Attempting to Scult a Hybrid - Completed and Painted!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I've finally finished my sculpting and painting of my Hybrid for a sidecar and I'm pretty impressed with the results.

Here's an example of what I was aiming for:

Here's my results:

I only needed to do his upper half as he'll be sitting in a sidecar (which I'm still to make), though should I wish to give him legs, I'm pretty sure some Catachan or maybe even Cadian legs would work with minimal conversions.

I decided to give him a bolt pistol and power sword, giving him one Hybrid arm and one Catachan arm.

His bolt pistol is from an old plastic Ork (the ones that came in the 2nd edition 40k boxed set) and the power sword was a Catachan sword with the 'saw teeth' filled in and some wire glued into the groove for the power line.

I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do for the sidecar but I've got too much on my plate to worry about that at the moment.

Attempting to Sculpt a Hybrid (Part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

Looks like this project has become my main project at the moment with the Heavy Weapons squad hitting the back burner.

I think I've hit the last part of my working with greenstuff and milliput for this project (excluding cleanup etc).

All I've simply done is add a backpack with wire and extended some of the ribbing around the sides and a jewel to the front.

Here's the current state of things:

The backpack needs a little cleaning up and a few minor details (like gems etc) may be added later on. I'll also probably have to tidy up some of the body work and edging.

For his arms, I'm going to use one Catachan arm and one of the single Hybrid arms (without the claw). He won't be needing legs as he'll be in a sidecar.

Before the major cleanup begins, I'll be undercoating it black as I find it easier to see where non flat edges and mistakes are.

Attempting to Sculpt a Hybrid (Part 2)

Part 1

I've managed to spend a little more time on the sculpting of the Hybrid, though due to my impatience, I don't think the outcome will be amazing but will still have a decent look to it (hopefully a decent paint job could make it look good).

First up is the torso. The white areas are the milliput whilst the green are the greenstuff. The carapace (white areas) were made by cutting squares of milliput and impressing the sharp edge of a knife blade (as opposed to the blunt edge used in the lower ridges in the previous stage). This was then placed on the body and cut to fit. The edges were simply rolling up bits of greenstuff and molding around the carapace. I felt that I perhaps was a little rushed when applying the carapace so the ridges aren't as defined as I'd like.

Next is the head, very simple and just extending a Catachan's head with some greenstuff to look a little more like a Genestealer head. I also added a small strip across the nose and applied a few ridges to mirror the 'bridge' of a Genestealer.

And finally, here's the reference model I'm using. I don't think I'm too far off for a first attempt....

Attempting to Sculpt a Hybrid

So I've been a little busy recently working late and on some Imperial stuff so I haven't had much time to work on the Cult.

However, I've decided to make a start on my Hybrid in sidecar project, beginning with the Hybrid passenger. The passenger will just be the upper body of a Hybrid poking out of the sidecar wielding some sort of weapon (as opposed to manning a heavy weapon like the Space Marine attack bike). The easiest options available to me were to simply use the upper body of an existing Hybrid model but I decided against this as the metal ones are tougher to work with and, as they are about £7 - £8 a model, the project could get quite expensive if I messed things up. The other option would be to use a plastic Hybrid but they are all Second Generation Hybrids in my force and a more 'primitive' Hybrid in a sidecar wouldn't seem right to me.

Instead I decided to take a bit of a leap and build one using plastic Catachan parts and heavy greenstuff and milliput sculpting and, as I'd only really used greenstuff and milliput for small parts or gap filling previously, this would be my biggest sculpting project to date.

At present, I've only really started on the torso (waiting for the greenstuff to harden at the moment) but its not looking too bad for a start.

Using a metal Hybrid as a base, I decided that the first thing to work on was the 'ribbing' that can be shown beneath the armour plates which I made by filing down the abdomen of a Catachan torso and then covering with greenstuff and rolling the rear of my knife around. Its not perfect but I plan on tidying it up as it dries and most of it will be covered up.

The armour plates will probably be made using milliput (as it holds an edge better) and the arms will  be a collection of Catachan and plastic Hybrids.

Landspeeder - Completed

So finally I have finished the painting (and basing for once) of my landspeeder.

I've tried to work with edge highlighting again and I think I managed to do it right. Overall it wasn't a tough piece to do, or even that time consuming, it just took so long as I got distracted doing other things...

Anyway, here it is!

The Driver

The Gunner

Hopefully it doesn't look as if I've just put some Imperial Guardsmen inside a Space Marine Landspeeder. Also, I was toying with the idea of placing a search light on the back right of the landspeeder to make it look less as if ti were built for speed and more a 'hover patrol vehicle'.

Not too sure what I'll do for my next bit of work. I've got an Imperial Guard Sentinel to finish but after that, I'm not sure whether to do some hybrids (plastic neophytes or metal acolytes) or even work on the cult bikers (plus hybrid sidecar) I've also been planning.

More Hybrids

Just another short one here.

Finished up a couple of Hybrids I started whilst I popped to York for the weekend a few weeks ago.

Firstly is the Hybrid Acolyte leader.

To try and make the figure look less boring (as there is a lot of blue on the figure) I painted the skin and robes slightly different. Also, to try and break things up, I decided to give him a red power sword. To make the sword look like and energy blade, I gave it multiple stages of highlighting, finalising in a white highlight on the edges and blade. Hopefully this effect was pulled off correctly...

Secondly was another Magus model

This was a relatively easier Magus to paint than the others due to reduced number of ridges on the carapace.

This figure is one that comes along with the throned Patriarch (a reasonably rare figure these days). At some point I'd like to get round to painting him too, though as I don't have its throne I'll need to get around to constructing him a new one.

Landspeeder Update

Not spent much time on this recently (been too busy playing video games) but I thought I'd post an update on how the land speeder is coming along.

 Most of the work has mainly been cleaning up and re-gluing the old model due to a poor original job. I've also added bits of stowage from the Imperial tank kit and removed the rear spoiler to try and make it look less aerodynamic and more 'Imperial'.

Not sure if you can see it in this picture but part of the underside was too badly caked with glue and needed reconstructing out of plasticard and some bits and greenstuff.

So that's all for now really...

Landspeeder WIP

Here's something I've been working on for the past couple of days.

In the 2nd edition Tyranid Codex, Genestealer Cults are allowed to take Imperial Guard Land Speeders (though Imperial Guard cannot take them)...

I've wanted to make one of these for quite a while but never got round to it, however, I found a second hand Space Marine Land Speeder for £7 so it was an offer I couldn't refuse. Unfortunately it had a terrible paint job, was poorly assembled and the underside was caked with glue-gun glue.

I easily managed to disassemble the speeder and strip the paint, but the glue wasn't as easy to get rid of (is there a good way to remove glue-gun glue without damaging the model?) so I had to cut away parts of the underside and rebuild it.

I've finished painting the crew, cockpit and a few other bits which is what I wanted to do before fully assembling the speeder as it would require some greenstuff and plasticard work.

To make the land speeder look a little more Imperial Guard and less Space Marine, I added a few tank accessories and other bits.

So here's the painted figures along with the W.I.P. of the land speeder:

Land speeder gunner made from Heavy Weapon sprue arms, Tank Crew head and Sentinel Crew torso

Land speeder driver made from a Tank Crew head on a Sentinel Crew torso and arms

Bottom mounted Plasma Cannon and gunner's multilaser

The rest of the W.I.P. including painted cockpit

I've not used much plasticard before and painting vehicles aren't my strong point but hopefully I'll have it done in a few days.

Misc Photos

Just took a few images recently and thought you guys might want to have a look.

Hybrid Acolytes