Blood Angels WIP

Having posted earlier (well a few hours ago at least) my eBay sale of a Space Wolves army, I figured it was time to put up some WIP pics of my Blood Angels. Overall I've been spending a LOT of time on the Assault Squads... all 30 guys of them. And at this point I'm at what I feel is 75% finished with them after roughly 23 hours of work. Luckily when I finish them up I only have 20 more marines to do, 2 more stormravens, 4 dreadnaughts, 2 predators, and 4 rhinos. Of course that may seem like a lot, but this army is coming along nicely. I'm really using all my skills on it, and doing everything I can to make it look the best I can. Which is quite telling in the amount of time I've spent on the 30 marines I've been working on so far.

I've decided that this is going to be a 'showcase army' of my skills, and most likely won't go for sale unless someone is willing to shell out some big money for it. So it's getting all the care and critical work I can put into it. At this point I have pics for my initial work, and the first stages of detail work. I lost pic taking time this last weekend, so my next update won't have 5 of the stages I went through and will be jumping to post-varnishing, highlighting, face/eye painting, detail repaint, and touch-up work.

So here we go...

In the beginning there were legs with torsos and jump packs... and it was good.

Here we are after the spray with Pure Red and a few of them getting hit with white in areas.

A bit further along, now all the marines have white on them in some places.

At this point I've begun using a charcoal grey color to fill the areas that will be black. Weapons, assault markings, flex joints, etc.

This picture shows that not all weapons are going to be done with a base of charcoal grey/black. Some are going to be red or other colors.

My mass of swappable packs for them, for those times that I want them to run around and not jump.

At this stage only the red base and charcoal grey are in use on the packs.

 Of course, I spent the time and effort to magnetize the packs and jump packs for the marines. I also magnetized a handful of them for weapon swapping. Here are some pics that show what was done to do just that. (I might just do a magnetizing tutorial when I get more magnets in).

I use 1/8"x1/16" rare earth magnets for figs. Using a 1/8" drill bit I hand drill into the torso to allow a magnet for each side to be placed and glued.

To allow for pack swaps I snipped off the nub that marines usually have on their back, and drilled there. Placing the magnet in and glueing.

To make sure packs work correctly, I place a magnet on the torso location, and after drilling (or with jump packs not drilling) I put a drop of glue on the end of the magnet and push it into the hole I've created. 

With arms it is key to make a pilot hole with a very small drill bit, then follow up with the one sized for the magnet. This allows you to apply much less pressure to the arm, which makes it less likely to be broken while drilling.

 As it stands I think I have roughly 6-10 more hours of work for the assault boys, then I can get to work on other parts of the project. I've also opened up a slot for commission work in my schedule, so anyone interested in having me do some work feel free to contact me to work out details.

Until next time!