Friday, August 2, 2019

Jewel of July: The Angel of Disease

A Jewel that needs some serious cleaning and disinfecting this time, not so shiny as last year's.
While he may not be as objectively impressive as my KoS, I'm just as happy with him, because I've had this Conversion in mind since I first saw the Nightbringer C'tan, back in '02. I wasn't able to find suitable wings for almost a decade, tho, when the WHFB Cockatrice was released. The switch to Finecast also helped immensely with the project, both in reducing the difficulty of trimming down the bits and in greatly reducing the weight, letting me support him on a surprisingly thin bit of brass rod.
It took even longer for me to get hold of the necessary parts. I think I had him assembled and primed by sometime in 2014 or so, and I know I had the paintjob done to a usable state by the time Daemon Summoning was a big thing in 7th Ed. But it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally knuckled down and finished him up. All the work on the Gellerpox Infected really helped, since one of the reasons he'd fallen by the wayside was that I was having trouble getting the skin the way I wanted it, particularly on the wings. It's still not perfect, but it's close enough.
The staff was originally intended to be the Black Mace, but that's no longer an option for Daemon Princes, so now it's just a rod of office or something, and he counts as having two sets of Malefic Talons. Now, my Relic of choice for a Death Guard Daemon Prince is the Suppurating Plate. Since he's really not modeled suitably for that, I call him the Host of the Withering Contagion, which is completely different fluff-wise, but identical rules-wise!
I just got my light box set up again last night. I decided to go with the white background again for a while, but I might have to go back and re-shoot these on the black background, since they got kinda washed out, and then the base is so dark that it's hard to make out much. Speaking of the base, I also just realized that I forgot to clean up the rim, and I meant to do a teeny bit of black drybrushing on the entrance wound on that one skull.
I'm pretty pleased with my greenstuff work covering up the joins between the body and wings. It was crap while I was trying to actually blend them smoothly together, but once I decided to just extend the robe to cover the gaps there, it went pretty smoothly. I think the little bits are supposed to be scales, but I decided to do them as little buds of new feathers growing in, with the flesh all reddened and irritated around the areas where they're either coming in or falling out. The dead dude on the base has orange trousers because that's my standard 40K civilian clothing colour. I should probably also do a little more work on what's left of his shoulders, but it may or may not happen.

I'm sort of getting back into the swing of painting again, helped by the shock of "Holy shit it's August already OFCC is in like 2 weeks and I still have most of my Army to paint". Hopefully that will help me build some momentum, and I'll be able to sustain it better now that we're all settled in here. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

12 comments:

  1. Wow - that looks amazing. It's so rare to see that model in any form (even back in the day) and even rarer to see it converted and painted up so nicely. It absolutely looks the part of a Nurgle Daemon Prince.

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    1. Thank you! It's one of those that's been in my head for so long that I've been worried about getting the actual physical form of it to match up with that mental image, but I think I managed it.

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    2. Well, it might have taken a long time to get to the final form, but it certainly looks worthwhile to me!

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    3. Over half of that wait was just for someone to make the right wings for it, but yeah, totally worth it regardless!

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  2. He looks very intimidating and a worthy Prince of the Grandfather. I can imagine everything he touches instantly turning black and rotting away.
    Wonderful stuff :D

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  3. Excellent. There's definitely something biblical about this. Or Dr. Who. I'm not sure. The Nightbringer always reminded me of religious statuary but here you've created a fully (well partially) fledged Fallen/Weeping Angel.

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    1. Thanks! I was definitely trying to get something that felt archetypal in some way, and if there are echoes of stuff like that in there, I think I've succeeded.

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  4. I agree, this looks fantastic! The Nightbringer is such a great model for conversion, though I'm pretty sure this is the Nurgle version of him/it that I've seen!

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    1. Thanks! Yeah, that Model grabbed my imagination as soon as I saw it. Such a great sculpt.

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  5. Very nice work. I've always loved that model and your conversion is perfect for it. You've really got quite the piece here.

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    1. Thanks! I got a lot of nice compliments on it over the weekend.

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