Wednesday, April 30, 2014

EXPERIMENT: Greenstuff Xeroxing?



I'm pretty new at this whole Green Stuff thing and decided I needed to figure out a way to help myself out a touch with fine details until I get the hang of it.  If you ain't got the skills, steal.

Now that I've tried to start incorporating Grey Knights in to my fighting force, I've started looking more in to relevant HQ options.  One that piques my interest is the Librarian.  Let's all agree the name is stupid, but after playing nothing but Tau, these fancy psychic powers sound like something fun to play with.

First problem: GW doesn't make a GK specific Librarian model.  I could just paint one of the other ones, but where's the fun in that?  Conversion is half the fun.  I bought a Dark Angels Librarian model on Ebay (from the Dark Vengance starter set) and set about making him fit in with my Knights.  Really, the only offensive symbols on the model (read: not GK) was the DA logo on his chest. The shoulder...meh, close enough.  All the horned skulls- I don't know if that's a DA thing not having read the codex, but I'm OK spinning that as a Librarian thing.

Now the easy thing to do is glue some extra bits from the GK Terminator sprues to this model to give him a little Inquisition flavor.  I decided he needed a few Inquisition ][ symbols, so he got one of those backpacks. Next step was shaving off the DA wing on his chest.  That was a delicate operation, but not too difficult.

I spread out my sprues and started looking for small details that might work to replace the wing.  Choosing 3 different options, I cut off a small chunk of Instant Mold (reviewed back in November) and heated it up.  I took a few small chunks and squished it on to the details.  Everything went in to the fridge for 15 min for a cool down while I kneaded up some Greenstuff.

Once the new molds were cool I pressed some small balls of GS in to the mold, taking care to squeeze it as thin as possible.  I let them dry over night, picked my best one and sanded the back as thin and flat as I could, trimming off the excess material around the ][ Icon closely.  I glued the new icon in place, then I kneaded up some new GS and proceeded to blend its edges down in to the smooth chest banner, finishing off with some wrinkles to the cloth.

I'll have to post a new closeup pic when I find my extension tubes- sorry for the fuzzy detail.

I'm a decent sculptor in the right medium, but GS still frustrates me like crazy.  I still need a ton of practice with it. This little experiment came out OK.  I think I could have gotten a better icon if I had tried a few more times with new molds and multiple "pulls" from each mold to pick the best.  I think it's good enough, and paint will hide any screwups in the icon.  Now we'll just have to see how smooth I manged to get the cloth once I prime it up.  I think the technique has some merit, but I might be losing some sharpness along the way. Will try more.

~Deet

3 comments:

  1. I love Instant Mold, too. It's pretty much perfect for simple push molds like this. I think that new bib (what else would you call that? Maybe he was out for buffalo wings) looks great. Hard to see the other two bits but they look alright. As for GS, I've been slowly switching to a 50/50 mix of Milliput (fine, white is what I've been using) and GS. It's a lot easier for me to work with, personally, and if the mold is putting in the details I think it will work a lot better for you. Maybe give that a whirl?

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  2. Thanks for the tip. I'll try that out for sure!

    Yeah, why am I suddenly in the mood for ribs? Getcher bib on!

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  3. well done! the new bib looks great.

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