Altar mapped out

 

Great plan Naz!

My only comment is I think it would look better with the "congregation" in the hollow in front of the Skink Priest/Tehenhauin, as if he is preaching to the masses. Having the other models on the rise around him makes it seem like a council (feel free to ignore this )

 

Yeah I was certainly thinking about that sort of thing about having it more of a ceremony as you described, although I will need to leave space down there for the actual skaven who are being sacrificed on the altar (I will have some skink beast handlers like the ones with the salamander hunting pack prodding a chain of slaves forward)



But yeah Im really not sure about the skinks in their entirety yet, so I probably will leave that to last then have a much more in depth think about it once everything else is done if you know what I mean thanks for the suggestion

 

Nice idea, in which case it makes perfect sense for the followers of Sotek to be on the high ground surrounding the sacrifice area.

 

Neat layout!

You have a unique proces and thereby result with your Diorama building. I like where this is going

Grrr, Imrahil

 

On another Note:

It always makes sense to be on the high ground

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Decided to pick up a giant cobra from reaper miniatures, The sculpt came even better than I thought, so most likely going to change the composition of the altar to fit this avatar of Sotek in there somewhere - Either as just a stone statue or the real thing.

Spoiler: Giant snake

Also its about time I got out the mud textures and started going to town on this cork - Probably going to wait until I can have a full day to do this though as its pretty tedious and will no doubt take a while.

 

Oooooooh! Make it a live snake!!! To which the enemies are being sacrificed as an emissary of Sotek!

 

I have started work on really making the 'rock face' of the altar cove area, smoothing out all the walls. I find using lots of water in combination with the ground textures really helps to get that natural feel, as the water not only smooths out and hides all the brush work but also flows in really neat little trickles and waysdepending on how you hold the model which helps to build up just a ton of natural looking detail with minimal effort that would otherwise be impossible to gain - Really helping to sort of sell the realism, as if these are real rocks that have been weathered by the intense rains of Lustria.

This is most likely the first step of several in doing the textures, the following ones being doing the actual flooring, the external walls not to mention the top. Luckily enough, I do have two different ground textures that are fairly different, so will be using one for the more 'rocky' area's (Painting it so) and then one for the actual top soil and soil of the ground.

TLDR: Ground texture getting worked on.




Mercy on my designated texturing and glue brush lol

Yeah, I definitely think it would be a real center piece as a live snake, Might be a bit intimidating to paint, but would really set an interesting and unique scene that encapsulates Sotek very well.