Tutorial - AoBR terminator to Grey Knight Conversion (Sooo pic heavy)

I've been asked for this several times, both here and on B&C so I decided to document the next one I had a crack at.


We're going to assimilate this scrap AoBR terminator into a proud Grey Knight Terminator

First off, a List of What's needed.

The Bitz

Plasticard!
Cereal box card (optional)
Plastic Rod
GS
FW =][= Brass etch symbol
One complete AoBR terminator
One Thunder hammer arm
One storm shield arm
Any space marine hand
A suitable blade (I’m using Dark angels ones due to the unique shape)
A purity seal or scroll etc for “dressing”


And the tools used :
Superglue
Scalpel
GS sculpting tools
Pin vice / Drill
Fine files/sandpaper
q-tips

Acknowledgements

There are other tutorials out there which cover pretty much every aspect of this build, some I’ve used, some have been pointed out to me since posting the models.
The two(three) that most directly relate are Ron Saikowsji’s Pre-heresey terminators over at From the warp, and related to that iktovian’s template for PH- Pads.

And USABOB’s picture tutorial on plastic GK termies, which I hadn’t actually seen until someone directed me there, I’ve done almost exactly the same as him, but with less pinning and more GS, and I think a different magazine – I use the existing one, he uses a rhino mounted one.

I can only hope if BOB every sees this tut he wont think I’ve ripped him off.

Anyway, onward -

So here are the step-by-step stages of making this fellow

1) The close shave

First thing is to prepare the AOBR termie, by shaving off all the unnecessary bits.

Head – we make a few select cuts here, shaving off some of the detail from the flat planes thus,

Then following the line of the eye here, we make a cut each side,

shaving down until we are happy with our new mr. pointyface

If you like you can drill some “breathing holes” in one or both sides at this point. I do this to about half the squad, and in different patterns / sides. I’m going to leave this guy vanilla though.

Chest – all detail removed to make a nice flat surface

The stuff in red has to go. I use a sharp blade and then finish with a file or abrasive paper

The result is this:

Legs – again, protruding details removed to make way for the plates later

Anything that "sticks out" has to go.

if you aren’t a fan of the leg plates leave these intact and use the legs as is. Personally I feel the bulk of the shoulders demands some bulking of the legs for balance.



Okay so there he is prepped and partially converted, next is to start adding bits back on.

2) The Build

The Head / collar.

For this we need a thin strip of thinish plasticard.

Now I’m terrible at measuring, I tend to go “by eye” its the same when I cook, paint, whatever, so it’s about this big, and it gets fenegled to fit with a few dry fittings and a bit of a trim, until we have this –

Which can be happily bent around a paintbrush to provide the curve

And then glued into place

The Nemesis force weapon

Here are the components for the NFW,

and the cuts required to get at the good stuff we need

The assembly

and the product.

simples :)


The storm bolter

The bolter is made from....

Broken down into -

and reassembled thus -

Positioning the arms

At this stage and before I affix them or do any GS I get the arms to fit correctly for the pose I want. The posing of AOBR figs is very limited, but since we will be adding our own shoulderpads, we can do what we like to their usual mount, the shoulder nub.

Its this nub that dictates the angle the arm sits at, so whatever we shave flat here, will affect the final pose, experiment with trimming and test fitting until you have a pose you like. Any big “underarm gaps” can be filled and hidden later


Oh, yeah,

It's at this point you should glue the Brass etch in place,

Giving us this assembled Grey Knight to be, awaiting his first Greenstuffing.

3) The Features

The greenstuff – round 1.

The first part of the GS is to prepare each piece, -

The Bolter shroud is probably the first part you should do, it’s easy and it needs to be cured before you can start attaching arms if you want to avoid fingerprints.

You're aiming for roughly this shape, - the feeling that the whole bolter is some kind of armour peice or "cuff"

Next is the body, first step is to pack the GS in there where you need it,

then smooth and shape it to your heart's desire

Once cured, clean off the Vaseline with a q-tip and we're ready to move on.

The plasticard

Here is where I cut and fit the custom pieces, I have to give props here to Ron Saikowski over at From the Warp, without his tutorial and emails I wouldn’t have got these stages down.

Anyway I draw out the following, and mount to plasticard.

I cut out the scrap insides

I then mount this onto cardstock. (the previous two models I used cereal box card, for this one I tried using all plasticard, having found some very thin sheet styrene, allowing me to make the leg plates a little thinner and the feet more visible, as people seem to have expressed a preference for)

And cut the outline

A little curving round the brush and we are ready to go

Glue in place

You can see some issues with the new thin styrene in that is has a tendancy to bend in one place rather than smoothly, not a problem though, a rub over with a sculpting tool smoothes away most of this.


Next we put in some structure for a Tabard – a simple peice of styrene for mount, thicker card this time.

Affix arms

You can pin these if you wish, but I haven’t needed too yet, there's lots of plastic to plastic surface area which means good glue adhesion with CA.

Once the arms are on we can Affix the shoulders.

Bend,

place,glue.

Greenstuff round 2 - tabard and edging

First up, repair any cracks or visible seams in the plasticard parts

After that we are going to apply GS to the tabard plastic to build up folds and create a dynamic shape.

Slap it on first.

Then refine the shape

Then smooth and improve

Don’t forget the back

Detail and done.

Last step is to glue on a few purity seals and bolt heads

The seals just get glued in place, along with a few skulls to "hold the tabard on"

Then the bolts

Theres a trick to getting little things stuck on,

use a Cocktail stick as a glue applicator, dip and drop.

then use a Needle to deposit and position the item

There we are.

One GK Termie, from an AoBR box.

Last thing is....

The base

So here’s what you need to make bases like mine

The "basic" ingredients are :

Wood filler (I think called “spackle” in the US)
Ballast/gravel (your regular basing mix)
And a base (obviously)

I tend to dress this up with “interesting” stuff.

One of my staples is bits of broken plaster, whenever I cast anything is plaster I cast up the leftovers in anything I have handy, then I break it up. This gives me a great material with a mix of rough and smooth surfaces, which makes an excellent concrete/plascrete stand in.

I also use leftover bitz – usually from vehicles. These GK so far have a cut up barell, some tread and this fellow is getting a broken searchlight.

I also keep/ mix in things like wire mesh, balsa wood and these wicked sheets of textured styrene, I’ll use some on this with a tread plate texture.

Okay so thats the “stuff”.

Tools are very simple,
A scalpel,
a pin vice/drill (to mount the guy in the end)
a palette knife for spreading the filler
that’s pretty much it.

Method.
Play around with the bits and test fit them, make any cuts/changes so they fit how you want

With fiddly things you might need to use the old “blu-tak” vice trick

Slap some wood filler on the base, and push it about till you’re happy.

Then stick your interesting bits on

You can choose to either impress some ballast now, or glue it on later. I like to apply it while the filler is still wet.

You might want to just “eye up” and check the mini will sit how you want, with experience this gets easier, but expect your first few to look like they are climbing Kilimanjaro.

That’s it. Leave it to set. ( a couple of hours usually, but read your filler tub)



And last but not least, Here is the whole thing primed and ready for paint.

(of course hes just "resing" in place as I'll paint them seperately.)

All I can say is I hope that tutorial had value for you and if it did, please let me know.

If there's anything i've taken for granted you know, or if you've any questions in general, let me know what I missed or what you'd like to know and I'll do my best to answer.

AoBR Grey Knight Terminator 2

Judgement day? hrm maybe not.

Anyway I've produced another of these guys, a little more refined this time, a few changes, nothing so significant that he looks out of place next to his brother (*see last pic) but hopefully a little improved. some more colour which I hope will add to the unit as a whole, and a slightly different construction which has hopefully slimmed down the pads a little, while still keeping them as huge as I wanted :)

I've a good few more of these to produce, and they are quite intesive, but I think worth it, what do you think?