259: Individual minis: a zombie for the horde

Particularly for 40k, it makes sense to paint a batch at once. Probably a squad, squadron or formation.

It can start to feel like a drag, and standards may slip. Modelling and painting an individual mini is a way to experiment with new time-consuming techniques without it turning into a hassle.

Here's a one. After a particularly brutal defeat (using my Iron Knights against my friend's Death Guard), I rewarded my opponent with an Iron Knight zombie for his horde. I did not have any spare legs, but then zombies don't need legs.



There's greenstuff guts and mushrooms, UHU mixed with paint to give glue-string gore, and some weathering experiments. Kudos to the first person to identify the source of the head.

258: Photos of minis with an Android phone: Open Camera

Open camera is an Android app that is way better than the stock google camera app, when it comes to photographing minis.

One problem with the google app is that it will not focus. The auto focus keeps changing, so you just think it's sharp, then as you take the picture it blurs again. Open camera has a focus lock.

Under the dot menu, there is a padlock. Tap that to lock the focus. The camera will focus where you tap on the screen. Apart from that, it will not change. You can make fine adjustments to the focus by moving the camera closer or further from the subject.

Its a good idea to have an uncluttered background. A white sheet of paper curved up the wall is popular. The auto-exposure will then give you a dark image. The model can be almost silhouetted at worst, a little muddy looking at best. The exposure needs compensating for the bright background. In Open Camera the brightness setting is right on the main screen. It will then use it's standard algorithm for guessing the exposure, and brighten it up from that baseline. Then you can see tonal variation on the model, not the tonal variation on the paper.

If adjusting the exposure seems like too much hassle, then use a mid-grey background.


Here's a work-in-progress shot using Open Camera.

257: A Storm Talon that doesn't look too bad

A ways back in the dim and distant past I showed you all how I'd converted up the Storm Raven to make it look a little less goofy (in my opinion of course).  I've even stuck to the same naming convention for this post!  Well with the release of the new Space Marines codex and all the formation-y goodness in it, who could resist the lure of a Storm Wing.  All I needed was the little addition of a pair of Storm Talons.

Of course, what had been stopping me buying Storm Talons before was an equal dislike of the stock model as sold by GW.  Just like the Storm Raven, I found it a little too blocky, too deep for its profile, and with a few design choices that I just couldn't make myself like no matter how hard I tried.

Thank you Internet (I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to utter those words ;), there seem to be plenty of others out there that feel the same way and have made some amazing conversions of the Storm Talon.

• Excommunicate Traitoris has made a fantastic and subtle conversion, and one that I ultimately took the most inspiration from.
• This and this conversion really went to town, and retained the rotation of the under-slung assault cannon.
• This more realistic plane variant is really nice too.

There are a couple of conversions that really stand out though for their inventiveness:

• This A-10 Warthog conversion is inspired and if it didn't require the purchase of Storm Raven wings and a Punisher Autocannon from somewhere I would have been copying this heavily.
• Whoever came up with this ED-209 style assault walker conversion was truly inspired.

Anyway, I'm obviously getting lazy in my old age as I wanted to fix up the Talon with as little work as possible.  Its not a perfect conversion, if I had the money and time for lots of extra parts then I'd be doing more, but this is a pretty quick and easy fix (as long as you don't mind that the Assault Cannons no longer rotate.

All the images should be nice and big if you need when you click on them.

 First step is to make the Assault Cannons, add the skid plate from the very bottom of the standard setup, and remove the square tab from the underside of the body.  It's right in the centre of the circular mount for the underslung turret, you should be able to make out where it was in the image.

 Join the Assault Cannons together, add the skid plate, then glue directly onto the circular section of the underside of the body (where the little tab used to be).
I've also constructed the rest of the body so you can see the new silhouette, much more streamlined compared to the image below it of the standard build.

 Engine pods.  I like to mount the wings so they are tapered from the front, I think they just look a bit better that way.

I also mounted the rocket-pods under the wings, to the lower parts of the engine pods.  This required a very small amount of trimming to get them to fit nicely, but it was just a little bit, and just to make the join that little bit nicer.

That's it, all the work I had to do.  Below are a few shots of the completed model so you can see its final silhouette.  I'm pretty pleased.  It still has that compact, punchy feel of the original model that goes so well with its rules, but has removed the worst offenders for silly modelling choices.

 

 

So, what do you think?