Is 3d Printing the Hobby Messiah?

I've taken a fairly old, haphazard series from here on the blog called Deepthought and transitioned it over to video format on my YouTube Channel. This was my most recent episode, where Hydra and I had some deep thoughts about the possible impacts CAD sculpting and 3D printing are having on the hobby. It's definitely a longer one, so maybe put it on in the background while you're doing some hobbying.

And here are the other episodes that I've recorded in this series:

The Hive Mind Reacts to 10th Edition Trailer

On our most recent Creature Conference Livestream with Hive Fleet Moloch and Hydra, we reviewed the beasties that were showcased in the 10th Edition Teaser Trailer. As this was our first look at a significant number of new Tyranids in a very long time, I was super eager to see what Marco and Simon thought of them.

How are you feeling about the new nids?

Xenos Alchemist: A Review of Tyranid Design with Moloch & Hydra - #CreatureConference

This one has been a long time in the making. Back in the beginning of the pandemic, Moloch, Hydra, and I sat down to conduct a review of the newer parts of the Tyranid line. It wound up being a bit of a survey of our collective thoughts on Tyranid design, where the newer kits have hit the mark, and where they might have missed. 

And, to save it from just being three grey beards bitching about other people's designs, I kept a little surprise up my sleeve for the end of the video: a challenge that would make the three of us put our money where our collective mouths were. 

I'll save the surprise for your viewing, but the reactions I got from the Germans were pretty fantastic!

Anyway, if you love Tyranids and converting them, this is the video for you!

Xenos Alchemist: Hobby in the time of Corona

In this episode of Xenos Alchemist, we talk to Hydra about his most recent passion, Frostgrave, and how he's playing miniature games remotely in this time of Corona. There's a lot about Frostgrave and the idea of miniature liberation. However, we also talk about balancing family and hobby, why we're probably not getting into CAD sculpting any time soon, and how #Blanchitsu  and #Inq28 is the equivalent of an artistic revolution.

Even if you're not into Frostgrave (as we're not!), this should still be an interesting listen. We really wanted to have Hydra talk about Frostgrave because its stripped-down approach to rules could be pretty useful for folks who are into Inq28 / AOS28-style gameplay and narrative events.

Based on your preference, we've got two ways to enjoy this episode.

In audio format, like usual:

Or in video format:



However you prefer your podcasts, we've got you covered.

If you're not already following Hydra, you can see more of his work here:
https://www.instagram.com/4ydra/
http://h-archive.com/

We talk a bit about the #FG28 hashtag, and you can see more about that here:
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/fg28/

The featured artists from this episode can be found on on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/77th_terrorfels/
https://www.instagram.com/thewarsinger/

And here are the Instagram handles for the other artists we mentioned:
@hivefleetmoloch
@with_teatea
@btwnbolterandme
@thepolysmith
@a_polanscak

Let us know what you thought of this episode, and if you have any questions you'd like to ask us or Hydra, you can share them in the comments below or email modernsynthesist@gmail.com.

The return of Xenos Alchemist - Interviewing The Hydra / Simon Schnitzler

Well, it's been a bloody long time since Brother Pink and I put out our previous episode of our fledgling Xenos Alchemist podcast. However, now that I've restarted all the cogitators, re-established our link to the Hive Mind, and moved us off Soundcloud, I'm looking forward to doing a lot more of these. But first: let's clear the backlog of episodes Brother Pink had already produced before we went off the air.

No better way to mark our triumphant return than with an interview with Simon Schnitzler, one of my hobby heroes who is probably better known as Hydra over on his website H Archive, or as 4ydra over on Instagram. Simon and I met way back in 2006, and our friendship has blossomed well beyond the hobby in years since. Still, he remains one of the most prodigious builders of Tyranids I've ever seen, and his hobby brilliance has been rewarded with several Golden Demons.

Though this interview was meant to be about sculpting, we do a fair bit of digging through Simon's hobby history, and also wind up reflecting on our collective love for 90s action figures. Here's the episode for your listening pleasure:

...and if you've been subscribed to the blog for a while now, I wanted to point out that we've shifted our host from Soundcloud to Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout assures me that their system handled this seamlessly, and that anyone who was subscribed to us before should still be subscribed to us now. However, if you wanted to find us on Buzzsprout, you could do that here.

And, as we're dusting off our podcasting muscles, please let us know in the comments below if there are certain topics that you'd like to see Xenos Alchemist take on in podcast form.

Krak, Made to Order!

Hi, Everybody!

It's Brother.P, the brother of Mr. Pink!

This Holiday Season, GW is giving back in countless ways. Firstly, there is now a retailer in my city that stocks GW stuff, including the entire line of paints! Secondly, GW introduced 'Made to Order'. Giving folks the chance to relive the glory days of pewter models which helped us develop our upper body strength. (Note: pewter is the tin/silver metal originally used for casting GW models, well, after they stopped using lead)

I want to count down the top 10 models that I'd love to see get the 'Made to Order' treatment. To all the Dark Eldar, Tyranid and Genestealer Cult enthusiast; be warned, this is mostly a list of Imperial models.

"Oh, hello Officer. I was just admiring your shotgun, yes, I will move along"

More Chaos: Hydra's Demons for Sale

Howdy! I'll be dabbling in chaos a little longer, apparently. Everything seems to be demons these days, so why should modern synthesist be any different ;)

First up, if you saw the previous post about my brother's run at converting some flamer models for nurgle, you'll understand just how clueless the two of us are when it comes to chaos/demons. Having since read some of the Demon rumours, I now understand that there is no way Tzeentch would ever give Nurgle a gift of anything. Woops. Here I was thinking Nurgle and Slaanesh were opposed on the chaos wheel on account of all that rot not being very sensual/aesthetic!

Apology done, it's time to get onto the real focus of this article: Hydra's phenomenal demon models. You can read his post about them over on the H-Archive here. You already know that I think the boy is a genius, but I figured I'd repost these images as further proof. I'm particularly fond of the way he has made sure to add at least one large monstrosity to each squad. This stuff is pretty inspiring, and I've already got a want for some Horror mouths for some coven-related ideas.

Anyway, here are the models.

Hydra Has a Home

Might just be time to get back to the hobby briefly. There have been more developments in the #spacemarine fiasco, one of the most interesting of them being GW actually acknowledging the situation, if not bending low enough to actually apologize, but it's something. They even managed to leave up everyone's angry comments about the acknowledgement post on their facebook, rather than summarily deleting them as you'd expect them to do (considering @VoxCaster was blocking anyone who referenced them on Twitter).

Anyway. More on that later.
This one is meant for my dear Hydra!

He finally has a home! HUZZAH! (click the image to be directed)

He's still getting it off the ground, but I wanted to share the link so that people could find it.

For a time, Hydra, Moloch, and I formed a fantastic little team of Tyranid artists. We were active on Warpshadow, but we spent just as much time bouncing ideas back and forth through the background medium of email. We collaborated at all levels, from concept through to actual models. It was a glorious, fruitful little synergy that I've also meant to post about for bloody ever, but I guess that full story will have to wait.

Anyway, though I've posted numerous articles here featuring the works of the Moloch, I have been woefully behind in sharing the work of the Hydra. Once again, it's something I always meant to get to but didn't manage. Of our little Tyranid shadow team, Hydra has ALWAYS been the most prodigiously productive. I've described the guy's inspiration and modeling through-put as a nuclear reactor of creativity.

Also, did you know the guy can fly!?

Stop that. That's silly.
Ahem. The best thing about Hydra's creative drive is that it's very much contagious. You hang around the Hydra enough, and you start to achieve things of which you never thought you were capable.

And now is your chance to bask in the boy's brilliance. He's a very busy man, so it might take him some time to get the site up to full operating strength, but best to follow it now so that you don't miss the amazing updates later.

H-Archive

And, because I can...

How to Sculpt Miniatures 2: How to use Epoxy Putty, Greenstuff, Apoxie Sculpt

This How to Sculpt Miniatures series is my attempt to demystify the idea of sculpting your own miniatures. It seems that more and more people are taking cracks at it these days as the means of production are getting so very cheap and third-party casting companies are growing like mushrooms. Still, no matter how many head-swap bits are retailed, there is going to come a time when you have an awesome idea for a miniature, and there might not be a compatible, ready-made bit. You're going to have to make it yourself, and it is my belief that the only thing standing in your way is a few helpful tips.

Like I mentioned in my previous article on tools: I don't consider myself a trained professional, just an experienced amateur. Thus, I'm going to be talking about the putties I use, but, unfortunately, I won't be able to tell you anything about super sculpey or milliput, procreate or brown stuff. But that's alright because it's my goal to convince you that all you really need for 98% of your sculpting projects are two reasonably cheap, readily available putties. This article will be a general overview with a few tips about how to have more control over your putty, but it got a little long, so I will be saving hands-on techniques for my next installment. Still, I hope you find this one helpful in getting you better acquainted with sculpting mediums.

UPDATE: I've just polished off the video versions of these tutorials, and you'll find the second video, all about putty, below. The video is best consumed as an illustration to this article, so I'd still recommend reviewing both. ENJOY!

SEXIFIED!

Not particularly interesting, but as you may be able to see if you've been 'round these parts before, I've done a bit of Sexification on the ol' bloggerino. I'd always been intending to apply some design savvy to this place, but it took a generous and very beautiful gift to get me going––a wonderful piece of art from a woman who I wouldn't know from a hole in the wall were it not for the wonder of The Internet.

She and I had arranged to do a Tyranid bits swap by mail, but then I realized that me and Hyrda and The Norn Queen would be heading through Sforementioned Internet Personality's neck of the woods here in Ontario anyway on our road trip, so we made a stop, all met each other IRL, and it was lovely. She gave us a tour of her workspace and her woMAN cave (it put every other man cave I've seen to shame), and in addition to the bits we'd arranged to trade, she gave me this:

Which is, of course, Hel: one of my oldest and dearest conversions, re-imagined as a bad-ass cartoon version of herself. I thought it would be a pretty good anchor for a new header for the site, and while I was working on that, I thought I should finally whip up that greenstuff "Y" that I'd envisioned a while back for the Modern Synthesist name, and before I knew it I was in the advanced Blogger settings, tweaking this and that.

And all of it was thanks to that one sketch. One day I'll get around to writing the post I've been intending to do for a while now about how everything I know about sculpting I learned from friends I met online, but until then, here's photographic proof of the wonders of the interweb:

Also, here is the artistic wonder that is Krewl Rain: http://krewl-rain.deviantart.com/

Warpshadow has gone dark

Howdy folks.

Anyone who knows me from Adam knows that I've been involved with Warpshadow.com, pretty much, since the inception. It is a place near and dear to my heart, and though I know nothing about WebMagicTomfoolery, I have an abundant amount of enthusiasm for the board. Unfortunately, boards don't run on enthusiasm alone, and as much as I love the board, that love can't obliterate the nefarious work of hackers.

Thus, as we had recently come under the crosshairs of hackers, and there were all kinds of weird redirects happening when people tried to access the board for about a week now, we contacted out service provider and asked for help. They took a look through our files, found some ones that had been messed with, and, promptly, obliterated those files.

Unfortunately, those files were rather essential for the operation of the Phpbb backend of the message board  :|

So, when they removed the infected files, Warpshadow went dark.

Now the Gestalt is faced with the mammoth task of resurrecting the board from our back-ups and patching the holes that let the hackers through in the first place. Understand that NONE of us are web-heads, so we are, pretty much, clueless when it comes to how to move forward. We will be relying a great deal on our service provider for help with this, and I ask that you all have patience with the other members of the Gestalt/Admin team. Unfortunately, I will be away and out of synapse range for the next week, so I am trusting this all to Yaleling, Hydra, Hive Node, and Moloch. If anyone has any help that they could provide to them, I encourage them to do so.

Rest assured that we will restore the Shadow in the Warp as soon as we are able!

BREAKING NEWS! A message from the Moloch

Today is Hive Fleet Hydra's birthday, and Moloch, that most mysterious of modeling geniuses, has seen fit to bless the Hydra with a message. What's more, he makes a comment on the status of HiveFleetMoloch.com, which has been down for a time.



Unfortunately, this may be all for me this week as I'm heading out to Edinburgh for a week, and I haven't had a chance to put a post about my progress on the Coven in the can. That means no Flesh Friday, but I guess it wouldn't be Flesh Friday if I didn't miss it!

If anyone is keeping up with this, and you're feeling bored, feel free to pop over to Warpshadow in my absence and contribute some ideas to my Raider Problem, that would be glorious.

The Infestation of Casavant Prime

To build up some content on the site, I'm going to be posting a few of my past projects that were kind of like milestones in my development as a sculptor. I'll call them "Old Strains," and you can feel free to check them out if you're curious.



With my budding work on Tyranid Scenery from scratch coming along, I was asked by some friends in Toronto to breathe some Tyranid life into their table build for Games Day Toronto 2008. These guys had been bringing original tables to Games Day for a couple of years, and the previous year their extensive trenchwork table had been beaten out by a PC speaker and a smoke machine. This year they were determined to bring the pain to their long-time table nemeses.

The meat and bones of the table were actually constructed by the original build team and took the form of a cityscape with a canal running down the center, and me, Accommodator, and our creative ilk were given free reign to add some flare to the cityscape by transforming it into one that was in the beginning stages of a full-blown Tyranid infestation. I jumped at the opportunity to have a focus for my until-now-largely-aimless Tyranid scenery building.

Dominatrix from a Hierodule

To build up some content on the site, I'm going to be posting a few of my past projects that were kind of like milestones in my development as a sculptor. I'll call them "Old Strains," and you can feel free to check them out if you're curious.

Though I created this beast, a large portion of the credit for it goes to two other folks. First, Hydra, for if he hadn't had the spore sacs initially to take a saw to an already-beautiful Forgeworld model, there never would have been the idea to create a Dominatrix from a Hierodule. I'm glad he was rewarded for his inspiration at the Canadian Golden Demons back in 2007. Next, credit needs to be paid to Ross Nickle, a dear friend of mine and paragon of moderating might over on Warpshadow under his handle Accommodator.

When I expressed my interest in taking my own stab at a Dominatrix from a Forge World Heirodule back in 2006, Ross told me to do it. When I told him I hadn't the stones to pay $200+ CDN for a pretty model like that if I was only going to tear it appart, he bought me the model and said I could build it for him on commission.