Hobby Update: I'm back in the game!

I'm back, baby!
found here thanks to google image search

Hey everybody, Chaoshead here and I'm very happy to announce that I'm back in the hobbying saddle again.  After an extended hobby funk I finally got back to modeling.  It started with getting over my blogging funk and then the rest of the bits just fell into place... and stayed there because I super glued them. *rimshot*  I am also working on another major conversion that will save me a TON of money and, of course, I will be making a tutorial about the conversion soon.  Full details after the jump.

A few months back when M4X came home to visit I mentioned that I had stuck my nids together with blu-tac so I could get them on the table and actually use them.  The original plan was to clean the mold lines off of everything before assembly but with all the details and shortage of smooth easy surfaces on my gribblies, that turned out to be an overwhelming task, hence the need for the blu-tac in the first place.  I abandoned that plan because it would take forever and a half to get my army up and running that way.

That's how I feel about mold lines and why I procrastinated so much on working on my army.

Between 3 or 4 different types of hobby knife blades (picked up a couple new ones for my b-day), needle files, and some good old fashioned liquid plastic glue to melt the more stubborn lines away, I think I have all the tools I really need to take off mold lines even on assembled models.  Worst case is I can't reach them all but if I can't get to them with all the different tools I have then they probably won't be visible anyway.  At least that's what I'm telling myself.

I am not!  In denial that is.  Also that other thing.
found here

So with my harder, better, faster, stronger plan I grabbed some models, cleaned off all the blu-tac and instead of removing all the mold lines I concentrated on the stubs left from where the models attach to the sprue and took the mold lines off the pieces that connect together so I could, you know, connect them... together...  Then it was super glue time.  Side note: Dave G recently wrote an article about the different types of glue you might need in this hobby and has lots of good information on all of them.  I learned a thing or two and even got to contribute a little bit.  First I glued my 20 termagants together.  The first 10 have the interchangeable weapons and the other 10 I haven't put arms on yet.  Next came 16 genestealers, also with no arms yet.  I assembled a trygon and got it magnetized so it can be a regular trygon or trygon prime and magnetized the arms so they can come off for transport.  I am going to add pins (paper clips) to help them stay in place with smaller magnets and to help reposition them a little bit but I have to wait for my new drill bits to arrive because I bent my wookie... I mean my drill bit.  Once I had done that I got the urge to do some real converting again and decided to save myself a metric f#&kton of money.  That's a technical term by the way.

Before continuing to the next part, try to guess what this pile of bits will become.

These are the bits I will be using in my conversion.  As our regular readers know, I'm a cheap bastich frugal gamer so paying $25 each for Zoanthropes just ain't gonna happen, especially since I eventually want to have 9 of them.  There is no way in hell that I'm going to dish out $225 for 9 models so I decided to get my conversion on.

You will of course need a 40mm base but I already have extras and 'nid players get a bunch of them anyway for ripper swarms.  I already have termagant bodies and even though I don't have enough for all the gants I want and all my zoeys that problem is easily remedied.  By putting the termagant weapons on hormagaunt bodies I can have all the termies I need and since I have more hormagaunts than I need I'm not really losing anything.  I'm also going to be stealing a pair of hormagaunt scything talons so it works out well in the end.  The trygon kit comes with a ton of extra spiky things so those are easy to find.  The 2 battleforces I procured includes kits for 2 boxes of warriors which means 3 extra heads per box, enough for my first 6 zoeys.

Saving money.  Get it? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *cough cough* Ahem, now where was I?
found here

Now comes the part that actually cost me a bit of money.  Warrior tails are only 3 per box, obviously not enough for 3 zoeys and 3 warriors, so I bought some more online for 1 GBP each and my brother found some more so I can make more zoeys, more warriors, or use them for converting hive guard in the future.  The last bit is a Mawlock tongue.  You can steal these from your trygon/mawloc kits since mawlocs kinda suck a little bit right now.  If you're like me, however, you won't have 6-9 trygon kits lying around.  I also found the Mawloc tongues online for 0.50 GBP each.  I will also be using some green stuff which is super cheap if you buy Apoxie Sculpt.  $15 for 1 lb. is freaking sweet IMO and even with shipping it's way cheaper than GW's crappy green stuff.  Not included in the picture is a pair of Termagant fleshborer arms with the gun part chopped off.  They were not in the original plan but since I already have a ton of extras thanks to my swappable termagant weapons it's no extra cost to me.

So, once my bits arrive in the mail I will have enough materials to make 6 Zoanthropes.  Total cost to me: 6 hormagaunts minus the heads, a little green stuff, some bits that I already had, and less than $20 in bits that I didn't already have.  What I get for my investment: $150 worth of Zoanthropes and I don't have to deal with 6 Finecast models.  Sounds like major Win to me.

I apologize for the inclusion of this picture.  Don't worry, my wife will punish me for it later.
found here

I will be writing up a full tutorial on how I made them once I get the first one finished.  It's in the final stages and needs a bit of cleaning up and some tweaking.  I already took the brain part off and re-worked it a little bit but I'm not entirely happy with the way the brain part turned out.  I never claimed to be a pro sculptor and I think it shows here.  It's the one part of the model that I'm not really pleased with.  I need to figure out how to sculpt brains a little better or find a mold I can use or something.  Aside from that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Maximum Heresy's Twitter followers got a sneak preview of the bits pic above and the one below which is now available to the masses.

Nearing the final stages of completion.  Prepare for mind blowing.
... no that's not innuendo you cheeky little dirty minded monkey.

And that's what I've been doing this past week.  That and beating Space Marine single player campaign on "hard" when I needed a break (pro tip: hard is really not that hard.)  The whole time I was telling Captain Titus to turn to chaos but apparently he wasn't listening.  I plan on trying to finish up the first Zoanthrope tomorrow (today by the time this is posted) and maybe try to figure out how to sculpt a better brain.  So stay tuned for more on my conversion and please feel free to leave comments, criticism, or whatever else you feel like you want to say, and I'll catch you on the flip side.