Ancient evil: Big goofy hats don't make people soil themselves.

I'd used chaos

warrior helms as the basis for Night Lord helmets since Storm of Chaos gifted me
with plastic warrior kits. At the time all I saw was an alternative to the hated "bat
hat" and didn't recognize the utlility of the rest of the figure. I did an abortive
experiment with chosen in 2006 but thought the capes and upper bodies were fair
game (no). Bottom line on ancient evil; The adornments will be kept to a minimum.
Terror should be that a thing out of terrible legend. Use of the WFB chaos kit and
some green stuff work should suggest archaic horror striding from the myths of the
horus heresy. I don't have a masters in 40kology so the "marks" of armour won't be
accurately represented. I'm more concerned with ambiance than a technical study. I
really like the chaos warrior legs because they scream, "older than heresy". I like
the Idea of many of my legionaires being terran veterans of the great crusade.

Oppressive presence: I like to adjust the scale of my marines. I've played around
with upscaling marines for a few years and tried some different methods. I followed
the stuff Doghouse did for years but diverted somewhere along the way. I attempt
to represent my marines as somewhere in the 7-71/2' foot range assuming a
forgeworld krieg guardsman is somewhere close to 6' even. For the most part
marine models aren't too bad if they improve their posture and get some height in
the thigh and abdomen. If you have followed other "truescale" projects what I'm
doing here is a regression but I am choosing it because it suits my sense of
proportion and saves me extensive retooling of armour plating on standard marines
to suggest. I dislike the limitations on posing the CW legs allow but if I get ambitious
after the first crew I may move to articulating standard marine legs and detailing
them with additional armour after the initial build.

Special effects: I realized I couldn't paint lightning to save my life. The first NL
models I painted were terrible(there were even some straight lines of "lightning" on
those early models sad.gif ). The models I did before I packed the army in were
much cleaner with crisp forks (I'd discovered thinned paint smile.gif ). In retrospect
they looked cartoony and still missed the mark sad.gif . When I painted this time
around I tried something completely different and goggled images of lightning in the
sky. What I'm trying now is a combo of lazy blending and stippling. The effect is my
best yet and hopefully it will stand the test of a year or two biggrin.gif .

I had a bad habit of painting marines as though they were unaffected by their
environment. My guardsmen were always properly weathered but somehow the
awesomeness of both flavours of marines protected them from the mud that
afflicted my "lesser" compositions. Possibly the most important issue I hope to

address with NL 5.0 is wear and tear. Dust, dings and scrapes will hopefully take
some of the strain of presenting this army as hard bitten vets.

This write up was a precursor to actually putting up some models for some C&C . I
wanted to post again just to show that I'm actively working at this and ho[e to follow
up with some images in the near future. I do enjoy ruminating and hammering out a
design roadmap though.

Any comments welcome, what "big ideas" are you all following with your own
projects?