Friday 7 October 2011

Assassinating Metal Assassins

I've been meaning to add some vintage models to my Legion project - but clashed heavily with my ideology of using plastic and gs only for my projects. This got me thinking about creating my own versions of all 4 temples, in plastic.

I talked about it with Northen and he suggested running a challenge with some select participants, seeing how much fun pimp my wizard was.

I dug up a very old set of pics of an =I= kill team operative, which despite being old and not up to what I do these days, has some nice assassin flavor and ideas.





5 comments:

  1. hey that was a quick start - either at work at night because youve not adjusted to new times of living or you are just naturally energetic - this is a bit hard to see but i really love the paint job on the gunne - i expect i do not need to encourage you to do a pimp mi assassin but i would love to see that one going - inspiration .........

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  2. Very nice, I vaguely remember that picture (am I right?).

    However, I do think you need to make the model even sleeker, or at least the weapon. It seems too clunky and crude, but that's probably because of the ammo-feed of the thing.

    What you could also do is play a bit more with the poses. The one he has now seems pretty standard. A Vindicare assassin for example is a sniper. It would be more fitting to make him stand/sit/lay as if he was aiming at his target.

    The Callidus is a shapeshifter. I think you could go for her normal look, but have her run around or jump...very dynamically of course. But, I think this model offers a true challenge: what about making her as if she is in the middle of the shapeshifting process?

    The Eversor assassin is kind of an oddball, no subtlety, just brute strength and mass killing. He needs to look slightly beefier and more muscular than the other ones. I don't know yet if that would be possible to model or that the difference is perhaps too subtle to be noticed in a 28mm model. But yeah, like I suggested first for the Callidus, this fellow should also have a rather dynamic position, but not as graceful as the Callidus. This guy is simply dropped into a crowd and then goes killing everything in its path until he reaches his target, all very bloody of course. You could sort of view him as something the Imperium uses as a terror unit, in a way similar to how the Night Lords viewed their own role when they were still loyalists.
    I think the closest movie allegory to this figure would probably be Ichi the Killer, this out of control killing machine that butchers everything in his path. If the Eversor is done with the killing, the room would kinda look like this: http://pu.cdn.hub.nl/sites/pu.nl/files/dump/ichi_the_killer.jpg

    The Culexus, pose wise is probably the exact opposite of the Callidus and Eversor. He would stand very still. I would imagine him standing straight up, legs close to each other, arms folded over each other, staring straight at his target.

    But yeah...food for thought!

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  3. An pimp my assassin contest would be awesome. Loved what you (and the other participants) did with the pimp my wizard thingy. Plastic is the way to go :D

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  4. Malika's description of the Eversor fits very nicely into a Legion army: the Legion having no morals or scruples when to comes down to who or how they kill or utilise in order to achieve their objectives. The Eversor as agent of terror rather than a 'simple' assassin is very Isstavnian and I imagine the Legion having good relations (albeit very secret or once removed) with the Temple Eversor and the Isstavanian branch of the Inquisition. To paraphrase Marilyn Manson (of all people) - let's just kill everyone and let the God Emperor sort them out (and we achieve our objectives en route).

    Aside from this, I'd be interested to see how you'd tackle the metal assassins in plastic, though. I think retaining the 40k gothic aesthetic is essential in building a Temple assassin as one can slip too easily into generic sci-fi 'beefcake in spandex' or Star Wars bounty hunter when conceiving assassins.

    This could be a really interesting project. Are you going to get the same Dakka gang on board (JRN, Dante, etc)?

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  5. Very nice idea to make a sort of joint log or challenge out of building your assassins.
    I also have the luxury problem of going totally over to making all models in plastic, but my Inquisition army is so old I still allow myself to make models with metal parts.
    I've made an ugly shemale Callidus, a crazy Eversor and an all-plastic Culexus, but still have the Vindicare left to do.
    Almost a shame I don't have any plans to use one as of now.
    Only have room for death cultists in the list I'm working on now.

    I would love to follow this log, here or on Dakka.
    And let it inspire me for my death cultists as well...

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