Topic: Darknight's Knights (Dark and Otherwise) - Thread Superseded!!!

[Darknight]

It's an unusual mix of greek style head piece and the puff and slash style trousers though.

The minotaur is actually wearing a skirt with armor strips around it - I tried to find a picture which wasn't of a sexy Hallowe'en gladiatrix costume, and eventually found this;

My only problem is that stack of cannon balls in the wagon. I just don't think they would stack like that in there without some kind of rack for the bottom balls to set in. On the ground they can stack like that because those bottom balls will sink into the ground and not roll away when you put the top ball on the stack. On a hard surface at an angle like it appears to be, that stack of balls is going to end up on the ground.

Good point - they aren't glued in yet; I can make a little brass monkey or something like that very easily.

[Delthos]

Ah, now that you point it out, it is obvious they aren't puff and slash trousers. Good work in any case.

[Albrecht Hexenjaeger]

Looks great! I particularly love the wagon! 

[Darknight]

The carts (and the ponies) are from the Wargames Factory celt chariot set; $20 for three chariots and six horses. I just added some carved plasticard sides. That kit - the softness of the sculpts on the figures notwithstanding - is a great kit for anyone wanting to make carts for logistics, artillery trains or other such things. There are some nice weapons on the sprue, even if the 14 (!) figures included with the kit really aren't up to GW standards. Definitely worth $20.

[Daenoir]

This is a very nice idea.
You could add one or two guys who are bringing the bullets on their shoulders.

[Darknight]

I'm keeping the models to three figures (in line with existing machines). I may very well make some little sack charges of gunpowder, ready to be loaded, sitting on the back of the cart.

For the mortar, I have a guy checking the elevation of the barrel (and using a compass to check the angle) and a guy lighting the fuse of the mortar. For the helblaster, there is going to be one guy frantically reloading the gun the minotaur isn't firing, while another will be trying to calm the panicking and rearing horse (a helblaster just went off about three feet from its ear ...)

I'll try to get some pics of these models (even if they are incomplete) up over the next few days. I want to get all three of these warmachines finished by the end of Feb, although the amount of work needed to get the Tommy-gun helblasters done is MASSIVE!

[Darknight]

Alright, everyone! I have completed the assembly and conversion of the helblaster minotaur, affectionately known as Tony or "Scarface" .... say hello to my little friend!

(click for larger images)


I've still got a bit of work to go on the "Mortaur" as its being called.

[Delthos]

Another excellent job. I really like the scared horse.

[Maza]

It's great! One more to go then?

[Darknight]

Yes, just one more - mortar.

Thanks for the comments, guys!

[nuttunen]

Oh thats nuts! Good nuts like cashews.

[Fandir Nightshade]

I will PICK YOUR NOSE! fantastic job I like how they are all yelling and screaming like scarface would....except the guy in the back...you should paint him rolling his eyes going something like...

"gee they go all rambo again".

[Darknight]

Guy in the back is like "I'm just loading this gun. It's what I do. Just loading the gun ...."

[Darknight]

On a bit of a roll! The final Minotaur warmachine is complete! Click for larger images;



This is the last you are going to see of them for a while; I want to enter them into the April painting comp, and so I will keep the painting of them secret! However, I am somewhat sick and tired of staring at warmachines, tiny ponies, and bull-headed horrors .... so I am likely to paint and post something else!

Here are a few figures (Reaper, mostly) I grabbed because they looked cool and am going to use to bulk out my Greatswords and Swordsmen. The unit filler is a Reaper figure with the statue being the Celt Queen figure from the chariot set (I felt the relatively poor sculpting would not be noticed so much as a statue). Again, click for larger image.

[Delthos]

I love that praying Paladin figure from Reaper. It is an under appreciated fig that I don't see very often. I had a lot of fun painting up mine.

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k112/prozinskij/Painted%20Figs/PaladinFront.jpg

[Darknight]

That looks much better than mine is going to - not only are you a better painter, but the position mine is in means I can't easily get a brush to him!

They have another Paladin figure - fairly new - who I think is pretty much "Tebowing" http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/pray/sku-down/03600

[Delthos]

I've not yet seen that one, but then I've not been following their new releases for a few years now. That one doesn't look like he's praying. He looks more like he's bowing down to his liege.

[Hoodling]

These are looking great. I especially like Scarface. 

[Maza]

This is a lovely project - looking forward to see the minotaurs painted.

[Darknight]

Well, I had planned to get the minotaurs painted in March and April for the painting competition, but that didn't happen because the girl who lives with us when she's not at university came home and stole my painting room so she could sleep in it. This is what charity towards people from disfunctional homes leads to, people! No painting time!

Let this be a lesson to you all.

Anyway, didn't get much done on the minotaurs at all And then the new stuff was released and I bought that and it was so exciting etc. etc. that I started working on it (check my converted Celestial Hurricanum here).

I must get back to the minotaurs and other projects - I can assemble and convert much more readilly than I paint, it seems (always my problem) - but for now here is a teaser of "concept sketches" from my Luminark of Hysh (click for larger picture);

[Albrecht Hexenjaeger]

"Nice sketches. I know they have a hidden meaning though..."

[Delthos]

What strange hieroglyphics are those notes written in? 

[Darknight]

Auto-didact pseudo-copperplate, common in those educated in British ex-Grammar schools of the 1980s and '90s

EDIT : Alright, no double-posting mullarky for me!

I completed my Celestial Hurricanum last night (check the first post in this thread for a link to it) and was planning to start my Demigryph proxies today. "But Self!" I said to myself. "Self, listen to reason! You sent the bases for the Demigryphs to Tiny (who is a fine man, and who - as he comes from Wales - clearly deserves a clone of Catherine Zeta-Jones just as soon as you can get the technology to work) so he could make those fantastic resin ones. Why, when you have them, your conversions will be masterful and completely freaking sweet. But, alas! They have not yet arrived from the fine land of coal, sheep, and exquisitely beautiful brunettes! Alas! And you have everything else, including those 90mm heads from The Lost Battalion the nice man from Minnesota forgot to charge you for for two weeks, and the cute resin wings!"

But then I got to work, and stuff arrived in the mail! One huge box was about $800 worth of networking equipment for the new office, which was exciting, but another package was personal and it was from Wales and it was not made of coal and / or sheep and it was from Tiny!

Yay!

Ahem.

Alright, serious stuff here - Warhammer is srs bznz. I wanted some Demigryphs, because they are really cool, but they needed to fit with the army and its Greek theme. Gryphons are - while Greek in certain ways - not archetypically Greek, ifunowotimean. But Greek sphinxes are ....

I did a quick Google image search and found this image by Jonathan Ewert on Elfwood (click image to go to his site);



That gave me a general look and proportions. The wife (who is sensible) objected to the bare breasts - very classically Greek, but perhaps not appropriate for a wargame miniature. No matter - the barding of the Demigryphs would work as chest armour, and the large neck hole would allow me to sculpt cleavage in there, giving the correct impression while retain modesty.

So, I purchased some 90mm heads from The Lost Battalion. They are really nice heads - gorgeous models, well-priced. The site appeared to go down for maintenance the day after I ordered the models, and then he didn't charge me for about two weeks, even though the models arrived! I spoke with him on the 'phone and email - yes, he was charging me. I even designed him a new shopping website (database driven) because his old one wasn't ideal and had a fair few flaws.

(Anyone want a free SQL database driven PHP shopping site? I can give the code for nowt.)

I also bought some resin wings from MicroArt Studios, which were the ideal size.

I assembled the Demigryph bodies and glued in some scraps of sprue deep into the neck cavities with some green stuff to provide somewhere to insert a pin, and then glued the female heads in place. I stuck the models on the bases (I am going to write a review of these resin bases in the Trading Post thread, because they are very good indeed).

Enough words! Pictures! Click to embiggen them!





Here is a picture of a wing held in place, to get some kind of idea what they are going to look like. I am not sure precisely how they are going to go together - I will likely cut the wings down so they fit "behind" the barding as it were, going under the riders' arms. Or, I might angle them upwards significantly, to give more space for the knights themselves.



Comments welcome!

[Alleton]

Simply awesome, I will be watching this with interest.

Only thing, The heads seem (to me at least) to be too low down on the body to allow for a woman's chest in proportion to the Demigriff's body. I.E. it seems to me that making the women's chests proportionate to the heads, in this position, will pull them far behind the curve of the armor, or, if you sculpt them into the armor, the chest area will seem too far forward in relation to the heads.

Of course, I may be looking at it completely wrong, or not taking into account any plans you may have, (Anatomy isn't my strongest subject) It's just an observation that I could very well be wrong about.

[DariusZero]

Great idea, I like it. NIce sketch you found, which should be followed carefully , because the proportions are just right.

I agree with Alleton thou, that the heads are too backward on the spine. They look (too?) big anyway , so you should be very carefull about placing them to the body. Move them to the front, make different variants and post pics here to compare.

Don't hesitate to change that, until the unification is perfect, because this stage is probably the msot important one.

 Have you considered to use the necks of the demigriffs, just cut the heads off? I n this way the neck-body joint will be perfect.