Back on the air!

Hello. 

As you might have noticed, things have been a bit quiet on the Convertorum these last two months. This has mainly been for two reasons:

The first reason is that I've been trying to finish writing my next book. This has, as you might imagine, been rather time consuming ( plus my ridiculously oversized 27" iMac has occupied my worktable ).

The second and, in a way, most important reason is a general sense of miniature fatigue. I had boxes full of bitz but couldn't come up with any interesting ideas on what to make with them.  Also I've kept a pretty frantic pace these 2,5 years since the start of the blog and felt I really needed a break. That break grew longer and longer as I realised there wasn't really anything I  truly wanted to build. 

But now the book is done, the computer is stowed away and paints, brushes and little plastic men are slowly taking over my worktable yet again. 

As a warm up piece after the break I'm working on a xenos mercenary to accompany the skadir. I like the Star Wars vibe these two give off...

Kicking it old school

Hearken ye brave adventurers!


Today I can proudly announce that I´m doing the interior illustrations for the illustrious swedish roleplaying game Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons). For the non-Swedish readers this game is as legendary for swedes as Dungeons and Dragons is to english speakers - since it´s debut in 1982 it has sold over 100.000 copies. 


The game will be very much a back to basics deal: black box with the old logo and Wheelan cover, the old Ereb Altor setting, ducks as a playable race and so on. 


The kickstarter is live now and the game is to be released the coming summer: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1256540796/drakar-och-demoner

The New Realms of Chaos

Just a quick news flash to tell you that the newly started, rather excellent, communal blog "The New Realms of Chaos" has a feature about my forays into the chaos wastes. 

Head over there and check it out: http://thenewrealmsofchaos.blogspot.se/2015/09/a-special-featuring-mister-vaders.html

Thanks Manu for featuring me!

Poxgut

I did this plaguebearer as a warm-up before painting the converted blightking. 

I simply adore the plastic plaguebearers - they look exactly like Adrian Smiths illustrations in Realm of Chaos. They're also ridiculously fun to paint. 

While fairly new models, they have a lot of oldschool charm with grinning jovial faces  instead of angry ones, tiny nurglings mischievously pulling on intestines and so on. The only thing I don't like are the swords who look like pointy sticks so that was replaced.

Here he is next to the rest of Mawgut Gloops warband. 

 

Come to Papa!

The plan was to follow up the tzeentchii champion with a tzaangor, but as I was rummaging around in my chaos bitz box an unused blightking caught my eye. The lure of Papa Nurgle was simply irresisteble... 

Tzeentch may be fun but Nurgle is more fun! 

Sword and Sorcery pt.III

I spent the evening watching a documentary about Monty Python and finishing up the shield for the Tzeentchii champion. Somehow that combination felt oddly proper as Tzeentch, along with Nurgle, are the two chaos gods with a sense of humour.

I´m really quite happy with the model. It was fun painting something really gaudy and flamboyant while avoiding making it tacky. 

I used a lot of colours I don´t normally use on this one, and tried to make them more vibrant than my usual fare. Though that didn´t quite succeed in all cases - particularly with the pinks (I think I need some more practice to nail those), all in all it turned out like I wanted it. It´s really got that old school, Realm of Chaos, vibe. The madly grinning shield and checkered border helps a lot in that respect of course... 




After a quick look at the trusty old name generator table in Slaves to Darkness I´ve decided to call him Mandragore Warp-feather. It´s got a nice ring to it. I´d like to think the shield constantly argues with him. 




The shield, incidentally, is called Klaus and speaks with a slightly effeminate german accent.  

Here´s Mandragor facing of against the unsavoury followers of Nurgle led by the vile Mawgut Gloop.

Shield and sorcery

The Tzeentchii champ is nearing completion. Time to pick a shield - after some rummaging I found this classic in my drawers. 

What do you think? It's certainly has an old school charm...

Sword and Sorcery pt.II

The Tzeentch champion is coming along rather nicely, although I'm not sure if it looks quite as old school as I originally intended. I'm just making it up as I go along - guided by the Changer of the Ways no doubt...

No matter - it's a lot of fun and a pretty different palette to that of my usual output. Here's a WIP shot of him at the moment. 

Sword and sorcery

There haven't been a lot of updates recently - I've been focusing on work: drawing and writing my next big book about norse mythology.

I have fiddled around with some xenos but there's nothing to show yet. Designing new species is hard. You want to hint at new technology and different physonomies, but doing that using existing bits is tricky. 

But today I got the urge to do something old school - something nostalgic and "warhammery" as a contrast to GWs current relentless barrage of golden warrior angels with big hammers. So, I picked up a tzeentchean sorceror, gave a new bird head from an empire mini griffon and turned him into a classic chaos champion. 

While I say old school at the same time the theme is completely new for me, as I've never painted a tzeench model.

The plan is to paint it in a Realm of Chaos early 90s style and have a lot of fun with the shield doing a wierd face or eye motif of some sort.

New Blog! Get yer new blogs here!

Hello dear readers!

I´ve started up a new blog focusing on my exploits as an illustrator. Check it out here:
 http://johan-egerkrans.blogspot.se/

Now back to the xenos warband...

The Hunter

- The Skadiir -

Hailing from the infamous ironwoods of the Garmian cluster the skadiir are a race of fierce and proud hunter-witches. Trackers beyond compare, with the ability to psychically home in on their quarry´s warpshadow, they are sometimes found in the employ of less than orthodox imperial agents.

The ironwoods are giant spherelike aggregates of thorns the size of small moons, orbiting the upper atmosphere of gas giants common in the cluster. These floating forests can all be considered as deathworlds, each teeming with various ferocious ecoystems of their own.

Only female skadii are ever encountered by outsiders - the males are hulking semi-sentient beasts who roam the cores of the ironwood orbs. When reaching maturity a skadii must earn the right to become a full member of the ruling matriarchy. She goes on a quest to hunt down and kill a particular prey. The more powerful the quarry the greater the honor, but she cannot rejoin her coven-pride until the quest is complete. Most choose among the various feral beasts roamning the forests of the thornworlds, but some particularly adventurous skadii choose exotic targets such as zoats, ork warlords or chaos champions (or in some cases even senior space marines ). It is these hunters that normally come into contact with the imperium. Should their goals coincide a skadii might be persuaded to join an Inquisitors warband.

If their hunt is successful they return to their home and are given the right to mate - otherwise they will stalk the stars until they die. The female goes into the deepwoods in search of one of the feral males, capture him and bring him back to the pride. There they mate and when the mating process is over the coven-pride kills and consumes the male. After bearing a huge litter the young hunter-witch is taken up as a full member of the matriarchy and her full psychic powers develop.

=I=

Predator in progress

Here's a little sneak peek of the Hunter halfway through the painting process. Getting the mottled predatory skin right was a lot of fun. 

Turned out a little "krootier" than originally planned perhaps, but I'm still quite happy with it. 

The hunt is afoot!

Early this year I was invited to partake in Iron Sleets first Invitational. My first plan was to create a group of xenos bountyhunters in an attempt to show off the diversity of sentient life in the galaxy. 

This unfortunately proved a bit too ambitous and I got completely stuck - none of the xenos turned out the way I wanted them. In the end I decided to do a slaaneshii themed entry instead where one of the xenos was reworked into a warped hellbrute construct. 

The xenos that I felt worked best - nicknamed The Hunter - was temporarily shelved after he had a little accident. Now however, I feel the time has come to get back to him as I'm really quite fond of this mini. There's a certain feline menace about him...

He'll probably end up part of Carax growing retinue of miscreants or I may actually do an entire band of xenos like originally intended.