Mini-Tutorial: DIY Twin-Linked Brainleech Devourers (part 2)

Well that was fast!

After playing around with some Green Stuff, I have completed the first arm!

This took a lot longer as I am still very much a novice when it comes to sculpting. However, all things considered, I am happy with the result.

As for the second arm, I decided to re-pose the claw as it was drooping down quite significantly. I clipped the claw as best as I could to avoid collateral tissue/chitin damage, then after a bit of clean-up with the hobby knife I drilled and pinned the claw back on at better angle. This was followed by a fairly successful Green Stuff fill-in.

I still have a bit of cleanup (mold lines, etc.) to do on both arms, but will wait until the Green Stuff has dried.

Pictures below. Hope this tutorial was actually useful!

(As a side-note, since I had to do sculpting anyway, I managed to finish magnetizing my Tervigon arm sockets, as well as all 3 sets of Trygon/Mawloc talon sockets, as well as the Trygon/Mawloc head carapace, jaw area and pincer sockets! I still need to drill and magnetize the talons, pincers, and remaining head carapace, but all-in-all a productive day!)

Finally, a pic of the Devourer on my Carnifex... and yes, I do realize that the radical angle I decided to place the arm magnet is a bit odd. Live and learn.

Mini-Tutorial: DIY Twin-Linked Brainleech Devourers (part 1)

In a first for this blog, I attempt to post something actually useful!

This morning I decided to jump in and get started on my brainleech devourers. Previously, I had scoured the net for inspiration, and found a lot of great resources. Of course, now that Forgeworld makes their own, there is always the option to buy them. However I still find them to look a bit flimsy, and besides they are super expensive and hard to come by.

With my research complete I decided I wanted to use Crushing Claws as the base for my conversion. I first saw this idea used on a showcase that GW had featured on their online blog (now gone). However, a bit of Google Image searching paid off, and here is a link to the owner's Hive Fleet Titan flickr feed. There are a lot of great conversion ideas on there, and I don't assume to come anywhere close to his skill level.

The Great Devourer...

...of my precious time.

When facing a seemingly insurmountable horde of grey sprues, my motivation to keep up on this blog is drastically diminished. That said, I am officially done assembly with my gribblies* and can ramp up work finishing my bigger bugs.

I really want to get my force assembled, so I can actually start learning to play. If I muster up the courage I may sign up for a 40K escalation league  at my FLGS that starts this week. I don't have all of my army built-up but it may give me the motivation to power through the remainder!

Either way, completing my Tyranid assembly frees me up to go back to painting my GK's (who are now pseudo-obsolete thanks to the Codex drop next week).

Once we get the Codex in our hands I will hopefully have more to add!

It he light at the end of the tunnel is at least visible now, if not more than a speck...

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*This does not include the basing, which I will worry about closer to when I am ready to paint. Unlike the big bugs, the gribblies won't have complex bases.

Well, that absence was longer than expected - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #5

Hello again!

I am back to this blog after a 4 month "break." To quickly bring things up to speed, hobby life was going quite well back in early February; I was making fairly quick work of my Tyranid assembly, until one day we received notice that our landlords were moving back into the house we were renting from them. Basically, we now had 2 months to find another place to live. Deciding to test home-ownership again after 2 years of renting, a torrent of house-hunting ensued and we found a nice place that fit our criteria and happened to be located right around where we wanted to live. *It doesn't hurt that I am now only a 3 minute drive from the FLGS that I mentioned in previous posts. I tell my wife this had NOTHING to do with my location criteria... ... ... ... ...*

As I was unable to continue commuting to work, a new car had to be purchased in this timeframe as well, and when you add this to all the other things one needs to do before, during, and after purchasing a house, 4 months seems like a blink of an eye. And now that the boring stuff is out of the way, lets get back to the hobby!

Today's special: Aluminum & Lead

Today I put the finishing touches on my brand new Light Box (Mk.1). I opted to go with a white background for now (for lack of a colour printer), using a pretty ghetto backdrop of 8.5"x11" pages glued together with double-sided tape.

Ta-Da!!!