Weekly Snapshot:First of my Sanguinary Priests

Meet the first of my Sanguinary Priests for my Blood Angels army. It may be a little surprising that I started work on them what with their almost mandatory inclusion in BA lists, but I haven't played a Warhammer 40K game in over a year.

For this guy, almost all of the bits are from the Sanguinary Guard box set, except for the narthecium and apothecary torso. It's a very simple kit bash, but I think it works decently for a Blood Angeled up apothecary.

Making Pre-Heresy 'T' pattern helmets

You know those 'T' helmets you commonly see on the Chaos Space marine sprues? Well I thought it would be cool to have them on my Blood Angels.

Here's how you do it:

1. Cut off the side bits on a normal Space Marine helmet. 

2. Small ball of putty on his mouth. 

3. Flatten out the sides so that you get a distinct raised area in the center. 

Weekly Snapshot: Imma step on my shield!

It's been a bit of a slow week. The scratchbuilt Leman Russ is on hold as I await the arrival of some turret weapons I ordered over the internet. Darn cardboard just doesn't work well when trying to make cylinders.

I had a Vanguard Veteran that was lying around for quite some time and decided to give him a base. You can't really see it from this angle, but he's stepping on a combat shield from the Space Marines Assault Squad box that I had lying around. I made some scratches and bullet holes into the shield to give it an abandoned and war torn feel.
Really sorry about the lack of photos guys, I cannot be bothered to set up my mini photography studio again.

I did some experiments on this guy with a new weathering technique. I just loaded my brush with silver paint and scratched away. I think the metal could do with some further work, it's quite bright in inappropriate places because of the light. Maybe a wash on the darkest parts?

Weekly Snapshot: Knightly Blood Angel Conversion

I've been looking at the Horus Heresy: Collected Vision for some inspiration, and I've found some really interesting looking Space Marine helmet designs.

Pictured above is an AOBR marine converted to be taller than the average marine and have a more dynamic pose. The reposing tutorial can be found here.

From a normal marine helmet, I raised the top of his head a little bit, gave him a 'beak' and added a cross design. It kinda looks like a medieval knight helmet.

I got my inspiration from this picture, of Chapter Master Astelan in the Collected Visions book:

Another pre-heresy space marine tutorial coming soon!

Explorations of Miniature Photography

I have a serious issue with my photography skills. No matter how hard I try, the picture ends up looking too dark or the colours don't come out right. I don't think I need to provide a picture as proof, because I believe my older blog posts will do...

Here is what I do so far:

• Switch to Macro mode
  -ensures objects that are extremely close to the camera lens, are in focus
• Sit the camera on the table top (or tripod)
  -so that there aren't any wobbles or disruptions in the photograph
• Use a lightbox
  -so that light will be evenly dispersed across the whole model, and prevent shadows 
• Use three white lamps
  -maximum lighting!
• Use a white backdrop 
  -so that light will bounce off and onto the model
• Shoot in a dark room
  -prevents external light from interfering and distorting the photograph

These are the fundamentals of taking good photographs of minis, but just what is wrong with me?
Exposure. This is how much light your camera lets in. So the higher your exposure, the more light your photograph will be.

Zero exposure

1.5 Exposure

Definitely a huge improvement! The problem is, it looks a little unnatural and the reds are too harsh. 

A little editing on Photoshop and voila! I think I may have found the solution to my problem!
I'll try to figure out other ways of improving my photography.

Hope it helped for others as well!

Weekly Snapshot: "We're Big Boys Now!"

"We're big boys now!" says my Blood Angels. Well, at least one of them.

This week, I made one of my boys true scale... in a manner of speaking. I simply chopped off his legs, pinned them so that they were longer, and filled the gap with green stuff.

Real simple stuff, but it has made my Space Marine so much more intimidating and realistic.
I've always had an issue with the proportions of the GW Space Marine. It was so...squat and even cuddly looking!

My reasoning behind this conversion was that I wanted to get the look of a genuine true scale conversion, but without all the hard work.

Doghouse Pattern Truescale Marine

Pictured above is Doghouse's amazing true scale marine. There's a link to his tutorial on Bolter and Chainsword if you're interested: here

But the thing is, it requires a feth load of time, effort, skill and loads of terminators legs.

A regular male's lower body is about the length of 4 heads stacked on top of another, excluding the groin. But GW's Space Marines aren't exactly in proportion. The upper part of the legs are shorter than the lower parts.

So I simply extended the upper parts so that they were equal in length to the lower parts. See my reasoning?

Weekly Snapshot: Assault Marines!

So today, I spent a couple of hours working on my Blood Angels again. Man, I hadn't touched red paint in ages!

You'd think that the main parts of the mini; for example the red of the assault marines, would be the most difficult and time consuming to paint.

Nope.

Yes, the red does take the longest to paint, but the details; helmet lenses, chainsword teeth, parchment, etc., are the most annoying. You have to keep switching the colour of the paint. They're so small, but they consume a surprisingly large amount of your painting time.

It's ridiculous.

I've spent all this time on them, yet I'm not happy with them. At least, not with the photographs.
I really don't know why they turn out darker than they should, I use a lightbox.

Perhaps I'll explore this issue in a post in the future.

Mastering shadows and highlights

So a while ago I posted up a tutorial on highlighting your figs here. The problem is knowing where the shadows and highlights go on a model. It's been a major issue for me in the past, but I've seen some improvements in my painting ever since I used this trick.

Beautifying AOBR-the Tactical Marine (Tutorial)

It is now February but we still have about half a year until the 6th Edition of 40K AND its respective starter set comes out. Starter sets over the history of 40K were designed to allow a new player to enter the hobby with relative ease, at a relatively cheap price.


You got all the essentials that would let you experience the different aspects of the game. (I'm trying to pretend that I know all about the history of 40K starter sets, when in fact I started as a noob when 5th came out!)

How to paint Blood Angels

Hello everyone, it's been ages since my last post (1-2 months I think) because I have been busy with my life and all. The good news is that I've been finding more free time lately because the holiday season is coming soon (Christmas!) so that means I'll be able to post more often and paint more often.