Thanks. I measured everything by eye on this and was trying to avoid a haphazard look, like you would see in Orcish or Skaven construction. The wire I ended up using was a bit thicker than what i should have used. I actually would have been much better off using thread instead of wire, but once I started it was really too late to switch oars mid-stream without taking the whole thing apart and starting it over. I will see about going at this with a hobby knife and doing a little carving, but I am anxious to get this done so I can start my other steg, using the newer plastic kit.
Looks freakin' sweet! I really like the lizard like texture you made between the poles. Really good stuff there.
Hey guys, this is a little off topic, but I needed to do something non-lizard related just to get the paint flowing. My local group had a non-campaign game day scheduled, so I took the opportunity to give my rat army some daylight - and pulled this old conversion http://s6.zetaboards.com/The_UnderEmpire/topic/1174435/1/ off the shelf and finally got some paint on it. Without further rambling, I present my Warlock with Doom Rocket and Warp Energy Converter: ...and from the back: Pretty happy with the cinematic effect of the lightning, although I admit I wimped out on attempting indirect lighting. Hope you like it...now get back to that Steggadon
Indeed! Get back to your cold blooded project! Skaven are pretty cool though and your Warlock looks awesome. Now back to your lizards... Oh and out of curiosity would a Warlock have horns? I thought it was just the Grey Seers that were blessed by the Horned Rat? I ask because I'm a big fan of C L Werner and his Thanquol novels. Either way a cool looking model.
Sweet model! I really like the rocket and the lit fuse. Also the lightning effect is very cool and while admittedly some OSL would have been awesome, it probably would have been very tricky to execute. Anyway, nice job!
Rad conversion! I might show this to my skaven playing friend, see if I can get him back into the hobby.
Thanks guys, this got the juices flowing and I put in about a half hour on the Steg last night, hopefully I can finish it up this weekend (although there is snow in the forecast, so I may end up skiing instead of painting). Pilgrim - the original Warlocks sculpted by Jes Goodwin all had horns, although not as big and crazy as the Grey Seer horns. I thought about grinding the horns off but decided to spare my lungs the lead dust and keep as much of the original figure intact as possible, as it's a really cool old figure. The Doom Rocket is pretty nasty indeed, and used correctly the Skaven are quite formidable. I win with them far more often than I do with the Lizards, but they were my first army and I do have the most experience with them, so that's probably part of it.
Hey guys, I've been finishing up my baby steg conversion and finally had a chance to take some photos for you all to see. Pretty happy with the way it came out, and I decided to go a little crazy with the base in honor of the last time I used this model against the elves and crushed a whole unit of swordmasters with it. Here is the base, before painting, (note the genuine New York twigs!) with a dead elf figure made by Mantic Games, that I ordered a while back through http://hoardobits.com/ - And below, a close of of said dead elf, after the base was painted, flocked, static-grassed and water was added into the little crevasse which I sculpted. The water is simply Future acrylic floor wax poured It takes about 48 hours to completely dry when you pour it on this thickly, and turns cloudy during the process, but ends up crystal clear and rock hard. I have a bottle of this from the supermarket cleaning products aisle that I bought about ten years ago and may never use up. Quite a good investment! The elf's skin looks a bit more yellowish in this photo than it actually is, probably because of the light bulb that I was using to light this photo. Of course it could just be necropathy setting in
So here are the rest of the photos that I took of the Baby Steg Elf-Crusher, with the skink Chief and his War Spear: Viewed from the other side: and a close up of the howdah interior: Below I've replaced the Skink Chief with a normal crew skink (the old metal one with the long pole-arm that can actually reach far enough to attack enemy infantry on the ground). This is probably how I will field it most of the time: Final rear view, with just the normal crew figures: Hope you like what you see!
Thanks. Sure took me long enough to finally finish it! Now I can can get back to some sculpting projects that have been pushed to the edges of my workbench...
wicked Steg, man. I wish I had even 10% of the collective painting talent shown by this forum's members. top notch stuff.
Thanks newscales, I should have some photos of back-burner projects returning to the fore starting this week.
I was trying to go with a natural skin tone on this Steg, as my army is painted in fairly bright colors and I felt some contrast was in order. Most of the shading and blending on the Steg's body was done with an airbrush initially and then finished with a brush. The detailing went mostly into the way I painted the horns. I resisted the urge to put a lot of color on the steg's frill, as I felt that would pull the eye away from the color and action going on in and around the howdah. There is a fair amount of conversion work here (see earlier photos in this thread), especially with the skink straining to pull back the bow, the one standing next to him with a spare ballista bolt, pointing to the enemy target (which ended up less noticeable from the side, as the quiver of ballista bolts obscures the view) and the whole back end of the howdah, and the two cupolas on either side, which were constructed of balsa/bass wood. I'm very satisfied with the red and black pattern on the howdah walls and like the scaly texture I sculpted on, but actually wish I had made the texture even more noticeable now that I see it finished. All in all I love this model and had to go a little nutty with the base to really do it justice. I hope the plastic steg comes out as good, but lately when I look at the GW plastic steg kit (compared to this one) it just looks awfully bloated. I wonder if we will get a new steg kit with the new book in August? Either way I am 99.9% sure that GW will not remove the Steg from our army list. I would love for them to be a bit more able to survive cannons and other shooting...
Just a few more photos of the baby steg's howdah and crew before I move on. These are taken at an angled, overhead view, which is how most people will see the model on the table top during gaming: ...and I made a special base for the Skink Chief, so I can use him without the Steg, as a regular hero on foot: To nice of a model to leave laying flat on a shelf! I should mention that all of the skink crew in these photos (except for the two conversions working the giant bow) have wire pins in their feet, so they can be removed for transport (or in case I take wounds....perish the thought!) and can be repositioned in the howdah if I get bored
Just wow man. Simply and not so simply at the same time, AMAZING! Cannot find one thing I dislike about this model. Everything from the base to the steg to the skink chief is just freakin' awesome!
OK, happy Monday everyone Those of you who've been around awhile may recall that I started a project just before my wedding last summer, when I needed an extra Salamander for a tourney I was about to play. Since I use the old style metal GW sallies, and all of them are conversions, this new one had to be equally unique. As the game was just a few days away and I didn't have time to get an old sallie from eBay and convert it, I decided to make one from scratch. Here is how it looked after a couple hours (2 evenings) of sculpting, with a styrene plastic sail on its back: Since that tourney I've fooled around with the model on and off, when I had spare greenstuff on my fingers and nothing better to do with it. But now that the Croc-Ogres http://chapterhousestudios.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=136 and the baby Steg (above) are finished, I've brought the Sallie project front and center and intend to finish this over the next couple weeks (if not sooner!) Wthout further rambling, here is how she looks now: And from the other side: I just need a few more spikes and horns to wrap this up, and then I'll be painting her. What do you all think? I'm about to start work on the handlers too, and intend to do conversions on all of them ...stay tuned!