Tyranid diorama

[Will Vale]

Blimey, that's quite the collection, and a lot of work to magnetise I expect. I think the Tau offer some really interesting colour choices - basically any realistic military scheme looks good, and any '80s sci-fi armour scheme looks good - the sky's the limit.

Glad the Kroot are still around, I thought they were resin only so it's nice to see that there's a plastic kit. And the Ghostkeel looks way cool.

I spent last night painting more tiny streaks. I've finished the hooves and spurs for all three, reworked the frill striations a bit for the prime, and painted his tail thingy. For the frill I tried to break up any fat blotchy lines and add some longer and shorter areas, as well as wrap the pattern round the trailing edge a bit.

I think the rework is good, but now the legs stand out a bit so I'll probably do something on them as well. I also need to get on with the weapons.

Cheers,

Will

[Will Vale]

Bit more on the warriors in some spare time today - I painted the scything talons, highlighted the hands (at least the ones glued to the bodies) and painted the claws.

Again, the photo shows some carapace which needs fixing on the back - those thin lines need blending in and also eliminating or softening in the darker regions under the plates.

More interestingly, I painted one of the faces - quite fun although in a couple of places I used paint which was a bit thick rather than being sensible and getting some new

I think the upper lip needs some cleaning up, otherwise it's fine. They're not as nicely moulded as the Broodlord's face - the mouth is all one part so the teeth go right through from left to right, and that means the front teeth are a bit rabbity. I've painted in some gaps, but cunningly taken the photo not to show any of that.

Cheers,

Will

[Dazzio]

Those carapaces are looking really good dude. I'm loving the colours used here. That face, while not as good as the Broodlord's is still pretty horrific. I wouldn't want to meet him down the pub on a Friday night.

Got anymore of these things to paint?

Kind Regards,

Dazz

[Carts]

The little "buggers" are looking fantastic,they have a definite Giger feel to them.

[Will Vale]

Yeah I agree the Giger feel is particularly strong with the warrior heads and their big frills at the back

I have quite a few left to paint - the "Start Collecting" box the warriors came from has 10 gargoyles (small flying things) which I've assembled but not mounted to their bases yet, and a Hive Tyrant which is about half-assembled and needs a bit of filler. I also found a cheap-ish copy of Deathstorm which has more Genestealers, the Broodlord you've seen, and a Carnifex.

Somewhere in the cupboard there's a big flying thing (Harpy/Hive Crone) too. And a long time ago I painted this one:

who I still rather like, but is in the wrong colours!

The family (my daughter at least) are of the opinion that I should have a Trygon, which is a big burrowing thing, but I probably need to catch up with the above first.

Will

[Will Vale]

Ooh, pleased at how much more sense the head makes stuck on the body

Needs more arms though.

Cheers,

Will

[Will Vale]

Ooh, shiny new forum gubbinz

 

I painted the rending claws for the Prime last night, he still hasn't got a head though!

 

 

and did most of the lash whip for the last warrior. I wasn't sure about it in person but it seems to photograph OK so I ended up finishing it tonight. Since this pic I smoothed the blends, added highlights on the spikes and final section, painted in some very faint segmentation etc. etc.

 

 

He does have a head now, also not yet photographed. I'm waiting for the black upper to cure so I can paint the carapace. So much carapace.

 

For the weapons, I've tried to make them a deep crimson and blend towards pink, whereas the bodies are a sort of hull red and blend through orange to skin colour. So there's a cool/warm divide. I was hoping that the paler hands would make the weapons look more separate than they do. I still feel they should be in some vibrant contrasting colour but I couldn't think of anything I really liked, so for now everything's based on red :[

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Andy Moore]

The whip looks great Will. It's very, err... organic isn't it.

 

Would a purple wash/glaze help the weapons contrast to the skin more?

 

Andy

[Will Vale]

There's definitely more than a hint of Slaanesh there... In the Tyranid background, all the weapons are bred-for-purpose creatures of one kind and another. And I read last night that the whips aren't fed, but live on the chunks of flesh they manage to rip out of opponents. It's all a bit icky.

 

I think a purple glaze is a good call, I was going to wash purple onto the grip to darken it already, but I think the glaze would tie the whole thing together. Thanks!

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Madhatter]

man, they look disgustingly hideous but also very cool. I agree with you in regards to the Giger influence - even has the killer tounge thing going on. Nice touches with the blood too - it's not over done

How big are they? Your pictures make them look quite large, but I rather suspect they are quite small.

[Will Vale]

Cheers Si! The Warriors are a bit bigger than the genestealers I painted earlier - about 2" tall. They're quite good to work on as they have pretty much all the standard Tyranid features, so I can figure out how to approach some of the bigger monsters by painting these.

 

I've finished another head and tarted up the whip a bit - I used two glazes in the end, a very thin one mixed with medium rather than water for the business end, and a stronger version around the hilt. I think it hangs together better, it will be interesting to see how the guns work out following the same method.

Thanks Andy for the suggestion :) (For reference, the glazes were mixed from the GW red and blue glazes and thinned with their medium in two ratios.)

 

 

I realised when I came to paint it that I'd rather melted one eye by applying too much glue (n00b error) and rather than fixing it I thought I'd make it into an injury. I carved the carapace a little to support the idea:

 

 

Still needs some tweaking to get the feel of old, scabbed over green blood vs. a little bit of new weepy green blood. Eww.

 

Will

[Hunter Rose]

Wow those guys look great, I really love the ribbed look and the shiny shading gives it a real visceral look.

 

And I like the busted eye!

[Will Vale]

Cheers! I've been doing a little bit of plastic modelling as time off for good behaviour - I've mostly built the Revell 1/144 Fairplay, and made a start on the Tamiya Tyrrell P34, no primer or anything yet.

 

But today is the start of the half-term holiday so I've made a start on a board to display these guys at Armies on Parade, in three weeks time. This should be scary but I've built more complex things in three weeks before, albeit as a rather younger chap:

 

(click for bigger)

 

This one is a little bit larger but doesn't have any working parts so should come together quite quickly when I get going.

 

The Armies on Parade display area used to be a two foot square Citadel Realm of Battle tile (styrene) or your own version, but they've now made it anything up to that size, so I've gone for 580x360mm (plus 6mm or so for facings) which will fit in my new cabinet. I'm more interested in a cool way to photograph and display the Tyranids than I am in winning, but the deadline will be a good motivator.

 

I started the same way as the model railway - a sheet of 10mm foam card:

 

 

The blue thing is a foam knife - it's just a blade with a 90" guide so you've got a better chance of getting perpendicular cut edges - I wasn't trying too hard to be perfect and didn't get much more than half a mil variation which is plenty accurate enough for my purposes. I cut a flat top and 50mm framing/diagonal bracing. I had to butt a couple of pieces together to avoid cutting into a second sheet as you can see.

 

 

The masking tape holds the joints together, and then I've left it like this to set up:

 

 

Once it's dry I'll start roughing out the landforms with 50mm styrofoam and more layers of foam card, plus I need to get some 3mm MDF for the facings - the foam is very light and strong but it gets dented easily. The MDF also provides a deeper web against bending and helps turn the whole thing into a single structure.

 

Incidentally this style of construction scales really well - this layout uses the same materials with deeper 100mm webs (although it's relieved to 50mm or less along the front for the valley floor) and is 1850x500x500. I can still cart it around on my own too:

 

Now to plan out the jungle

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Will Vale]

While the board's drying up (nearly but not quite!) I put out all the Tyranids to see how much space they took up:

 

 

I don't think the pencil marks are very clear, but the box (Munitorum Armoured Container) on the LHS will be some kind of comms outpost with the marines around it, and Genestealers pouring towards them down a couple of jungle paths.

 

The Broodlord will be up on a bluff, probably with water running down to a pool in the upper left, and I'm not sure what's going on in the lower right - maybe spawning/reclamation pools? It feels like it needs a bit more something, but I'm not sure what - L and I think the Big Space Onion would look cool but I'm a bit nervous about painting something that big in the time.

 

I think the view would be from the upper left corner in this picture, with the terrain rising to the diagonally opposite corner?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Will Vale]

I flipped things around - not sure why it but it felt right. Time to start adding layers now to block out the terrain properly.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

 

[Dazzio]

 

  That's looking really smart Will.  Those Terminators would need to be saying their prayers to the Emperor right about now tho. :/  Can't wait to see what you do with the big floaty thing

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[Will Vale]

I need to do something painty with the onion soon - I have three large monster things which could go in that space - flying hive tyrant, harpy, and death onion. But the onion is actually the most finished and it might be that the blobby detail-everywhere design is easier to paint than some of the others?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Madhatter]

great dio set up Will. Being Styrofoam (?) it would be light. Where do you get the foam from? Also, how do you shape it like that without it crumbling?

I'd love to have a crack at a diorama like that but I don't know enough basics to do it - despite owning Shep Paines book on creating dioramas. 

 

That gray thing looks interesting - what is it? and I don't mean the box

[Will Vale]

The grey thing (evil space onion) is a Tyrannocyte - a sort of living drop pod. It eats a load of monsters and then crashes down to a planet's surface and excretes them ready for combat. Or something like that!

 

The white foam here is all foam-card - it's extruded foam (I think polypropylene) bonded to thin paper on both sides. Very easy to cut and glue - you can buy big sheets from art suppliers. I'm also using Styrofoam (extruded polystyrene insulation board originally from Dow Corning) for rocks but haven't shown any of that yet as it only got cut and glued this morning. I get that from the art shop too - they sell various sizes cut down full size sheets - but it's cheaper to buy from an insulation or plastics supplier. You can see it as the green and blue stuff in the railway layout pic above.

 

The crumbly stuff is expanded polystyrene foam - I avoid that like the plague as the beads go everywhere and they also stop you from carving it

 

More soon as the basic landforms got done this morning!

 

HTH,

 

Will

[Madhatter]

9 minutes ago, Will Vale said:

It eats a load of monsters and then crashes down to a planet's surface and excretes them ready for combat

delightful....Something to take home to show and describe to a Mum 

 

Thanks for the info on the foam - I'll have to pop into a Riot store and inquire on it when I am next near one. 

[Will Vale]

I love foam, it's so fast!

 

 

I need to put the end profile boards back under the pile of books they were weighted by as the glue hasn't gone off yet, hopefully I can attach the front and back boards this evening and then fret them into shape tomorrow.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[rockpopandchips]

As Im thinking about a bit of a dio for my Zaku tank this is going to a great help to me watching you put this together, any plans for some water on this one? Im thinking of using clear bathroom silicon for water just because I have some.

[Will Vale]

I am planning to have some water - I've been looking at pictures of waterfalls in Thailand so I've revised things a little to make it make more sense. Here's where we are now:

 

 

The water enters top right (from the pov of the top picture) and cascades down the levels to the flat hatched area bottom left. In the past I've used a mixture of acrylic things - e.g. gloss gel and gloss medium for flowing water, and pouring medium for still water, but I have a bit of decoupage resin left over which would give a nice glossy layer. Or I could be brave and do a proper casting resin pour for the bottom level? Tricky to get right.

 

It's a bit dodgy because there's not really enough width where the water enters - waterfalls should usually be in concave landscape (the water wears down the rock and works backwards) rather than flowing over a convex spur like in my setup. Hopefully I can sell it right and make the big rock bit looks like it's wider just off-scene.

 

Other than that I think it'll be cool.

 

Big question to resolve still - do I make sockets in the landscape for all the figure bases, or have flat landscape and stand them on top? The former gives a neater presentation and probably better photo options but loses flexibility. It might also be hard to create enough sockets close enough together? I'd thought I could make them by cutting holes in 3mm or 5mm black foam card with a compass cutter, and scenicking up to edges of the holes?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Dazzio]

 

  For that foam/cardboard thing, check your local picture framers. They should have shed loads of the stuff, my gf gets loads from her old man who works as a framer type person.

 

  Looking forward to seeing this come together.  I'd say go for the big onion

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[Hunter Rose]

Wow this is going to look great, love the sound of the waterfall!