Teasers For Things To Come In 2013

It's been a while since any real update on what's in the pipeline and I'm not going to give you one now. Instead, I'll just show you a couple teasers and be done with it. Oh, and there is now a new facebook page where you can also follow updates.

Can you guess what these are?

And this?

This should be fairly obvious (painted figure for scale)...

I've also been playing around a bit more myself and completed the second member of the stretcherbearer team and added some bits that offer the option to use them as an ammo/petard team instead. We'll see if it looks halfway decent when it's moulded (if it doesn't, they'll stay in my personal collection).

Some heads to go with them. Only the best will go on to be turned into metal.

And I've finished mister twohands here (after tearing off parts of it more times than I can remember in order to start over) or at least got him close enough to stop fiddling with him. He'll get two optional weapon tops that will be spear and halberd, though he should look good with one of the dwarf standards as well.

Dwarf Stretcherbearer Conversion Redux

I wasn't happy with the way the left arm on the stretcherbearer looked (somewhat short, too far out and more puffy than the right arm, all due to trying to accomodate for the slightly large width of the stretcher I made earlier), so off it went and now the figure looks much more natural. Both arms are now the same length and thickness. I need to tidy a few small things and then he'll be good to go.

Compared to one of John's uncoverted models and with a couple WIP headvariants to go with him (honestly, they look better in the flesh).

The tower is slowly getting there, here's another look at those windows. Not perfect, but it will do.

Various WIP builds and conversions

I'm currently in the middle of a lot of converting and scratchbuilding. For starters, I'm making an updated version of my dwarf stretcherbearer party, as I think I can make it better than the old one and perhaps cast up a few if the result is worth it. So far, it's going well enough, it's certainly better than the old one. Although I will have to tweak the left arm on the stretcherbearer body as it doesn't look right now (slightly too short I think). The left hand needs some work too:

With a couple heads (head conversion still WIP) and next to a metal dwarf for size:

I've also started on the casualty figure. I think he'll have an integral head. The stretcher needs work too: 

On an unrelated conversion, I'm also "imperialising a citadel dwarf from the handgunner set that came after the Marauder ones but before the current plastic ones. I really liked the idea for the original figure but it looked very flat and 2D. The addition of the wider helmet and puffy sleeves helps to flesh it out a bit. Still needs landsknecht shoes and a few little details:

Also WIP is this scratchbuilt tover, based on a hexagonal card box (see on the left in the image) I found in the craft section of a local store. I think the idea is to decorate it and use it as a pencil box. Anyway, when I saw it, the size and shape screamed "tower" at me, so I had to pick it up. Still a few things to add, but it's getting close. One thing I learned is that on conical roofs, I really should go with individual tiles. As it is, I went with short strips, but that made it look very shoddy. But that works for me too.

I used some fine plastic mesh for the windows, which will hopefully give the impression of leaded glass when painted:

WK Dwarf sallet helmet conversions - Part 2

Following up on the previous post (and with John's consent), I have decided to follow through with the idea of converting the complete set of the action poses with sallet helmets and offering them as an additional choice for core infantry troopers. Since they are fairly uncomplicated conversions, these should be able to go straight into a productionmould, so it shouldn't take very long to get these released.

The last 3 went together a lot faster than the first one I did. Here 's a picture of all 4 of them:

WK Dwarf sallet helmet conversion

Someone was asking about the possibility to do a unit of WK dwarfs that are all wearing sallet helmets. The big obstacle to using all the available poses is that the WKD-03 set (action poses) have heads that are cast on to the bodies and 3 of the 4 are wearing floppy hats.

So I went to task to see how hard it would be to convert one with a spare sallet helmet. I took a pair of heavy duty metal cutters to the top of the head on the figure (just below the hat) and did the same with the beard peaking from under the helmet. This was followed by some more cutting with a hobby knife to remove the excess metal on the top of the head/bottom of the helmet and then a lot of filing to get a nice flat surface (head should be filed back to just under the nose). The bottom of the sallet helmet isn't completely flat, so a small gap remained on the front and the back, but a tiny amunt of greenstuff  quickly filled it. I think I spent about 20 minutes on this, most of which was filing away at the parts. It didn't even occur to me to get out my dremel, which may speed things up.

Anyway, I think the result looks pretty good and I'm now considering whether it might be a good idea to give the same treatment to the other 3 bodies and throw them in a mould for more variation.