08/04/2020

Khoron Avir, Champion of Nurgle

Day whatever of confinement. Though we're doing good given the circumstances, my mind usually goes faster and beyond recommendable standards. So beware. I'm trying an experiment [Spoiler: doesn't end well]. With all the bombardment from the news, the situation and all, I remembered I have all the Dark Imperium box inside... well, a box. And I remembered there's a Champion of Nurgle in the set. And then a (EU approved led) bulb lit over my head, I simply came with the name of Khoron Avir, Champion of Nurgle. And I knew I had to do something about it.

Oh, come on, don't put that face. The concept is pure Rogue Trader.

Here it all begins
First things first. I had to replace that absurd helmet. I can't stand it. If this is going to be a proper Terminator Champion it needs a proper Terminator head.

Hush. No discussion about it.
You can see I cut the belly out. This is some serious guy, not a soap opera villain. I'm taking the rotten flesh and tentacles and shit out; I can't bear seeing a putrid belly and pretending it has the same protection than the armour. I have some clear ideas in mind, I'll share as I unfold this conversion.
Next step. If this is going to fight my Space Sharks Force or whatever, it has to be tall enough! I mean, this is actually my first Realscale Terminator attempt ever! Wow, fingers crossed...

So the legs have to be slightly enlarged
Awkward pose at the moment, I hope I can solve that
Well, more or less this is going to be it
We are usd to see (even more in recent times) Nurgle guys with giant maws on the belly, tentacles and stuff, you know what I mean. It's nice (if that's the word), it's daemonic, it's scary, it's distinctive... But it doesn't work for me at some level.
Right, if  we are dealing with some possessed Marine I can see the claws, maws and paws. Whatever, dude. But if we are in front of a Chaos Space Marine, we have to make the right questions. What are they? What is their purpose, how do they wage war, what is the nature of the being I'm about to paint/convert? How does this armour work? How does this weapon shoot?
I'm not sold on the idea of rotten, rusty-to-death bolters or armours, and that's a thing we often see about Nurgle. Sorry, I'm not a fan of the This works because Chaos idea. This is not a daemon prince, not a vessel possesed by a Warp entity. This is a Space Marine. A Chaos Space Marine. He wears an armour, which has to be designed to protect its bearer. And he shoots a firearm, he doesn't fire bolts from his fingers, so the weapon cannot be ridiculously rusty.

Now that you see my train of thought (of course you may disagree!), let's move forward. The weapon. The model comes with this huge axe:

I think it would do great on an Ork. But not here
The huge two handed weapon seems odd to me on such a mini. The flexibility and agility you need to wield such a weapon is something I don't see on a Terminator. They are bulky, they are adamant, ready to resist whatever the enemy throw at them. I thought I could use a more traditional approach.

Storm bolter and chainfinst from the Space Hulk box
I wasn't convinced by this pose, and the banner pole was too tall
However, I'm happy with the size of this monster
I repositioned the chainfist and randomly added som texture paint on the model, so it could represent rust and decay to some extent.


Well, let's see how this works! Paint time!

I think I messed it to some point. I'll let you judge. I had a clear idea. I didn't want it painted green, and of course I wouldn't paint it white. I wanted to show decay and the concept of a really old armour with no paint, with tons of damage and signs of rust and stuff, yet functional.
Risky.

I followed the same steps that I used for my Underworlds Sigmarites, trying to get a bare metal effect. So first thing, dark metal:

Iron Warriors? Nope, never heard of them
Leather brown wash:
I'll never understand why they call it 'wash' if it looks dirtier
German camo + dark brown wash:

On a retrospective, I should have left it here
Orange wash:
Or even here
Maybe this was the no return point. I used a brown/reddish ink. And it suddenly looked awfully metallic:
Oooops. How do I solve this?
I went back to the bare metal and tried to add dirt and stuff, but I don't think I got it back to the point I had already achieved. Well. Whatever the case, sometimes you have to admit you kind of screwed the thing, but you cannot get obsessed. You must let it go. Lesson learned, next time I'll do better.
I made my best to solve it, and this is what I got:


Khoron Avir, Champion of Nurgle
At least you cannot say he looks clean
Oh, the size of the beast (remember, that Space Shark is a realscale guy)
Alongside an old Terminator
So, cousin, you are new in the neighbourhood...
I think I may explore other paths for future Plague Marines. Though keeping the same way, I'd like to try an all-brown palette, for rusty metals and so. Well, we'll see. For now I'll let the Champion of Father Nurgle spread his blessings at a planetary scale.
Stay safe!

20 comments:

  1. You set yourself a real challenge with this one, and the converting work is excellent.

    I feel that the rusty paint job has resulted in a bit of a lack of definition. If you compare against your other nurgle figures, they all have colour variation that help to define the details - the pale horn and pustules on the RT figure, the red markings, gunmetal weapons and blue lenses on the other plague marines. You could (for example) paint the right shoulder spike bone, the fist markings red, and the storm bolter gunmetal, and it might help?

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    1. Thank you! I think you defined it perfectly, it lacks definition above all. I tried a very strict palette and I think more colours are needed. I will most likely repaint the mini, so I have a few things to think about...

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  2. It looks great! I especially love the head swap.

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    1. Thanks! For me the original head was a no go. I could have worked with something more tech-like, but having that spare old head just solved the issue. I thought of adding some spikes or stuff, but honestly there was no room for that! :D

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  3. I'm with you on the Nurle Marine aesthetics, GW have gone a bit too far with the guts hanging out and the armour falling to bits for my tastes (they did the same sort of thing with Space Wolves and their Frosty McFrost crap), sometimes less is more. Great work with the conversion work, he looks more sinister and less cartoony.

    I like your choice of colour scheme, I just think he needs a bit of black lining to accentuate the detail because he looks a bit muddy. I'd recommend Windsor & Newton water mixable oil colour (Yeah I know it sounds like a contradiction, but really it's a thing). It allows you to paint it on and feather it our with water without harming the paint scheme. You can black line a model like this in 10 minutes.

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    1. Thank you! I totally agree, there are some recent designs that are sooo over the top that I think GW missed the point about them (or maybe it's just me!). But right, less is more.
      Thanks for the tip! I'll dig into it!

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  4. Gotta give yourself permission to fail so you will have the room to grow. I really messed up a special resin Chaos Hound recently experimenting with Tallassar Blue – gunked up all the detail on the fur and it went gloss. But one day, I might be better at deploying that colour.

    And you got the figure finished, so that counts as successful!

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    1. Ouch, I feel your pain. Thanks for the encouraging, much appreciated. Of course I've learned some stuff through the process, so I'm determined to try again, to repeat and to fail better!

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  5. I feel you.

    GW kinda wrote those colour and shape schemes into stone: why diseased dudes have to be all fat, with belly mouths... Looks more like gluttony to me. Same for tentacles.

    Despite that, it really works. Matter or fact, nothing beats blue+gold for magic, green and pale for disease, red and brass for hellish appearance, etc.

    It's colour theory 101, as colors themselves evoke stuff into viewers mind.

    So thought call. Nurgle not being green nor white. Neither having belly mouths nor tentacles. Wow.

    IMHO way to go is to think backwards: you are looking forward a given result so let's see. You can't it rusty ? Rust is basically orange and dirt tends to brown. That's why green works so well. If you are looking for that finish you should search the complementary: rust = orange so let's paint him blue, give him cold rims (iron instead of gold or brass) and the bukkakke him good in oranges, reds and browns.

    That was just an example. If you looking for turquoise rust you could paint him orangeih and copper...

    Overall it ended looking good and old school dirty (not like in modern weathering).

    Entiendo perfectamente lo del punto de no retorno y joderla. Pero muy entrecomillado. Mi dinochuflas era guay. Le di un devland mud y casi me entrรณ diarrea hasta el punto de tenerlo muerto de asco la pila de aรฑos, pero al final si te estrujado el coco puedes enderezar cualquier mini.

    Otra cosa es que merezca la pena. De todos modos estรก guay, pero tenemos impreso el cรณdigo en la retina. No es que sea mala mini, es que metales y baner amarillo, el cerebro lo asocia a iron Craps y tal en vez de nurgli.

    Saludos y รกnimos, que hoy por hoy son necesarios.

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    1. Hmm, quite insightful. Thanks, you gave me something to think about. That's the problem of trying to do something different!! I'll try some of that stuff and see what happens.
      ¡Gracias y รกnimo a ti tambiรฉn!

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  6. Replies
    1. Thanks! I may have to repeat the paintjob now that I've learned what does not work (hehe, that's something!)

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  7. Como siempre el trabajo de convertir una mini normal en un verdadero exterminador de Nurgle, tamaรฑo real, es alucinante. ¿Una locura?, desde luego, pero tambiรฉn una genialidad.

    Y la foto de familia demuestra que vas por el buen camino. Persevera en este proyecto y continรบa extendiendo las bendiciones del padre Nurgle por la galaxia.

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    1. ¡Gracias! Tengo ya alguna idea clara de por dรณnde acometer el trabajo, asรญ que verรฉ si soy capaz de arreglarlo...

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  8. Excellent conversion work as always! I think he looks fine,could maybe do with a dark wash maybe? But take care ,I gave all my Nurgle army a brown wash the first one looked great so I did it to the whole army,then they dried and I have a shiny brown Nurgle army, oh well!
    Best Iain

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    1. Ouch. I think that's kind of what happened here. I suddenly got a shiny mini and I panicked, haha. I0'll see what can be done...

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  9. If only GW could see it the way you do.
    I'm completely with you on the fact they're just overdoing it. That's why I like the older models better. At least they were only halfway over the top :).

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    1. Ha, I think there are some cool, usable concepts in modern minis, but I wouldn't be able to say at what point they went 'too far' in the escalation.
      Not sure if this is a step back in time, but I'd like to make not so over the top designs -just regular over the top! :P

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  10. To me it looks good. So there :) But it's missing something ... it's missing a morningstar flail because that weapon looks like the coronavirus ;) ouch sorry :)

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    1. Oooooohh! How didn't I see that! Oh, I do need to solve that! Hmmmmmm (mumble, mumble...)

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