Marco does something

[Quickdraw McGraw]

Very Nice!  I love the sculpted head and all the gear on her back/belt!

[MarcoSkoll]

Closer inspection of the Kasrkin I bought shows the moulds are giving away their age. Some of the detail on the helmet hasn't cast well (left eye and lamp-pack) and the torso detail has some damage to the undercuts and is generally a little less than crisp.
They could just be tidied up as is, but...

... I had fun with Lynx's conversion. A lot of fun.

So, given the Kasrkin's head and torso already need at least a repair, I'm considering outright replacement too. The same recipe may lose some of its panache a second time around, but it's at least worth a Photoshop mock-up:


Once again, the picture of the head is shamelessly stolen from Statuesque's site, just this time edited to be green

The aim this time around would be to try and preserve the shoulders - they'd still need to be lower and narrower to reduce the masculinity of the model, but I'd like to see if I can swing it without removing the pauldrons.
If nothing else, a little more practice before I have to swing into action on any test sculpts I'm called on for* wouldn't be unwelcome.

A "bare" head is somewhat non-negotiable in terms of not ending up with a sex-indeterminate model (well, it's that or add huge norks), so she can have a beret instead.
Beyond some vague recollection that red berets might mark veterans, I don't actually recall what the "rule" regarding berets is in the Imperial Guard - but hey, I liked it on the first version of Little Brother's Sgt. Ellis (and was a little disappointed to not see its return for version 2), so *immature raspberry noises*.

So, pop quiz - worth doing again, or just trite the second time around?

* Lynx, despite "just" being a conversion, proved to be a useful part of a portfolio when talking with a miniatures company, so I should have some test sculpts to do at some point. More on that if anything comes through though.

[Gilleon]

I would say Marco, that if you are doing it then it will be worth it. Not wanting to sound like too much of a fanboy of course...

With regard to the shoulders then all I can say is best of luck, I have tried but had little success with resculpting the Kasrkin models. An easy cop out of course is to say she is from a particularly low gravity world, where the women are built like Cadian men. A scary thought, but probably too easy an option to be worth considering.

Whilst you say the bare head is non-negotiable, I would suggest trying to sculpt a feminine face inside of the helmet, the helmet forces more attention to the face itself, thus you are forcing yourself to do an excellent sculpt. That made sense in my head at least.

[Koval]

With regard to the shoulders then all I can say is best of luck, I have tried but had little success with resculpting the Kasrkin models. An easy cop out of course is to say she is from a particularly low gravity world, where the women are built like Cadian men. A scary thought, but probably too easy an option to be worth considering.

Or she could just be large and beefy anyway -- I personally know a few women for whom that's genuinely the case.

The trouble is that while it's certainly possible to tell male and female soldiers apart, it can become harder when they've got all their combat gear, to the point where the only visible indicators are the head, hands and (usually) shoulders. For example, you can see that these soldiers are very clearly female, but owing to all the gear they're wearing, they're not so far removed in initial appearance from male soldiers, the main difference (aside from the faces) being that the ladies in the first picture are just that much smaller.

Once you start adding on carapace armour as well (with all of its rigid plates), and that dirty great hellgun, the distinction can become even more blurry.

So while this might come across as counter to what you're trying to achieve, I don't see that it would be that huge a deal in context if you made only very minor changes (barring repair work), or no changes at all, beyond the head swap.

[DapperAnarchist]

I say leave her looking "masculine" (large and beefy). Then we can have the famous Rogue Trader and arms dealer, Anton Strak (also a famous ladies man) saying "By the Emperor, you're a woman! I honestly, I couldn't have called that. I mean, I would apologize, but isn't that what we're going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first."... I want to make Anton Strak now.

[MarcoSkoll]

An easy cop out...

How often do I go for the easy cop out?

As a general rule, I'm not a fan of excusing problems with a model by slapping on an ethnicity that's tall/short/bulky/slender. Ethnicities are interesting, but they're not just something to be thought about when something needs to be justified.

It's not the intention for her to be built quite as chunky as the original model (and not half as interesting a challenge either) so I'm not planning on a lazy solution.

Whilst you say the bare head is non-negotiable, I would suggest trying to sculpt a feminine face inside of the helmet.

It's an interesting idea, but I've a feeling the model would look less like a Kasrkin than without any helmet. The rebreather is part of what gives the Kasrkin look, so removing it gives something that looks more akin to a heavily armoured guardsman.

Also, I picked the beret because I liked it. Still, I'm considering leaving the helmet (and rebreather) to hang off her belt, such that she can still use it in game.

I want to make Anton Strak now.

Let me guess... power armour and a bionic heart?

Anyway, should Strak ever wish to meet her, I'm not going for anything particularly feminine (as is presumably obvious).

~~~~~

Anyway, the jeweller's/piercing saw blades and diamond files arrived this morning, so dissection commenced. In order...

Removed head:


Drilled pilot hole for the jeweller's saw:


Cut between arm and body:


Cut under the arm to free it from the pouches:


Removed right arm:

In theory, the jewellers' saw could make it possible to remove both arms and the hellgun as one piece, but that would ultimately be counter-productive, as I'm changing the torso width... and the razorsaw is a lot less likely to snap than the jeweller's saw)

And then cut the hellgun free of the torso:


After cutting away the knife too (it'll make the work easier), I've also proceeded with some preliminary filing:


~~~~~

For what was only a few quid's worth of purchase, the return to service of my jeweller's saw and the new diamond files are proving a big boon.

That said, I'm so used to steel files, I keep forgetting that it's acceptable to use diamond ones in both push and pull motions.
(They don't have cutting teeth to damage, instead just being embedded with abrasive grit. But, more importantly, they're too hard to damage).

[Dosdamt]

Hey Marco

These are all fantastic. MORE PHOTOS!

Do you have a retrospective thread?

[MarcoSkoll]

There's no retrospective as there's never been a big need for a retrospective thread, seeing as this version of the forum mostly stretches back to cover this era of my Inquisitor modelling - and I generally don't like to talk about the previous eras.

There is my 54mm thread around (and then the thread for whenever I get back to building the Warhound), but nothing more neatly organised (at least yet).

[MarcoSkoll]

Right... only minor progress, but few more quick pictures.

I decided to separate the left arm from the hellgun to improve the freedom in posing:


And did some more filing and cutting on the torso, which is now approximately shaped for a more feminine size of carapace armour.

Sculpting of the armour detail should be possible shortly - some of the areas that were previously obscured should now be visible.
There's a little damage from the disassembly to clean up too, but it's all to only lightly detailed areas.

This brings the current part list to about here:

The helmet is still in the pile as it's probably be going to used - as I mentioned, I may have it hanging from her belt so she can still WYSIWYG wear it in game.

I'm also considering removing and re-sculpting the shoulder pads anyway as, while I do want to have an equally armoured end result, they're trivially basic shapes and it'll make the posing process easier.

[MarcoSkoll]

It's all still WIP, and I'm not necessarily happy yet, but here's something to prove I've been doing stuff.

The lady Kasrkin, with a guardsman (from an IG force I started to build but never finished when I realised the 5th Ed codex was pretty much guaranteed to invalidate them) for a "masculine" reference.




(Her helmet will be hung from her webbing eventually, but a gender neutral head helps me be more critical of my work).

This seems a fair reduction in shoulder, torso and waist width, at least to start. We'll see where it is yet to go.

[Quickdraw McGraw]

Lookin' Good Marco!  I can definitely tell she has a feminine frame.  I may have added a little more (girth) to her Lats but not much.  She's got to still look strong to carry around that armour. But of course her backpack will probably cover her back so it won't be a problem.

Can't wait to see it finished.

[MarcoSkoll]

And back to that Stormtrooper from pages ago...



I've been procrastinating over him for way too long. I decided I was going to start over, then decided that actually the original leg armour plates were quite nice and went back to them and cut everything I'd done with the upper body because the proportions seemed wrong. I think the arms and head may be salvageable though.

Perhaps the proportion issues are why I bothered sculpting musculature when I'm just going to put more carapace armour straight over it, so I could convince myself they were right.

Or maybe it was to prove I could. But whatever happens, we'll all know he's a buff stormtrooper.

[Rayner]

Very impressive sculpture work, the musculature is so accurate. (almost a shame to cover it up - but I can appreciate the unlikelihood of a storm trooper running around shirtless in a combat situation)

I'm jealous of how sharp and clean you have managed to get the armour plates on his legs, I find that green stuff doesn't always cooperate with me when trying to achieve this kind of crispness.

Excellent work so far, looking forward to seeing how he progresses.

[MarcoSkoll]

The leg plates are a complete cheat.

I roughly shaped them, let them harden, cut and filed them square, then polished them to get the original finish back. The last step is unnecessary, but looks really slick.

Between that and other tricks, I can comfortably get green stuff to take sharp detail. Perhaps switching to other putties would be the professional thing to do, but this gets results without the problems of swapping putties between tasks.

[MarcoSkoll]

To get at least something done, I've finally started on the necessary head for the lady Kasrkin...



Unfortunately, while it's not too bad (the mess around the corner of the eye should clean up), this might be too small, as it's only 4.5mm. It probably needed to be somewhere between 5 and 5.5mm. However, I'll finish it and see how it looks. If it's no good for the Kasrkin, it might do for an Infinity model.