Distracted!? Moi!?

 I've been distracted....

Just to clarify it's been life and work stuff mainly that has been distracting me from getting my Dwarf Marines and Truescale projects moving forward. I will be pushing forward with them again, but i also need to find my inspiration to get back into it again. I started looking through my boxes of models and came across a box marked with "Inquisitor Models" in permanent marker on the top. I knew I had an Artemis and Covenant model still in my collection, I had literally just found them two weeks prior, but I had no idea what was in here. 

On opening the box I was met with an equal amount of cringe and nostalgic serotonin rush. This was a box of scratch build Inquisitor 54mm bits i thought had got lost to the gods of moving many years ago. When Inquisitor first released I had gone to a preview night at my local GW store and pre-ordered it. I was so excited that I went back and started making some models that could potentially be used. An assassin, Tech priest, Demon Cherub.

Almost everything from inside the box that was found.

54mm glorious tragedies!

Though these are quite some years old now there is a part of me that looks at these and feels all warm and fuzzy inside. There is also another part that puts is hand in front of his face and winces from how bad some of these are. However, as this was 20 years ago I'm not going to be too harsh on myself. Out of all of these though two stand out, to me, as not being too bad for the time.

The Terminator

Modelled using Foamex, Milliput and electrical wire. This was my second attempt at a large scale Grey Knight model for 54mm scale Inquisitor by GW.

This model, though unfinished, shows a lot of promise and is most certainly better in proportion than the first one I created. I did actually finish off and fully paint up the first one, even submitted it to the painting competition at Gamesday. That being said it still wasn't one of the best models I had ever painted or even made. My confidence was way more advanced than my skill at the time though.

Ancestor Lord

Are you actually surprised that Squats featured in my Inquisitor models!? It's no secret that i'm a huge fan of the stunted heroes, whether in the Grimdark 41st millennium of GWs imagining or in my own Sci-fi universe.

The Ancestor Lord has seen better days and the Book of Grudges lies at his feet.

There were actually two made for my warband. The first one I made was an Ogryn conversion into a shotgun touting gunslinger character with a Mohican. Unfortunately I don't know where it is right now so I can't put them side by side. For my warband though it had to be lead by an Ancestor Lord so I sculpted it from scratch giving it armour, grenades, a power axe, Master crafted Bolt Pistol (which has since been lost somewhere along the line) and the beautifully sculpted blue Psychic Hood that has absolutely no detail on it except for the painted runes and three nubbins. 

Now we get to the crux of this post... As much as I love these models for their nostalgia for me I am also embarrassed by them. I can do so much better, so that's what I'm going to do.

Recreating old work

Yes, yes... I know. It's another project to my already full docket and I should just finish the Dwarf Marines already... but this is my hobby time and I want to do this. So, I'm going to.

The plan is "simple". I'm going to sculpt a 54mm scale male dwarf blank body (are you noticing a pattern here) because I hate making something and then not being able to quickly make an iteration of it should i mess up or get inspired to make something else. I think it's a good habit to get into. Once i've done this I'm going to make three Squats for my Inquisitor warband. That's it. I know I could just make the warband in 28mm but it's not the same.

The first one will be the Ancestor Lord. If I end up not doing any more from the project at least I'll have him done and I can see how much I have improved over the last 20 years. It's going to be fun. I'm sure!  

So, let me know what you think, guys. Is it madness doing this and if you were doing a 54mm Inquisitor warband 20 years later, what would you make?

That's all for now and I'll catch you all in the next blog post.

Cheers.