Warp Spiders exarch w.i.p.

Collecting an Eldar army is something I've wanted to do for years. Only in the last year or two, though, have I felt up to the challenge of painting them to the standard they deserve... they're a beautiful army, and I just wasn't sure I could do them justice.
In particular, I wanted to go for a Biel-Tann Swordwind force, partly because of the background and imagery of the force, and partly because it was the perfect excuse to try my hand at every last one of the Aspect squads!
One of the first that caught my eye was the Warp Spiders, thanks in no small part to the opening movie for Dawn of War 2... the exarch was just too cool, and I decided I just had to have a squad. There was just one problem, so far as I was concerned, and that was the exarch.
There's just something about the vaguely 'He-Man'-esque pose of the model that I don't like; it's a nice enough model, don't get me wrong, but it just feels out of place to me. A conversion was clearly in order, to my mind at least. After several good chats with the other FlashGitz and some of the staff at our local GW, and a great many cups of tea, it was obvious that it would be tricky but quite do-able, involving lots of careful clipping of model parts and filling with Green Stuff.
And it was about that point that someone joked "You might as well sculpt a new one!" Oddly, that's the idea that stuck...
The model below is the result of that stroke of genius (or outright lunacy, as some have suggested). Seen here, it's about 1/3 to 1/2 painted, give or take. The body is from a basic, plastic eldar guardian, with the back clipped away, the gun removed and some repositioning of the left hand to make it into more of a fist. The head got scrounged from a High Elf bolt thrower kit. And the rest (aside from some brass rod supporting the frame of his death spinners) is pure Green Stuff.
My sculpting isn't the most amazing you'll ever see, not by a longshot, but in all I think it went quite well. The hardest parts of the model were the guns and the backpack... lots of complex angles and shapes that needed to be done in small stages. The hardest part of all was getting a smooth finish on the backpack; as anyone that has tried to get a smooth surface from the stuff will know, it's quite hard going. For me, it wasn't until BigMek suggested using a layer of Humbrol filler putty, then sanding it flat, that it all came together; it has a finish similar to the 'powder coats' used to give a flat painting surface to motorcycle and car parts (see American Chopper for an idea on what that looks like), and with a coat of thinned PVA glue over that, it looks as smooth as I could ever have hoped for.
As I write this, the model (and his squad) are nearing completion... something of a miracle for me, as my painting speed is normally in the kind of ball-park range normally reserved for tectonic plates :). I'll post 'finished article' pics, as well as a more in-depth sculpting guide, at a future date. 'Til then, enjoy the pics of the model so far, and let us know what you think!
~MyBlueOblivion

Plague Hulk w.i.p.

A good few years back, just after the previous edition of Codex: Chaos Space Marines hit the shelves, Virus finally decided he wanted to get into 40K. He had been a dedicated WFB player for years already, and wanted to try his hand at a new game... with this in mind, he found that the Chaos Marines, the Death Guard in particular, caught his eye.
He bought Typhus and a couple of marines, just to try out the feel of the army, that sort of thing. All these years later, and Typhus and his bodyguard have been joined by over 8'000 points-worth of their mates, including a Warhound titan, an armoured company's compliment of tanks, transports and walkers, and more Plague marines than you can shake a loyalist Chapter at... guess he liked them after all!
Here are the best of a batch of work-in-progress pics of Virus' latest addition to the army, a home-grown conversion of one of Forgeworld's latest offerings, the Plague Hulk. The rules for the thing are immense... imagine a Defiler, with a permanent 4+ cover save, offensive and defensive grenades, and a vicious set of poisoned weapons to boot; nasty stuff indeed, and he just had to have one.
The trouble is, Virus just isn't that fond of the way Nurgle daemons are sculpted, and I happen to agree... we just don't find anything that scary about fat blokes with idiot grins and poor hygiene! Yes, I know, that's just the way they are; but a bit of variation never hurt anyone, and so this conversion was born.
The basic chassis is a Soul Grinder from the Daemons range, and to this Virus has added several segments from an ordinary Defiler kit, mostly to make up the plague gun on it's left arm. To make the thing look more Nurgle-ish, he then carefully cut the head from the model and repositioned it further down the chest. The rest of the conversion involves almost an entire packet of green stuff.
Almost the entire torso was sculpted over, adding a layer of flesh shaped to look suitably buboes-ridden and flabby, almost as though the skin of the creature is loose on its musculature. The spinal column was extended up and over the top, running down to join with the back of the head, covering the hole it had left in the process.
Throw in the makings of a distended gut working its way over the top of the stomach plate that joins the creature part of the model to the machine half, and you're pretty much there. Virus then added more green stuff to the various armour plates, either to make them look warped, or to sculpt on Nurgle and Death Guard iconography. The end result is, to say the least, quite cool.
Once the model is painted, we'll post some 'finished article' pics, as well as a rough guide on how it was painted. For now, enjoy these 'in progress' snaps (though I apologise for the slightly poor quality in advance... I'm hoping to improve my photography as we go! - Blue).
~The FlashGitz

Greetings!

Hey folks, and welcome to Da Flash Gitz!
The FlashGitz are a small group of friends and GW hobby enthusiasts from the south of England; the ones who are taking part in this blog are me (pen-name MyBlueOblivion), and my best mate, who we'll call Virus. Between us all, we've got something like fifty years of hobby experience... not bad going!
The name 'The FlashGitz' was bestowed upon our little team a couple of years ago, by a staff member at our local Games Workshop (you know who you are!); the reason being that we're of that special breed of nutter that likes to turn up to painting competitions - though not Golden Daemon just yet - with models from our regular gaming armies. Which doesn't normally sound that strange... right up until we tell people that, on average, at least one of us has made it into one of the top five slots, and on several occasions one of us has gone on to win the competition.
The only really weird thing is that not one of us actually collects Orks, in either game system!
We've decided to start this blog purely for posterity's sake; it'll be a place for us to post battle reports, work-in-progress modelling and painting articles, to showcase some of the stuff we've already done, and even post some of the news we hear about the hobby. It's a way of showing the world at large what we can do... and if it serves to give other people ideas, all the better.
Thanks for reading. We should have something a bit more interesting up soon!
~The FlashGitz