Around the time I started with 40k about a year ago I tried to read up on the hobby all over the internet and found Terrainthrall and this tutorial. And now I've finally started my own version of this. I knew I wanted it to look like some industrial little something place with a door and a few simple details. I want it to fit with the game table I will one day finish. Some post-apocalyptic industrial desert kind of theme. Sand, rust, junk oh my!



Materials so far is the 7UP can, plasticard, the lid from some old medicin bottle (the white thing on top), round lid from a small Creme Fraiche container, cereal box and thicker card board (for the base). I've since added details with wires from an old computer (have LOTS saved for all my scratch projects), McD straws, q-tips etc.








Now some more rivets and a few more details then prime time! :D

"I've had enough!"... My desk was a complete mess. So much junk I barely had room to work. And with junk I mainly mean all sort of unfinished scratch built projects and pieces for them. So I sent my wife to IKEA with a shopping-list of a few items to help me organize my desk. The result:


It feels so much better with a clean desk! The shelves on the right side of the desk holds all the junk now sorted in big red plastic boxes. One for the stompa, one for the warhound etc.

And as you can see on my desk, Ive started yet another project. A while back I found this soda can sci-fi building tutorial over at Terrainthralls and it's been rattling around in my head. I wanted to start a small project I knew Id finish fairly quick just to get that "I finished a project" feeling. I'll most likely do more of these small "generic sci-fi building" type projects since it's quick, easy and fun.

I didn't feel like working on the figs last night. Too tired. Instead I pulled out some stuff to make another game table piece. Ive got 6 or 8 pieces of plywood each some 60x60cm that I intend to use as game table. I dont want to just cover em all with sand, but want to do something ... more. My goal is a sorta post-apocalyptic industrial rusty desert thing.

Now to rewind. I watched all the StarCraft 2 movie clips on their website this weekend with my 8 year old son who loved it all. So do I :) Have you seen the Protoss game play video? Its the first video they released way back. Check out the terrain. Its like a sci-fi city built into asteroids floating in space. Beautiful! Sci-fi technical stuff sticking out of the rock. Inspiration!

So with that SC2 map in mind I set to work last night wanting to build a piece for my table. Didnt finish it but Im happy with the progress. Photos will come once its assembled.

Then on a swedish 40k message board I noticed a discussion about Chapterhouse Studois which is a business that sells bits of their own design for 40k. Really cool stuff. Check em out. Anyway. On that board I found out that one of the sculptors is a guy from my neck of the woods! Even cooler. And he said that he was looking for concept art for new stuff to sculpt. So I PMed him and now Im all fired up to draw some sweet concept art that might end up being built and sold world wide. Coolest! :D

One piece Im working on goes by the working name "steampunk feral mecha". Itll be my new version of the ork deff dread which Im sorry to say isnt the best model GW has made. IMHO. Oh well. Hopefully Ill have som sketches to show by the end of the week :)

Worked a little on the army tonight. Finished the ten bases for my chaos termies. My army is based on post-industrial desert type world.


The metal junk is all sorts of stuff. Plasticard, pieces from a toy truck, pieces from an ice-cream box, straws, q-tips and some wires from an old computer. A few close-ups:



Funny is that my wife bought our son this toy truck thats supposed to carry cars. It was cheap and she thought that Id like it once it broke :P It broke and Im happy to cut it up and get the textured plastic like you see in the close-ups 1, 2 and 5 above. Note the necron head in #2 above. Its the head that GWs metal DP has hanging together with a few other heads. Didnt like those heads hanging there so they now adorn bases instead. The riveted metal sheet in #4 above is plasticard with styrene prod cut up for rivets.

Also did a little on my obliterators. Ive got three that Im working on. One is PIP with no conversions. The other two are gonna get a little more work.


The left one has some extra muscles sculpted on since I want to have the arm raised a bit. The right one is for comparison. The raised arm is below:


An effort to slaaneshify the ob hand. Its pieces from the daemotte small claw that will be grafted on to the fingers. Some cutting in the plastic and then some sculpting before its done.

More to come soon I hope :)

Ever since I saw these, Ive wanted to scratch build a stompa of my own design with them (the one on the right and the one on the left) as inspiration. And last week I sat down with pen and paper and did a quick concept sketch that I was happy with. Then I started building. Yea, Im crazy. Im building from scratch after my own design. A STOMPA! :D

Here are some links to others who have inspired me.

insaniak on WarSeer

Kr00za on DA WAAG

jamsessionein on dakka (totally awesome! the details and the paintjob! GAHH! Hes got this beautiful mek as well...)

And the orkilicious Tater Titan from Irondog. If I had such a tater toy I wound jump right into building a thing like this. It is just... the best. THE best. Nuff said.

And yes, Ill post photos later on. Ive almost finished both legs (except details). Ive finished the frame for the body, legs and arms. Its great fun! :)

I got an email from Warseer (since Ive subscribed to my own thread there) and saw that someone commented on my WL yesterday! How lovely. I really need to give that poor WL some attention (that and a ton of other figs...).

I really really like the WL figure. Horrible basic pose if not converted but the fig is full of potential to convert and there are lots of great WLs out there to inspire you. I hope that mine will join the ranks of those one day...

I mean, a revenant one finned WL? How cool is that? :D

You too? Hang around message boards too much instead of actually working on your own figs? My excuse is my kids and all the other things that fill up the everyday. It's easier to sit and surf around Warseer with a one year old in the lap, than sit and paint my figs with the same son on the lap :P

If you haven't been to Warseer, go there. Find their Science Fiction Project Log section and you'll be set for a while with WH40K logs of varying degree of awesomeness.

One of my favourites atm is of course a slaaneshi army by tortoise. It is awesome. And several pages long by now so if you haven't seen it before you are in for a nice treat :D

Hopefully I'll get to paint a little tonight. And this time I'll photo my progress so I can share here too, promise :)

I haven't touched my figs for months. Not from lack of inspiration or anything. Mainly lack of time and energy. I sometimes just don't know where to start. There is so much I want to do!

Here is a list of my current projects:

1 demon prince with wings. Its "only" painting left. Mainly.
2x6 noise marines. Six of them are supposed to be female and Ive only done the conversion work done on two of those. Six will be male and again two are converted. None finished paintingwise.
3 obliterators. Working on the conversions.
10 terminators. Magnetizing the arms.

Then there are a few more things like a warhound, wraithlord and ork trukk...... :P

But tonight I sat down and built ten bases for my termies. All done and ready to be painted. At least something, heh? ;)

My wife bought me some new paints from our local toy store. They had a deal that if you bought 3 pots you got 3 marines. These must be old promo ones from when Battle for Macragge was released. So since they are so static in their pose I couldnt do anything fun convertingwise I decided to just paint them up quickly.

       

Ive also experimented a little to figure out how to base my CSM army. Here are two Im ok with. Itll be a dead industrial desert kinda thing. Sand, rocks and metal junk since I like to use all the scrap plasticard Ive got and its fun to play around with painting rust.

I haven't updated in ages and will have to remedy that. With photos. Another day :)

Now I thought I'd just wish you all a merry new one, all you out there in the Void.

2008 has been an interesting year. It's the year I started with 40k. I thought I'd play more but I've been starting so many projects so nothings finished. Not even my first commission is done yet! Shame on me.

So here I'm hoping that 2009 will be the year I finish my first army. And my first commission. And my first warhound :D And much more *grins*

I'll most likely be starting a ton of new projects and I will work at being better at blogging them. Because I know you want a better view into the twisted mind of xedric....

Earlier this year I felt I needed something different and challenging. So I started converting an eldar wraitlord. If you want to read more about the past of this small side project then check out either of these:

My Eldar Wraithlord-blog on Dakka, Warseer or Work in Progress.

Lots of research, sketches and early WIP photos to see where Im heading with it. Now I thought Id just show the last little progress made on the head. Needs to be smoothed out some more, the details of the face and then some. But Im getting there!

My army will be a Slaaneshi Chaos army. One unit will be six female noise marines all armed with sonic blasters. Im almost done with two of them. Bases done. Conversion 90% done. Its mainly the custom bionic arms with built in blasters that needs to be finished as well as some other small stuff. C&C always appreciated!


I wanted to build small backpacks for them but havent figured out how I want them too look just yet. So that will wait. Anything else you feel is missing? Next two girls will have possessed marine legs *grin*. Some more wips of the pair above.

It's about time I update my blog. I have been doing a few things that haven't appeared here yet so let the updating begin!

The other day I found a very inspirin site: Irondog Studios. Great conversions and paint jobs. And the main focus of the site is orks! Mek Shop, Tater Titan and Big Trukks. Great inspiring stuff!

Now had you asked me may/june this year (before I started with 40k) what I thought of orks Id have told you how much I disliked them. Now though, a few months down the road getting to know the 40k world Im slowly but surely falling in love with the orks :) I love to convert and this is a race with many new possibilities.


So here is the before picture. The only ork I own is the WD one seen above in the photo. Ive just cleaned it, drilled out the gun and removed the pony tail (dont like em!). The construction machine is a toy my wife gave me the other day. "It's broken, so why dont you take it and build something out of it". She is such a wonderful woman :D You can see something that looks like a seat from which our 3 year old has pulled the driver off as well as broken one of the pieces that hold the dumpster.

Now the orkifying begins. A few parts were removed since they looked to toy-like. And since I dont have a driver yet I started with the underside! I read on Ironsdogs site that "Ork vehicles have the armor of a coke can and tend to spend a lot of time as smoking wrecks on the battlefiled. I figured it would be best to have this 'often-seen' part of vehicle look nice too." So Ive followed his lead :P


It's still a WIP but its taking shape, and Im having so much fun. This is a really good way to get the creative juices flowing.

Now the question is, up or down? Im thinking down atm to give some room behind the dumpster for something and to give it more of a open maw look once more teeth etc has been added.


And any suggestions for guns? This will be just a small vehicle so nothing too heavy I suppose.

Comments and crit much appreciated!

My army will be running a bunch of Noise Marines and all of them will have sonic blasters. My first scratchbuilt sonic should be done later today, but here's an early WIP shot.



The long blue wires sticking out of the hand will be cut and GSed onto the sonic. More wires will be added from the gun to the right arm.

While waiting for the GS to dry on the sonic, I started putting two more NMs together. I fixed their torsos and legs a while back and now it was time to start GSing together. As you see its NM legs with daemonette torsos. It took quite a bit of cutting and filing to get them to fit, but to be my firsts Im happy with em.




They will both have a big daemonette claw and a scratchbuilt sonic in the other hand. Smaller sonics to fit the smaller upper body. And Im thinking that theyll both get shoulder pads and backpacks. Smaller custom made of course :)

Ive been working on and off on this little bugger. It was actually the very first thing I started to build for my 40k army. It was before I had decided what army to collect. It was either tyranids or chaos marines. After some building and lots of planning on the hound I realized I had to build a chaos marine army. Love the tyranids but theyll have to wait.

So first I thought Id do a straight chaosy hound. No alignment. That decision was mostly based on the fact that I didnt know anything about the chaos gods :P So I was planning a straight chaosy dog and all the pieces I did was towards that goal.


So then I decided to start building a CSM army and soon I realized I wanted Noise Marines. Which led to the work on a slaaneshi army. Now the question is, should I turn the Hound to Slaanesh? Or keep going straight Chaos?



Not sure yet. With straight chaosy Im talking flesh mixed with steel and steel mixed with flesh obliterator and DP style. We're talking spikes, rust and cracked armour. Or just keep building according to plan (yea, Ill add some concept art in the future. dont hold your breath though. Im currently happy to have all the concept sketches in my head) and then perhaps paint it slaaneshi in the end?

We shall see. Stay tuned. Soon my first Noise Marine with a scratchbuilt sonic blaster.