Building a Lictor Alpha or Lictor Prime (Project Deathleaper)

 The Tyranid Lictor has been a part of my hobby DNA since I started Warhammer 40k back in 1997. In second edition, I ran four of the beasts, each equipped with voltage field biomorphs, and when the Inquis Exterminatus art book was released in 2000, I fell in love with Jes Goodwin's original sketch for the Lictor.

So much so that not only was I determined to convert one of my own to match this artwork, I even felt the need to tell Jes about my plans when I met him for the first time at a Games Day Canada in the early 2000's.

That was my first-ever Tyranid conversion, and the first time I ever tried sculpting on models. I was a bit hamstrung by my materials (greenstuff was expensive and came in small quantities, so I worked with plumbers putty :P ), but I didn't make out horribly!

But that was the last work I ever did on a Tyranid Lictor for nearly two decades! The 3rd edition pewter model failed to inspire me, and though the most recent pewter/finecast edition has grown on me, never so much that I felt the need to model one. In the back of my mind, I always thought I'd get to converting my own Tyranid Lictor one day, and when I did, I'd draw on the amazing sketches from Roberto Cirillo that came out in the interim!

Fast forward to early in 2021, when someone approached me with a commission to make not one but THREE Tyranid Lictors for them, all inspired by the unique Tyranid creature known as Deathleaper.

Converted Tyranid Tyrannofex - #Gunbeast4

In case you're not familiar with my past work on Tyranids, it could be said that I've got a THING for big, beefy Tyranids, and for Tyranid gunbeasts. So it should come as no surprise that my most recent Tyranid project consisted of marrying those two interest into a BIG BEEFY GUNBEAST!

As this is the fourth gunbeast I've made after my Exocrine, Dactylis, and upscaled Dactylis, I decided to organize my posts about the project under #Gunbeast4. 

When Life Hands You Lemons

It all started with me learning the hard way that, if a deal on the internet for a model kit seems too good to be true, IT LIKELY IS. 

I got what I thought were two Tervigon kits for a STEAL of a price...only to find out it was the seller who'd stolen from me when what I received in the mail were two shitty, chinacast recast of a Games Workshop Tervigon kit.

Kroot Tyranid Hunter Killteam - Kitbashember... the rest of the weeks

After making a good start on the first week of the Kitbashember project, real life happened. As a result, I got off my nice tempo, but I still endeavoured to crank out as many Kroot Tyranid Hunters as I could and to keep up my rhythm.

In the end, I cranked out 7 Kroot in total, which I'm happy with, but it still grinds my gears that I didn't make the full 10.

In my last post, you saw the first three members of the team:

The Trooper and The Heavy

The Priest

Kroot Tyranid Hunters - Medic

And I teased the Medic, but here he is in his full glory:

Tyranid Dactylis from an Exocrine Conversion: The Process

Last time I showed the completed photos of the Tyranid Dactylis from an Exocrine conversion, but I thought I would go through the construction process in this post for anyone who was curious about how it came together.

Here's what I started with: A bunch of my nid bits box stuff, an official exocrine model, a Tyranofex model, and my own converted Exocrine of yore for inspiration...oh, and a bottle of peaty scotch :)

I first tried to mock up the beast with the original exocrine arms.

...However, the exocrine arms weren't working for me in that position, so I moved the arms forward to extend the profile of the model. I was already loving it a lot more :)

Tyranid Dactylis from an Exocrine Conversion complete!

Howdy!

Sooo, I'd foolishly assumed I'd already created a post about this project, but apparently not :/

A good while back, someone very nicely commented on my original Dactylis conversion here on Modern Synthesist, saying they'd love to have one of their own. We started talking, figured out what he was looking for, and it evolved into this commission. I'm very glad it did, as I'm pretty proud of how the beast turned out, and I feel like he does a giant Tyranid gunbeast far more justice than modest Exocrine >:)

As he's done now, I'll share the completed photos in this post, and then I'll go through the build process in a separate post for anyone who enjoys that kind of stuff.

Here's the finished beast in all his glory:

Genestealer Cult Armoured Sentinel conversion - Magitek Armour

I MADE A THING!

I've been horrible at blogging lately, but I promise you I HAVE been making Hobby progress and sharing it on my hobby Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/modernsynthesist/, as well as my hobby twitter: https://twitter.com/Mod_Synth

Heck, I even cross-post this stuff to Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, and Pinterest, so, really, you can pick your poison.

Anyway, I haven't been sitting around on my hands, and I mean to post more on the old bloggerino soon, but for now, here are some photos of my latest creation, without all of the chin-wagging I normally do, which keeps me from actually posting blog posts!

It's an armoured sentinel for my Genestealer Cult force. I want to include sentinels since they give me the chance to create some mining mecha, which the Cult force is sadly lacking!

Long Time No See!

Hi Everybody!

Long time no see!

Brother Pink here, and I have minimal hobby progress to report on.

Last month, I roped Mr. Pink into crossing the globe for some sort of momentous occasion and it threw a major monkey wrench into both our hobbies.

Dark Eldar Grotesques Aberration Painted! (Flesh Friday)

Well, this feels pretty good.

Though I may not have succeeded with as much of my November Modeling Vow as I did with October, but I still feel like I accomplished some good things in November, chief among them, for me, is having finished painting AND BASING the unit of Dark Eldar Grotesques that I finished modeling in October.

That last basing bit is key. Anyone who has known me for a while can attest to the fact that I'm far more interested in modeling and sculpting than I am in painting and basing. Though I said I finished a lot of things in October, NONE of them were based. I fixed that his month, forcing myself to get over how boring I find basing, and have now nearly finished basing all the models I painted in October.

The full idea and process behind my bases is something I'll go into in a separate, fuller article. For now, the general concept was that I wanted them to represent the floor of a Haemonculus' workshop: a slick, bloody mess, some of which looked like it might actually be alive.

For painting the Grotesques and Aberration, I took the colour scheme for The Hexed from the Haemonculus Covens book...

Converted Dark Eldar Grotesques & Aberration (Flesh Friday)

What feels like a thousand years ago, I converted the guys below as part of a commission to create a haemonculus coven for a client.

...And they had some cool little details...

...and they took me FOR. EVER.

When I decided it was about time I do my next batch of Grotesques, I wanted to get them done quick and get them painted so I could see how my test scheme would work on them. I made them part of my October Modeling vow of stuff I would get done by the end of the month to keep me motivated.

It worked pretty well:

Coven Reaver Jetbike Conversion (Flesh Friday)

In my ongoing quest to convert haemonculus coven versions of every dark eldar unit in the codex, I've been rolling around the question of reavers for a long time. Well, I always knew that I wanted to convert them to look something like miniature Talos, but I wasn't sure how I was going to pull it off.

Until one day a couple of weeks back when I was just messing around with a Hellion skyboard and a reaver jetbike canopy. I placed the skyboard on top of the canopy, and—BY GOD—it just...fit. As in the two model components pretty much slid together like they were meant to be that way.

Haemonculus from Cephalyx Overlords conversion (Flesh Friday)

As soon as I saw these guys, I thought they'd make perfect Haemonculi.

In the fluff I've created for the Coven of the Unmarred, one of my main juxtapositions/weird and hideous bits of creative reasoning is that the Coven is obsessed with perfection. Well, at least the Coven's master Haemonculi/Coven Archon are. It's a kind of pyramid scheme, I guess, wherein the Dark Eldar at the highest level of Coven get to be pretty (or "unmarred") because of all the hideous experiments that have been attempted on the twisted creatures beneath them.

Cronos Parasite Engine Conversion Complete! (Flesh Friday)

I posted my thoughts on the Cronos Parasite Engine model a while back. The summary was that, though I love everything about the Talos/Cronos kit and all Our Man Jes did with it, when I hear the description of the Cronos as a soul-sucking parasite, I picture something far worse than the be-tentacled-but-faceless existing Cronos plastic model.

I picture an insatiable, avaristic horror: a gaping, needle sharp maw stretched wide as it hungers for souls. I picture this:

A twisted, dangerous, grasping thing. A soul vaccuum. A monster from under your bed. An utter nightmare from your darkest dreamings.

So I built it, and I'm pretty damn happy with the results. Here's a rough, 360 tour:

Coven Mandrake Conversion (Flesh Friday)

Remember this guy?

He was my attempt at my first coven-ified mandrake, based on the idea that if there was a soul-sucking Cronos Parasite Engine, there must—therefore—be Cronos parasites somewhere who were bred up to Engine size/capability. I figured what better place for these soul-sucking parasites to live than in the slot reserved for mandrakes.

Anyway, he now has a whole posse to terrorize the neighbours with:

Including a spooky Night Haunter that is emerging from the shadow of an Eldar Guardian:

Silent Hill Amnion Talos Conversion

*AHEM* - Mr_Pink

This post could also be called "Kiss of the Spider Lady", or "Kiss of the Pregnant Spider Lady", as she's become known to my friends. Also, this is kind of like Flesh Friday, except I haven't done that in a while, so I figured it's worth posting early ^_^

Also: WARNING - NIPPLES!

I took on a commission earlier this year for another member of the Dark City forum. At the time I was presented with the following sketch of the Amnion boss from the Silent Hill Homecoming video game as inspiration for a Talos, and I thought "I could scratchbuild that..."


Famous last words.

I think I'd rather be a Blood Angel

Hi Everybody!

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who checked out my posts on the Sniper Scout.

When I dropped those first three articles, I told myself that I would be able to make a post a week... not true.

With the release of the new Space Marine Codex, Blood Angels took a bit of a hit competitive-wise. The title of the article was meant to be a joke about how often I've converted Dark Angels models for my army... Who's laughing now? Still, this article is about a sergeant dual wielding inferno pistols.... what's more BA than that?

Brass Tax on a Sniper Scout

Hi Everybody!

This plastic Sniper Scout was randomly added into an ebay auction. I paid $20.69 US for the scout, 9 tactical marines, a librarian, and a captain from Dark Vengeance.

Why 9 tactical marines and why is one pewter?

Grotesque Genus: Options for Converting Dark Eldar Grotesques

EDIT: I updated this article on 12/28/2016 with a new options and some more pics, and I'll try to continue to keep it updated as it's one of the most popular posts here.

Anyone familiar with the Dark Eldar scene knows that there is one big, burning question from anyone with eyes, limited funds, and even a passing sense of aesthetic rigour.

What am I going to use to convert Grotesques?

"But," I hear you saw, "GW already HAS a model for Grotesques."

Yes, that is true, but the thing is expensive, statically-posed, lacking on additional bits, and, well, UTTERLY GROTESQUE!

I that way I guess it's perfect for representing the unit that it is meant to, but I certainly cannot respectfully field that "Breakdancing Bigfoot"(TM someone brilliant who isn't me) in my army—particularly when I put so much work into converting so many of my models.

Coven Wyches Conversions - Nurses

I take this whole making a coven version of every unit in the codex thing seriously.

What's more, I'm not a fan of just slapping a tentacle or a atrophied talos arm on something and calling it a coven unit. For that reason, I still think I could have done better with the following unit of wyches. However, I'm not a huge fan of Wyches, particularly now that they've been depowered, so I figured I should just get this unit done with and move on.