My First Conversion Project

[Tekore]

Okay, so this is my first real conversion project, so I was wondering if perhaps some of you could have a look at it, offer some advice and critiques, that sort of thing.

The idea behind this was I did not do any major conversion until after I got my first win in a league. In one of the early games, this missile launcher marine's squad was nearly wiped out by a Daemon Prince and some Khorne Beserkers. After my squad....erm "tactically retreated" with only two of them living (missile guy included), I shot a missile at the Daemon Prince, who had peeled off to go kill my dreadnought that had just landed. I hit the Prince, wounded him, which counted for all three wounds with my Str 8 weapon...blam, Prince dead. This led to a reversal of the game, allowing me to completely wipe the table of my opponent's army and get an early win that I didn't see coming.

Anyway, this is my missile guy, going to be putting him on this large base, with a post hanging a dead daemon's head and a banner commemorating the battle...on the banner you might be able to see my sketch of a sword sinking into a planet...

Less babble, more picture now!

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/c...nBeginning.jpg

A maximum of 700pixels wide please! - KU

Oh yeah, and I have some small stones to cover the base of the post, and probably make a small border in the back.

Edit: Sorry about the pictures that were too big on these two posts, I didn't realize until seeing the remarks just now!

[JihadJoe]

I think its pretty cool, and the story of why you made it is also cool 8Y

[Silentspy7]

it looks good so far, but i think the base is rather large. a terminator-sized base would be more appropriate in my opinion.

[socalghia]

nice! the base is friggin huge. But i love the idea behind the conversion. I like it alot. I say keep going with it. And most of all MORE PICS UPON COMPLETION! Cheers!

[Hekau Chasut]

I have one advice for you: You should mix GS more carefully. If there are still blueish and yellow stripes in the material go on until it is plain green.

[simonilicious]

hmm alternate suggestion:

skip the cross. go with the base (termi or dread sized) and get some cork and make it like a cliff (i could swear there was a guide here somewhere...), and put the deamons head at the bottom and the banner hanging off of the cliff, i think that would look awesome, and make for a more dramatic scene

but IF you go for the cross, try to skip the sprue pieces, and go for some balsa wood instead.

gl and DEFINETELY post pics

[Tekore]

With the green stuff, my blue portion is pulling up paper when I bring it up, so I had to remove a bit...tried to mix it to green, but yeah, it sure hasn't come out as well as it could.

I will save the cliff idea for my next big project, after the league and tournament season pass, that does sound awesome, I'm going to fill out the big base here with some rocks (rubble or a collapsed wall)...the idea of my army, vaguely, is coming from a decimated world, so the city that they're set in has lots of rubble, collapsed stuff, etc. Goes well with the cities of death architecture that is generally used for games here.

Anyway, yeah, I plan on getting pics up as I work on this, thanks for the support, and keep the suggestions and ideas coming, I love that stuff.

Tekore

[Andusciassus]

I love the idea of letting your models tell the story they are part of creating, and adding that Daemon head is really a great narrative touch. But... (here comes the advice-part, might sound harsh, but I know you can take it )

First thing about gs has already been said. You need to mix it good. Now, this can be a pain, you press and squeeze and nothing ever happends. What you should do is to twist it around, that way it'll mix far faster and way more evenly.
Make a new "blob" to work with. (There are really only three ways to work with GS, it's the blobs, the saussages and the flattened pieces)
Next is to get a sculpting tool of some kind. This could be nearly anything. Even the backside of a paintbrush if you have nothing else. Keep this close to you.

Now, get a knife. A good and sharpe one. Hold it steady and take a deep breath.

Cut almost all of your GS away from your model;? Or maybe you can even peel it off.
Sorry to be so harsh, but your idea is to good to not give proper attention to the sculpting.
It's not hard to make it look as good to others as it does in your head, but, it takes some patience. But as this guy will be a centerpiece in your army I think he's worth it.

Now, look at the banner, you can see how the GW-made part has it's cloth going up in two places-where it's atached to the pole. Your GS is a bit more random. Take the old GS off, and make two small sasuages, about 1/3 of the width of the attaching cloth part and long enough to reach all the way around the sprue-pole. (You could of course use something other than sprue, or maybe cut/sand it round) Like this:

Now use the sculpt tool to flatten it out a bit, so it is nearly as wide as the cloth-parts. Then let the Sculpt tool follow the recesses in the cloth around the pole.
This will take maybe two minutes, all in all.

Next is the daemon head.
Here you could cut almost all of the GS away. Save some only to attach it to the pole.

Then roll up a long and very thin saussage of green GS. Cut it up in smaller parts, each about the legth from where the hair starts on the Daemon's forehead to the top of the banner. Put some small drips of superglue at the base points.

put one of the ends of a GS-saussage in one of the basepoint-drips and then use the sculpt tool to gently press it in rougly the same place as the hair. One string for each hair.
Like so:

That's it really.
I know my post might be a "Do this, do that"-kind of post, but I just felt I had to do it. If you think I'm a (insert something foul) so be it, if it helps you to improve -I'm happy.

[Tsele]

I like the idea behind the conversion but I think that the sprue you used to make the banner pole - cross is a little large for the proportions of a SM...

After my squad....erm "tactically retreated"

Space Marines never retreat... they tactically re-deploy! 0:

[Tekore]

Andu (sorry for the shortening):

Thanks for the amazing post there...I had started work on the project already, but I am going to take some of the Green Stuff down and redo like you suggested. Frankly, I want this to look good, and by good I mean great, and so advice like that is really just incredibly helpful, not harsh at all. I'm going to start cutting away the extra this evening hopefully, because I want to have this done for a tournament this coming weekend (the 23rd). This kind of improvement could really make my work shine.

I'm attaching a picture of my work in progress to show you guys more of the idea, I suppose, but I am inspired to clean some back up, so here goes.

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc42/Tekore/WIP2.jpg

Again, please keep all images to maximum of 700 pixels wide. - KU

Tekore