A Guard Hellhound a la Dave Taylor

Like many of you I also look forward to Dave Taylor's new blogposts. His work is really inspiring and his Blood Pact army looks so creative and artful; the trucks in it are awesome. Here's is Dave's blog, make sure to become a follower. So get you started right, click here for the link to Dave's Guard Truck.

So I decided to make a Hellhound using Dave's template that he has on his site for all of us to use. So I am starting a little series on making this thing. I have not gotten very far but I am inspired!

First thing was to download the template. For some reason the file printed out too small, so I resized it so the dimensions on the page are perfect when printed on a 8.5x11 sheet. Here are those files for you all to download without having to do photoshop to it.

Copyright: Dave Taylor and Thomas Wynn

I sent Dave these files so he can drop them on his site as well if he wants to. If you open them up in Photoshop you can see the guidelines that I added to create the right size. Should work for all of you.

After printing I cut all the pieces out, then traced them on plastic card. After that the cutting starts. Not easy but by no means impossible.

Here's a start: The Truck Bed

My buddy Christian gave me some sprues from this funky russian brand that made an oil refinery, I will get a picture of that next time. But the pieces work great, here are the railings that will hold the prometheum tank in the bed.

here's the tank from that same kit.

I made some stabilizing posts for it.

I am not using the Ork Trukk chassis, instead I found an old truck bed in a bitzbox that will have to do.

I did put an engine in the front of the truck

I am going for a 1930's look in this thing. At this point Dave's template stops working for me; his templates work with the slightly smaller Ork Trukk and my chassis is longer. So it's blindfolded forward from now on. It is tons of fun!

Mike

It's a Dwarf Bear Rider! Part 2

In my post about an old Grenadier Dwarf Bear rider, I was mentioning that an unknown company had bought the ancient molds and then forgot about them. Well, I was wrong! One of our readers, Andrew Szigeti, found the newly recast models on an Italian website called Mirliton Miniatures, click here for that link.

So anyone wanting to revisit their painting past with a wonderful model, go fetch one! For my part, I am very glad these wonderful sculpts have been preserved. The new owners of the sculpt emailed me and mentioned that the dwarfs were sculpted by Nick Lund, so here's to that creative mind making these guys.

Mirliton Minatures has promised us some goodies to Give Away so stay tuned!

Thanks Andrew for letting us know.

Thanks Stefan from Mirliton for responding so fast as well.

Mike

Space Wolf Fenris Wolf Riders from MaxMini

Today I received a box from MaxMini and was happy to find the new Wolf Mount model enclosed.

We have been feeding you info about this model for a while, but I now have it in my hands and am able to give it a real good going over.

Due to the length of the model, I threw it on a bike base, but it should also fit on the round base, with a bit of hanging off. I found that in this casting the mounting foot was a bit too high up to mount to the base, but since it is a resin casting a quick dip in some hot water and it was easy to bend down just a bit to get it where I wanted it.

I added some Space Wolf Marine bits on it to try it out as a Fenris Wolf Mount, so you can get an idea of how it will look with a rider.

Also in the box was a set of the new feral heads, one of which I also added to the rider.

As you can see, looks pretty good and the scale is great for giant wolves. Make sure you click on the pictures for some nice big photos.

These models are available direct from MaxMini, and I am sure some of you Space Wolves players will be ready for them.

Here is a closeup of the riders legs bit of the model, which can be used as well as a bit with just the fur. There will be a some small gaps at the leg joint and " saddle area" that you may want to fill using greenstuff which should be easy to blend into the fur of the casting.

The little tail bit in front of the legs is part of the plastic marine torso.

I hope these pictures with a space marine mounted will answer some of the questions you may have had about this model, and at 15 EU or $22, I think it's a great model.

So what do you think?

John

It's a Dwarf Bear Rider!

Having become slightly exhausted by the painting work on the Manticore and the Valkyrie, I decided to paint a Dwarf. John passed me a few ancient models from his collection: Dwarf Bear Riders, cast in 1990 by a company called Grenadier.

You look at this model and wonder why GW doesn't give the dwarfs some cavalry. The modeling options would be endless and so much fun and Dwarfs would certainly be able to tame a few black bears.

Anyway, here's the mini. Could not remove his base, it's cast in heavy metal, probably lead.

Here's the paint job. Really mellow and muted with a red spot color. I didn't want to make him look fancy and dandy, more pragmatic but proud.

It was great fun washing and highlighting the bear. I got some pictures of real bears to do the snout and face.

The detail on the leather saddle was very nice.

And here is 4 more!

Notice the far right one having a raised paw, a nice touch.

Yo for bear riders in the new Dwarf codex (if a new one will ever come). I did some research online and found out the original casts for these models were bought by a different company who hasn't done anything with it. Hopefully these models will be re-released soon. They are a perfect way to spend a few stress less hours painting an easy model.

Mike

Simple Vostroyan Rough Rider, Finished

Here is my Vostroyan Rough Rider conversion with some paint thrown on.

Reminds me of The Nutcracker with a laspistol and lance, but he will not be ballet dancing around with Fairies and little girls, as he is in the service of the Emperor of Mankind.

You can read about the build here, in the last post.

My first attempt at a dapple grey horse, I thought the grey would work well with the dark red of the rider's coat.

I am very happy with this, and it was a very inexpensive build using an $8 model and some bits.

Any Nutcracker/Christmas vibe was totally unintentional as after being informed by Visa that my credit card number was stolen, and I must wait 10 days for a replacement, I am in no way in the Holiday spirit.

( at least, It was caught and charges reversed)

I was happy to score a deal on a bunch of new Warhammer gear at the local flea market this morning, which did cheer me up a bit.

John

Simple Vostroyan Rough Rider

I recently got a good deal on a nice Vostroyan force and I thought the ancient look of these miniatures would lend themselves well to cavalry.

After the good amount of modeling to my last Rough Rider for the Ardwick 23rd, I wanted to try building a model requiring very little modeling work and using all GW parts.

I considered using a bear or the Mechanical Empire horse ( I might still use it as a counts as Mogul Kamir on cyber-steed) but decided to go simple.

I found an old Atillan Rough Rider blister for $8 at the local game store. It had all the essential parts; lance, rider legs and a horse, but I don't like the Genghis Khan look.

I trimmed off the fur and peak of the hat and made the Vostroyan Bearskin /Cossack hat of greenstuff using the device shaved from a lasrifle as the cap badge.

I decided the Cavalry would have unique uniforms and that I would not try to make him look exactly like a Vostroyan foot soldier.

The pistol was huge and goofy looking, not fine enough of a weapon for a Vostroyan , so I crafted a new pistol using a musket body with an added scope and lasrifle tip.

I also added a canteen and saddle bags and a bedroll from a space marine bike.

This conversion was very simple and I hope some of you will give it a try.

Check out the finished and painted model here.

John

The Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie: Part 6: I am done with this!

Just letting you know right away: I am done with working on large models like the Valk for a while. With the Manticore and the Valkyrie I have had great fun and I have learned a lot, especially using the ForgeWorld modeling book. But in order to be a great modeler, you have to have lots of stamina, stick with it, do the best all the time, the whole way and never letting your guard down. And in that I failed. I had the same with the Manticore, in the end I just finished it as quickly as I could. Same thing happened this time. I worked so hard on the camo and the weathering and when that was done, I kind of wanted to stop. I didn't but now the end result feels like a letdown. Don't want to make anyone sad, but you all know what I am talking about, the fatigue that the likes of Dave Taylor don't seem to suffer from.

Anyway, here are the final pictures of the Valk. Be prepared, I do have a lot to show (and complain about).

Topshot. I worked hard on the exhaust soot, not just on the roof, but also on the back wings.....

and the inside parts:

I also worked on the soot of the wing engines

Here are the wings. The muck on this part of the wing is the fuel cap leaking while flying through dust chem storms

The other wing

keeping the weathering under control is so hard to do, its pretty aggravating. I should probably just build chaos vehicles where you can go all out. Then again, a workhorse like this should get battered up pretty badly in the desert.

Here's the Bishkek 2nd number

On to the pilots. The cockpit is challenging to finalize and I had to use all kinds of clamps and rubber bands to make it work, but it did. It was great fun painting the pilots and the interior.

inside the navigators spot

It's really hard not to mess up the 'glass'. You can see I failed to do it well, see glue in the left bottom corner of the front part of the cockpit. When that happened I was really disappointed, because I had kept the glass safe for the entire time of building, in the end a little too much glue will just push you over the edge.

and the other side, pilot has his red insignia on his arm

Here's the inside. I had to shave off a bit of the cockpit frame to make the roof come off easily.

I made the guns movable on their arms, but also on their own axis, so the heavy bolters can shoot forward, dramatically increasing the shooting arc of the guns....

And here is the base:

The stand for the plane is a prototype that I received from Dragon Forge Design to try out and see if I liked it. YES, I love it, this stand is way more robust and handy then the GW one plus it looks better. The base come separate and is great. Jeff doesn't have this thing online but if you all leave comments he might speed things up a bit, maybe we can even do a Give Away with one of them...

Here's the piece that goes under your plane

And this is what it looks like

and

Painted:

and the final images

A keen observer might have noticed the lack of ammo. I couldn't get myself to finish that part up, but I will in the very near future, magnetized of course.

Thanks for following me on this weathering journey. My next model will be a Dwarf.

Mike

Finished Maxmini Giant Wolf Mount!

We have been following the progress of these giant wolves from our friends at MaxMini, and here are the photos of the finished product.

each multi part resin set comes with one of the three heads, and will be up for sale on MaxMini's web store this week. Priced at 15EUR ($22.45USD) each with a 3 wolf set available in the near future.

UPDATE!

Here is a picture of the assembled wolf with a marine to give an idea of the size.

John

The Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie, Part 5: finishing the engines

OK, I am finally done with the engines. After the gloss coat I grabbed a palette and started using the oil paints, just like in the Forgeworld Modeling Book. I filled one spot with a mix of Black and Burnt Umber, the other Burnt Sienna. The browns and the oranges work well separate or together and with a little spirit I started working the wear on the engines. When I was done, I overcoated with Testors Dull Coat.

Here are some images. First the two side shots:

I find it quite hard to make both engines look the same. I painted them separately and ended up with one intake being a little brighter. Then again, in real life they could look differently as well after some missions.

A shot of the top. I added very subtle washes of blue to the exhaust, didn't want to go too far with that though. I had fun with the soot stains on the roof and on the exhaust. I am pondering if I should add some powders to that soot, but then again, maybe that would all fly off anyway when in flight. I kept the rust because I think it looks good to have once color that doesn't belong in the mix, even though a few readers have convinced me these planes don't rust.

The inside roof with the blue lamps. Painted this ages ago and have been keeping it sheltered for all the sprays ever since. Might still need some work, but not now.

Close up of the back. You can see the blue hue a little better

And the front. I did a bit of work to the little propellers but don't really know what they would look like. In the end I made them look plain dirty. Image all the stuff that flies in there. Maybe it would need a little screen...

Now it's time for the real work..

Here are all the posts in a row in case you all are not bored by this:

part1

part2

part3

part4

Mike

MaxMini Wolf Mounts Photos!

Well The folks at MaxMini are wasting no time on the giant wolf. We had lots of interest after or rumor confirmation post, and here are the first photos.

Photo from Przemek at MaxMini and is also on their forum

Space Wolves players (and everyone else) should be able to order these multi part resin models (with multiple head and rider legs or not options) as soon as next week in a pre release pack, and soon after in a 3 pack.

Price is not available yet but is sure to be much less than the GW Canis model, and will be further discounted in the 3 pack.

Don't forget these new Feral Heads from MaxMini which will also be great for Space Wolves.

I know I am looking forward to seeing these models, and I hope you are too.

NEW PHOTOS OF FINISHED WOLF MODEL HERE

John