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Friday, August 28, 2015

Putrid Blightkings: Death Guard Terminator Conversion Finished

A fell wind blows...
The year is already well past the halfway mark, and up until this point, I have not shown any progress of one of my favorite projects I started last year, my Blightking/Death Guard terminator conversions.  I am happy to say that the first of my Death Guard terminator conversions is finally complete! Now that the first terminator is finished, I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk a little about how I went about the conversion and my thought process. Also with a little luck I will be showing you completed versions of the other two Death Guard terminators in the coming month!

The biggest hurdle that I needed to overcome to finish the first of the Death Guard terminator was figuring out how to complete his torso armor. Due to the size and bulk of the Blightking bodies, fitting any armor over them was difficult. To overcome this, I ended up cutting a Cataphractii terminator body into multiple pieces and carving each piece to roughly fit on top of the Blightking’s torso.  While this was not too challenging, it was quite time consuming, and paved the way for the true challenge of using green stuff to fill in the sizable gaps, and ultimately bring all the separate pieces together. While reshaping the terminator’s armor I decided to fashion the left side to look torn and mangled, allowing more room for his bloated and swollen power fist arm. While mentioned in previous posts, it is worth saying again here that all the greenstuff work was greatly facilitated through the use of Royal Sovereign Colour Shapers. These vinyl/rubber tools make smoothing out and shaping greenstuff much easier.

Now that the conversion is completed, I am amazed how much of the original Blightking model is hidden.

As a nod to the classic Nurgle/Plague marine esthetic, I decided I had to add some extra exhaust ports or smoke stacks on the model’s back. After looking around through all of my plastic kits, I realized that I could create exhaust ports using the little censer found dangling from the backpacks of the Skitarii Rangers from the Adeptus Mechanicus (finally a use for all the censers that I trimmed from the backpacks of my Skitarii, ha ha). I shortened the Skitarii censers with an x-acto knife and trimmed a little notch into the side of each of them to seat on the terminator’s back. With the exhaust ports glued in place I went back with greenstuff and added a few attachment cables to the ports.

One of the most substantial parts of the conversion was fitting pieces of terminator armor around a Blightking body. 

While I wanted to leave the one arm missing its shoulder pad to showcase his bloated physique, a terminator would not really be complete without at least one domed shoulderguard.  In another nod to classic Nurgle design, I wanted to have some vicious bone spikes erupting from the thick pad. To do this I trimmed some spikes off of one of the Blightkings’ shoulderpads and glued them to a standard terminator shoulderguard. Then I went at the shoulderguard with a pin-vise and an x-acto knife to make it suitably scarred and pitted. In place of the shoulderguard on his left arm I added three metal spines protruding from his shoulder.

I am pleased with how tiny his combi-bolter seems in relationship to the hulking monstrosity that is his armor.

Next to s Scion, it is clear how cyclopean the terminator is.

While the completion of the first Death Guard terminator has been a long time in coming, I think the results were well worth the wait! Now that the conversion is complete I am busy trying to decide on a color scheme for when I paint the model. Since the warrior heralds from the mighty Death Guard legion I think I want to remain pretty faithful to their white and green color scheme. Due how ancient his armor is I will need to make sure it is heavily worn and battered by the elements (and rot and decay!). Any thoughts or suggestions on the painting scheme are welcome! Finally, I am happy to say that I have been making steady progress on the other two Death Guard terminators remaining. So with a little luck you will be seeing more of them in the coming month.

- Adam Wier

24 comments:

  1. otto's helmet is the best of all GW ... seriously

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    1. Otto Glott's helmet is really cool. From the moment I saw it I knew I had to use it in a conversion. (:

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  2. Looks great. His pose really conveys how big and heavy he is. Looks like he is really plodding along.

    some brilliant nurgle detailing

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    1. Thanks! I am glad you like his pose. I tried pretty hard to make him look like he has a slow and purposeful gait (slowly advancing and carefully choosing his targets).

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  3. Really great. One of the best nurgle terminator conversions I have seen for a while

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    1. Thank you for the kind words! I think you will like the other terminators too. :)

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  4. Literally had to pick up my jaw Adam, stunning work! Will you paint it eventually? I'd love to see your take on nurgle.

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    1. Thank you for the support! I am planning on starting to paint the model as I work on finishing the two other terminators. I want to use a color scheme resembling the classic Death Guard (with battle damage and Nurgle rot). :)

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    1. Cheers! Look back in a few weeks for the others (hopefully, ha ha).

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  6. Nice work Adam! The blight kings are ine of my favorite boxsets to dateso much potential. Ive been up to my elbows in the kit about a month now myself totally get how a break might be in order

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    1. Thanks! The Putrid Blightkings truly are one of GW's standout kits; their release last year was a big inspiration for me to try and push my converting skills further. I highly recommend spending some time with the kit yourself. They are worth a diversion! :)

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  7. This guy is great! You have a really strong vision and it must be very rewarding to have put in the hard work to see it through :) Good job - one of the best Nurgle CSMs I've seen.

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    1. Thanks you for the comment! The model has really be a labor of love; and as you suggested, it has been tremendously rewarding to see the model take shape. I think he is going to look even better when he gets some paint on him. :)

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  8. Fantastic conversion Adam! That is one extremely impressive nurgly terminator.

    David Soper has a terrific article on using baking soda to create mold and textures - might be of use when painting up a moldy follower of Papa Nurgle such as this: http://sproketsmallworld.blogspot.se/2015/08/using-baking-soda-to-create-texture-on.html

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    1. Thanks for the link! I am familiar with David's models but I had not seen that post about using baking soda to create texture. That is a great idea. I might have to try it!

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  9. Great proportions on him - I especially like where the head sits in relation to the cowling. Suitably massive.

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    1. Thanks! I was really happy with how the cowling over his head turned out. It was one of the aspects of the model I was most worried about. I was not sure if I could place it properly with his head glued in place. I ended up adding the cowling as a separate piece and greenstuffing to fill in all the gaps.

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  10. Very menacing. Absolutely brutal conversion. I'm in love.

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  11. Wow! Great work. I like the posing particularly, but also how well integrated all the pieces are. I am sure it will be amazing when you paint it.

    The cloth though... could it use a thinner, more ragged edge? might help it to look a bit more like part of the model, and less of a "bit" if you catch my meaning.

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    1. Thanks for the comment and the suggestion. I see your point about the cloth covering part of his legs. When I am doing more greenstuff work on the other terminators I will try and go back and make the edges of the cloth more tattered. :)

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