PLOG! A first for me.

[kunimitsu]

Any chance of a tutorial of how you are doing your cloaks/hoods? They look amazing, the army is really coming together, would be great to see on the tabletop.

[xFallenx]

Absolutely stunning!!

[Lion of flanders]

Great models, really like how the warlocks turned out!
I was just curious, how do you paint your purple, ie
what colours do you use? Cheers

All: thanks for the high praise!

Malicir: first off, welcome to the forum! As to my purple process....with today's paints, I start with a very light grey undercoat, then;
standard purple.
The new purple wash applied only in the recessed areas
Layer on the purple with lighter shades added to the purple, like the bone colors, elf flesh, or a light blue (I use a Vallejo one)
Glaze with Tamaya clear red mixed with a little bit of the original purple to make it less red and (you guessed it) more purple.

Any chance of a tutorial of how you are doing your cloaks/hoods? They look amazing, the army is really coming together, would be great to see on the tabletop.

As in how I sculpt them or how I paint them?

As for seeing them on the table, I played my first tournament in 4.5 years over the weekend and don't know when I'll next get to an out of area tournament, but if the Quake City Rumble is happening on a weekend that I can make, I'd like to get the girls to that event. Other than that, y'all will have to come to Oregon if you want to see them live and up close (which is the best way )

[Lion of flanders]

Here are the last two girls that I made for the recent tournament...the dark rider musicians:

[Amboadine]

Absolutely stunning. Nice work again.

[anthalont]

Pure awesomeness!

I love your work,

please continue to amaze us

[Lion of flanders]

OK, so next up for me and the girls (that I know of) is a tournament where we can field a DOW unit with our regular army. To round out the points (and because six ogres give you a rank, true?) and because all the other units in my army are six strong (or 36 in the case of the witch elves)...I needed to add an ogre to my existing Ogre Mercenary unit that i made for an equally clever minded tournament years ago.

So....I get on a ladder in my garage and get into my trove of old metal (the ogre box ) and what do I find that i had completely forgotten about? This awesome GW girl Ogre!



What could be better for the Soulcrusher girls? She even has a diamond pattern on her leggings (perhaps they are fishnet stockings which might just be completely awesome):

[T.D.]

Sexy.

[Amboadine]

I am sure she was utterly devastated that you had forgotten about her.

It's a nice feeling, finding models you purchased years ago.
I am sure I still have a couple of boxes of models in my parents attic from twenty years ago.

[Calisson]

Indeed, ogre ranks are 3 wide, 6 makes 2 ranks.
Nice finding.

[Scythe]

This plog is a huge inspiration. Just huge. Thanks for sharing your fantastic work, Lion!

[kunimitsu]

I'm always amazed at your painting, each time you put something down I think you have improved, then I look at your passed stuff and you were always that good...

As for the cloak and hood tutorial, I was mainly looking for how you make them. I have a few I need to mould and would love a guide to follow and these look stunning!

[Lion of flanders]

I'm always amazed at your painting, each time you put something down I think you have improved, then I look at your passed stuff and you were always that good...

As for the cloak and hood tutorial, I was mainly looking for how you make them. I have a few I need to mould and would love a guide to follow and these look stunning!

I'm pleased that y'all are finding inspiration and information from this Plog. I'm having fun doing it at the same time so I guess I'll keep doing it

I don't have any upcoming plans for more shades, or chicks with hoods (although perhaps a dark rider with a hood wood be cool) so I can't foresee a step by step. However, I'll dig through my WIP photos and see what I have on the recent shades and I think I can pair those with some good tips that will help make your life easier when sculpting. Stay tuned....

Meanwhile, speaking of upcoming plans....right now I am imagining a bunch of new beautiful and deadly characters becoming impatient in the ether waiting to be made. My goals (as usual) are:

1) Look cool
2) Be reasonably efficacious on the battlefield.

Currently I have:
1) sorceress on dragon
2) Hero on Manticore
3) hero on dark steed
4) Dreadlord on foot
5) sorceress on dark Pegasus

My current DE army is pretty fast all 'round with the slowest thing being a unit of witches with the speed banner.

So....I plan to make a mounted version of my Dreadlord to ride Yamaraz, the dragon. That one is etched in stone. Additionally, I'm thinking about:
1) a sorceress on dark steed (etched in soapstone )
2) hero on cold one
3) hero BSB on cold one

I started a thread on the army discussion board about load outs for the new girls, and that feedback suggests lances or halberds. Anyway, what are y'all's thoughts?

[kunimitsu]

Awesome, thanks lion, ill definately be looking forward to it...

I personally like to run most of my characters cheap, so I would go with lance or halberd as well, depending on what they are on and wether you want them to be in short fights or prolonged combats.

[Lion of flanders]

OK, so I'm just getting underway with a reprise of one of my original Soulcrusher Dark Elf characters that I made way back in 2002, a sorceress on a dark steed named Talika. The figure was my first attempt at custom sculpt work, so she holds fond memories for me. Trouble is, her steed (one of the old metal elf steeds) is too small nowadays to ride amongst her modern sistren. (if brethren is a word, sistren should be as well )

First, some backstory on the character. I imagined Talika as a dangerous psycopath, completely heedless of personal safety during battle. The original idea for the character was a girl dark elf sorceress version of this Frazetta Conan rendering:

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/3/25028.jpg

So....we begin with the obligatory humble apology to Chris for hacking up one of his beautiful figures....and then carefully jeweller's saw her head off:



Here are the bitz:



I had originally planned to use the dragon mounted sorceress legs as Ragin' Cain did with his super cool mounted sorceress. However, after fussing around with the various Witch Elf legs, I came up with the scheme to use the flexed legs from two different models as rider legs. We will see how that goes.....

I have already cut away much of the much of the dark rider cloak to make it fit on Talika’s smaller frame. I expect that it will take a fair amount of trimming to get the cloak to fit with the huge mane of witch elf hair that she needs to have (modern Talika = bigger horse, bigger cape, and bigger hair). I am resolute on making both cloak and big hair work because a) I want to be true to the original, b) having a cloak makes her more than a witch elf on a dark steed, and c) because I like big hair

I just realized that I don’t have the head and torso in the bitz shot. I’ll be using the old cauldron hag head plus a new witch elf torso with the leg removed. I decided to not do the original “Conan” pose because a) times must change and b) because I had this great vision of Talika with both arms raised overhead about to unleash a six dice large template Black Horror on 67 ranked up high elves.

Further bulletins as events warrant…

[xFallenx]

What could be better for the Soulcrusher girls? She even has a diamond pattern on her leggings (perhaps they are fishnet stockings which might just be completely awesome):

So this is what happens to whales caught in fishermens nets...

I have to add that I am apprehensivly looking forward to what you do with the rest of the Chris Fitz model, in your hands I'm sure it'll look amazing... far, far less so in mine. You're far braver than I.

[Lion of flanders]

OK, so the sage advice I'm getting from Druchii.net members and elsewhere has strongly suggested that I need a BSB for my girls nowadays. So, in addition to a Cold one mounted BSB (I have those two CO characters which I don't care for, but the metal Cold Ones are cool)...my first one will be a Death Hag on foot with my Witches. How to make her was the question and the answer lay in another awesome GW figure that I forgot that I owned....Lelith Hespirax...who has been respawned in my fantasy world as Sebati:



You can see three little spots where the 40Kish stuff was removed and redone. Plan is to use one of the new witch elf arms for her right (sword) arm and use the "pole fork" for the basis of a banner pole. Banner will be the dark rider banner with some skulls and stuff added. So far, I have extended it a bit with some aluminium tubing...Stay tuned....



Meanwhile, not to abandon poor Talika...she is underway as well. She has her legs and head, her horse has been to the dentist and is having his mane and tail enhanced a bit.....

[T.D.]

I love those metal Dark Eldar characters.

Wish I had picked up a few before they got 'finecast''ed.

Lookin forward to seeing the finished articles

[Lion of flanders]

OK, so here is Sabati finished and ready for prep & paint. The flag top is just set on as I'll affix it permanently after painting:



I cut off the bird stuff on the other side of the flag and puttied it up to make it smooth. While I really love what GW has cranked out with the new release, I have to say I am a bit less than pleased about the whole "we decided that dark riders have some kinda of raven backstory nonsense" and thus we have bird stuff on everything.

On another note, the much maligned (for their price tag) witch elf set is really an awesome bunch of bits. I haven't bought the box (mostly just to make a statement), but I have purchased a bunch of bits from resellers. The quality of these bits are really top notch with beautiful sculpts (I'd have made their waists a tad narrower, but that's just me ) and nearly invisible mold lines. This is one thing that really sets GW apart from many others in the business. Its one thing to sculpt a cool figure, but you have to make a figure that will be rendered well in your mass produced medium, and then produce a clean casting with minimal flash and gunk. Well done GW.

[Lion of flanders]

So, Kunimitsu asked about hoods and cloaks. To that end.... here are a few WIP photos of one of my new shades along with some tips about how I made the cloaks. As usual, I'll start with the disclaimer that what follows is how I am currently doing it which most definitely does not make necessarily it the best way to do it...it's just the way I'm doing it at present.

So first thing, for a hood is to cut away the hair so your finished figure wont have a balloon head:



Next, make your hood with the basic shape that you want. Best tip i can provide on this part is don't worry about getting the thing perfect on the first sitting. I think you'll spend 3x as much time trying to achieve the perfect shape on the first try than you will roughing it out, and then making it perfect later. Here's the hood after I roughed it and carved back some stuff that was out of shape (or just too big):



Finally, you dont need to over-obsess with smoothness on cloaks, because you can use a very fine 3000+ grit sandpaper and make everything as smooth as you like. Make sure the putty is fully cured, of course, before you sand.

That's what I have on this subject. The next cloak I do, I'll make sure and take some more WIP shots. Talika has a cloak, but its nearly perfect as is...there will only be a minimal amount of joining it around her shoulders. Feel free to ask questions if any come to mind.

Here's the same figure from the rear which shows 3 steps that I did on this cloak. If you work on several figures at once, you will be pretty efficient, e.g. 10 minutes of putty work on something, then work on other things while things cure.:



Here's a shot of the inside of the hood. I roughed it out nice and "fat", then cut (I like brand new xacto blades for this work) the cured putty back so its nice and thin:



Now here is the finished hood with the spots that I cut down smoothed over. The white putty you see in these shots s "Magic Sculpt" or Magisculpt (same thing) which is really great stuff as it responds to water and thus is very easy to make super smooth for finish work and "organic" shapes.



Finally, you don't even need to worry overmuch about perfect smoothness as you can hit the finished surface with some fine grit sandpaper (3,000+) after it is fully cured and get it just as smooth as you please.

That's all I have on this subject for now. I'll be sure to take some additional WIP shots on the next one that I do. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone setting out to make some similar stuff. Feel free to reply with questions.

[Amboadine]

Nice tutorial, thanks.

[xFallenx]

So much awesome here!!

[Lion of flanders]

So much awesome here!!

Thank you!

For those interested in adding cloaks to figures to make shades or what have you, here's a recent discovery for me, Victoria Miniatures (I.e. Victoria Lamb, for those who know their paint goddesses) :

http://victoriaminiatures.highwire.com/product/camo-cloaks

[Lion of flanders]

OK, so here's new-style Talika just about finished. Careful observation will reveal that she needs a tuck here and there, like a brooch to fasten her cloak, tidy up some plastic joins, and a bit of finish on a few rough spots on the hair and cloak...but you get the idea:

[Amboadine]

Very nice. Looks like a good fit on the horse.