Don't stop here! This is bat country.

[Ravenstein]

Nice work! You made some bad models look presentable. Not at all a fan of any of the bat sculpts, swarms etc. Maybe I should try and do a cute undead one day for giggles. In regards to the older undead models sculpt quality I agree. Recently I read that the Nagash sculptor Gary Morely had been given a design brief for Nagash and hated the idea so he deliberately made a terrible sculpt. The studio just accepted it and the rest is infamous badly sculpted history. Nagash is still available on GW website too, crazy! Think of how amazing he could be sculpted now.. it would be tremendous if they remake him one day I hope.
Gary Morely however sculpted a slew of really terrible miniatures for GW in the late 90's. It actually put me off collecting GW miniatures for a few years. Now things are starting to look fantastic again and I love all the new undead kits.

 

[Santawraith]

well even though the vampiress did not turn out as originally intended she is a stunning piece. The standard bearer rocks.

 

[Count Homogenised]

Fantastic stuff - one of the best VC painting projects I have seen.

That BSB is 'full of win' (as the young folk say these days) - very nice job indeed

 

[Von Calyptra]

Grave Guard!
I took a couple of older than dirt GW wights and painted them up as experiments: one in rust, the other in verdigris.

I'm happy with both of them (and I had a lot of fun with the shields) but I decided that the rust just doesn't work with my army colors. I intend to restrict rust to spot colors on zombies.

Here are my 30 Grave Guard:

I quite like the Grave Guard models, but I think the kit doesn't have enough heads. I converted a few to break it up a bit, but I'm not sure it was enough.
I also converted the guy holding the head so that he would rank next the standard bearer without his great weapon getting in the way. And I shortened the musician's horn so that it wouldn't prevent the unit from being flush with an enemy unit in combat.
Finally, the text on the banner is from the scene with the Wights in The Fellowship of the Ring; unfortunately, there was just too much of it to fit, so I just used the beginning and settled for sticking the whole thing in my signature.

And here's my Wight King:

 

[Malikos]

Effin awesome man. Effin awesome.

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Love the green armour look, really makes them stand out!

WK looks awesome too, is that our lost love Hawk Turquoise on the cape there?

 

[Johnny-Crass]

That banner... Hot damn... HOT DAMN

 

[Von Calyptra]

Thanks for the kind words!

WK looks awesome too, is that our lost love Hawk Turquoise on the cape there?

Good eye! I mixed a bunch of stuff for that (and don't remember precisely what now) but the heavy lifting was done by P3's Arcane Blue - which happens to look *a lot* like Hawk Turquoise.

 

[BloodbathMcGrath]

Your scheme is so great! I love the coldness and pale greens

 

[Von Calyptra]

At the beginning of 2012 I started keeping track of where my hobby money was going, how many models I painted, and so forth, as well as resolving to paint more models than I buy. Here's my year in review.

I bought 67 models, which includes Dreadfleet (I found it for 40% off and couldn't resist). In addition to Dreadfleet I got a space marine chaplain and land speeder (with an eye towards polishing off my marines in the near future), Manfred, a wight king, a mounted wight king, an old classic Strigoi, a box of Empire handgunners (for use in conversions), and a box of Grave Guard. I spent around $227

I painted 76 models, at an average of a bit over 6 a month. I worked my way through a necromancer, 30 Grave Guard, a wight king, a classic wight (the verdigris one), my BSB, 7 Space Hulk genestealers, my skeleton standard bearer, 14 zombies, 7 Dire Wolves, a Varghulf, the winged vampire lord. For Dreadfleet, I painted the five treasure counters, the wind counter, the Flaming Scimitar, Grimnir’s Fury, the Seadrake, and their auxiliaries.

I spent around $182 on hobby supplies and another $223 on army books, battle magic cards, and a miniatures case.

And here's some necromancers:

[/img]

This was one of the first models I did for the army. I like the idea of the original, but the skull in his hand was just too cartoony, so I ground it off and replaced it with a (much more reasonably sized) plastic one. I think the gem came out a bit too bulky, but I'm happy with the scroll I made out of putty and a bit of skeleton's rags.

I was a little sad when they brought back Kemmler, only because it made my feel like I can't use the model for not-Kemmler anymore.

[/img]

Again, I replaced the skull with a contemporary plastic one. I also sculpted something boiling out of it; in the original model, there's just an egg-like dome emerging from the top of the skull, and I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Plus I toned down his hat a bit, and gave him a flower. Flowers are cool.

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

Most recently, I wanted to have a necromancer with an open book. So I got this guy:

[/img]

And did this:

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

 

[Mad 'At]

Very nice conversion work on all of those necros! if you hadn't said that they were converted and how I would have thought they were GW originals.

And congrats on painting more than you bought, it is something I aspire to do but I haven’t tried counting yet, maybe I'll try it this year...

 

[TheComedian]

Damn... There so....there so....so.... *sobs from beauty*

These are simply F@#$%&*%@!%$!@&* AWESOME DUDE

 

[Von Calyptra]

*Blush.* Thanks guys.

 

[BloodbathMcGrath]

Awesome necro conversion! You really can't tell it was doctored at all -plus he is in a better pose now anyway
Also, your Heimlich and other necro look great. You really know how to pull a lot of detail with a brush! Not to mention your awesome freehand skills on your banner and things like the books and scrolls you do

 

[Von Calyptra]

Hey all. I burned out converting ghouls, so I haven't done a lot with Fantasy recently, but here's an old Daemonette that I painted up for the fun of it.

[/img]

 

[Theerteen]

Man, you got a hand for details. Awesome stuff you got there, looking forward for every new pic. I may have overread it, are your banners freehand? The ideas are very cool, love them!

 

[Von Calyptra]

Thanks for the kind words! Yes, the banners are freehand. I work out what I want them to look like on scrap paper first, but beyond that, yeah, it's just brushwork.

 

[Blutsauger]

Hi, I love the look of your grave guard. What was your recipe for their robes? That's almost the exact colour I'm aiming for on my own grave guard

 

[Von Calyptra]

Hi, I love the look of your grave guard. What was your recipe for their robes? That's almost the exact colour I'm aiming for on my own grave guard

Thanks! It's old GW Shadow Grey (according to this close equivalents would be new GW's The Fang or Vallejo's game color Sombre Grey). It's washed with a mix of blue and brown ink wash. (I think I was using Vallejo's brown but I'm still using GW's old Asurmen Blue until I run out of it. Honestly I don't think it matters that much, just blue and brown something. Note that since most browns are orange, if you mix them just right you'll get a really nice black, though that isn't what I was trying to do here.) Then I highlighted with more Shadow Grey and increasing quantities of white.

I hope that helps.

 

[Von Calyptra]

I've been pretty distracted from my vampire counts working on my dark eldar and some other projects lately, but my girlfriend just gave me a mortis engine for my birthday. So now that I'm thinking about ethereal things, here's some photos of my banshee and spirit hosts that I took a while back but never got around to posting.

Banshee:

Spirit hosts:

[/URL][/img]

I got the idea for using classic spirit hosts with skeleton heads and ghoul hands from somebody else on this forum, but I don't remember who it was, so I can't give due credit.

 

[Theerteen]

Ouh this is nice! You're right, the original models look like bed sheets a bit cool idea!

 

[Santawraith]

Give a nicer look I remember seeing who did it once but can't remember. Nice paint job.

 

[robtion]

I love everything in this plog. Your bases and freehand are particularly awesome (so are the conversions, colour choices, and painting quality too). The banshee looks great.
You certianly have the skills to pay the bills

 

[Tomfoolery]

At the beginning of 2012 I started keeping track of where my hobby money was going, how many models I painted, and so forth, as well as resolving to paint more models than I buy. Here's my year in review.

I bought 67 models, which includes Dreadfleet (I found it for 40% off and couldn't resist). In addition to Dreadfleet I got a space marine chaplain and land speeder (with an eye towards polishing off my marines in the near future), Manfred, a wight king, a mounted wight king, an old classic Strigoi, a box of Empire handgunners (for use in conversions), and a box of Grave Guard. I spent around $227

I painted 76 models, at an average of a bit over 6 a month. I worked my way through a necromancer, 30 Grave Guard, a wight king, a classic wight (the verdigris one), my BSB, 7 Space Hulk genestealers, my skeleton standard bearer, 14 zombies, 7 Dire Wolves, a Varghulf, the winged vampire lord. For Dreadfleet, I painted the five treasure counters, the wind counter, the Flaming Scimitar, Grimnir’s Fury, the Seadrake, and their auxiliaries.

I spent around $182 on hobby supplies and another $223 on army books, battle magic cards, and a miniatures case.

And here's some necromancers:

[/img]

This was one of the first models I did for the army. I like the idea of the original, but the skull in his hand was just too cartoony, so I ground it off and replaced it with a (much more reasonably sized) plastic one. I think the gem came out a bit too bulky, but I'm happy with the scroll I made out of putty and a bit of skeleton's rags.

I was a little sad when they brought back Kemmler, only because it made my feel like I can't use the model for not-Kemmler anymore.

[/img]

Again, I replace the skull with a contemporary plastic one. I also sculpted something boiling out of it; in the original model, there's just an egg-like dome emerging from the top of the skull, and I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Plus I toned down his hat a bit, and gave him a flower. Flowers are cool.

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

Most recently, I wanted to have a necromancer with an open book. So I got this guy:

[/img]

And did this:

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

[/img]

The Kemmler model has some denfinite Kung Fu. I thought of doing the same to mine when he arrived. The model is clean as is but does look dated. I hadn't considered using a newer skull in place of the old one and truth be told I am going to steal that from you. I'll give credit where it's due in my plog when I get to him. This entire army is orgasmic looking really.

 

[Shareya]

I first thought the scroll is a child's doll >.>

Necromancer: Now show me where the bad undead touched you!

I also have to ask at the very last picture, how much detail did you actually put into the tomes pages? Or did it come with it already? I can't imagine what tiny tools you needed for that.