Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 6)

Painting begins! I may not have been 100% happy with the model, but its amazing what a lick of paint can do, okay, so its not display standard by a long shot, but I'm increasingly pleased with how its looking. Sorry about the darkness of the pictures, natural light ones will have to wait until the weekend now.

Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 5) - Conversion Complete

Well thats the conversion finished, it's not perfect but it'll do given time constraints, my only real regret is giving in on a dioramic base, BUT I'm quite templted to revisit this model later on (once its painted) and do a much nicer base.

Tutorial - Simple Epualettes

Disclaimer - There are plenty of better sculptors out there, and I'm sure many of them would advocate different and quite possibly better ways of tackling projects then I currently do. I'd encourage anyone considering doing any sculpting to browse around and do your homework before tackling a project.

Also if anyone wants to add any suggestions to the tutorial please do comment with any tips, suggestions, criticisms etc, all would be most welcome.

1 - Stage one is to prepare the arm and shoulder your working on, the main reason for this in my book is to help when it comes to deciding how the braid will hang, in my example it's strait down, but you may have an arm raised which would perhaps cause the braid to lie at an angle partially or completely.

Doing it this way is also far easier in my opinion when it comes to putting folds in fabric beneath the epualettes if these are present as doing it after may result is the fabric ending up rather to much on top of the braiding or simply thicker in places and thinner in others.



2 - Once the surface is completely finished and cured roll up a sausage of putty, this can be formed into a horse shoe shape and placed around the shoulder.



3 - This horse shoe can then be smoothed out down the shoulder, the bottom and sides trimmed into shape, this is the basis of the braid. You can adjust it later on but it's easiest to get the lay of the shape now.



4 - You can then rough out the way the braiding falls using the tip of a scapel blade, remember at all times the effect of gravity! Try to keep the widths even where possible. However that said each strip can potentially cross, get tangled etc, this involves a little more work and should probably be saved for once you feel more confident. If you make a mistake however dont worry, this is just a rough go at it so to speak, and can be tidied in the next stage.



5 - Now you can go over your rough version widening the gap, using either a thin sculpting tool or a scapel again. This is the most important stage, remember you dont want squared edges rather slightly rounded, so dont be afraid to wiggle your tool a tiny amount. This can extend to the bottom of the braiding, doing so allows you to also put in a little more movement to the braid, having the whole lot slanting towards or away from the torso a little as desired.

If you have excess putty try an shift it upwards but dont try an remove it now, wait until it's cured to avoid ruining your work, put the piece aside for the full curing time and then leave a little extra before moving to the next stage.



6 - Having trimmed any excess putty so the top of the shoulder is flat with a scapel (at whatever angle the epualette will be), roll a little ball placing it centrally on top of the braided shoulder, then carefully flatten out the ball across the surface, you'll want at least some overhang however.



7 - Rather then trying to build a rim up, I find it easier to take the center or this disk down, this can be done with careful downward pressure to create a indentation which is of equal depth and border. It'll likely take a few attempts before you get the hang of this so be prepared to pull the disk off and start again if needs be. Allow it too cure fully again.



8 - Next take a tiny sausage shape, this can be pressed and squared to finish the epualette. And yes, thats about it I guess! Hopefully you'll now have something which looks something like this.

Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 4)

Well have now added the arms, though a little more work is still needed, the epualettes are also finished. For his hand weapon I've settled on a Plasma Pistol in the end, I played around with the idea of a Plasma Weapon based on a Webley pistol as suggested by a few people on Warseer, but in the end time constraints and the realisation that to get detail in the weapon would need to be quite large put me off. The idea is something I'd still like to play around with though, maybe another model!

The only thing I'm not quite happy with is the hand, I'd hoped to cut corners by using one from the Cadian plastics, in retrospect I think it may be just a tad large as is, I'm going to try an shave down the knuckles a bit, if that does'nt work I'll go to Plan B and sculpt a hand instead.

Finally I've also started working on a base, working from a resin piece from the Citadel Basing kit and an Ork Boy, we'll see how it turns out!



...and yes I have just noticed how thick the hair strands are in this pic from that angle, I'll go back and sort that out!

Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 3)

Added his hair last night, another first for me with sculpting, it was actually a good deal trickier then I expected. I worked the whole lot wet rather then doing it in layers as normal, the advantage of this was it was easier to get the whole lot looking as one, rather then multiple wigs(!), though of course that meant as mistakes were made I had to go over bits again. From the front I'm realtively happy with it, though I'm sure it could be improved upon with more practice. The back (not show yet) I'm not so thrilled with, the hair does'nt seem to lie quite right to me, especially when looking top down, I'm probably exagerating the problem, being very self critical I guess, I'll post pics in the future of that portion, tonight I want to get the epualettes finished to square off the toros more, and then to start working on the arm stumps again.

Blog Changes

Okay, okay, yes nothing modelling wise to show today, though I've done a little more to Caine. I've really spent the past couple of hours just fiddling around with the blog with the intention of doing something more with it, so new menus, a changed layout and a bit of background text to give some information on Praetoria to the uninitiated.

One thing you might notice is a tutorials heading, so yes I'm going to try an do a few, nothing major, there are far more capable people then me out there in just about every field! But hey, I've had enough requests for some so who am I to argue? ;)

Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 2)

Just a little update, the head I sculpted is now fixed on the torso, I've extended the skull ready for doing work on the jaw bone, ears and hair and also done the collar though this needs a little more work. Off to pull a platoon out of the stripping bath now, more soon!

Orks Drift - Captain Caine (Part 1)

Excitement runs high in the barracks of the 4th at the moment, my local GW (Exeter) is going to be fighting out 'Ork's Drift' on the 22nd of December, which of course means lots of Orks(!) and who better to take on the Orks then the Praetorian Imperial Guard! But of course theres more, I've been volunteered to knock out a couple of characters for the game for what Zulu game would be complete without Captain Caine and Parson 'Your all going to die!' Witt?

So I've begun work on Captain Caine first, taking this picture as my inspiration.



The model is being based on a Standard Bearer model, he long ago donated his head to another model, a quick snip and adding of armature for the arms and I was ready to go.



I began work only on one side the body initialy (this was because I had'nt at that point decided on what the other arm would be doing). This involved building up the arm in which a bolt pistol taken from the Baneblade Commander would be held, and also working on the front of the tunic. The tunic would have its top button undone (yeah I know disgusting aint it, a Praetorian in the field without his uniform tidy!), the cloth hanging down.



The head was the next problem, I wanted bare head something like Michael Caines in the picture, there are'nt many which are suited, and on finding the only one which I had in my bits box was a little large (the WFB Empire Outrider with bare head) I could'nt really decide what to do.

So I decided to take the plunge and try sculpting my own head, something I've never attempted before. I spent an evening researching and practicing, finding an excellent tutorial on the One Ring website. On my fifth attempt I produced this, which at least for now I've settled on using, once its cured fully (I'm leaving it 24hours just to be sure), I'll add it to a head and mount it on the model to see how it looks.

Leviathan (Part 2)

The madness continues, be it a little slower now!

I've completed further work on the rear section, mostly rough tidying with greenstuff, the end result there is still a long way to go, but this will mostly wait now until I've decided how to finish the corners. One thing you can see in this picture (be it at a distance) is that I've started altering some of the statues, basicly I decided to have them all looking the same would be... daft, so I'll work on these as I go round the sides trying to keep them all slightly different.



I've also added the curve to the front of the hull, this is mounted directly on a framework you can see in earlier pictures. I cut the templates by taking a piece of paper and slowly cutting it back until I had the right fit, I then used two thinner pieces of plasti-card rather then one thicker piece which has given surprising strength, the picture below shows it directly after glueing (hence the sticky tape holding it firmly in place), like much of the rest of the hull this will then require outer 'armour plating' detail.



Next up came some early work on the sides, with additional CoD sections much the same as on the rear. I've also added the walls and floor of the fighting deck, the keep still needs adding, as do the tower wall facing it with its door. Im leaving that for now however while I do some more work on the sides, at the moment thats the plating on the lower-rear and doing the rear corners, I'll then move onto the lower front before tackling the sponson towers.