Artscale: Building a squad

 Over the last week i've had less time than I would have liked to get some hobby stuff done. Work has had me casting a lot and I haven't been slowing up on the usual R&D stuff either. So, some progress has been made, but bear with me.

5 Brother Squad

As I mentioned in the previous post I wanted to create 5 bodies and poses to mould up and cast to make the whole squad making easier. 

All posed and ready for the details.

As you can see, when posed they can have quite a bit of dynamism to them. this will make it so much easier to put the squads together and expand the force in the future. I had blue-tacked the shoulders, head and weapon in a previous post to see how it would look, and on reflection it seemed to be quite small. I decided that if I was going to remodel and print out a resized weapon then I may as well do some other weapons too.

Forging Weapons For The Fight

The rinsed prints curing in the sunshine.

The weapons I decided I would need right away were boltguns, chainswords and power mauls (The pistol is a previously printed piece that had been lurking in the bottom of my ultrasonic cleaner). After a while I selected the one of each type that was the best print, cleaned them up, filed and filled what I needed to and then sprued them up ready to go in a mould box.

The sprued up pieces.

As you can see there are a couple of other pieces on the sprue. These are for another project which is work related, but i needed to cast them up for the project so added them to the sprue. I like their aesthetic too, so may well use them for the company veteran squad. The boltgun is the same size as an Intercessors weapon. You could use those instead of regular boltguns, but i decided to use my own modelled, printed and cast pieces for this.

Vehicle Progress

The Rhino/Razorback progress has been a little slow. I have some extra pieces printed out and it's making a better attempt to look like it's smaller brother, but there's still quite a bit to do. The Razorback is going to have twin linked Lascannons, so that could be a bit of fun to make. That being said i do have a turret weapon that could be modified to work as a replacement.

The current state of the Razorback.

I'm currently umming and aahing in regards to the assault squad. I do want to have a squad, but i would rather have them with jump packs as opposed to the more ground bound unit they are planned to be right now. I may make the squad with magnetic backpacks so i can have either or in the future. I will have to see. The other thing is I would love to have a bike squad as a possible replacement for the assault squad. As this force is a 500pts force right now i can have either bikes or assault without jumpacks. I really can't decide so i may very well do both to give me that option.

One more thought about vehicles. While looking for reference images I was going through the Jes Goodwin art book: The Gothic and the Eldritch. I've always been a fan of his work ever since he joined GW. One image that i always liked, and never understood why they never took it further, was the sketch on the Dreadnought page.

A quick snap of the Dreadnought image from inside Jes Goodwins art book: The Gothic and the Eldritch.

You can see how it has probably influenced the new Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought, but i have always thought it would be a great alternative to the clunky bulk standard dreadnought that we all have several of. If i do decide to make this it will be in the next phase of the art/truescale project. I think it would fit in nicely and be a fun piece to do.

So, that's where I am so far with the project and the next part is to sculpt some details to the armour and get them sprued up. For this update that's it though. Take it easy and I'll catch you in the next update.

Cheers

John