Conversion: Parasite of Mortrex

This weekend, I was struck with the very sudden desire to convert and paint up the Parasite of Mortrex. Thankfully, I thought to grab the camera to catalog the conversion.

See those primed Thousand Sons in the background? Yeah, the Parasite basically just cut in line. I would feel sorry for them if they had souls...

Anyways, back to the Parasite. The description in the codex described it as an organism the size of a Tyranid Warrior with bat-like wings. With that, I clipped out a Tyranid Warrior body to start with.

My vision is based off of the picture in the book, where the tail has this stinger on the end, and curls underneath the body, so I glued the abdomen to the torso backwards.

I had ordered some Tyranid Warrior wings from Forgeworld some time ago and had a pair left. Awesome.

Tyranid Warrior head with tongue-spine.

The rules give the Parasite Rending Claws, Implant Attack, and wings. However, the picture shows a couple sets of scything talons...

I tried using the Tyranid Warrior scything talons, but they looked awkwardly large, to be honest ... especially since the unit doesn't actually have them in game. So, I opted for a set of genestealer scything talons. This would serve to keep the aesthetic, while making them a bit more subtle.

Next up, the Rending Claws...

This idea actually came from Suneokun over at Pathfinder, back when he did his Parasite conversion. I had struggled for a long time to find a meaningful conversion for the legs of a Tyranid Warrior in flight. I hated the answer shown in the above Forgeworld link (using scything arms, or even rending arms); They just looked awful. Suneokun's answer was to use the legs, but cut off the hoof and replace with a Rending hand. It was brilliant.

One little addition though:

Suneokun discarded the rending hand's thumb. I moved it to the back of the foot, to emulate a bird of prey's talon:

Kaw!

Ok, with the talons attached, I'm ready to move on to the tail implant.

The piece I ended up being drawn to was a genestealer head. The Acid Maw head, to be exact. Above, you can see a whole head of the type I'm talking about. The tongue looks like it would make a suitable stinger. I cut the lower jaw off to use on the tail, discarding the top of the head.

With a little filing and greenstuff, I had a cool looking stinger! There's even a poison sac! Bonus!

Checking out the codex's stats again, I found that the Parasite has a 3+ save, while a Tyranid Warrior has a 4+ save. I decided to grab some armour plates from the monstrous creature sprue:

The shield shaped one will go on the chest, the other on the back. Notice how the one for the back has been filed on the underside to fit better with the Warrior's back. The Warrior's back has a steep peak to it.

Here's the mostly finished product:

And here I'm testing height/placement on a flying stand. I want him to look like he's swooping down on his prey.
At the above point, I had asked my wife to grab me a guardman I could use for reference. She got the one model of mine that looks oblivious to his surroundings. LOL. It cracked me up so much, I used him in the final pics after I finished painting him:

The Flying base's stand was filed at an angle with a cylindrical file so it would cup the tail at the angle I wanted. This made it bond very well with super glue.

For the painting scheme, I used the exact same method as in the Step-By-Step Old One Eye with the small addition of some Thraka Green around the stinger's base.

LOL Stormraven

I don't know if you saw that project over at B&C, but check out the results:
He actually modeled Dante surfing a flying landraider while playing his axe. Hahaha, awesome.

How can any enemy stand to such high-octane insultery? -5 Ld.

"I'm sorry, what was that? I can't hear you over how awesome I am."

Biel-Tan Guardians

Biel-Tan always intrigued me. Specifically, the part in the fluff about how they have much more Aspect Warriors than any other craftworld. Lately, I took to wondering what it must be like for the Biel-Tan Guardians to be always surrounded by basically elven frat-boys.

Step-By-Step Blood Angel

OK, it's Blood Angel time!

Step 1: Basecoat

Step 2: Mechrite Red
...because Blood Red doesn't go on black so well.

Step 3: Blood Red
You're not a Blood Angel unless it's Blood Red.

Step 4: Fiery Orange
This was used to edge out the armor. Now, left alone the orange highlight actually makes the armor look less red and more ... vermillion, I guess. We'll fix that, trust me.

Step 5: Devlan Mud wash
This was applied ONLY in the recesses to give some depth. I had done a test model where I coat the whole thing in Devlan Mud, and it turned out way too dark. Great if you're looking for the Flesh Tearers red, or the Angels Vermillion. Not so much for Blood Angels. I did find a remedy for that orange, though:

Step 6: Baal Red
Ok, now THIS was coated over all the red. Notice the effect it had on the orange; it brought it closer to the red armor, which is perfect.

Step 7: Charadon Granite
This is for the black gun and sword casing.

Step 8: Fortress Grey
Edging on the gun and sword casing.

Step 9: Boltgun Metal

Step 10: Badab Black
This was for all metal, and for the gun and sword casing.

Step 11: Dheneb Stone
For all scrolls, skulls and purity seals.

Step 12: Shining Gold

Step 13: Mithril Silver
This was drybrushed lightly over all the gold bits as a highlight. I'm setting up a few things here for a Devlan mud wash...

Step 14: Vermin Brown
For all the leather and rope.

Step 15: Bronzed Flesh
This makes a great highlight color when drybrushed over the Vermin Brown leather/rope parts.

Step 16: Devlan Mud
This was washed over all the scrolls, skulls, purity seals, gold bits, and leather/rope bits.

Step 17: Bleached Bone
Build back up the skulls, purity seals and scrolls. Leave the Devlan Mud in the recesses.

Step 18: Skull White
Highlight/drybrush the scrolls, skulls and purity seals.

Step 19: Gryphonne Sepia
Bring back some midtone to the scrolls, skulls and purity seals. Stay away from the white highlights.

Step 20: Skull White
Coat the wings on his armor with white.

Step 21: Asurmen Blue wash

[picture lost to the warp]

Let it on heavy, this is for the shadows, we're going to build back up the highlights with white again...

Step 22: Skull White
re-highlight the wings with white, leaving the Asurmen Blue in the recesses.

Step 23: Iyanden Darksun
This sergeant is a productive member of the 2nd Company, and thus his blood drop is yellow. All my yellows are based in Iyanden, it makes things so much easier.

Step 24: Sunburst Yellow
Nice and bright yellow.

Step 25: Blood Red
This is for all the blood droplets/gems on the armor.

Step 26: Astronomican Grey
There's an odd vial hanging from his wrist. I will fill it with blood (what else would it be?).

Step 27: Scab Red
The blood for the vial. Also, this was applied in the upper sections of all the blood drops/gems on the armor.

Step 28: Fiery Orange
This was applied along the lower rims of the blood drops/gems on the armor.

Step 29: Skull White
This was applied as a small dot of light in the blood drops/gems on the armor. It is best placed within the darker Scab Red area. Also, a thin line of white on the vial to make it look like a glass sheen.

Step 30: Scorpion Green
For the eyes.

Step 31: Chaos Black
Scribblings on purity seals, writing along scrolls, and the bolt pistol gun barrel.

Step 32: Calthan Brown
Base him!

Step 33: Basing sand/Devlan Mud
I glued down some basing sand, then washed in Devlan Mud to darken after the glue was dry.

Well, there he is. I have to admit, getting the red satisfactory was a bit of a challenge. I had to do a few test runs to find the right approach. The Baal Red made the red+orange highlight look great, but didn't add enough depth. The Devlan Mud added depth, but darkened the red too much. The method that I liked was to use both, just using Devlan Mud only in the recesses. What do you guys think?