Still more plague marines

Yep I'm returning to talking about the Plague Marines. I tried to individualize each marine and make them somewhat unique. With this model I tried to show the rotting and decayed armor. So for that effect I applied the decayed technique in large areas, used a zombie head and busted up the backpack a lot. The bit part here was showing the decayed and burst hoses which I had to carve out and replace with lengths of metal tubing.

Continue

More Plague Marines

Okay so continuing on with the details of the plague marines I donated for the Black Legion charity.
Today I'm going to talk about the two aspiring champions I built. First one is armed with a plasma pistol and a powerfist.

From the front of the model you can see that I applies the left leg, and the left side of the helmet and body. It's not clearly visible, but I applied the same effect to the inside of the power fist. I also applied the decayed effect to the back pack. I went for a bit more of an improvised look to it by attaching a cable from the backpack to the helmet.

The second aspiring champion is armed with a Power sword and plasma pistol.

Here I applied the decayed effect a bit more liberally applying it to the shoulder pad, the back pack, the sword and the left leg. I again went with the idea of an improvised look by adding the power cables going from the backpack to the plasma pistol.

Continue

Plague Marines continued

So now we come to the next model in the Zombie Marines units I have built for the Black Charity army.

With this guy I wants to go for a very distinct feeling of "How the bloody hell is that thing still alive let alone reaching toward me?!" and to accomplish that I went for an almost entire zombie torso showing the rotted flesh, the ruptured guts, and the shriveled head. I bore out the gauntlet, mucked it up a fair bit and then added a zombie hand to it. I placed the back pack at an angle and then fashioned strips of green stuff to to run across the chest showing that it was being held in place, but wasn't actually attached the way the should be. I deliberately made the texture of the  green stuff straps rough and un-even to carry on the "decayed" and "rotten" looks in the model.

Continue

Plague Marines

Okay I have some time so I'm going to put up posts about my contribution to the Black Crusade Charity army. I have been a big fan of the charity armies ever since I saw the Storm Wardens one two years ago so when I found the announcement that a new army was being done I jumped at the opportunity to contribute. I quickly contacted Falk and offered up two 8-man squads of 'Zombiefied'  Plague Marines. I also offered to create a new Abaddon for the army but that role had already been taken. Falk was happy to accept my Plague Marines though. Through Falk I was introduced to Dave who has agreed to paint my ugly little fuglies.

So first up:

 This was one of the first models I built for the unit. I wanted to give the unit a peice-mail look and feel to it, like the armor is constantly rotting away and being replaced by whatever the individual member can find to replace it. So I went with a mix of loyalist armor parts and Chaos parts making a very conscious effort to avoid using the same styles of armor detailing on the same model.

I'll be honest; I've never much liked the Games Workshop version of the plague marines. The whole bloated stomach... it just doesn't scream "Plague Marines" to me. So instead I went for more of a "rotted armor" sort of look to the marines, showing that Nurgle's toxins and acids slowly eat away at the armor. To accomplish this I went at the model rather liberally with my pin vice, drilling dozens of small holes and then going back and selectively drilling a hand full of medium sized holes in the model. I then spread a layer of plastic glue across the holes and moved the glue around with an old brush. The glue partially melted the plastic around the holes while the brush pushed the pliable plastic around creating the rotted look on the model.

In this particular case I wanted to make the model mostly marine and just show his army rotting away in some parts indicating he had recently replaced over parts of his armor. So I was a bit more selective about the rotting process.

One part I do particularly like on the model is the Plague knife I gave him:

I took a chain sword left arm, removed the sword and attached a zombie knife blade to the bottom of the hand. I then attached the heft of a chaos sword to the top of the hand. I think the Plague knife is something that just isn't seen in game much and it's a real shame. The Plague Knife is as much a part of Plague Marine lore as anything else.

Continue

Return of the resurrected hobbyist!

It's been a bit of a helluva couple weeks for me. First the majority of the east coast of the United States got hit by what was basically the little brother to a hurricane. That little punch knocked out power for five days. It also destroyed a friend's modeling studio, so I'm not sure which I would prefer. No power for five days, or having my studio wrecked. Either way, that was not a fun five days.
Then I went down to Richmond Virginia to help my cousin move into her new apartment. In 105 degree heat. Despite drinking close to a gallon and a half of water during the course of the 5 hours worth of work I found myself suffering from heat exhaustion shortly after my return. So I spent the rest of that day in bed.

The next day I was hit with the first punch of an ongoing series of problems. Namely work. And the fact that the company I work for is reorganizing. The reorganizing is fairly radical and wide reaching. I won't go into details, but will simply say I basically have to re-learn the job I was already doing, plus learn how to do three other jobs now. Oh and then I worked for 11 days straight. That all topped off with a rather sever spell of dizziness and mild nausea that had me bed ridden for two days as I worked to recover from the preceding three weeks.

And then finally recovered from those series of ass-kickings I realized that in the course of everything I had yet to finish the two units of Plague Marines I had promised to the Black Crusade. So I've spent the last week working furiously to complete them. I'm not going to go into detail on the units tonight, but they will be detailed in coming posts. Here is a picture of the completed 16 plague marines:

Continue