Imperial Guard with silly hats WIP

[Flightless]

I\'ve been out of the hobby for a good while, and though i have a fair few Marines sitting around needing attention, i decided to start with something fresh.

Let\'s start with the pictures shall we?

I\'m rather pleased with how he turned out. Despite not working with the stuff for absolutely ages, i managed to wrangle the green stuff into doing almost exactly what i wanted. I was trying for a fair amount of realism; the things on his belt have attachments, for example, rather than just being glued near his waist. And the grenades on his back are attached to a webbing harness - i fully sculpted it before discovering the grenades almost completely covered it...

I\'ll be cleaning up the remaining mould lines and errant rough spots. Apart from that, your thoughts are appreciated.

Next step is basing. I am aiming for a trench/siege warfare theme, so i\'d like to give him a horrible soggy muddy base. I\'ve never done that before, so i\'d love to hear ideas on how i should manage it. My current thoughts are just modelling putty mashed about a bit, probably with some fine sand pressed in for good measure, and plenty of footprints.

I\'m looking forward to giving him a few friends, though it is sad that 6 will be basic squaddies - i find it a lot easier to work on more individual models like specialists and leaders. The idea is that that level of conversion makes them unusual without being too arduous to repeat for a tonne of models. Admittedly that one took a couple of hours in total, but i\'ll blame that on having done no model stuff in a year or so - with any luck i\'ll get faster the more i do.

 

[Chrome]

I do hope you are going to give everyone in the army helmets like that one! :drool:

 

[freakinacage]

good stuff, keep going!

 

[cleen X]

Love his helmet

Let us know how the muddy base is made when you figure that out! Would love to do some muddy bases myself!

 

[Mourner]

on making a muddy base:
how\'s about something to give it a bit of body (like greenstuff as you suggested) and something to give it structure (like the fine sand you suggested)
so.how\'s about using something like wall filler, it has both these characteristics....

and as you said, add a lot of footprints, but don\'t forget to add in some mundane items, like piecesn of wood, fragments of metal and other random bits, half submerged beneath the mud.

and maybe add some gloss varnish to lower parts of the finished product tio simulate water.

 

[Flightless]

Glad the helmet meets approval (hoping of course that my sarcasm detector hasn\'t failed utterly).
The initial concept:

I initially hoped for gas masks everywhere (later decided against because they\'re too dehumanising), and wanted to use something like a stahlhelm (possibly inspired by the Pig Iron heads that seem to be in favour at the moment). Then along came that rough sketch (traced over a FW pic, yep!), which warped things rather. Then the sculpting itself, which distorted it yet further. It was nothing like a stahlhelm, and yet i think i kinda like it. It speaks to me a bit of kettle helms, which seem appropriate for a siege regiment, and look suitably anachronistic. Perhaps slightly large proportionally, but this is GW Imperial Guard we\'re talking about here!
The more percipient among you may have noticed the spike. I still want this! I have no need of historical accuracy, after all, and it gives a suitable vaguely Prussian feel. Plus spikes are cool. It\'ll be reserved for sergeants and likely officers though.

I\'ve completed the helmet on another trooper. Pic for good measure:

It\'s not identical (indeed, not even perfectly symmetrical), but i\'m hoping similar enough to pass muster - in a guard army, hopefully it\'ll be the overall impression that sells it.
Cutting the boxy bits off Cadian heads is hard. They are tiny. And adding that rim, or whatever one wants to call it, took ages. One can only hope that i get faster sometime between trooper 2 and trooper 40-odd...

I get the feeling that the next while of pictures is going to get a bit boring: \"And here\'s another guardsman with a lasgun and the same kit as all the others...\". But still, keeping a log will hopefully act as incentive for me to continue.

In the next thrilling installment, i shall moan at whoever sculpted these guys (i suspect the same culprit to blame for the Space Marine Scouts) for their complete lack of necks. With the parts provided it is entirely impossible to have a guardsman looking in close to the same direction as his gun-barrel. Guess it\'ll be Dremel-time.

 

[Flightless]

Well. A couple of days after a new graphics card arrives and already it\'s gone back for repairs. But on the bright side, it is encouragement to do non-computer stuff.

The squad so far:

All but the second one pretty much finished i believe, other than any cleaning i notice (here\'s hoping that\'s none). Second guy still needs his pack, of course.

Gradually getting faster on helmets and, well, green stuff work in general. Not exactly convinced by my abilities with small details, but i\'ll live with it for now.

5 completed (so close) earns me the right to buy a couple more. And it\'s awfully tempting to make that \'couple\' another infantry squad, a command squad and a heavy weapons squad.

 

[Shadzar]

Perfect hats for IG. What you really need when facing Nids is something that will double as a chamber pot!

If they weren\'t green and grey-plastic, I don\'t think you could tell where they have a seem either. Real good smoothing on them.

 

[SkelettetS]

sweeeet, the helmets look awesome!

 

[Undave]

All Guardsmen ought to be issued with silly hats as standard. I mean there has to be some kind of perk to joining.

 

[pez5767]

These look really cool. Very SW trooper.

 

[Aliengod3]

To me they look like darth vader helmets I think they look great!