Lord Gaudinzor, the hunter paret 3

So we have the running body from the Dark Vengance aspiring champion, with the faceless head made by shaving down a Tau helmet, that is connected via a half dozen cables to a lascannon backpack.

Well, that leaves the arms, and by extension the weapons. I've decided to give him a pair of extending swords mainly for the modeling potential and the dynamism. Having two whip like weapons requires the entire body to be in motion in order for them to be of use, other wise the on-attack weapon is held back by the counter force of the off-attack weapon.

The swords are still going to be segmented with the coil whip sections between the bladed sections. Previously I had done this by cutting the Raptor power sword into sections, drill a hole in each section, and then passing a length of pewter power cable through the segments. This works... visually... but not for gaming purposes.

The problem with this for a gaming piece is the general abuse a gaming piece will be exposed to. The stresses of being picked up and placed on the table. Being stuck into and removed from foam. Being pressed against other models, the list goes on. The pewter cables look very good, but they are not terribly strong and over time, the stresses placed on it will cause it to break. If used in a way where the cable is placed against something, like the hull of vehicle or the hips of a space marine, the stresses are greatly reduced as the majority of the stress is taken by the model. In this situation the pewter cable is free standing, or rather free flowing, and is out in the open exposing it to the full stresses with out anything to brace the cable.

So I needed to figure out a way to address this problem, while still keeping the visual appearance of the segmented sword with the whip coils. I hit on the idea of making several sections of power cables, using the Green Stuff Industries Tentacle Maker, and then drilling out a section through each segment so I could pass a thicker gauge wire through the power cable. Beyond this is was just a matter of sliding on each segment of sword blade and gluing the parts into place. Once all the segments were in place, I just had to bend the finished weapon into form.

Of course I still had to make the second weapon:

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Lord Gaundinzor, the hunter part 2

So last time I talked about the prototype version of Lord Gaundinzor. With the prototype I used the normal Chaos Marine legs and a Raptor Torso for the body. While this provides a solid base for the model it doesn't provide the dynamic range of motion I really want the character to convey. So I went back to the drawing board and worked to plan out the model some more. I knew I wanted to have the model showing a fair amount of motion. I also wasn't thrilled with using the multi-melta back pack. It looks less like it houses a cogitator array and more like it;s carrying a supply of promethium. So I wanted to change that as well.

The backpack actually turned out to be simpler to deal with then I first though. Just a power plant back pack from a lascannon devastator marine. I had to cut off the power feed that would normally go to the lascannon, but even this actually helps with the character of the model. The entire thing about Gaundinzor is his 'inhumanity' and 'unreal' visuals. He's a space marine so he's around the 8 feet tall mark. He's faceless, yet he can see. In fact he can see better then someone with eyes. He wear this heavy armor, yet he's a master swords man as if the armor isn't a problem at all. He's got this massive backpack, yet he doesn't fall over and pulls off moves a circus acrobat. Everything about him physically is challenged by his actions, and now he's hunting you. He is supposed to be terrifying. So I wanted to make him terrifying.

The first thing was the head. With humanoid characters the head, and more specifically the face, is a focal point for the model. It's really a human instinct, we look to the face for expressions of emotion and intent. How do you tell if someone is being hostile? Or if they're being serious? Or really any other range of human emotions for that matter? You look at the face. The face is the 'human' aspect of a model. It conveys emotion, or conveys the lack of it in the case of helmets. So there are the two options right? a face or a helmet? Well, sort of. There is one other option though in reality it's the absence of other options. This what I wanted to go with for Gaundinzor, the absence of a face. See, we're conditioned to see 'human' in even abstract objects. Don't believe me? Look at this:

It's an electrical outlet. But can't you see a face too?  The ground port is the mouth and the positive and negative ports are the eyes. Now look at the shapes of each part. The negative slot is larger then the positive while the ground port is shaped like a tunnel opening. Looking at all three elements combined produce a visual suggestion of a face making the 0.o look. This is why the helmets on space marines draw so much attention from painters. Ever tried to paint the lenses on a space marine helmet red and accidentally over paint winding up with what looks like the space marine is bleeding out of his eye sockets? Suddenly your trans-human super-solder in futuristic power armor looks like they're trying to perform a bad kabuki theater production.

But like I said, I've elected to go with a 'faceless' design with Gaundizor. That is I want to completely remove any semblance of a humanity from the face... well head. Why? Because it looks freaking creepy! What? Don't believe me? Ever see Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest? Remember when Will Smith turned the sailor over who had his face sucked off by the Kraken? Admit it, you were shocked too. Why? Because it's so far removed from 'human' we have no basis of comparison to it. No eyes, no mouth, no eye brows, eye sockets, nose, cheek bones, nothing. There is just no face what so ever for us to relate to. This is why that kind of thing is so freaking creepy. Now take that image and combine it with someone who stands 8 feet tall, has armor comparable to a small tank, moves faster then any human let alone one that is 8 feet tall should be able to move, and is hunting you. You have no means to see if any thing is effecting him. Did that shot to the chest even hurt him? Will that door even remotely slow him down? Think about it this way. Imagine you are playing a video game, and you come to a big boss fight. And the boss has no health bar and makes no reaction to your attacks. You land hundreds of hits with every gun in your arsenal only for the boss to continue attacking until finally you're dead. How close to beating him were you? Were your attacks even having an effect at all? Is there another trick to beating him? You can't tell. You may have been completely wasting your ammo firing at him or you may have been exactly 1 hit point away from beating him. That's the sort of inhuman terror I want to have this model make. So what did I do to get this?

I took a Tau helmet and removed all the detail from it leaving it smooth. There are no optical components on it. No camera, no lenses, no scanners nothing to indicate where he could actually be looking. To help carry the idea that Gaundinzor doesn't actually use eyes, but rather is fed a digital manifestation of the environment, I drilled out a series of holes along the edge of the helmet mounting and inserted a series of small cables, again from  Dragon Forge. These cables will be attached to the back pack.

So next thing, showing more motion. How can I do that? Well change the model position. What space marine models typically show the most motion? Models with running legs. So assault marines and Raptor legs were what I looked at first. But the assault Marines and Raptor models didn't have the... what's the word.... the right detail level for what I wanted. So I did some more looking and finally settled on the body from the Dark Vengeance aspiring Champion.

Here's a shot of the version 2.0 along side the original prototype. Please excuse the 'cyber whiskers'. The head is attached to the back pack and effectively free-floating at the neck. I have some green stuff in there and until that dries I don't want to try and move the other cables to attach them to the backpack. So that's going to wrap things up for today.

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Lord Gaudinzor, the hunter

So, it's that time of the year once again. You know, that one that starts with Thanksgiving and culminates with January 12th. Yes, I am referring to the holiday season for retail. We've already had Black-thanksgiving, Black Friday, Black-saturday, Pre-cyber Monday (Sunday), Cyber-monday, and Cyber-monday Follow-up (Teusday). I truly hate this time of year. 50% of the sales are crap sales that were better two weeks prior, while half of the products being put on 'sale' are crap made specifically for this period to be cheap so stores can sell them for $40 and people will think their getting a $150 item. Anyway, I still work in retail so I have to deal with it all. Friendly suggestion, don't go shopping on Black-friday and please don't buy stuff on Thanksgiving. The more money companies don't make by being open on Thanksgiving and not selling stuff, the more likely it is that retail workers will be able to get Thanksgiving back as a holiday.

Anyway all of that out of the way, today I am returning to Warhammer 40,000 with a new Chaos Lord for my Chaos Space Marine army. My view of a Chaos Space Marine is one of varied and loose alliances. A Chaos army isn't an 'army' the way an Imperial Guard or Space Marine army is. It will be a force made up of multiple groups that has been talked into working with the other groups through one means or another. Typically the focal point will be the Chaos Lord himself. He or She will be the one that is able to offer something of interest or value to the other groups to get them to cooperate. Perhaps the Lord can offer lost relics from an ancient world to get a Thousand Sons War Coven's cooperation, or maybe He will swear his warbands services to helping a Crimson Slaughters lord's efforts to hunt down an offending daemon lord. The possibilities of payment are long and varied.

What am I going on about? Well the justification for building my Chaos Space Marine collection the way I have been. I have an Iron Warrior Squad, a Night Lords Squad, Dark Mechanicus war constructs and I have plans for other groups I'm intending to add to my army. Each of these can become the core of an army onto itself. Or I can mix various units to form a unit, justifying it fluff wise by way of the loose alliance I just explained. This project is a perfect object example of this approach. I crafted the character before I worked to craft the model.

Functioning as Lord Roth'Gar's Lieutenant and direct liaison to Dark Magos Bargose, Gaudinzor has subjected himself to numerous experiments by Bargose that have resulted in enhanced combat abilities, deadlier weapons and an increase in his own sadistic tendencies.

Gaudinzor is a sadistic individual ever seeking to prove his superiority but he takes it further then most. For him, it's not enough to simply best them in a fight, or kill them in a duel. He wants to utterly destroy them, in every way it possible. He will purposely draw out a fight for the purpose of psychologically breaking his opponent before killing them. Rather then a swift strike to decapitate, or a thousand minor strikes to inflict pain, or even a targeted strike to incapacitate, Gaudinzor will serve feints within feints, toying with his opponents, drawing the battle out for hours even days only landing telling blows as examples of how futile his opponents attacks and defenses truly are. Stroke by stroke, Gaudinzor will tear down his opponents until there is nothing left and they beg him for death. And then, only when there is nothing of the proud warrior left, will he kill them.

Honestly the genesis of this character was a random image I ran across:

Thanks to the internet I learned the image is a rendition of the character Ivy from the Soul Calibur series. After some reading I learned that her sword was effectively 'alive' and reacted to her commands. That was really the first thought that gave rise to this lord: A Space Marine with a living sword that extends to become a bladed whip.

As I thought about it more I developed more details. A featureless visage. A large back pack to house a cogitator array. he doesn't use his eyes, rather he is fed tactical data from the cogitator array. He would be viscous and cruel killer. Ultimately more thinking lead me to the fluff passage I post earlier.

So with at least a rough idea in mind, I worked on a first effort for the model. I knew going into this, that I was likely not going to finish this particular model as it was intended more as a development of concept project then a final project. Still, have to start somewhere.

For this prototype effort I used normal Chaos Marine legs with a Raptors torso and a multi-melta backpack. For the sword I used a Raptor power sword cut into 2mm long segments with a hole drilled through the center of each segment. I then used a length of small diameter cable from Dragon Forge and passed that up through the sword segments. This gave me a semi-flexible body to work and tweak. It works but has problems. First off the pewter cable is fairly weak and with time it will break off from being flexed by being put into foam and taken out. Also the entire model looks very 'static'. He's not this viscous killer using super swords, he's a guy with ADD waving his cool sword about. So the model itself doesn't work visually for what I'm trying to produce. As a protoype effort it works, but I know I can do better. So that is what I will talk about next time. Version 2.0 of Gaudinzor, the Hunter.

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