Lessons learned - Hive Guard Conversion

[ziyousansz]

So, when I first bought my box, I decided to make a shooty prime and a melee prime. I started with the shooty one first, for those who recall:



It was my first conversion attempt, and a few things never sat right with me. The model never sat on the base, and every attempt to make it work failed. The putty that I built the neck out of cracked and broke easily. The legs refused to stay on. I moved on to the melee prime, which worked out a lot better. After playing a few games, I realized another problem with the shooty prime: it just doesn't work like I thought it would. Maybe if the unit had a better gun option, I would've had better luck. Alas, I wasn't impressed.

Lessons learned, I decided to dismantle it and make a Hive Guard.




The arms took a little bit to figure out, since I'm working almost exclusively from the battleforce bits that are leftover. I wound up shaving and cutting a pair of genestealer rending claws and fitting them to a pair of warrior devourer arms leftover from another project.


For the gun, I took the venom cannon that was leftover and stuffed some spiked armor plates to the front.


The backplate crest is a warrior's head crest that was shaved down and glued to the shoulders. I fit a bunch of armor plates to the back. The spike ridges are leftover from an earlier conversion effort that didn't pan out, so I left them. They're off the bottom of a devourer.


I settled on a warrior's head out of a lack of options. The only other bits I had left were genestealer heads, and those are too small. I shaved the spikes off the back of the crest. Also, liquid gs is amazing. I don't know what I did before it. I plan on doing all of my bases at once, later on. My wife and I want to do the same terrain types for our forces ('nids invading a SoB shrine world) but we haven't decided on a terrain type yet. I'm holding off on doing any large MC conversions until that's decided.

Thoughts or comments?

[theregistater]

Given what you started worth it looks pretty good, the middle arms look pretty interesting never would have though to do them like that. All in all You have the concept down the next will only get better. I can't wait to see your next ones

[ziyousansz]

Thanks! I do find it's getting easier to come up with stuff as I go.

I was digging through the bits box, and I found the clipped bit of tail from my Broodlord conversion. I split it in half and fixed the pieces to the shoulder of my guard, and used the gs to make a hood around it. I also filled in the little notches and joints in the arms so that they looked more gorilla-like. After looking at it a bit, the arms had too many segments before, and the hand bits holding the guns threw the whole thing off for me. I wanted to keep the wires though, since the guard model has that bar that detaches from the bottom of the arms. Updated:

[evilfighta]

Hmmm pretty nice but what about taking 2 venom cannons gluing them together (Fitting them and all) So that it will look bigger?

[ziyousansz]

I don't know that I have a second one around, but I'll see what I can come up with.

Edit: No extra cannons lying around, but I found some other bits of pre-cut guns and arms around. (I'm kind of a pack rat, and you never know when that leftover spike ridge might just do the trick.)

Beefier gun:




That's two devourer fronts stuck to the end of the barrel, a deathspitter that's split and glued to the sides, and part of an arm to bulk up the top of the gun. Liberal use of gs makes the gun more convincing.

[Threeshades]

The conversion was really going somewhere until you added the devourer bits to the cannon. It would have been better off without those.
Another criticism I have, the secondary arms schould've been made out of something else, something that is large enough to do the job on its own, like the rending claw or large scything talon arms from the warrior box

[ziyousansz]

Noted. The larger rending claws and talons are in use for other things, but I have the overly large scythes that were the back legs free now. I'll play with those a bit to see what I can come up with. The devourer bits aren't pinned in place so I may be able to pry them back off. I'm really just throwing things at the gun to see what sticks at this point.

Edit: I don't like double-posting, so I'll put this here. Impaler cannon, now with spikes. I don't honestly know why this didn't come to mind sooner.




I also took the monstrous scything talons and cut the blades off at the last joint. I wanted to keep the middle legs as a set of clawed hands or feet, since the scythes didn't look right with it.




I'm going to have to do something to his base. The pose is a little odd but the arms and legs don't really fit together to let him have all four on the ground. I tried one of the genestealer spawning pit bits, but it isn't tall enough. I tried to pose him mid-turn to counteract the two-legged stance. Overall though, I think you're right, threeshades. I do like the middle legs more this way.

Total effect thus far:

[stefan]

Looks good, I would stop work on the gun right there though, you really don't wanna make him out of proportion, Otherwise i would say give him some more rounded off chitin on the back and he'll look very similar to a hive guard.
-stefan

[Threeshades]

Yes this version I can get behind, very pretty.

[evilfighta]

Yup it's pretty cool now!

[randoman11]

Wait, you are priming your models before painting them arn't you?

[ziyousansz]

These days, aye. The need didn't seem apparent when I started up.

[ziyousansz]

I figured I should post the painted product here, for completion sake. Again, the basing will be done at a later point after we figure out what terrain style we want for our armies. For now, it's brushed in green craft paint.

My painting skills are not incredible - I've only been at it for a few weeks now.

[Braddon]

It's a pretty slick conversion, I don't think I've ever seen one done like that. The use of the tail to form the hood was brilliant.

[nidzy]

I really like the paint job! I found that the carnifex barbed strangler trimmed a little bit with a few of the little spikey bitz from the Trygon kit made a fantastic impaler canon. I still need to finish my hive guard, mostly by trimming the hoods.

I think this is a solid conversion though even if I'm not a fan of the gun...