This build is made from an Ironbreaker body, chaos marauder flail arms, chaos warrior gloves, weapon head and helmet. I still want to make more “Irondrakes” so he’ll be getting dismantled, and I think I’ll try and make a unit of these with Hammerer/Longbeard bodies instead.
The only problem is that positioning the arms is a massive pain, and I’ll have to figure out how to either do the posing before sculpting the beard, or somehow sculpt the beard around the arms.
Looks good. I think id get the arms fixed1st and just do shorter beards or cut off flowing beards from dwarf heads that could go over the top of the weapon haft
Drill holes for the brass rodd - position the arms with the rod as guide but don’t glue the rod - remove the rod - sculpt beard with slight indention for the brass rod, before it´s dry: wet the brass rod and push it in place and give it a few turns to form the indention - pull out the rod, fix up defects on the beard and leave it to dry.
This works quite well for me when sculpting from scratch.
I spent this evening sculpting beards and hair on the rest of the Warriors and on the hero. Very happy not just with the results but also with how I cut off PRECISELY the right amount of green stuff for today’s work.
I like to use the fine edge of my sculpting blade to do the texture on the beards, I think it makes them look like they have ringlets rather than dreadlocks - giving the models a look that’s kind of a synthesis of all the various styles of GW Chaos Dwarfs over the years. Hopefully they come out as a mix of features from the “small Chaos Warriors”, Big Hats, and masks eras.
I’m very glad I found @Xander’s gallery on the old website- without it my unit champion was just going to have a fancy helmet from the Chaos Knights kit; instead I’ve cribbed the idea of using the BFSP warrior champion and leaving some of his beard intact.
Such progress! and all I had to do was go to sleep and wake up again. So if I say I’m looking forward to seeing them primed to set in the conversion that’ll be done by tomorrow morning right? How about fully painted the day after that?
I followed the same steps as my simplified test models, but batch painted all 15 models at once - one colour on every model, then the next colour on every model, and so on. I got a little anxious to finish near the end and broke the group into two smaller groups of 7 and 8.
After two big blocks on Saturday and Sunday, I put a couple of hours in each night for the rest of the week to finish them off. Altogether it took 18.5 hours to paint these guys. I think it took maybe 3 hours to do the first test model, and about 10 hours to do the next four. I’m glad I got my time down to about 75 minutes per model, it gives me some confidence that I might ever have a fully painted army of these guys!
Overall I’m happy with how these guys look. I’m very happy with my colour scheme and the palette. I’m not 100% satisfied with the highlights on the green (does anybody know how to paint straps without doing edge highlights?!) but I think the surfaces that gave me trouble on this unit don’t show up on the other models I’m basing my conversions on, so I might not have the same problems in future.
I took a bunch of in-progress shots to keep myself sane, so I could post a full step-by-step if people were interested. I’d love to hear if people are interested in that kind of thing.
Next on the hobby table is some squigs for my Gloomspite Gitz, because I want to do some experiments with zenithal undercoat and contrast paint, but I have the parts for some more Chaos Dwarfs in the mail so there will be another update coming pretty soon, no doubt!
It’s almost entirely built from parts in the Mournfang kit (although I substituted a different ogre head that I had in my bitz box). Only the shoulder pad and the loincloth are from the Chaos Daemon Prince kit (they looked very Destruction and not very Chaos).
I took a dremel wire brush and etching bit to the Mournfang, to get off most of the fur. It also needed some work with a hobby knife and some files to get it to where it is.
I’ve got some soft-tipped sculpting tools coming in the mail, I’ll be waiting until they arrive before I start on the main sculpting work. When that time comes, I’m probably going to give him a scale armour skirt and a belly plate, as well as a beard. I need to fix the transition around his waist and fill in the front, of course, and add hooves and fill out the tail.
I wasn’t sure this idea would work, but I think it’s paid off and they’ll look like Bull centaurs once they’re done - it just takes a whole load of work! And I plan to make six of them. Hoooo boy.
Amazing work, well done on getting the batch painting side of things nailed down as you have. The end result certainly looks worth the effort you’ve put in
(does anybody know how to paint straps without doing edge highlights?!)
I also look for a way around this, the way I’ve done my recent Stormcast is using a wash. I put the base colour down (Mournfang Brown in this case) and then just used classic Agrax Earthshade to wash not all over the straps but in the middle pushing towards the edges.
That way when it dries you just get the dark shade in the middle and the base brown is only along the top and bottom giving the impression of an edge highlight.
Don’t have any great pics sorry but I did try and zoom in on this and it kind of shows it…
That’s quite helpful actually: sounds like some real serious glazing. I’ve done a little glazing in the warriors by accident, trying to cover up mistakes on the green highlight with darker green that I’d thinned down too much; looks like I was onto the right idea and just needed to take it a bit further!
I stuffed the body with aluminium foil to give myself something to attach modelling putty to, and I’ve applied putty around some of the egregious gaps that the dremel left, as well as doing some sculpting on the tail and trying to turn the saddle into armour. I’ve filled in the front of the model and hidden the very rough surface with a Daemon Prince tabard and a guard from an old Ogre bull’s armoured fist.
There’s still some sculpting work to go around the belly where the ogre and the Mournfang meet, but I think it’s coming together nicely and it’s definitely a strong proof of concept.
I built & undercoated the first five including command a while back (scroll up!) and built the next five alongside my Bull Centaur. The conversion is technically a straightforward headswap and beard sculpt, but it requires four separate modelling sessions:
Build the torso and attach the left arm, dry fitting it with the right arm but leaving it off so I can sculpt the beard. Allow to dry.
Cut the lower back of the Chaos Warrior helmet off on an angle, and attach using greenstuff so that the helmet is facing roughly in the direction of the pose. Allow to dry.
Sculpt beards from greenstuff using modified Xander method. Attach gun arm while greenstuff is still workable - making sure that the gun has clearance behind the beard - but do not glue into place. Allow to dry.
