Building a True-scale Space Marine

And they shall know no fear.

Making true-scale marines has been very popular as of late, much of it stemming from all the excellent examples Migs and many others have created over the years. With this in mind, we wanted to try our hands at creating one. We really wanted to try to address some of the questionable anatomy that Space Marines have developed over the years (incredibly wide thigh gap, lack of a proper abdomen, questionable arm attachment points), and try to create a suit of armour that a person could conceivably fit into.

The marine is an interesting collection of space marine and terminator parts brought together with green stuff.

As with most true scale marines, I started using Terminator legs. After shaving off the loin cloth of a pair of Cataphractii terminator legs, it became very clear that the model had an outrageously large thigh gap (something that is very common with most Space marine models, too). Furthermore, they connect to the groin extremely awkwardly, as if they were attached to the side of the hip. To fix this I cut off the legs and reattached them; to do this I needed to remove this little armored “fins” on the upper leg armor. Along with reattaching the legs, I had to widen the waist and abdomen. All of the plastic terminator models have woefully short abdomens, which directly attach to the chestpiece. The chest pieces are shaped like a ribcage, so most terminators look like their waist attaches directly to their ribcage.

After removing the loincloth from the Terminator legs, it became extremely obvious that something was wrong with them. Humans do not have a thigh gap as pronounced as what the terminators exhibit. I diagramed what the marine would have to look like fit into that armour, along with a normal human groin to help illustrate this point. 

The unnatural thigh gap is present on both normal Space marine legs and Terminator legs. To remedy this, the Terminator legs had to be separately removed and reattached closer together.

After reattaching the legs to the groin, next I had to widen the waist and the abdomen, as they were far to thin. I did this in stages, first widening the waist, before widening the abdomen. I also lengthened the abdomen considerably. I have included some red lines on the pictures to help illustrate how thin the waist was initially.

For arms, I found that terminator arms were far too short. I ended up using parts of Tartaros terminator arms, but created a lot of the upper arm with green stuff. Interestingly, normal marine shoulder pads still fit, size-wise, so I did not need to modify them. Nearly all of the weapons in 40K are comically oversized, but I found that they were just the right size for my true-scale marine. I could not resist trying to make some subtle improvements to his boltgun, though. It is based on one of the new plastic Deathwatch ones, since they are a little shorter. I extended the barrel with a piece from a power armoured Grey Knight’s backpack. I made a folding stock with a piece from a Sicarian Ruststalker, and the buttplate from a Dark Eldar rifle. With a little cutting I was able to modify the iron sights to look usable, including doing some minor green stuff work to make it look like the rear sight was adjustable. Because the marine was not going to be holding the weapon in a position to fire, I resculpted the his trigger finger off the trigger.

I had to sculpt the majority of the arms, as terminator arms are far too short. Humorously, all 40K weaponry is so oversized that it manages to be the perfect size for a true-scale marine without any modification.  

The body was based on a Grey Knight terminator body, with the segmented front armor of a Adeptus Mechanicus Kataphron Breacher. I carved off the topmost plate of the Breacher armor, and carved off the lower teeth-like protrusions from the second segment, such that it did not give the illusion that the marine’s ribcage was too large. I used green stuff to bulk out the rest of the breastplate and make it flush with this extra armor plate. One of the most important elements for making the marine look natural was attaching the arms properly, which were seated considerably lower than what is seen on the normal plastic marines. The effect also relied on extending/sculpting the models neck. It is worth noting that I used one of the old plastic tactical squad bare heads (circa 3rd edition 40k), because they are larger than the bare heads on most of the current plastic Space Marine sprues.

The progression of creating the marine’s torso. It began with a Grey Knight terminator body, upon which the armor plates from a Kataphron Breacher were added. These were cut down substantially before green stuff was used to fill out the gaps and make the breastplate look continuous.

To make it seem like the marine was truly ready for war, I added a lot of smaller details, a grenade dispenser on his belt, a lot of pouches, a large combat knife, etc. I also gave him a thigh holster for a bolt pistol, which I used green stuff and some brass eagles to create clasps to attach it to his leg. The pistol itself was also modified to have the magazine loaded into the pistol's grip. With these details, I think the marine is basically finished. The whole project took a lot longer than I anticipated, primarily due to the need to at least partially resculpt most aspects of the model. But, I think the end result was worth it!

The true-scale marine is substantially larger than the normal plastic MkIV marines.

The true-scale marine in all of his glory, fully outfitted for war!

Rather than paint this model myself, I decided to give it to Migs (of Iron Sleet) as a gift for allowing my brothers and I to be part of the Pilgrym project, and as a nod to his influence in true-scaling community. Excitingly, the marine might make his way into the new Thorn Moon Crusade. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions about the marine!

- Adam Wier