A "Horde" Army...

[TaurenMoo]

So I decided after the release of the Beastmen army book and with my general ability to paint and sculpt rising as I work that I wanted to build something unique and powerful. I love all three of the bottom tier armies; Beastmen, Ogre Kingdoms, and Orcs and Goblins and this will be an army that more or less will fit into their "molds". As a counts as army it leaves me open to a lot of free form sculpting, ideals, and painting styles but one thing is for sure...

It will be 100% Warcraft Horde. To start I have begun work on something simple to try a new technique for producing armor plates similar to scibors. He showed a demonstration using some sculpy and some time to produce some neat etched armor bits, I decided to take this concept and a little work I found on some wolves I saw online to produce what I will call "Spirit Wolves".

The horde is all about shamanism, great, lovely, but I have to remember that I need to tie this in, both with an army and with a theme.

My theme:
Red, the horde symbol, black, spikey
At the same time each race has their own perks:
Orcs - Horns, large shoulderpads, spikes
Trolls - Voodoo, masks
Blood Elves - Clean, blood symbol, reds
Tauren - Indian, feathers, totems
Goblins - Tinkerers, tools, oil, tricks

Beyond this the army ideal leaves the entire thing open to mercenaries. Just about any of the "monstrous" races could end up in the army as a "counts as" unit, but its important to somehow tie it back to both the theme, and the unit it represents. Additionally I will be doing the army in chunks of 500 pts, starting with a 500pt beastmen styled list and proceeding outward by 500 pts. This involves building 500 pts, then painting 500 pts up to a very high standard. No more half ass crap from here on in.

I have begin with spirit wolves. Building a custom piece of armor to tie them to the army as well as giving them some cool differentiation over just normal looking wolves. They will represent Chaos Warhounds or in an Ogre army sabertusks. Here's the initial set of custom converted wolves and my initial foray into this army:










What I want to hear in terms of criticism:
What do you think of the models? What do you think of the molding and fur sculpting? What do you think of the concept? What would you do differently? What can I do to improve?

 

[BPI]

Hi TaurenMoo, sculpting conversions look to be coming on well. The fur seems to match the plastic which I think is probably kinda important :good:

A couple of recent threads that have involved sculpting fur that might provide useful reference...

Chrome's SW Lord thread...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/showthread.php?35410-SW-Lord-wip
...someone else was posting a wolf conversion but I can't remember who?

Victoria's winged boar...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/showthread.php?36144-Sculpting-a-big-winged-boar-WIP-thread.


I'm not as convinced by the stylings of the armour but if you're trying to emulate Scribor, that probably explains it. Are you familiar with the Rackham Wolfen line? May be some useful inspiration there. Here's a thread with lots of models in one place...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/showthread.php?34080-Join-a-Rackham-WIP-Free-Minis-!&highlight=free+rackham

I can just about bluff my way through a very short WHFB conversation but have no idea about Warcrack Hordes, beyond the fact that the design stylings GW have taken from them of late don't appeal to me

What colour will the wolves be? Does the Spirit element mean they'll be ethereal?

Looking forward to the next update.

Cheers, B.

 

[TaurenMoo]

I don't think its so much trying to emulate scibor, but rather its a piece of armor. The armor pieces after I finished them and put them on remind me a bit of some of the masks from other settings. I think of them more as a focus point for the spirit to materialize behind rather than a piece of armor, in concept anyways. In regards to the mask the symbol for the horde fit so perfectly over the wolf head that it fit so I went with it. Scibors method provides for producing easy armor pieces with high detail, which I felt was useful and could be used in other areas, namely in producing the horde symbol where I want it in an easy method.

Thank you for the links and the comments, I'll be checking those out. I actually have a large amount of wolfen models that I may eventually use for something, still unsure. I bought them because they are amazing sculpts and I do look at them for inspiration. Maybe I will expand to include the Alliance races of Warcraft which will be gaining a wolfen race in the near future. In terms of the army I think you might be confused as to the concept. I am building "Warcraft 3/World of Warcraft" themed army based upon the "Horde" faction.

The spirit wolves will appear ethereal but in gaming terms will just represent a warhound unit. I was considering either painting them up in turquoise whites similar to this:

Or something more akin to the old style from Warcraft 3, which was a ghostly wolf that glowed "Red" which is the color of the horde.

Either way they are ghostly spirits and need to be painted as if ethereal looking behind a "spirit focus mask".

As for the mask it kind of reminds me of other art where the creatures wear a "strange" mask. Makes them appear odd, and from the front they portray a very weird silhouette. The mask almost looks like its staring at you.

Next up on the list for production is producing 5 more spirit wolves and a magnetized movement tray for them. Then I will be looking into the first block of troops. They will represent a block of Gors on 25mm's and will be a mix of Warcraft Orcs and Trolls. Assuming a unit of 20 or so that would mean 10 orcs, 10 trolls. Figure the conversion for the trolls based on kroot cleaned up, and custom heads. Assuming I figure out how to mold these old Gorka Morka Orc heads that look surprisingly like warcraft orc heads, I'll use chaos marauders with some conversion work along with the heads to make the beefy slightly stooped Warcraft Orcs. I just finished ordering a molding kit from alumilite for that purpose.

Either way I'm looking forward to finding time. Have a bunch of other projects on a deadline (paint contest, and a commission miniature) that I am working on simultaneously and they have priority.

 

[TaurenMoo]

Bump: Update...

So the first next step as part of this army is going to include a short video tutorial on how I made the wolves including a tutorial on the fur. I'd like to get more comments on the fur but from what I've heard and seen most people like it.

Firstly my ustream video:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6850020

Secondary Link to video:
http://img245.imageshack.us/my.php?image=16664776850020.mp4

Below is the first attempt at molding something mundane... a bolt... pretty good but...









As you can see 1 side is discolored and shows imperfections. I believe this is the mold release or an excess of the catalyst that was left on one side of the mold. It clumped with the baby powder used to increase flow of the resin and also discolored the entire side and mucked up detail. Cleaning the mold in the future after creation would be the best approach I think. Anyways there you go.

Beyond that expect another update this week with a new video and hopefully another set of completed wolves. I'll be kit bashing flagellants with some undead to make forsaken and I'll be using marauders and molded gorka morka heads for orcs with lots of additional modding on both. That's it for my progress...

 

[BloodyBeast.com]

Hey! When making two-part molds what do you use to make them not glue together?
My silicone molds always glue together. I've used some fat and vaseline and that didn't helped at all.
Please help.

 

[TaurenMoo]

Ummm I'm not exactly sure. I bought my kit from a place called alumilite. From what I understand silicone rubber once mixed only sticks to itself. I noticed that the rubber didn't stick to the legoes used to make the mold wall and the final plastic piece. My suggestion is you look into something called mold release. When I bought my kit I was issued paint on mold release which I painted on in 3 layers before pouring the second half of my mold. Seemed pretty simple to paint on and then let dry. Once dry you pour the second layer over top from a corner and allow it to flow slowly across whatever you are molding.

My suggestion is that you look into something like this:
http://www.alumilite.com/ProdDetail.cfm?Category=Dyes - Fillers&Name=Rubber to Rubber Mold Release
Or
http://www.alumilite.com/images/products/Dyes - Fillers/UniversalMoldRelease-lg.jpg

I recently spent some money to buy the second one for future molds so I will have it around. Supposedly the universal stuff works both on resin on resin, rubber on rubber and rubber on resin. I found that the plastic I bought from alumilite didn't stick to there rubber so I had no issue popping the piece out of the mold. Hope that helps... I'll be doing a step by step picture show of my creation of the orc heads and a final pour picture.

 

[TaurenMoo]

Small Update:

Mounted Orc Heads:








The first steps for prepping a spirit wolf. I begin by cutting and pruning all of the mutations and spikes. I glue the wolf together and select a wolf head to apply and figure out approximately how I want the head to sit. I then saw the head off the original dog and apply green stuff after smoothing out the cut with an exacto. I position the head, glue the tail, then let the green stuff harden so that I can begin sculpting fur onto the miniature. That will be next as a video.

Additionally the heads are mounted to be made into a mold. You can tell that head 1 and 2 from the left are the same just without the top note. I wanted a variety of expressions so I used one of each except that one. The bald heads allow for sculpting possibilities.

I'll post the rest of the step by step pictures of the wolves when I finish up the video tutorial of the fur sculpting I did and the mask being attached.

 

[BloodyBeast.com]

Thanks' ll check that mold release soon.

I live Warcraft style of Orcs. Can't wait to see finished orc grunts, and would be hell fun to see orc wolf riders!

Great job on wolves. I'm waiting for more to see.

 

[TaurenMoo]

Here's a small Update:

First set of Orc heads:


Fur sculpting Video Tutorial:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7081301

Pictures of step by step sculpting pending.
Expect a second set of finished wolves within the next two weeks or so. Additionally I have the models for some goblins and blood elves (going to be using high elf shadow warriors and grots from 40k with there pistols and jagged weapons and tinkerer look.)

I need to find the right shoulderpads for the orcs... any suggestions would be good, I'll probably scrounge up a bunch of shoulderpads from all over and take some time to modify each with spikes or rivets chunks of metal etc.

 

[pate]

Perhaps these shoulderpads, with some tweaking, could be usable.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1300136&prodId=prod1920001

 

[TaurenMoo]

Thanks for the reply pate, more of these I get the better. Right now I am looking at a mixture of something like this, any orc shoulderpad bits I can scrounge up from others and marauder shoulderpads. I might also snatch some from the chaos knight bits I have. The real trick will be making them look cool. Additionally I plan to use some horns on the orcs with the helmets. Should look good. This is the final goal:

or something similar to it.