Thursday, 23 August 2018

Mutants


“I tell you one of those foul things ate Bob! They only found his gun and some drips of blood.”
“Stop trying to scare me, Gus. I’m not a kid anymore.”
“Sssssh! Quiet! Then stop acting like one and listen. These places are dangerous.”
“Yeah, yeah. As you say, old man. I’m sure we’ll OH GOD SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!”


Down in the underhive, in the darker domes, amid the ruins, mutants find shelter. Some form packs, some lurk alone; some still retain traces of humanity, others devolve into mindless beasts. But whatever crosses those territories is doomed to attract many a hungry mouth. Thus they’ll look like a group, while the truth is every mutant is racing to secure the juiciest bits.
Tales of horror and gruesome death are told by the other gangers around campfires, like one would a ghost story. Tunnels are sealed and guarded. But some still try to venture in those places, and not everyone return.


Mutants are not actually a “gang”. They are a ragtag collection of mutated, deformed, deranged individuals that all happen to be hungry. So I’m trying to shape each of them individually, make every one of them easily recognizable as a character. Many of them won’t even have names. 
This one, for example, wears what remains of a hazmat suit. Once a worker, mutations wracked both his body and his mind. Now  his only instincts are killing and eating.








I built this guy from an Acolyte Hybrid body. The forearms and the head come from the Crypt Ghouls, and the bludgeon is made of two pieces of a banner of the Empire Flagellants. I swear Warhammer Fantasy AoS is a goldmine when you want to make Inq28 conversions!

The hazmat suit is painted with abundance of washes and paint splatters here and there. The skin is something I like doing with all my mutants (yes, there will be more, hopefully soon!): I start with Rakarth Flesh, and then I begin adding thin patches of colours: Kislev Flesh, Slaaneshi Grey, Cadian Fleshtone, and some crevices darkened with Reikland Fleshshade. Everything extremely thin, to simply provide different tones to the skin, trying to make it look ill.

Now, I need to choose how to make the base. Since the mutants live in abandoned areas, amid the ruins, maybe I could make them like the Techpriest’s one. Let’s see.

Thursday, 2 August 2018

Mechanicum Explorator Squad

Under the city... below, below, in the depth of darkness of forgotten vaults...


The Imperium of Man, in its ignorance, built upon itself, burying its past, forgetting, one might even say purposefully, its power and its danger.

Words have been whispered in blurred static, echoed through the noosphere. Of something buried deep under the city. Something powerful but, most important, something old.

And the Mechanicum covetes old things above everything else.


One of the many warbands I'm slowly building is an explorator squad of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Their mission will be investigating if the rumors are true, and that will necessarily make them clash with the other gangs.

What I want to strive for with these models is to recreate what I have always felt the Mechanicum was: cloaked figures, cables, creepy retro-futuristic technology, shining eyes in the dark. Something along with these lines, which is one of my absolute favorites:

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/32/ed/f0/32edf09934de8f7619401bbdac74abb5.jpg


Let's see the first model of the squad!








I wanted the colour scheme to reflect the Mechanicum of old: red robes, black-yellow danger stripes, brownished steel. I didn't like the idea of using blue or green  for the lenses, so I went back to John Blanche's works and noticed he used white, which I tried to replicate here (though I should retouch it to make it brighter). Black for the gun seemed an appropriate colour; no energy effect on the coils for the same reason of the eyes, and didn't fit the model anyway. 

Since the theme was a squad exploring old vaults and crypts, I made the base to look like an old stone pavement. Had so much fun creating it!

The only complaint I have is that my camera sucks, and does horrible things to red. The robes have been painted with Mephiston Red, and it doesn't look like that.

So, what do you think?