Modelling Festerheart Part 7( Conclusion)

The finishing touches had to be made to the build and this entry will round off the whole deal. This  shot shows the fly image gone and a skull imbedded in its place along with a mass of pustules. You can see the small screw that holds the cloak and also another skull with chains threaded through its eye sockets, on the left. I had the problem of how to support the cloak and this is my solution. The fringe of stiff hair satisfies the view of hair we see in the painting, even though it is now not part of the cloak.

 

Now you can see the whole support system with the chains from the last skull connecting to bones laced through the cloak lower down. The top screw is still visible but will be covered by more tufts of hair added randomly to barer areas of the back. Those dead heads are still swinging wide and their wire ties will later be changed to thread.

This pic shows a few disgusting aspects of our friend -numerous sites of infection, swellings, tentacular growths and very painful looking piercings. My painting scheme is basically greens and browns with flesh areas as sickly, pale and intestinal as possible. Metal areas are rusted as this is the diseased state of steel.

The new coloured flies are in place and when finally glued, try to give the impression of all, just in the act of taking off. These are the three smaller ones, the larger being placed on the other side for some 'Dipteric ' balance. (Diptera - the group of insects that includes flies taxonomically)

What went on the base was always a problem as I really had no specific idea in mind. I know I wanted to give the impression of ground that had become diseased as the monster passed over it, and so used stuff that you wouldn't expect to see on healthy earth. The round balls in the middle are polystyrene chunks crushed until the pill like structure broke free. These are randomly sized and when glued haphazardly represent unnatural growths of rot and fungi quite well. Numerous broken twigs are bromeliad roots which we have in abundance, but which are strange looking enough to serve in a  multitude of ways. I used a product called Realistic Water, (obviously for modelling water in many forms) to coat things on the whole model to make them look slimy, this included parts of the base as well as Festerheart's skin, especially those diseased swellings.

 

Here's a look at the back of the axe and behind his knee. The axe would never have been cleaned, so as well as rust, battle damage and age, there would have been an awful lot of dried blood and guts visible. I think I can see a bit of old skin stuck there, I wonder whose? The knee area has had the micro ball treatment and is excessively pussy and painful looking, I hope.

Well, that's the build and here it is on the table, in the Open Category of the Golden Daemon, Sydney 2012. The red book in front is a photographic record of the build to prove that it was a scratch build  and that it was mine.

Finished at last!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Festerheart Part 6

 

 

 

The polystyrene was covered with a layer of casting plaster mixed up with  random pebbles, bromeliad roots and anything else I could find that I reckoned would make for interesting textures. It was a trifle hit and miss but really the painting gets a bit wispy at the base so no harm done. I did add some Apoxie tentacles and imbedded them strongly into the plaster on the figure's right.

Every great Nurgle lord needs an entourage of Nurglings - lesser nurgly daemons that are really just cannon fodder unless in overwhelming numbers - and this little guy gets to have pride of place at his master's feet. Many Nurgle creatures only have one eye, I don't know why it swallowed the fly. (Oh my god, too much influence from a 3yr old grandson)

At the other end of the base is a construct of the dribbly remains from a resin pour and an Apoxie tube worm. Following the philosophy of never throwing anything out, I always look at any bit of stuff that comes my way and ask if it could have a place in the great scheme of things, and the answer is usually, yes, of course it could. When you pour resin into a mold, there is always an amount left and this can be encouraged into some amazing shapes, especially by inverting the cup and pulling strands, letting gravity do something useful for a change.

Festerheart really isn't a nice guy and his taste in personal adornment tends to the cannibalistic. These flayed faces were made with Greenstuff (another 2 part epoxy putty) which lends itself to fine detail and use in thin sheets. I tried to be accurate with the attachment of the skins and cut brass pins down to a few mm. for use as pegs or nails.

You can see them better in this pic as well as other details of the chest area. The aforementioned star of Chaos is there (quite fiddly, to make with added spokes and arrowheads), as well as cords with their clamps, a strange spiked device and some cool attachment pieces. When something as simple as a thing to tie a chain or rope to, is made properly i.e. IT WORKS! then this modelling gig really becomes fun.

You can become so sick of the sight of what you are making that continuing is painful, hence so many "works in progress" owned by modellers. Lucky for me I am easily impressed by the simplest of successes.

Here are some of the heads attached with thin copper wire and although they looked okay I eventually changed the wire to thread, as they "hung" better. The wire just didn't give the impression of weight which is so important in the modelling world, where we are dealing with quite light materials but want to represent things that may be amazingly massive - I'd say old Korpus wouldn't be any sort of  lightweight.

My biggest problem in the whole build was the cloak and this shows the first attempt using fake fur. As
it came, it was too soft looking and gentle. Something had to change its textural appearance so I singed it with a lighter, just frizzing the synthetic fur until it took on the above look. All well and good I thought, but as with the "hanging" problems of the heads, it just didn't flow as the wind blown cloak of the painting did. A major change had to take place but it happened quite a while later. Some things are so daunting that it's best to have  a bit of a holiday from them - hence the foray into the flies.

The painting shows some Nurgle flies hovering around the base (anywhere a Nurgle lord walks becomes a disease ridden dung heap and of course there you find flies). This is the earliest photo of their build, but a thick aluminium wire was wrapped with three thinner wires and the body modelled with Apoxie.

The wings were made by bending guitar string wire into the correct shape, then laying them between two sheets of tissue paper soaked in PVA glue and leaving them overnight to dry. The straighter of the two wires was left longer and it is inserted into the cured body and super glued in place.

One set of legs was left longer than the others as it was similarly used as the glueing attachment.The eyes were made the same way I make large rivets, that is by bringing a plastic rod close to a candle flame, waiting for the plastic to heat and"dome", then squeezing the soft plastic to a lenticular shape. When cold and hard, the eye is cut off the rod and the procedure repeated until you have more than needed, so the best matched pairs could be chosen. The proboscis was carved out of that hard grey plastic that is so handy, drilled, pinned and glued in place. I went to the trouble of individually placing tiny wire hairs into some fresh Apoxie on the thorax.

Voila! A finished, painted and thoroughly evil septic green Nurgle fly, too bad I decided both the colour and size were wrong - fool! I ended up making another three of the things, but I still have the originals which could make a vignette with them harassing some poor creatures.

Here are my notes outlining the building stages, as it had been awhile since the originals were made.

The final colour scheme changed to a sickly grey maggoty colour because the WHOLE model was repainted for the Golden Daemon 2012 - this happened over about 9months and I will probably not be doing something as crazy for a long time. ( Sez he.)

 

 

 

 

Lead sheet was wrapped around the pine base board as I wanted it to be more than just a base
. I used thick lead so that I could incise the monster's name into it with a V-groove lino cutting tool.

The time had come to confront the problem of the cloak and the only way I could see of doing it was to basically mould one. I had to have a form over which I could lay some stuff, be it fabric, paper or putty -at this stage I was willing to try a number of materials. The form had to be big enough to cover the area across his back, down to near ground level and all the way out to the right side as you look at it.

It had to be quite large in surface area but  also deep enough that a change in level could be factored into the flow of the cloak - these height differences stop things from appearing flat and 2D.
It was made of casting plaster, cheap, easy to carve when "green" and robust enough to stand up to some vigorous use. The above is the final carved form and all I had to do was wait until it was dry, in the meantime trying to find a suitable material to coat it with.

I settled, not surprisingly, on a thin layer of Apoxie Sculpt which was rolled out on a powder covered board with a gal. pipe roller - nice and heavy. As this putty gives you about an hour's working time, I was able to coax it into position, tear holes where I wanted them and think about how I was going to attach it and where. After curing over night, I found it to be quite fragile and in need of reinforcement. Super glue was spread all over it, both sides (what fun that was), and then I remembered some thin Japanese paper a friend of mine had given me. She is always looking for stuff I could use and like I've said before, friends are the best!
This paper had a structure where you could see the various threads and fibres used to make it. Laid over the form and softened into the grooves with diluted PVA, the paper took on the appearance of skin with the blood vessels close to the surface - perfect for Nurgle

 

Here is the cloak in position, air brushed to show the folds and doing all the wafting necessary as shown in the painting. Here you can also see the attachment of the trophy rack, the ill hanging heads and the start of the Adrian Smith standing up hair.

See what I mean about those heads? All their connections had to change, but I'm happy with the cloak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modelling Festerheart Part 5

A couple of  elements solved here. The banding on his left arm is the second attempt, as the first failed because I tried to make the square links out of wire.This was too thick and instead of using a  thinner gauge, I made things easy for myself by finding something already square - an Evergreen square section tube, from which perfect squares could be cut at will. Some initial vein and pustule work is also visible as well as those creepy eyes and long re-entering belly growth.

Mention has been made of the Nurgle icon with its three circles (sometimes they are three skulls, faces in torment or just horrible eyes), but I followed the painting's simpler circular form and made it with styrene plastic, putty and lead solder. You can see more clearly the hanging leather loin cloth, chain mail and waist chain belt, as well the spiked shin guards or greeves. This picture also shows where Ferropre and Apoxie Sculpt have been used.

Now that the belly work has been done, the axe can be attached by the arm wires being wrapped tightly around the haft and glued in place. Over the attachment points, the hands are modelled. Any art teacher will tell you how important it is to render hands well and how difficult it is to do. Apart from eyes, hands are the things we use and are aware of the most in our human lives. They are even harder to render when they have to be 3D. Remember, someone will always try to look at the bits underneath things to see if the artist has been slack. I do, don't you?

"Oh my god, he's got an axe!" Yes he does and doesn't he look pleased? At this stage, I finally could say that I had done what I started out to do, that is, model an imposing figure. Even though there is an enormous amount to accomplish in order to emulate the A.Smith painting, nobody in the Warhammer world could mistake this bloke for anything other than an agent of Chaos and especially, Nurgle.

 

More detail is added to the hands using that wonderful stuff, lead sheet.( I paid particular attention when I used it, washing my hands frequently.) Again you can see the white deposit  called chlorosis, which appears when an accelerator is used with super glue. Super glue is quite easy to buy but when you find a source for a Kicker or accelerator, jump on it and buy enough for a year!

The left arm nearing completion with wrapped chain, pustules, spikes and flat things attached under the skin. I forgot to mention the crazy little finger that has turned into a tentacle -Nurgle loves a good tentacle.

The pauldron has had a bit of work with some spikes, rings and , for the first time, a departure from the original picture, an added skull. Why you ask? Well, I had an extra so I just stuck it on, you can never  have too many I say.

Here are some views we haven't seen so far and they are valuable in teaching the lesson that sculpture is 3D, and you neglect this fact at your peril. Keep looking at your work from all angles, and to do this the base and figure must be able to be rotated many times without fear of damaging it. This is why my initial armatures and bases and connections to those bases, are so strong.

Not so impressive from the back is he? The only back elements visible  in the painting are the hairy cloak and the trophy rack, so much must be done with these at least, before any other details can be devised. Other areas of promise are the back of the pauldron and the back of the axe.
The cloak was a real problem, because on closer examination of the painting, it is seen blowing away to the figure's left, and I had only been considering the upright hair that seems to be a signature Adrian Smith device in all of his "wild warrior type paintings. This mistaken 'upright hairiness' led me to think that I could use fake fur, treated in some fashion as to show this quality. How wrong I was!

The trophy rack I had, but where it had to be placed was too large an area just with the rack. I needed something to cover the whole back, be appropriate and even play a part in the mounting of the rack. What better than the overall symbol for Chaos, the 8 pointed star. This device is present in various forms in any Chaos army and on the body of any Chaos follower. It is one of the smaller details seen on the front of the figure but it hasn't shown up in any picture yet. A large sheet of lead was pounded and prepared, then laboriously cut out to make the star, with a hole centre punched to accommodate a piece of dowel that had been glued into the middle of the back.

Here is a page of images of icons of Chaos and the one immediately above the centre of the rack is the one I copied. I needed something to cover the screw that would attach the rack to the star's centre and it would help if this cover could also sell the Nurgle story. I think it succeeded and at the same time I added a small triple of circles to a knee guard - you can never have enough detail in this world, a minimalist would have a fit!

This is an interesting image in that it shows a fly detail on the back of the pauldron. Nothing wrong with the fly as a Nurgle image, in fact the fly IS the image of Nurgle and all followers of the god of  disease usually dissolve into a cloud of flies when backed into a tight situation such as imminent death. It just didn't seem to work here, maybe I should have added some more, especially another two to make up the obligatory triangle or something. I did change it as you will see later.

Some base work next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Korpus Festerheart Part 4

We now start to see the figure more fully, with arms bulked up by Ferropre. The hands are rarely modelled as part of the arms but usually as part of what they are holding, in this case the axe. Because the axe will be held in front of the belly, the belly details must be finished before any hand work is undertaken. It is a real problem to get the order of the modelling tasks sorted out. Other non related bits, such as the trophy rack can now be started. This is the main element of the figure's back that is visible in the painting and my interpretation of it is based on the idea of a devotee of Nurgle, who's number is always three.

I made a mistake in building the rack like this even though I like it. It answers all the triple Nurgley questions, allowed itself to be attached in a sensible fashion (if a three pronged tree branch festooned with human heads can be called sensible) and was quite simple to make. The thing I didn't see until too late was the other branch tip just protruding through the centre of the hook attached to the shoulder guard. However it should have been, I used balsa, lead sheet and that hard grey "spike" plastic, to come up with my trophy rack.

This picture shows the real start of the modelling of the final look. The belt is thick lead sheet and the armour and codpiece of are Apoxie Sculpt. I don't know whether old Korpus was this well endowed, but I have always modelled the cockpit of an aeroplane even if it were never visible once the canopy was down. Who knows if those judges look up a model's skirt or not?

An update picture showing all the finished bits. The axe is held on with Bluetack, as was the trophy rack, but the cauldron spike is in place and the whole thing is going well.

There are at least seven decapitated human heads in the painting, who knows how many more on the back? This necessitated casting from a master and manipulating the resin while soft to achieve a number of different looks. In the above picture, the masters are of Apoxie and are mounted on a support rod each while the copies are lighter. The blue stuff is a French product called Gedeo Siligum, which comes in two containers - one white, the other blue. Both are soft, rubbery, non sticky materials and you simply mix equal amounts until the colour is uniform. Into this you press your master, wait a few minutes and when the stuff feels firm, remove the master. I did this as well as using the pink two part mold and thus had more than enough heads. The pink molds are there to show the cut grooves for resin entry and air exit, as well as a new casting on the left and the master on the right. On the top of the spike is a scratch built head armature which will be built up to match the casts.

Pretty they aren't, but very necessary. The one on the right is as it came out of the mold, while the others  have had things done to them while the resin was soft. I was thinking ahead (joke) and wrapped them with copper wire so that I would have a method securing them to the rack. Nurgle, being the chaos god of Disease, would appreciate the use of the black and white micro balls which look just like buboes, boils and skin eruptions. I found these when a foam rubber toy Stegosaurus split and spewed them all over the floor --they looked interesting and were immediately collected and stored.

 As the modelling progressed, more detail was added such as the use of a large squared off syringe  tip to impress into the putty as rivet heads at the margins of the armour plates.

 Knee protectors came next, all spiked up as usual and with a border of thin solder to give that degree of 3D that you need to show.

 

At last a piece that looks human! Well maybe he was human once before he was blessed with the deadly kiss of Nurgle. Five toes even, but  is that a spike growing out of his ankle? Too right and there's more of those to come.

Back to the top and you can see the battle damage on the spike as well as the finished unfortunate head impaled on the rack's spike.

By this stage I was really going for it and the photos were not being taken as frequently. There has been a great deal of work done here on the belly and I think it is the most important part of this particular model. This really sums up what Nurgle is all about -the bloated, infected and gross deformities that infect his servants but which don't kill them. The bulging belly has to be restrained with a strap, chain and hook. There are eyes imbedded in it and elephantine growths extending from it, and all over are the pustules and bulges of unnatural decay. It really was fun to model all this stuff using a silicon tipped brush to make subtle grooves, folds and holes. The eyes were glass Teddy Bear eyes you can buy at Spotlight,(sewing materials shop).

You can see now how not attaching the axe and hands has allowed the front of the figure to develop. Below the belly is a belt, attached to which is the triple circled icon of Nurgle hanging over a chain mail and skin lap lap. The chain mail was made of looped fine solder, coiled around a skewer, pulled off and flattened in vertical rows. In there is a chain with a hook stabbed through the hanging skin lap lap. The skin was a piece of really old leather I had soaked in boiling water, hammered on an anvil until thin and holed and then cut to size and glued in place. I had become obsessed with emulating every skerrick of detail that I could see in the painting - there is a lot going on in an Adrian Smith painting.
By now the figure was in place, screwed securely onto its base, with both feet modelled around the attachment points as if he had walked up to the top of a hill. The greeves or leg protectors were in place  nicely decked out with their due complement of spikes.


Next entry -- buckles, boils and hands.