Commission work: Imperial Knight #1 finished!

***

I am a Raven, and a Raven flies free...

He looked down on his swollen gut in numb misery.  How long he had sat in the darkness, how long he had felt those awful hands groping at his person, the intrusive piping and the whispering breaths-- oh, the whispers!  All he could see from the blank confines of a scabbed, solitary eye was the flickering square within his vision, a single, static-wreathed screen that whined in a voice, a white voice, a pitying voice that tore at him, tore at him!

Fearing not the traitor, for fear is a shackle...

They had bound him there, imprisoned him within the gutted, empty confines of his beloved, bound until this, his only love was one with him though he felt nothing, no heat rising from the sand of his arming pit, no pain from the mass of chains that bound his body to the pillars, blind like a judge of old-- only numb, empty cold.

Honouring my kinsfolk, for honour is meaning; house and Cog, Metalica our doom...

They had pulled his head from his body, and that channel yielded static until they replaced it with what he assumed to be his ceremonial death mask, painted in a fresh smearing of blood.  This led the misshapen figure to believe there was some significance to be had in the upcoming event.  Finding the channel that viewed from his tilt shield, he saw swarms of enraptured fans pawing at his feet, defecating across his warped shin plates or doing whatever they felt honoured him the most; he had seen expectant mothers give up the life within them at the sight of him, and they would offer up the dead ones as burnt offerings to their most adored warrior.

Spare not the heresy, spare not proposition, for Cog knows the doubter and victory awaits...

"Do you hear them?  The guitars, I mean," an empty voice wheezed like unspent breath through his chest, "A decent game, for once?"
"Maybe," he replied.  He could hear nothing, feel nothing.
"The spoils of the crusade may have yielded us an adversary-- maybe one even worth killing?"
"That's all you think about these days, isn't it?"
"It was all I was ever told to think."

Free are the agents of a Cog-fearing mind; so fears the Raven and the Raven is free...

His body dropped his stance and bellowed savagely, sending the mad fans scattering with screams of delight.  What had he become?  A freak show, a means of entertainment...  A player in some demented circus, and quite literally too, bound until he earned his freedom, so said his masters.

He pulled weakly at his chains, as he did a thousand times before.

I am a Raven, and a Raven flies free...

Fearing not the traitor, for fear is a shackle...

Honouring my kinsfolk, for honour is meaning; house and Cog, Metalica our doom...

Spare not the heresy, spare not proposition...

He was led by a score of lumbering beasts through a maze of twisted, shrieking corridors, such comprised his parody of home, into the harsh light of a daemonic sun and the familiar ring of a blood thirsty crowd.

 The channel that gazed out from his shield boss jittered and never focussed as it should have, but he could see the people, innumerable people lining the seats and staked to hanging racks; climbing over one another, desperate for a clearer view of the ensuing battle.
The next channel made him reel (inwardly, for neither one of his bodies could) at the sight before him, the opponent that the Despoiler had so kindly brought him.

Unnatural long count of years had done much to dull his memory, but this silhouette before him... That battle cannon, the oddly familiar shrieking clatter of vengeance... but was it possible...?

After all this time... Separo?

...for Cog knows the doubter and victory awaits...

 ***

At last, Victory Awaits is finished, and by THRONE, this was a terrific experience!  Yeah, he's not quite finished-- there's a rocket pod, an icarus autocannon and another head to make, along with maybe a few finishing touches I found by taking photos, but other than that, I reckon he's done!  I so hope the client likes him as much as I do.

I'll be putting up a post with his work in progress shots later.

So, yeah.  Want anything built or painted?  Now one IK's just about off my chest I'm taking requests again!  Remember to check out my commissions website, and/or send me an email @ lonely.kitbasher@yahoo.com if Victory Awaits sparked your interest.

Bye bye for now, hope to see you soon!

Random hobby update: more of the same

 Right; there's very little going on in the way of new things as I continue to chip away at the three IKs-- that's not to say I'm still having a right old ball with them.  With settling into a new work environment, I haven't had much time for decent updates... this is more proof to the world I'm still working on anything at all, really!

Please don't mind the state of the altar, it's got into a bit of a pigsty again.

First and foremost, painting begins on Victory Awaits!  Almost, as I'm still trying to source some glue for the base, so his lower half isn't undercoated yet.
As progress continues I'll try and dedicate a whole post to each titan, so you'll get more than just one badly lit photo.

Aldrich isn't looking too much closer to finished, which is a pity.

Joseph's Cadmus Gallant is just about assembled, he'll mostly want a bunch of literature and a finished base.

... and a finished interior, which I'm certainly looking forward to.

 

 On a less serious note, I had a go at making Mettaton out of a necron.  Someone on G+ drew him as a crossover, and I wanted to know if I could make him.

And this is where I'm up to with him.  Good thing he's not taking up much of my time.

...And speaking of video game characters, an umbra Inquisitrix has just had a few finishing touches.  I was going to go for clean and shiny paintwork, reminiscent of Bayonetta but, well... I am me, so yeah.
Funny thing, I didn't realise how much I hated painting pink/purple... imagine the hassles others have with getting a decent yellow, that's pretty much me with pink.

I'm trying to find the time to get a decent rotation up on Flikr.

And I reckon that's that!  A much shorter post this time, once again just a means of proving I am still doing stuff/still alive.  I hope to get some more in-depth updates on each individual IK later on; I'm also slowly putting together a Rambling Thoughts post concerning the direction GW's art styles have taken-- a terribly biased Rambling Thoughts, I might warn you!

Bye bye for now.

Commission work: knights into days

 Never actually played that game...  Apparently, it was great fun.

You'd never believe an Imperial knight would take so much work to assemble... in truth, I'm bringing most of this upon myself, aren't I?  I just like to make cool stuff, dammit

Firstly, the house Cadmus knight is  pretty much assembled, sorry I haven't really got around to photos Joe!  You'll be receiving an update presently, I can assure you.

Here's the base for Victory Awaits so far.  I'll be covering it in sand and debris later; I'm going for a daemon-world-circus-maximus-sort-of-arena floor.
What else have I got done on him?  Let's have a look.

Not sure if I've already shown the chain falx yet? It was still on my camera, so I figured I hadn't.

I had a go at sculpting a chaotic arrow, just to see what it'd look like, rolling a thin sausage of greenstuff and smoothing the sides down with the end of a brush...

... I got a little distracted...

...And an entire Dragonland album later, I'd done both shoulder pads.  What I was hoping to achieve was a cross between warped metal and welded-on effects, a branding of sorts by the knight's masters.

The smaller area of the other plates were awkward to work with, so I just ended up doing abstract lines for effect.

After much back-and-forth over shield shapes, I decided to go with rectangular.  I suppose it's a bit ironic, the fact that the base I'm starting with is a toy roman one...

I think I'll put an eye in the shield boss.  That'll be nice.

So here's where I'm up to with Victory Awaits.  He's got all his limbs magnetized, he's got a rocket pod and autocannon magnetized, an extra head magnetized (still puzzling over the thracian bascinet) and all I really need yet to get hold of is a decent swag of skulls to hang about his person and I can call him assembled!  I'll be discussing with the client what kind of paintwork he'll be after.

So what about the third knight?  His working title will be Aldrich until we decide on a proper name, because, as you'll see, "he developed an odd habit of devouring men".

So, for his torn-out carapace infested with bodies, I bent a sheet of plasticard and held it in place with spure; the bodies are held in place by a layer of greenstuff I shaped a bit for interest's sake, not that you can really see it under all the flailing limbs.

There's still some work needing to be done on the bodies themselves; extra limbs and heads need adding, for one.

Also, the pilot who, for some reason, is sticking out the top.  I'll be giving him more human features, along with the remains of a command throne and some clothing.

So here's where I'm up to with Aldrich, and I believe that's that!  I need to keep going, but this pack of night runners are telling me very strongly that I need to continue with the skaven army.  They're not going to paint themselves, don't you know.

Oh, and I've yet to deal with those annoying bolts on the reposed IKs' hips.  I wrote myself a reminder to stick up on the wall so I don't forget:

Mm.  Something I can truly aspire to.  Bye bye for now.

Triumvirate of the Primarch: a swift look atwhat you get

Right!  So the Primarch has arrived at the altar!  I just wanted to quickly show you lot what to expect from a box of 180 NZD's worth of plastic and card.  I was in such haste, I even forgot to rotate some of the images... bugger.

So firstly, we get a halfway-decent A4 print for the wall, an instruction book and the goods all displayed nice in a merchandise tray to help justify the price tag.  Though really, I mean THRONE!  This is the first ever plastic Primarch we're talking about!  He'd better arrive in at least a bit of style.

Quick (blurry and not rotated) look at the sprues, what do we get?

... Oh no... it's going to be one of those kits, is it?  For kitbashers like me, this might pose a slight problem, what with having to assemble the figure straight up BEFORE cutting him to pieces.
Never mind, they look pretty nice.  I'll need to have a decent look later.

One thing I'm a bit disappointed with, Cypher's sword... it's in two bits, one being sculpted to his cape and the other to his power pack.  Nothing I can't handle, right?  I just might end up with less fingers than I wanted, no big deal!

Guilliman is no exception to this-- oh, but he's going to be an utter mission to repose!  I'm liking the power fist, though.  It's like a scaled-up Gauntlet of Ultramar, nice homage.

 
Here are their rules too, until someone in an official hat finds out and shuts my blog down because of it.

So that's that!  Just wanted to get them out there for you lot to look at.  I won't be assembling anyone at all soon, of course-- I've got knights to build and skaven to paint, but once that's all cleared up... we'll have to see. Tossing about some ideas for Mr Guilliman-- I've got a Grotesque and two kastelans on the way for that purpose....

Hee hee, bye bye for now.

Commission work: KNIGHTS TO AFRICA

Feeling rather miserable today, sorry, but I'll try and keep it cheerful for the post.

Smiles :D

Right, so you can see three Imperial Knight torsos on the altar tonight, can you?  Very good!  Joseph, a previous client would like a reposing job done, and the chap for whom I'm painting the skaven force wishes me to make him two-- not sure how many (hundred) times I've brought it up, but I will continue to do so because, believe me-- it's a big thing!

The first one will be simple enough-- a sort of Nurgley one with corpses spewing out of the top, other than that it should be pretty straightforward.  You see the IK torso in the right of the top picture with a big ugly white thing showing through the broken canopy, that's where I'm up to so far with him.

Copyright to whoever owns this image

What won't be straightforward-- and for good reason!-- is the Thracian, a gladiator-esque renegade knight gallant.  I've got to calling him Victory Awaits until the client settles on a proper title.
RIGHT!  The most prominent features, let's see-- bubble helmet, I'm still fiddling with what I've got to see what'd work: curved sword (with the edge on the INSIDE like a falx): I've got armour panels for the right arm (all lined up beside the corpse-cart torso)... and I'm not sure on a square or circular shield for the thunderstrike gauntlet?  I think round is more iconic, but square is less cliched, so... still undecided.

So here we are, beginning work on the chainsword; a bit rough at the moment, but we'll get there.  The engine housing is covered in panels off the Chaos chariot.

I had an idea for the mask: seeing as the client is going to run it as a renegade, he might want something a bit more Chaotic to swap out for the down-and-out traitor look, magnetized and everything.  This faceplate is, again, from the Chaos chariot-- oh, if you're building a traitor IK, do yourself a favour and get one!  The amount of useful bits in there is surprising!

F'rinstance, there's these two panels that make fabulous chest-pieces, with minimal filling required.  I think I'll use the one on the right this time.

The story of Victory Awaits goes thus:, he's a prisoner on a daemon world, and he has to keep himself alive by serving time in the circus, fighting daemons and other knights to earn the right to live and one day his freedom.  His armour and thermal reactor has become warped, but he does not worship the Chaos gods... yet.

(Also, the extra carapaces from the carnifex work well, except not for the Thracian... )

What also might be unsuitable-- and impractical-- and awfully cool if I pull it off!-- is making him a cape out of all these shields I've had no other use for.  I should magnetize it as well, to make transport easier.

The third knight is for Joseph.  He's wanting a knight Gallant as well, a house Cadmus one with an interior and put in a pretty dynamic and not very easy-to-make pose, if you ask me.  Oh well!  Exercises in patience!  I need those.

Lastly, if I get the time, Reprisal of Sanction will be getting a little bit of attention if I find the time.  The younger brother of the White Rose has been waiting to be finished for about a year now, but there's too much on at the moment to devote more than a few minutes a day to him, not to mention being depressed again...


So that's that.  Four knights on the altar!  What more can I say?  I just hope something good might come of this... madness I've found myself in at the moment.  Sorry to bring this up on the blog, but it's just monumental and I felt the need to bookmark it in history.
Let's just say, the Lonely Kitbasher may well walk alone forever...

Bye bye for now.

Oh, baby, please think about this...