Librarian, Ironclad Dreadnought Giveaway Progress! Tons of converting!

Old School here with an update on the dreadnoughts from my part in the Super Blog Chain Give-away. I have been hard at work putting my converting skills to the test for the Iron clad for Chosen1 at Team Snake Eyes and the librarian dread for Damien on Tales from the Warzone. So far I am happy with the results and I wanted to share these progress photos with you. The first 4 photos, including the one above are of the Librarian Dreadnought for Damien's Knights of Blood!

Here is a shot of the dreadnought from above. I wanted it to have a larger than life feel and wanted it to look like it has been armoured with the reverence that would fit a former HQ choice for a chapter. The shoulder pads are from the Defiler kit and have been cut down to fit the dread. They are a little big, but I did that to balance out the large Force halberd he is carrying.

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The shoulderpads have been decorated to fir a librarian. The right pad has the book from the Dark Angels upgrade kit chained down with jewelers chain and the other on is decorated with a shoulder pad from the Chaos Lord kit, which fits well for the librarian symbol.

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The head is from the old death company metal models and since this photo was taken, I gave him a psychic hood. Also, if you look at the position of the arms, I have taken cut down parts from the defiler close combat flail to add some cabling for extra detail and to help hide some of the actual construction work.

Here is another look at the shoulderpads from the back.

The force weapon is made from the bottom fin from a landspeeder, the large powercell looking part beneath that is from the Battle for macragge kit and the handle and blade are made from plastic card. The handle was then wrapped in a long strip of green stuff to give it the appearance of a more ornate, man sized weapon.

This is the Ironclad I have been making for Chosen1. This model is much more about function than the heavy form concentration in the Libby build. I want Chosen to be able to switch weapon arms if need be and I want it to fit the style of his army.

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The hammer was made in the way I showed in my recent dreadnought thunderhammer tutorial. The close combat arm is made from the original close combat arm and I really think it looks deadly and like something that may be weilded by a much more tech-inclined dreadnought.

The details I added include the Salamander symbol from an extra Vulcan kit I had in my bitz box and the other arm is decorated with a pelt of dragon skin and some small fetishes from the Lizardmen saurus kit. This badboy goes on the painting table tomorrow and if you are reading Chosen1, What colors of green do you use for your Sallies ... I could guess ... but I want to make sure.

This last photo is from a recent commission project I picked up from a member of the FLGS. He wants me to paint Vulcan and I threw in a free conversion to reposition the spear so that he is holding it straight up and down. The botton did not survive the drilling, so I replaced it with plastic, caped it with a bit and I will make it look good with some green stuff later.

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All in all, each of these projects are being treated like a commission and I am really using this chance to learn something new with each model. I am teaching myself more about using plastic card with the librarian dread. I am teaching myself to make large items and to produce scratch skins and such from green stuff with the Ironclad and I am taking those skills and applying them to a smaller model with the Vulcan project - So we will see where that goes.

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Keep your eyes open for the painting WIPs and please shoot me some feedback either via comments or through our new "Contact Us" tab. Comments and critism can only help improve future works. If Damien and Chosen1 are reading this, by all means, please send me your feedback!