No Time to Prime

Hello there,
I have been unable to continue work on Hagar the Horrible due to crummy weather not allowing a good time for me to prime.  Hopefully I have an opportunity this week.

This weekend I plan on attending a local tournament which is heavy on soft scores.  Luckily I have an excellent army for tournaments like this.  I will be bringing my Brides of the Emperor.  I posted some pictures of their guardsmen cultists earlier in the blog.  I may touch up some of my chimeras before the event, but I have an anatomy test coming up soon which will require a lot of my attention.

At any rate I am looking forward to this tournament.   They have a bar there so that will be a whole new beast.  I usually get better sportsmanship scores when I am hungover/half in the bag. 

Once more to war we go.

Ready to PRIME

Hagar the Horrible is ready for priming, pretty much right on schedule.  I am pretty pleased with how he has come along.  Below you can see the harpy wings I added to the flanks as smaller flippers.  These fit into the hole which spines usually occupy on a trygon.

 Check out those barnacles on the back next to his leg!

 I also put a lamprey of some sort attached to him here.  It covers up a wonky spot on the sculpting of the tail.

 This is a good shot of the rebreather I made.  I am pretty pleased with it.

I might hit him with some sandpaper to smooth out some of the greenstuff transitions, but that will happen right before priming.

Climb Upon My Faithful Steed

Like I promised, I am working on this guy at a rapid pace.  Today he finally comes together.  Hagar has bent a mighty leviathan to his will, and rides him into battle.  Enough jibber jabber. Here he is!

Yes that is a valkyrie base.  I think the truscaling came out pretty well on the marine.   It was good that I worried about it as much as I did, because it was essential to get him to look right.  I still have to finish his rebreather, make a sheild, add the chains, and decorations, but overall I am very pleased.

OMG, I'm learning so much about sculpting you guys.

Alright.  Big updates.  Now that this guy is beginning to really take shape, I am getting really excited about it which means more motivation which means more work on him and more posts for your amusement.  Watch this spot.  

Below you can see what I have done to created an underwater breathing apparatus for the beast.

 

 Here is a picture from a different view.  You can see that I've left a hole down there at the anterior (look at me using anatomy words I learned in dental school!!!111!).  The idea is that from each of the three protrusions that compose the gill, will be a gill like frilly thing which will connect the rod to the neck.  I will probably use fake eyelashes for this.  I will be purchasing them incognito.  The idea is that water can enter the gill through the hole I left as the beast swims along.  It will then pass the frills and oxygen exchange will occur, just the way nature (or the hive mind) intended.

Also Hagar is moving right along.   He is essentially finished.  I need to glue him together, add a rebreather of sorts, and finish the shield.  Unfortunately the shield is somewhat of an embarrassment currently.  Ill probably scrap it and start over.  I want a Scottish Inspired Targe which should fit in nicely with the designs on the shins as well as the viking theme of these guys. 

So what is left to do?
Hagar:
1. Glue him together
2. Sculpt rebreather
3. Make Shield
4. Removably pin him to the Leviathan

Leviathan
1. Glue the head on
2. Fix the nicks in the gills
3. Add fake eyelash frills
4. Affix him to a base
5. Add chains to connect him to Hagar
6. Add Space Wolfy decorations and battle damage.

The Grind Continues

So I have been swamped with school work, however I have managed to put some time into Hagar the Horrible.  I made a tread on the left foot, and Ill soon have a matching one on the right.  I'm pretty pleased with it.  I also added a strap on to the back of the leg in the calf region.
 

Below you can see some of the thigh armor detailing I did.  It is supposed to look sort of like the rims on the grey hunter legs.  I plan to do similar work on the opposing leg.

Next I need to finish work on the gill apparatus for the leviathan, and sort out the other leg.  From there I just glue him together, and its pretty much good to go.  I want to finish building by the end of the month to give me a month to paint this guy.

Recent Work

So I just realized that my deadline for this monster is approaching faster than I wanted.  I need to get crackin!

I worked on this recently:

The rider has had his left foot finished.  I'm really pleased with it in general.  Also his torso has been bulked out laterally.  Once the arms are in place I think he will look just about right as far as scale goes.  Tonight I want to finish the other foot, and maybe do the calf on the left leg. 

I also worked on the leviathan's head and neck.  I eased the transition on the neck.  It looks pretty solid, but now I need to figure out some way to make gills for this guy.  The things I have on there at the moment I am not really happy with at all.  Here's a picture:

A New Hope

Alright, so I'm not going to say that I am a wise hobby zen kung fu sort of fellow, but here is something I learned this past week or so:

If something isnt looking the way you like, start over.

My last post showed a picture of the green stuff fins that I made for the Leviathan.   One side was thicker than the other.  The ridges from one side to another didn't match up.  They looked bulky, and un-hydrodynamic.  I thought long and hard about how to fix them.  I sanded and sculpted, but nothing really fixed the problems mentioned.  Finally I decided enough was enough.  I needed to try a new method.

What I ended up doing was drilling more wires into the tyranid arm, spaced at even intervals.  These would act as support and as the ridges of the fins.  Then I took regular printer paper that had been dunked in water and then used wood glue to affix it to the wire frame work.  Afterwards, I painted on several coats of wood glue to make a smooth transition from the paper to the copper wire.  Im very happy with the result in comparison to before.  You can see the results below

Also there has been a lot of work on the rider.  Hagar the Horrible is what I have named him.  I have worked on the legs, and just as I feared they are clearly too large.  The feet are almost twice as large as a normal marines.  I plan on sanding them down quite a lot in order to make it look like he doesn't do weekend as a clown at childrens parties.  The thigh armor looks good and is the correct size.  I think I will need to bulk out the chest laterally somehow in order to keep him from looking crazy.  I also want to try putting on his left arm before I decide exactly how much he needs to bulk out. 

I also finished converting some chaos warhounds into Fenrisian Wolves.  They are pretty simple.  I just green stuff over the ear holes, and then put a wire up their butt, and then put on green stuff tails.