Israphel's Host

[radred609]

So here begins the plog of Israphel's Host

Basically this is going to be a conversion heavy VC army, hopefully using a number of wood elf models and bitz (because let's face it, the new wood elves look amazing).

The general idea of the army is that the Vampire Lord is a wood elf. I'll write up the fluff properly and post it later.


Anyway. So i went and bought the giant limited release VC box from GW

so, step 1.
Skelies

 

[radred609]

After dry fitting a bunch of skeleton warriors together i decided i wanted them to look more threatening. So i bought a box of grave guard to help beef them up.
Then the masochist inside of me thought: Hey, Owen. Why don't you green stuff cloaks onto the normal skellies as well so that they look more bad ass.
For some reason, i agreed to this :/

This started by rolling out some thin strips of green stuff and wrapping them around the legs.

Then, after the GS dried, a second layer was used to make them look like proper cloaks. The main focus here was to follow the shape of whatever covering they already had on their legs to make the most of the sculpted detail on the models.

it wasn't until after this step that i realised that the GG had chest plates and the normal skelies didn't. So i glued the GG chests and helmets onto the green stuffed legs before adding normal skely spears.

with 5 skelies down, the next step is to decide whether or not i can be bothered to try to sculpt chest plates on to the normal skeleton bodies :/

EDIT: btw, all of these photos can be zoomed in if you click on them (highly recommended, esp for the last two shots)

 

[lord marcus]

lovely greenstuff work!

 

[radred609]

Yeah, I'm not all that confident with GS.
I haven't used it much in the past (other than filling gaps) but i just keep moving it around until it feels alright.
But hey, by the time i make another 20 of these cloaks i'll probably be decent at cloaks

Oh, and i decided i would try sculpt the chest plates. What better way to improve than throw yourself straight into the deep end... right?
I'll post pictures up either this evening or tomorrow.

 

[lord marcus]

So, are you making your skeletons into graveguard, or just making skeletons look like graveguard?

Also, same here. I've only used GS for gap filling.

 

[radred609]

Making my skellies look like grave guard.
The actual grave guard are going to be Wildwood Ranger conversions (with great weapons, obviously)

 

[lord marcus]

Making my skellies look like grave guard.
The actual grave guard are going to be Wildwood Ranger conversions (with great weapons, obviously)

Very cool.

 

[John Rainbow]

Making my skellies look like grave guard.
The actual grave guard are going to be Wildwood Ranger conversions (with great weapons, obviously)

Looking forward to seeing these undead rangers!

 

[radred609]

So the chest plates are coming along nicely.
Hopefully i'll get faster at this with practice though :/

If there's one thing that i've learnt about green stuff over my years of reading blogs, it's work in layers.

So step one was to press a thin layer of green stuff into the ribcages (the left chest) after they dried, i added another layer to make the chest plate.
The detail on the chest was created by pressing the green stuff below in and up with my modeling tool to create the ridge, surprisingly easy actually.

Once that hardened i added the shoulder coverings and tidied it up a little with a happy knife or more GS.

And now one of the chest plates glued onto a set of grave guard legs.

I don't have the skill to add the raised detail that is on the actual Grave Guard chest plates. I'm thinking of just leaving them as is, after all, these aren't actually grave guard in game. so it shouldn't matter if only some of them have pretty embossed armour, right?
Actually, if anyone had advice on how to sculpt the little raised details, that would be sorely appreciated.

Well that's 1 down, only 19 to go... yay?

 

[Alastor]

Great work on the armour. I think there's a couple things you could do to give them more detail, the first of which being ornamentation. You could roll out a very long thin price of GS and then cut it to lengths so you can make some angular trims for the collar, shoulder and abdominal areas. Alternatively you could create the armour slightly differently to give the effect of detail. Put your first layer of GS on then only apply the second layer to the upper chest, kind of like space marine style chest prices from 40k but more fantasy style.

The second option is damage. Roughing up the edges to give a "rusty" effect or adding sword cuts, chinks or even gunshot dents and holes. If you're feeling adventurous combine both ideas. A decent paint job will really accentuate both these effects and give you really unique and interesting skellies.

Good work mate.

 

[Blutsauger]

Why don't you just buy Graveguard bits?

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Looking great so far, kind of feel a bit daft though for never thinking bout green stuffing whilst models are still on the sprew in the past however.
Well live and learn.

 

[radred609]

Why don't you just buy Graveguard bits?

Lol, this guy.

but to answer your question properly. I decided to use grave guard as regular skeletons after i bought the special edition box and didn't want to waste the regular skelies. Also it's a great way to learn how to green stuff. perhaps a little ambitious for my first proper GS attempt, but what better way to learn to swim than jumping straight into the deep end... right?

Looking great so far, kind of feel a bit daft though for never thinking bout green stuffing whilst models are still on the sprew in the past however.
Well live and learn.

Don't worry, you're not the only one. It took me ages to think of it.
I did the first test on a piece off the sprue, it was near impossible.

anyway, I have exams and stuff at the moment, so probably no updates for about a month.
Hopefully I'll be able to crank out a whole heap of these after the semester is over.

 

[Eternal Salvation]

Looking great so far, kind of feel a bit daft though for never thinking bout green stuffing whilst models are still on the sprew in the past however.
Well live and learn.

+1 this guy!