Iron Kingdoms RPG Adventuring Party Competition Greenstuff & Conversions: The Grey Lanterns

This is the first hobby session for my entry into the Iron Kingdoms Party painting contest run by the "Warmachine and Hordes Painting" Facebook group (you can find it here) 

I gathered up some parts from my bits box which I thought might be interesting of useful for this project. I might not use them all but its a time saving step for me to not have to contently dig through my bits boxes.

I'm thinking I want a bed roll on top of the left shoulder pad. Obviously I can't use this plastic one from an old GW kit as its too straight and flat. I will make a green stuff mould of it and apply it to the Warjack while the greenstuff is still curing letting me bend it into place.

When I look at the "monster" the party will be fighting I want to customise it.

This is the "big bad" of our campaign and I want to do him justice.
The idea for him is that the oldest of three brothers became an Ironlich Overseer and set out to collect the souls of his brothers to complete his trifecta power. He arranged the death of the middle brother before the campaign started, the youngest brother began the campaign as the parties employer.

This facing will be the "main" one, the older brother and dominate personality.

This will be the middle brother, who has been silent every encounter, I will try to make it look chained up at some point. 

This is the younger brother, he is the most recently "collected" soul into the iron lich and he's not fully integrated and suppressed. Multiple times in the story so far he has broken free of his older brothers control and been able to speak to the party to tell them something, encourage them to flee and on one occasion wrest control briefly to save the party.

I want to model it so that you can see his soul attempting to rebel and break free of the Iron lich.

I had some GW spirit hosts from back when I made a Cryx soul counter for my local Press ganger as a thank you gift for all he did for us.

Here that is in case you were interested. You can read more about it here if you want.

I cut up the spirit host to make it fit better.

Dry fitting where I want the soul to go and cutting and adjusting its shape to fit the model better.

Then I used green stuff to fill the gap between the plastic and the metal of the Iron lich. 
This will be painted to match other souls I've done in the past.

I then put the "monster" aside for the rest of the night while the green stuff cures. I don't want to ruin this progress by working elsewhere on the model and accidentally touching it.
So I will move onto a different model.

I put a layer of green stuff on the back of Balasars shield and smoothed it flat. This doesn't need to be perfect as I will be sculpting wood grain in it later once the green stuff is partly cured. (If I did it now it would rip off the shield too easily)

So with that needing me to wait I moved onto the Warjack Hodgepodge.
I sculpted Grey Lanterns logos onto both shoulders in the place where the Cygnar logo used to be originally. I'm quite pleased with these even though they are not identical (I'm new to sculpting something so small and delicate)
I also added some straps to the gear I had already glued to the back of the Warjack. I like there to be some level of realism as to how things are all attached and held together. I used an empty mechanical pencil to add a Rivet to the leather strap.

I used a small section of plastic piping and a resin valve detail to add a "heavy boiler" upgrade. I used green stuff to cap the ends of the plastic pipe.

And here is the other Grey Lanterns logo and more strapping to hold on the "cargo".

Next I added leather wrapping to Balasar's axe handle. It was looking too thin to be realistic in my point of view so I think this makes it look a lot better.

I also improved the connection between the arm and the body.

Joston is the parties Trollkin express crew. I could have use the "easy way out" and just used a stock express crew member I had already painted. But this didn't seem in the spirit of the competition to me!
I have a spare express crew body which was a miscast (Which PP missing parts replaced years ago and I put the damaged one into my bits box. This does mean that I don't have an Express crew gun, arms or the iconic Trencher shoulder pads so I have to find a way to add all these details.

I used instant moulds to make casts of the shoulder pad of a Trench buster... the Express crew has a giant knife on his preventing the mould from being able to case a whole shoulder pad. Hopefully the size difference won't be a problem. I also made a cast of the stock of the express crew gun with the plan of making it in a large holster on Jostons back (I got inspiration from the Morrowan Resolute model)
This way I can scratch build the weapon with most of the tricky details hidden in a leather holster!

By this time the green stuff had time to cure so I added wood grain detail to the shield.

Then I added some rivet like details to the edge of the shield.

These are half round nail art beads I bought from ebay super cheap for the Necromunda terrain I will be working on soon...

The four of them didn't feel right, so I asked my hobby group of friends for their input and was suggested to add more in at "north, south, east and west" as well. I did this and was happy with how it looks! Its great to have hobby friends to bounce ideas off and get feedback from I highly suggest it!

That's it for the evening. I will work on these some more tonight. I hope you found it interesting to know my thoughts and process in making these conversion. If you did, let me know and I will do more of these WIP style articles 

I don't normally post about WIP's as typically I bounce between projects so often that I don't focus on one long enough for it to have enough that I would have a decent amount to write about.
The contest entry having to be finish by the end of the month means I have dropped all other projects and am focused purely on this, making it a bit easier to make a post like this with my thoughts being fresh in my mind.

Next time I need to work on the "silent" brother on the Iron lich, Joston's shoulder pads and holstered express crew gun, additional detailing on Balasar, and anything else which springs to mind!

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See you all next time!