Xenos Alchemist: Siege of Pech

We've got a brand new episode of mine and Brother Pink's Xenos Alchemist podcast for you today, and this one's a love letter to one of the best xenos races out there: the Kroot! In this episode we catch up on The Siege of Pech: a group project to stage a Krootvasion of the Adepticon 2021 Team Tournament, and we talk a little about what makes the Kroot so interesting.

This will be the first of two Siege of Pech episodes, and in our second one we hope to interview Ironbeak Mercenaries and That Kroot Guy: the two progenitors of this project.

For now, here's part one:

Too Many Nicks - A Xenos Alchemist Experiment

So k0rdhal and I have been joking that we should start up a random podcast. His name's Nick, and my name's Nick, so we mused it could be called "Too Many Nicks!". Wasn't really sure what the focus would be, but for this inaugural episode, we tried doing some hot takes on this weekend's reveals from Games Workshop. Give it a watch and let us know if its the kind of randomness you'd like to see more of. Think of it as a hold over thing until the next proper podcast episode of Xenos Alchemist.

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.

Tyranid Broodlord Genestealer Patriarch Conversion - Nyarlathotep

I can't say no to a commission that involves creating a horrible monster. Ostensibly, this one was meant to be a big Tyranid beastie: either a Broodlord or a patriarch for a Genestealer brood that had taken a decidedly Eldrict turn somewhere along the way.

However it could just as easily be any kind of horrible chaos demon.

Usually clients allow me a lot of freedom when developing the design for the beasties they ask me to build for them. This client, however, was pretty exacting about keeping the design very close to the source material, which was this Yugioh card for Lovecraft fan favorite: NYARLATHOTEP!

HORAY TENTACLES! IA! IA! FTHANG R'LEH! 

AHEM.

To say I was thrilled by the challenge would be an understatement. Not only did I get to give flesh to an ancient horror, I got to do it in the service of the Hive Mind!

Old Strains: Genoproject and the Genestealer Hybrids

Or, "How I once converted a Eldar Genestealer and Ork Genestealer"

What feels like a thousand years ago, the revised plastic Genestealer kit released to much fanfare. However, that fanfare was pretty negative as this was the early days of the Internet, and the advance photo of the new plastic Genestealer that leaked was taken from the front, the with crumby, potato phone camera pointed right up its nose!

Thus began Stealergate: the controversy of the entire 40k community panning the new genestealer models before they were even released for having giant nostrils, and Jes Goodwin swearing off the online community for them having prejudged a model they hadn't even seen yet.

So, when the new plastic Genestealers finally released in the Battle for Macragge they did so under a bit of a pall. However, there was a group of us Tyranid hobbyist who couldn't be dissuaded by net negativity. We appointed ourselves Goodwin's Army, and we decided that we would embark on a project to show what the plastic Genestealer was really capable of!

Or at least I think that's how we started. Regardless, the Genoproject was born!

How to Sculpt Teeth: Video tutorial 8, featuring guest sculptor Hydra

Faithful blog followers, I owe you an apology. If you also follow me on YouTube, you'll know that this How to Sculpt video has been up for.... a while (COUGH--3 months pretty much to the day--COUGH). I'm sorry it has taken me so long to share it here, but I'd say that's more proof that you should probably subscribe to my channel on YouTube to get the freshest content as it drops!

To make up for that disappointment, I've got good news: this video features special guest sculptor Hydra. Why should you care about Hydra? Well, he's the guy who taught me everything I know about sculpting, so there's that! He's also got a sexy German accent >:)

Enjoy!

The Siege of Pech - Krootvasion of Adepticon

Some Shmexy kroot art from my dear and very talented friend Evgeny Pasternak

If you've been noticing a lot of Kroot conversions popping up on Instagram these days, you also may have come across the hashtag #SiegeOfPech or #Krootvasion. I've been meaning to do an explainer post on Siege of Pech for some time now, so here it is!

How To Sculpt Organic Armour - How to Sculpt Miniatures Episode 7

I've been dragging my heels on this one for more than a little while, but I'm happy to announce that my next full-length How to Sculpt video is live on my YouTube Channel!

This one focuses on sculpting organic armour, of the type most commonly seen on Tyranids. However, in this video I also detail how the process for sculpting Dark Eldar armour plates is essentially the same. I also do the whole sculpt big, then sculpt small approach in this one.

I hope you find it useful!

And if you've not been over to my YouTube channel yet, please head on over and subscribe as I'll be releasing a couple more videos soon, and subscribing on YouTube is the best way to get notified about them as soon as they drop.

Happy Sculpting!

Tyranid Prime Conversion

One of my favourite commissions over the last few years was this Tyranid Prime conversion that I created for a new client. Though I started with the goal of making something slightly larger than a warrior, to fit the standard size of a Tyranid Prime, we got a bit of scale creep going on, which meant, as you can see from the photo above, it wound up being something closer to a Hive Tyrant in stature!

What can I say? I like big bugs!

In this article, I'll go over some of my favourite parts of the construction and highlight some of the bits I used in the conversion.

How to Sculpt Amatures - How to Sculpt Miniatures: Video Tutorial 6

Got a BRAND NEW How to Sculpt video coming at you, this one focusing on getting started with armatures.

It's also the first wholy new video I've shot in nearly 4 years! I got a bit disheartened with how much work goes into these things, and how little folks seemed to care about them.

But I've been getting a steady stream of subscribers to my YouTube Channel of late, and that, combined with a swift kick in the ass from my brother Hydra, inspired me to get this video shot, edited, and uploaded inside of 24 hours! No dragging my feet on synching audio and editing down. Just a one-shot, direct to digital product.

So it's a little rough around the edges in places, but I hope you like it and find it helpful!

Note: I'm also posting this from my phone, so I'm sorry if it Le Bust.