During the holidays, before I ordered a bajillion dollars worth of new models (including an entire Imperial Guard army, and Deathwatch: Overkill) I got bored and paged through the newest marine codex. In one of the new force org formations I saw a character called the "Emperors Champion".
Sounded cool, so I kitbashed, custom sculpted, primed and painted one up. Only to realize that you have to be Black Templars chapter to take him. They really should have been more specific about that in the book. Oh well, he'll look cool as a captain in my demi-company.
I selected the pieces from my bitz box and arranged them to make sure I had everything I needed.
I assembled the miniature, but left off the cape, and head to be painted separately.
One of the bits I had in my box was the reptile skin cape from the wolf lord miniature that I turned into a custom Canis Wolfborn. I didn't think the reptile skin fit for the Emperor's Champion, but I had an idea...
I rolled a piece of greenstuff and applied it to the finecast cape. I mounted the cape to a pot, so I could turn the piece without touching it while I sculpted.
Making simple pushing motions, I created a heavy fur texture. You can find tons of tutorials for this on youtube.
Here are the final sub-assemblies for the model.
I mounted the parts to pots and primed them white.
Parts I wanted to keep white, I masked off using poster putty. I knew I was going to paint the model gold, and getting a pure white over gold is difficult, so I painted it first, and masked it off instead of trying to layer white on top. Once the white was masked, I first painted the base.
Then masked the base, and applied a layer of brown on the model. This will give the gold a rich, warm color.
I sprayed the gold from the top down, to create a natural highlight effect over the brown.
Once the gold was applied, I removed the mask. Perfect whites!
I then painted the details on the model; grenades, purity seals, silver highlights on the upper edges of the armor, and boltgun metal.
I painted the head separately, and then attached it.
I painted the fur cape separately, using a series of brown and grey gradients. Once it was complete, I glued it in place.
I masked off and painted the black blade - the champion's signature weapon. I used a blue gradient highlight. I finished the figure by painting the textured base.
And there you have it; one kitbashed Emperor's Champion.
-trip
Looks fantastic Trip!
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