Renegade Knight of Nurgle Complete!

The finished Knight. Corrupted and ready to spread the love and decay of the Plague Lord!

Welp, after about two weeks worth of work I've put the final touches on my Renegade Knight of Nurgle. It was a lot of work, but really worth the effort in the end. I do think I've satiated my appetite for conversions for a while, though. 

The head was a third-party piece from Shapeways. And the Mona Lisa is just a nice
touch of weird.

This project finally justified that purchase of the GW skull kit!

The mega melta may not be the optimal build, but damn if it isn't the coolest
looking one.

The banner was made by drawing the design out in Photoshop and then printing it
on custom transfer paper.

The plague censor will count as a power fist style close combat weapon.

The little nurgling is having the time of his unlife!

The billowing smoke really adds to the motion of the model and I'm super glad I did it.

I kept the back pretty simple.

My fingers were numb after cleaning and cutting all these skulls.

I've covered the basic build of the Knight a little bit here. Additionally, I sculpted some billowing filth for the smokestacks using expanding foam on wire armatures. I also made several of the boils and organic bits on the Knight using the same process. Expanding foam is a great tool for doing organic stuff. The trick is to squeeze some out onto some newspaper and then use a wire or some other tool to place the foam on the model. Just don't squirt the foam directly onto the model or you'll be sorely disappointed. 

A basic armature was madly twisting floral wire into shape.

I used some masking tape to fill in the gaps and give the foam a
surface to attach to.

Then foam was added to the frames. The foam expands
as it dries, so keep that in mind as you apply it.

One of the big things people have asked about as I've posted WIP shots on Twitter, is the image of the Mona Lisa on the Knight's rondel shield. I wanted to make the knight feel really Baroque and over-wrought, and adding the Renaissance image really helped tie it together. It was also a call back to some classic John Blanche paintings that have the image. I knew that there was no way I was going to take the time to try and paint it by hand, so I settled on a simpler way - I made a decal.

I grabbed a reasonably high rez image from the
interwebz.

I used Photoshop to scale the image and then printed it out on decal paper. One of the keys to making sure this worked was prepping the surface of the shield and painting it a nice clean white. This was done because any color the decal was placed on would show through. The white mimics the white of the decal sheet and ensured that it would look correct when finally applied. 

I'm super happy with the final result, and I can't wait for my Knight to stride into battle alongside my Death Guard and spread the joy of Papa Nurgle.

Cheers!

Mixed Bag 12: Revisiting the Death Guard

I knocked off a few projects this week and started a big one as well. A lot of my painting was focused on revisiting my Death Guard army for 40K. I had purchased a second unit of Tox Troopers from Anvil Industries to use as cultists as while back and it was high time that I got them done. These are great little sculpts and are a lot fun to paint up.

This gives me two units of 10 in the army and should form a nice speed bump for blunting assaults.

I also did some quick scenery work on some 3D printed crystals that I picked up off eBay a few months ago. I gave them coat of teal spray paint and then dry-brushed the up to white along the edges. I should probably pick up a second set, as I had intended them to be used as objective markers in Age of Sigmar - but the kit only comes with 5 models and I need six. Regardless, they will add a nice pop of color on my grey Hell-scape board. 

The build lines are pretty atrocious, but I can accept them for crystals and for the fact that they retail for about $12.

The vast majority of my week was taken up with building a Nurgle-esque Renegade Knight as an ally for my Death Guard. I've added a lot of bits and some putty work to him, and I think its gonna be a model I can really be proud of when all is said and done. 

I covered one shoulder pad with a ton of skulls from GW's Skull kit. It was a lot of work, but the
effect was really worth it in the end.

I've replaced the close combat arm with Skaven Plague Engine censor generously given to me
by my buddy Rob. I think it really set the tone for the model for me and damn if the spikes on all
those chains don't really hurt to handle!

The head is a 3rd party piece from Shapeways. I added the horn on it so it was a little more
Plague Bearer-y in its appearance.

I mounted the missile launcher on part of an Empire Celestial Hurricanum platform to give the
Knight more of an imposing and Gothic feel. I plan to create some billowing smoke clouds coming
from the engine stacks and this should be a nice visual counter-balance to the pulpit.

I managed to paint up the lower half of the Knight this weekend. I'm really happy with how its all heading.

The tumors on the knight were made by applying expanding insulation foam. After they dried, I smoothed them a bit with some green stuff and sealed them with a coat of white glue before priming. Protip: if you do something like this, put a little foam on some newspaper and use bit of wire to transfer it to the model. DON"T just squirt it onto your kit or it will
end in tears.

This week will probably see me focusing a lot on the Knight, but I think it'll be a while before he's finished up. 

Cheers!