+ Captain of the Blood Angels +
+ My initial plan for the leader of my retro Blood Angels army [+noospheric inloadlink embedded+] was to build an updated version of the Blood Angels Captain model that led the original army from WD (seen centre bottom here: [+noospheric exloadlink embedded+]).
+ However, that model has already been updated – it formed the explicit inspiration for the current Captain Tycho model, still available (I believe) from GW. I could do my own interpretation of that, but I got thinking about the core conceit of my Alien Wars project, which was to draw inspiration more freely and creatively. Secondly, in background terms, I wanted to make it clear (if possible) that my Captain is not the M41 Captain Erasmus Tycho, who later turns up on Armageddon. There's obviously a common thread of inspiration, but I want my take on the Blood Angels to lead me somewhere else. +
+ For these reasons, my mind hopped back to a fairly famous GW image from the early 90s. Dave Gallagher's artwork of Blood Angels was used for a cover of White Dwarf, the White Dwarf compilation, and sundry other bits and bobs. For good reason – it's awesome! +
+ The gold-armoured Captain stands amidst his men, his artificer-made facemask impassive, as the Blood Angels lay into the genestealer menace. This has long been a favourite piece of mine – it's such a striking image – and what better opportunity to do an homage than with the army fighting the Alien Wars? +
+ I'm not certain which came first – the model or the artwork – but either way it's in a great dynamic pose. The image below shows the basic building blocks of the conversion. I need to build up the waist with greenstuff – it's currently a spare carved-down chunk of plastic shoulder(!) that happened to be roughly the right shape – and the head's a placeholder, but I'm pleased with the general feel. +
+ I've departed from the halo being attached to the head (though it may go back once I've got the proper piece), but have tried to follow the inspiration fairly closely. Of particular note is the heraldry – a wing with three blood drops – which was fun to make.
3 comments:
One of my favourite pieces of artwork and it is great to see you oayour by homage to it!! I'm really loving his blood angels project! It's making me want to paint something red!!
This is an excellent conversion Apologist. :) I think that head is spot-on actually. My only suggestion would be to indeed go back to having the halo linked to the head. It's only one of the things that makes the artwork, and would provide a very strong link between the model and the image. :)
I'm glad you said that – I've been umming and ahhing about it for ages; so it's good to know which way to go :)
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