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I don't normally show off commission jobs until they're completely finished, but in this case the buyer (Dakka's own Yakface) thought it might be interesting to show the process from start to finish.

So, I'll be detailing the conversion process as I go, and then once Yakface receives the finished model, he'll take over the blog as he paints it.

Should be fun, if only because I very rarely get to see my work painted...


So, the project:

Yakface wanted a winged Hive Tyrant with a little battlefield presence. What we settled on is a combination of Hive Tyrant and Carnifex parts, which will be modified as we go to blend them together and to keep it looking sufficiently 'Tyrant' rather than blocky and 'fexey.

I'll be using Tyrant legs, with a Carnifex torso and head. We decided the larger torso fit in nicely with the increased chest muscle and lung capacity needed by a flying creature, while the proportionately slimmer legs represent the fact that he doesn't need to run too far.




The first job is to modify the Carnifex head to look more Tyrant-ey. I started this off by shaving off all but the first of the head-plates, and adding new, slightly smaller plates with green stuff, leaving the large, bulbous cranium area at the rear.



The plates need a little smoothing down, and then I'll add the row of spikes (including the Tyrant's signature massive nose spike) to the plates, and some exposed veins on the cranium.


Weapon-wise, I'll be magnetising a couple of sets of arms: two sets of Scytals, and two sets of twin-linked Devourers.

Since the wings take up an arm socket, the remaining arms need to have two weapons each, which will mean a slight rebuild.

I started with the Scytals, by slicing off the hand at the wrist and turning it sideways. I then added two Scytals as fingers.



These are just pinned in place at this point. Assuming Yakface doesn't hate them on sight, the next step will be to glue them and then fill the gaps with green stuff.


Next episode: The head gets spikey with it, devourers get linked, and Doctor House initially thinks it's one thing before deciding it's actually something else, and then discovers that it was the first thing all along, but they missed it because they forgot to stand on one leg while doing the MRI...

.

Dude!
That's it?
No!

Work faster.

Must...
See...
More...

<G>

Nice work.

...and, if he doesn't like the scytals, I LOVE 'em! Maybe we could work something out!

Eric

love the concept so far... except for the hands It may be a case of seeing it on the model, but I'm just not sure about Edward Scissortyrant

The fingers look great to me (just what we discussed), and I'm glad you're going to be putting the veins on the head. I really like the idea that the Tyrant is always thinking really hard (focusing his Warp Field and passing on Synapse) to the point where the veins are popping out of his head.


The one thing about the claw fingers: you say that you're going to fill in the gaps, can you also build some sort of tendon big enough that it looks like it could power such a massive "finger" blade? Perhaps you were already planning on that, but right now it doesn't look like there is a big enough muscle in the hand to power such large claws.

Overall the head plates look great and I like the overall look of the hand/claws.


Looking forward to the next update. . .

I like the Eddy Scissorshands look and may well steal the idea - I've been looking for some unusual conversions using the standard Carny sprues

Those hands are friggin sweet!

Looks prommissing, I am really looking forward the outcome.

Yes, that looks like it will be a great model when completed, please post more works in progress shots.

am I the only one who can't see the pics?

oh there they are.

Also House rocks.

So good that I wish I had one of them under my couch.

Yay Yakface for requesting WIP shots!

Have to say I'll be watching this with great interest, as I'm in the planning stages of a winged HT conversion myself. The idea for the head is one I'll have to have a go at with a spare 'fex head, looks like it'll really make the difference in stopping it look like a flying Carnifex.

Yakface:
"you say that you're going to fill in the gaps, can you also build some sort of tendon big enough that it looks like it could power such a massive "finger" blade? Perhaps you were already planning on that, but right now it doesn't look like there is a big enough muscle in the hand to power such large claws."

The tendon is an excellent idea. The actual muscles driving the claws would presumably be in the forarms, but the hands are a little too skeletal for the tendons to be internal... So, here's what we end up with:



Still need to do the backs of the hands, which will have another tendon running from just under the rear armour plate back into the hand.


Meanwhile, the head got spikey:



Still needs gap-filling around the base of the spikes. After a look at how this fits into the torso, I may also wind up having to remove the neck and reposition it, but we'll see how that goes once I have enough of the body assembled to settle on a pose.


And, I started on the Devourer arms:



Again, no putty yet. I'll add a little detail around the tubes at the rear, fill in the hand socket on the bottom devourer, and possibly join up the three spines in between the two 'barrels' of the weapons.

My magnets arrived yesterday as well, so once I start assembling the torso I can get that bit sorted as well.


Gen_eV:
"Yay Yakface for requesting WIP shots!"

I actually always send out WIP shots to the buyer over the course of the conversion. The only real difference here is that they're being posted publicly rather than just emailed directly to him. Although with the Blog format, there are admittedly a few more WIP shots than I would normally take...

A note on the pics: I have been having some sporadic troubles with my server lately... The host company assures me that it's been fixed, but I'm not convinced. If you can't see the pics, leave it a minute or two and try again... It' appears to generally not go down for longer than that.


Next Episode:
Fun with magnets, Building a better torso, and Agnes shows us how to feed a family of 4 with a coconut, a stopwatch, and the neighbour's garden gnomes.

I'd love to see you reposition the two devourer "barrel" pieces so the bottom of the top one and the top of the bottom one are touching and meet in the same plane. In other words you'd be tilting them slightly so the fronts touch as well as the backs and you'd be removing some of the details in the middle. Know what I mean? I think it would make it look even less like two devourers tacked together I'd also take the little armoured piece off the bottom gun because they nid weapons only have those plates on the tops. It would also be cool to move the two guns up more so the hand enters the guns in the exact centre.

Wow, so that's a lot of suggestions, but I think they'd help none-the-less.

Posted By Drake_Marcus on 10/03/2006 4:49 PM
I'd love to see you reposition the two devourer "barrel" pieces so the bottom of the top one and the top of the bottom one are touching and meet in the same plane. In other words you'd be tilting them slightly so the fronts touch as well as the backs and you'd be removing some of the details in the middle. Know what I mean? I think it would make it look even less like two devourers tacked together I'd also take the little armoured piece off the bottom gun because they nid weapons only have those plates on the tops. It would also be cool to move the two guns up more so the hand enters the guns in the exact centre.

Wow, so that's a lot of suggestions, but I think they'd help none-the-less.

Those are some good suggestions. However, if the two "barrels" were completely flush with each other the weapon might look more like a "super" devourer rather than a twin-linked one.

Right now, I think it looks like a Devourer slung on a Devourer, which is exactly what I'd imagine a Tyranid's twin-linking would (or could look like). I guess what I'm saying is that while I'd would like to see what it would look like if the two Devourer barrels were flush with each other, I'm not bothered at all by the current design (quite the opposite really).

As for the armor plates on the bottom, again you make a very good point, I just don't know that they personally bother me. I could take or leave the bottom plates.

I definitely don't think I'd care for the hand to be repositioned. I really like the "underslung" look of one of the Devourers and altering the hand position would change this feel.

 

So Insaniak:

I like the claw hands quite a bit. For the devourers I think I agree with Drake a bit that I'd prefer if the barrels of the weapons were more flush (parallel to each other) with each other, rather than the "body" of the guns. If you can pull that off (maybe by puttying up a gap between the bodies of the guns so the barrels are flush) I think you should go for it, even if it means losing a bit of the spikes that are in between the barrels.

 

I'm glad I could contribute to that beautiful model if only in a small way

so what kit did you loot the wings from?

maby you can replace the feet to look like the eagle talons prehaps from gaunts talons

other then this looks cool

Posted By upliftingprimer on 10/04/2006 3:58 AM

so what kit did you loot the wings from?

maby you can replace the feet to look like the eagle talons prehaps from gaunts talons

other then this looks cool

Those are the basic Warhammer Dragon wings. GWUK even sells them as part of a online "winged Tyrant" bundle (check out the online store).


No talons. In my mind, winged Tyrants, like winged warriors, retain their feet for ground attacks. That's why he's putting two claws/Devourers on each arm.

where are the wings going to attach?

I did something similar for my MC devourers, but I filed the bottoms flat and glued the two devourers together. Mounted both on the end of a meaty Crushing Claw arm. I like using that arm since it looks big enough to support the two weapons.

They're only 1/3 painted, but I'll post a pic later tonight.

Nice.
Perhaps bending the thumb part slightly towards the middle of the hand, making it look less flat??

Posted By SirNotInThisFilm on 10/04/2006 9:24 AM
where are the wings going to attach?

I asked for the wings to replace on of the arms (and Insaniak agreed). I'm not sure which socket he's going to use, though I'd be shocked if it wasn't the top ones.

 

Here are pics of some MC twinlinked devourers made out of Crushing Claw arms.  I found some unpainted ones:





Obviously they need a little trimming and gap-filling, but you get the idea.

I'm really glad you posted those pics.

They've made me realize I definitely don't want the two Devourers fully fused together like that. Don't get me wrong, your arm looks great, its just not the look I was thinking of.

I definitely prefer the "underslung" look of one weapon on the other.

So Insaniak, I'm not sure what point you're at, but I'm back on board with your original idea: connect the "spikes" in between the barrels of the two weapons and I think the Devourer arms will look great.

Boooo Yak! And here I thought I'd made a difference

If it isn't too late, here's something to think about on the scything hands...

There should probably only be tendons on the OUTSIDE of the hands & not the inside.
The idea here is that these tendons are what is used to "open" the hand. It's natural position would be tightly "closed."
This way, the inward motion of a scything attack would be that much more vicious.
As the tendons are released from holding the talons "open," the talons snap powerfully inward, returning to their closed position.
KWIM?

Eric

Heh, to each his own!

Another point about the filed-flat devourers - leaving the 'wrists' on doesn't work due to the angles. Notice how in Insaniak's pic, the wrists are touching but the devourers are splayed apart at about 15 degrees. If you cut the devourers flat and fuse them, then the wrists splay apart at the same angle - making them too far apart to look good, IMHO. That's why I cut the 'wrists' off of mine.

I suppose you could alway cut and reattach the wrists at a new angle, but I'm a lazy converter.

You'd need Tendons under tension to cause the talons to scythe inwards, MagickalMermories, otherwise, what's making them move? They don't need a muscle stretching the inner tendon, but they would need two sets of tendons to actually move the limbs.

Have to say I agree with Yakface on the twin Devourers, although mounting them on Crushing Claw limbs could actualy work for my nefarious purposes. Just cut the entire of the fleshy front part of the claw arm offff, leaving the devourers with more than simply the gun elements exposed.

Cool stuff!  I can't wait to see more.

When I did my MC TL-dev. I used four devours and the crushing claw because I felt that two were just not enough to give it the size it would need to look right on a MC. I filed all the devours flat then, using a piece a spru I glued one to the top flat side and one to the bottom then one on each side so they formed a circle. I then green stuffed it to a crushing claw and mounted that on my MC. I am not trying to criticize your it is just a suggestion. I will try and post pics if you want.