Dynamic Models

I’ve been enjoying building my Tyranid army a lot more than my first Imperial Guard army. The models for the ‘nids are, for the most part, much more pose-able and expressive than a grunt with a gun (Oh look! His gun is pointing slightly to the left!).

I especially love the genestealer model. They’re extremely expressive and have a lot of individual personality. The four arms gives a lot of opportunities for a wide range of gestures and motions. I went to a lot of trouble to insure that none of my ‘gaunts or genestealers are standing in the same way.

This is part of the reason why my gargoyle squad was so disappointing to put together. There are only five different positions available for the wings and three of those positions look almost identical, so you have 6 out of the squad with their wings pointing forward.

It’s for this reason that, more than ever, I want to start messing around with conversions and green stuff. The tools are out there to take these models and do some really interesting things. I’m not ready yet to really start converting and I’m more interested in focusing on getting my painting skills up to acceptable levels, but ideas are starting to percolate about what I want to do for things like the gargoyle squad and their inflexible wings.

-D-

Hobby Collateral Damage

As I look around my office, I realize that Warhammer 40K has taken a small toll on my life:

There are bits of clear plastic scattered across my floor (leftover bitz from the flying stands for my gargoyles).

There are splotches of super glue, paint, and painty water on my desk.

There are several, slashing scars across my thumbs and a fresh cut that I’ve closed with super glue.

There is a freshly spray painted Danish cookie tin filled with white genestealers.

There are codexes and rule books scattered around on the floor.

All in all, it looks like my office was hit with a very specific and very unusual tornado that deposited a very limited, very particular of debris here and there.

I have a feeling that, very soon, I’m going to need to come up with a better organizational system for all of my hobby stuff. Right now, paint brushes, x-acto knives, jewelers files, paint pots, gargoyles and imperial guard are scattered hither and yon and I don’t know what to do with it all.

How do you store all of your hobby equipment and supplies?

-D-

Hobby Priorities

So it’s been a week or two (or three) but I’m back. It turns out bronchitis, a wedding and nine hour work days do not leave a lot of time for a new hobby. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve steadily been building genestealers and painting hormagaunts, but my options were either to work on modeling or write in the blog about modeling and, of the two, I’d rather do the former.

So this is just a quick update before life intervenes again.

I’m more of less done with my hormagaunts, at least as far as painting is concerned. I still need to demonstrate how I’ve been feathering, like I promised, so I’ve saved one lone gaunt to demonstrate. All in all, I’m satisfied with how they came out, but they’re not perfect. I’m not sure how much of that is I need to practice my technique or work on my color palette. Probably both.

I also now have a fully assembled set of genestealers. In the past, I never filed down the mold lines or did much prep work prior to painting. This time I went to the trouble to carefully remove all of the mold lines and remove that extra fringe of plastic that crops up on occasion. It took me an hour to build a single genestealer, but I think it’s worth it.

In terms of the hobby in general, I think I’ve come a long way from the days when I was building Catachan warriors. Of course, at this rate, I’ll have enough troops to play a game by the time 2016 rolls around.

Next up, hopefully, a step-by-step tyranid painting guide and army building.

-D-