LeahO's scratchbuild studio!

[LeahO]

Howdy folks,

After a LOOONG (possibly a decade? The last thing I remember from old Conclave was Kaled winning the weird tech-berserker model in the character contest ...) time away, I've finally found my way back to the Conclave (I'm free! Time to conquer EARTH!).

Anyway, I was just checking out the Conclave in a moment of nostalgia, and saw that there happened to be an event in London (25 minutes train ride away! Much better than a train all the way up to Nottingham) coming up later this month. This was just the kick up the backside to register, get a couple of 54mm modelling projects finished after a few months, and have a fun blast from the past.

One problem - I don't have any of my Inquisitor models any more, and all the old models seem to be extremely expensive to rebuy. I was never any good at painting anyway, and have since moved onto different sorts of crafting (props, a bit of jewellery-making, etc.).As such, I thought I'd have a go at turning my new skills into scratch-building some 54mm scale models as a challenge to myself, and also because it gives me a chance to try out some new techniques!

Anyway, without further ado - my warband so far. I think I'm probably in the minority on the Conclave in terms of modelling priority, since I am very much model first - I tend to go 'cool character gimmick/material -> model -> basic stat line -> background -> full stats'. Fits in with my arty temperament, but tends to produce slightly strange characters. Will post character stuff in the rules forum in a bit.

In each case, I still need to do a bunch of 'cleaning' on the models before the event, but they're mostly done.

Sister Die-Well Brandeis, Hospitaller-Alienist of the Order of the Second Nativity





Die-Well (I have a weakness for old-style Puritan names, and think it's a shame that modern 40k is so Latin-dominated and doesn't take much from this period other than the name and the hat) is a Hospitaller focusing on psychiatry. She's very much designed to look non-threatening and elderly - she has a rather stylised stoop, and though she may be intimidating, she's not physically powerful.

Essentially, this was my 'experimenting with silver metals' character - she has a (somewhat subtle, but its there) aquila made out of some curved pieces of mild steel I made in a blacksmithing class ages ago, and the face/scroll-work/fleur-de-lis on her chest is all made out of silver metal clay. I recently got some of this, and it's immensely cool stuff - basically fine metallic silver powder in a flammable paste. You sculpt it into shape, then heat it with a blowtorch to burn away the paste until it leaves the metal, which fuses (you have to be careful not to melt it - just get it cherry-red) into pure silver. It's surprisingly cheap, all things considered - there's maybe 1/2 of a 5g pack in there, so about £5 of metal. The fact that it was cheaper to make a model out of literal precious metals than GW products is left out there without further comment. After that, I washed it with liver of sulphur and then burnished off the top layer with brasso (might do this again before the event), to darken it/give it a richness it was lacking.

Mixed success - I liked what happened with the mask, but it's too crumbly to carve script into when dry and pretty hard to work on when fired. It dries out super quickly - 5-10 minutes once it's out of the pack - and you can't wet it without separating the binder from the metal. Still, I feel much more comfortable work with it now, and am hoping to use it in other stuff.

Overall - it's nowhere near as polished (well, metaphorically - the silver is polished much more ) as some of the other sculpted figures here, as befits my own amateur skills and more unforgiving materials, but I like the way it comes together (different lights bring out the reflectiveness in a really awesome way that doesn't come across in the photo). Colour-wise, the lack of any warm colours other than a tiny red fleur-de-lis and muted terracotta on the base give Die-Well a very muted, almost sepulchral look, which works to highlight her neutrality and slightly 'disconnected' weirdness.

Adept Praise-His-Works, of the Priesthood of Mars





Praise-His-Works is a lot more flamboyant than Die-Well, in colour and pose, and is a prime example of my 'gimmick concept first' approach to model design. They're based on a combination of the relic skeleton of St Pancras, and Kars from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (believe me, I've not left this source material behind; planning a truly fabulous, sparsely clothed, posing Space Marine in the future). From the sublime to the ridiculous, I know. Praise is a tech-adept who's one of Die-Well's former patients, and possesses limited ability to reshape their body using a colony of skull-shaped mite-sized familiars that live in their body, but at the risk of severe psychic-neurological damage. I envisaged the terracotta skin as Praise's actual - incredibly emaciated, practically skeletal - frame, and the white as clumps of mites that would 'crawl' across their flesh to form different weaponised shapes. I might do something new with the hands to underline this - possibly have them in the process of forming themselves into beweaponed extremities, à la the T-1000 or Senator Armstrong from MGR:Revengeance - but this is technically difficult.

Anyway, if Die-Well was my experiment in silver, Praise is my experiment with copper. The 'robes' are etched scraps from a LARP armour project I was working on for a friend, and work well for Mechanicum-decorated robes here, with hints of Square Kufic arabic script. I repeatedly blowtorched and quenched it, which - as well as annealing it and making it easier to shape - gave it, once I'd polished and sanded it, a beautiful red-and-black-and-bright-copper patina of different copper oxides. Again, works with the terracotta, and is on-theme for the Mechanicum. The cog-trim on the robes and headband is made the same way, with a slight bias towards more red.

The hair was made the same way, from coiled copper foil twisted into tubes. I admit this was a bit more risky, but I think it works OK - it fits into the overall 'upward and outstretched' shape of the figure, and is a fitting nod to the fabulous hair of JJBA characters. Plus, Praise was going to have mechadendrites, but I was having trouble finding a place for them - where better than instead of hair, snaking up from the scalp and the metallic headband/brace?

Overall, Praise is a very different figure to Die-Well, but they work well together. They're tied by materials and basing (the only part I didn't make - some watch parts gutted from a car boot sale). Though Praise is more physically imposing, as befits their role on the table (though neither is a power house), they're very static and 'in place' - maybe rising upwards with non-specific power, nothing else. Die-Well is much less physically powerful, but she's lunging forward, hand thrown in front of her, brandishing some holy writ, robes and banner fluttering.

So - thoughts? Advice? Ideas for future things to work on / materials to work with? It's pretty hard to change what's already there, but I can certainly add stuff/colour stuff ...

[Van Helser]

An absolutely unique pair of models that fit instantly with the gothic weirdness of the 41st millennium. Top job. I really do love the etched copper.

Ruaridh

[greenstuff_gav]

i love the concept of trying new techniques and not-thought of methods and as Ruaridh says; fantastically "40k" figures there!
the Adepts' flowing robes are brilliant and my personal favourite part of the pair!

as per tradition,
Welcome (back) to the Conclave!

[LeahO]

Thanks both!  You are too kind, and it's great to be back. It's true about the robes on the Adept - I really like how they came out, and they look better in real life where they can catch the light. Getting them working with the 40k universe was something I was worrying about, but I tried to tie it in with an overall sense of slightly Blanche-ian weirdness rather than anything specifically 40k, so I'm glad that came out OK.

I am, however, slightly furious at myself for having managed to lose ALL. 3000. WORDS. of backstory for Die-Well (**** and **** LibreOffice), which I'll need to get back together before 21st November and Lachesis. On top of a super-heavy work fortnight. Aaarrgh!

Anyway, must calm myself by thinking of future character techniques and materials ... calm thoughts ... copal ... abalone ... a fresh set of blades for my jewelery saw ...

[Lord Borak]

I'm really envious of people like you LeahO. I can never seem to capture to complete Grim-Dark weirdness that you've done so well here. The Sister Die-Well is especially awesome.

[LeahO]

Thank you so much Borak! ☺️ Honestly it's motivated more than anything else because I am a /terrible/ painter and don't have any 54mm stuff (your stuff in the other thread terrifies me with how well-done it is!); anything I make has got to be out of what crafty stuff I have lying around, therefore, and so I'm often inspired by a particular material or technique that just feels nice; a lot of the gnarled, corroded, and heat-tarnished stuff happens to work very well with the grim-dark weirdness stuff.

I'm glad you like Die-Well (and not just because it's nice for people's likes to balance out); while Praise is obviously more imposing, there's lots of individual little bits of Die-Well's figure that came out really nicely.