Update July 23, 2012 (two things)

I wanted to talk about two things today.  First let’s talk about projects. I've had a lot of requests lately and I've figured out that the pile needs to be written down so I don’t forget anything.  I don't want people to not request things but i felt it important to actually record what I'm working on.  This will be in no particular order.

Lets see…

Sisters of Silence heads (Female with respirator and top knot)
Dark Eldar Harlequin Rider Heads (pilot mask with harliquine icons)
Dire Avenger Heads (possible upgrade sprue with weapons and banner)
Female Marine Bare Heads (female various hair styles)
Adeptus Custodes Heads (Male mk3 or 4 heads with wing motif and plumes)
Space Marine Shoulder Pads (about 400 of them, more on this below)
Space Marine Shields (heavy and light varients of about 300 chapters)
Space Marine vehicle icons (not sure I’ll do this but was asked once if I was going to and said maybe)
Revision of Mk0 Heavy Armor (exo armored Terminator)
Revision of Mk3b Heavy Armor (standard Terminator)
Total Remake of Female Marines (using beefier body design, likely with custom armor varients)
Hurricane Gunship Revision (custom storm talon alternative)
Tsunami Dropship (custom Storm Raven alternative definitely to expensive)
Iron Eagle Motorbike (motorcycle alternative)
Iron Eagle Heavy Motorbike (attack bike alternative)
Iron Eagle Trike Variant (3 wheeled bike alternative)
Sky Eagle Grav Bike Revision (jetbike revision)
Ground Taker Transport Revision (back burnered due to cost but still on the list)
Chevalier Warmech (Knight Titan alternative likely to expensive)
Gyrojet Rifles with secondary weapons (Combi-weapons)
Advanced gyrojet revisions (custom bolter revisions including pistols/combi-weapons/alternate weapons)
Blood Pack upgrades (blood pack icons and spiky lasguns)
Imperial Guard upgrades (shoulder pad-less guard arms, female guard uniforms)
Protoss (star craft race in 28mm scale)
Batman Heads (space marine and IG Scale)
Star Wars Storm Trooper Heads (Space Marine and IG Scale)
Eldar Wraith Lord Harlequin canopy (head for wraithlord, possible project)
Eldar Falcon Harlequin Canopies (for turret and vehicle body, possible project)
Aspecies Of Mu (advanced counts as space marine race, includes advanced power armor and centaur power armor variants)
Golden Legion (intricately detailed marine chapter, torso finished, arms mostly finished, legs left to complete, yes they are male legs no I won’t do 700 varients)
Emperor’s Tide Chapter (custom aquatic marine chapter, packs done, weapons done, need flippers and aquatic helms)
Scythes of the Emperor revision (custom female marine chapter, bodies done, scythes done, packs done, need cloaked arms, and add on cloth draperies, custom heads as well)
Iron Warriors Display (custom cybernetic arms for evil warriors, barely started)
Daemon Hammor rescale(7” scale D’hammer redesign)
Various Weapons Requests (combi weapons, frost blades, heresy axes, daemon weapons, necron weapons, eldar weapons)
Dalek Revision (revised dalek, spider dalek, heavy weapons dalek, supreme dalek upgrades, I haven’t gotten back to these but need to)
Other Franchise Figures (Ed209, T51b power armor, Starcraft Space Marine, these requests are very slow projects since they are built mostly from scratch)
MK16 Damocles armor (this was a maybe request, not sure I like the armor design enough to put in the work)

Tau Drones (various drones to build armies with cause GW won’t package drones alone)
Upgrade Sprues (still want to fix my Crusader and do my Death Cult and Arbites upgrades, maybe a servitor one too, so hard to get back to these)

So that’s my project list at the moment. I think everything is on there.  I might have a few other things that have been requested, if I’ve forgotten anything drop it in the comments.

On to topic number two.  Space marine shoulder pads.  This is of course a huge ongoing project so I thought a status update would be good.  I’ve designed approximately 290 space marine chapter icons.  These are sitting in sketchup in a 150mb design file.  I’ve just started work on my next batch of chapters this weekend.  I’ve completed maybe 15 chapters of those 290. 

I’m primarily going off of this list from lexicanum. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Space_Marine_Chapters#.UA3EgWGe6So

This rather comprehensive list includes both loyalist and traitor chapters which is quite helpful. They also have a pictorial list of chapters which includes an image of those chapters that have iconography chosen.  I’ve also been cross referencing chapters against the lists below.  I do this because there isn’t a definitive list of iconography and chapter names.  You’ll notice that lexicanum’s list of chapters is quite extensive but about 100 chapters have no icons.  This is generally because GW never ascribed an icon for them and generally their fluff or background material is so mundane or nonexistent that no one else has either.

It’s a symptom of Space Marine gluttony in modern 40k.  GW names chapters just to kill them off.  They do this for several important reasons.  Firstly they have different people write different codex’s so no writer wants to step on another writer’s toes so they avoid overlapping fluff as much as possible.  Second, the core space marine armies IE Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Ultra Marines, and Black Templars, are pretty much sacred.  If anything grand and inventive was ever planned with the other first founding chapters it’s mostly forgotten now.  Customers would cry doom if any first founding chapters got their ass kicked and their design team would redacted overnight if anything sucky happened to the favored chapters.  Thus they invent new chapters to shaft.  Thirdly, a longtime ago people would write in to white dwarf with original ideas.  It was one of the things I loved about the old dwarf.  But the chapter approved articles and space marine icon line ups and such were compiled from those chapter dossiers.  Games Workshop was really cleaver here.  They got their customers to send them pictures so they could publish them, then they tossed the icons and color schemes into a side publication so they could trade mark them.  Oh I’m sure the index astartes book sold out its phenomenally small print run but really the project was mostly intended to grab a bunch of IP and claim it as their own.  Short term gamers don’t really recall but most of the 40k marine chapters were created after they appeared as someone’s personal army in WD. Hell the original 20 legions were created from the ideas of individual employees, and up until the 90s were legally the property not of GW but the individual creators.  That’s’ why there are 2 missing legions and why most first founding chapters have never had their own codex.  Now GW keeps those Trademarks alive by mentioning chapters they axed in codex’s and name dropping in black library products.  Not that I’m cynical or anything.  My point is really no one knows all chapters that exist and what their icons look like, so this is a rather involved process.

I also confess that I collected a lot of icons into a photoshop file in order to recreate the icons in illustrator and then import them into sketchup.  Unfortunately during the entire process I lost the names of many chapter icons due to me being to lazy to write things down.  I’m working down the lexicanum list so I can remember what each icon is called. LOL.

You’ll probably note some variances between the icons on these lists. I’ve already found 15 chapters that have multiple icons for them.  Some like the Space Sharks have entirely changed names while others like the mentors have sort of evolved.  Admittedly this is often for the best. The original space shark icon is laughable. Also admittedly the original space shark icon has a quaint charm that sums up my youth painting 40k miniatures.   At any rate I will be trying to do these icons when I get the chance.

On occasions there will be icons I won’t do.  These icons are generally those icons that fall into two categories.  Category 1 is icons that have been done to death.  I’m sorry Space Wolves, ultramarines, and blood angels. It’s not that I don’t like your logos; it’s just that you have been milked to death by your GW overlords.  Sorry.  Specifically these are the core chapters I mentioned before (BA, DA, SW, UM, and BT).  Some other chapters likely fall into there as well like the Grey Knights but I’m not sure yet.  Category 2 is icons I just can’t do well.  The ones that string to mind here are the Alpha Legion’s post Heresy icon and the Thousand Son’s briefly lived 3^rd edition icon.  The Hydra logo of the Alpha legion is very cool but I can’t do it the justice that it deserves.  Likewise the Oroboros icon the thousand sons used on their banners is very cool but to intricately detailed to pull off well.  These sort of shoulder pads will likely become dedicated projects on their own like my Eagle and Lion Shoulders. Or I might never do them cause I don’t like the chapters and no one asks me to do them.

As I go through the icons I’m also adding designs.  These added designs may be my own chapter ideas like my Tides of the Emperor icons.  Or they might be joke shoulders like putting the wifi icon on a shoulder pad.  I even might get inspired by the name or background of a chapter that has no icon and make it one.  Such as the Angels of Flame which I have a sweet firebird and sword motif I designed.  Still others might be just random doodles I thought were cool looking with no real intent behind them.  Anything to inspire me really.  If I don’t have something entertaining to do then I’ll end up never finishing things.

The last thing I wanted to say about the shoulder pads is an honest statement about the proceeds.  For most of my products the proceeds of the purchases goes into a pool used to pay for test printing new models.  For most of the shoulder pads however I won’t need to test print at all since I’m using a template that I have tested multiple times.  So I’ve decided to take the dollar a model and put it into my computer fund.  Collectively the shoulder pads sold will help me replace my ailing computer with something that is more reliable. IE less likely to have the hard drive crash and lose my models.  It won't be the only avenue of funding I use to replace this machine but it will be part of it.  I’m not sure if the fact I intend to use the money this way will bother people as I’ve been designing things for a while without making any kind of profit.  I just can’t deny any longer that my computer needs replaced and this seemed like a good juncture to start working towards that.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Space_Marine_Chapters
http://www.gobiel.com/sonsofruss/chapter.htm
http://www.ironhands.com/chapters.htm

Chapter Update

So I've had a couple questions regarding my dedication to making "every chapter"  so I thought I'd clarify.  What you see below is my "Icon's" working file. the icons visible are the icons I have yet to finish.  Something like 40 icons 30 of them or so are official chapter icons.  On the right is my layers pallet which displays the individual layers for my chapter icons.  At present this file has 198 layers, each one is a single chapter icon ready to be made into shoulder pad.  90% of these are official chapters, either loyalist or traitors, that I've found icons for online.  The other 10% are designs I found interest such as a coffee cup wifi icon I thought would be hilarious on a unit. Common guys, Java marines is awesome.  Anyway.  Each of these icons can be applied to my shoulder pad template which bends the icon in 2 directions (horizontally and vertically) so it matches the shoulder pad shape.  Then I do clean up and a shoulder pad is born.  At present i have 6 shoulder pad templates, 1 for preheresy (without a rim), 1 for post heresy (rimmed), standard terminator, heroic scale (over sized termi), and recently a Pre and Post heresy female pad design.  Unless requested i'm only doing my personal designs as female pads so that means each of those 200 icons will turn into a minimum of 4 pads some icons will get 6.  The traitor legions will also begetting a loyal pad set and an "evil" pad set which include the chaos star.  Chapters such as the Astral Claws will be getting their loyal icons and their evil icons as well.  Eventually the 40 icons here will be completed and I'll start actually making them into shoulder pads.  This will most likely occur sometime over the next week.

Oh and for those diligent enough to read the tabs i have open, yes i'm making a titan.

Update May 24, 2012 (open to requests)

Well I’ve been whining about my hard drive for a month now and I guess I couldn’t flog that dead horse forever.  I’ve reached a point where I feel comfortable saying I’ve recovered everything I could.  Anything else I need to recover will have to be done as needed, generally though scratch build.
So at this point I’m reopening my requests policy.  Some readers might not have heard this so I’ll restate it here. I welcome requests.  I accept requests in all their myriad of forms.  The caveat with requests is an understanding that I am not a professional.  Just like wargaming is my hobby, so too is my 3d modeling.  While I can generally respond quickly getting to the actual modeling can be difficult so I ask for patience.  I do not claim to be an expert, nor do I claim to be perfect.  I will endeavor to be as honest as possible regarding my skill and the cost of items before I start. I cannot guarantee models will be perfect the first try but I will do my best to do so. At this time I don’t charge to design a model, this may change but presently there are no fees.  I do add a small charge to the printing cost of the model and will keep the item available in my shapeway’s store so it can be purchased by others.  This markup fee is used to offset the cost of ordering test models.  I also reserve the right to make derivative works based on a model I create from requests.  To request something you can message me here on my blog or through private messaging on shapeways. 

Presently the only requests I know I can’t fill are vehicles, the cost to print them is prohibitive.  If shapeways or another service ever makes this reasonable I will be happy to do so.  Presently however my landraider design would cost about 500 dollars American to print (about 200 after shelling).  I will also caution requestors about requests for iconography that is the intellectual property of games workshop or their subsidiaries.  While I may still make such icons I will not directly reproduce their icons in their entirety.  There will be differences.  That being said I welcome such designs when GW has not produced products to fill the needs of fans such as chapters and iconography that is only used in print and not in models.  My advice when requesting is to be as direct as possible.  Tell me what you want give me examples if possible.  I won’t tell GW or hold anything against you but I will tell you if it isn’t possible.

I look forward to any requests I get and working with people on new projects.

That being said let’s see what I’ve been working on.

So I’ve had some requests already which have sort of captured my imagination.  Firstly I got a request for one of my favorite armies fluff wise.  I personally have a lot of armies but there has always been something about the Tau that entertained me.  At least on paper.   The current rule book makes them pretty hard to play but their backstory still inspires me.  For The Greater Good!
Well Jimjimjimmyjim, a friend on shapeways, has requested a special stealth suit model.  The Tau stealthsuits are a fun variant power armor with cloaking capabilities.  Jim wants a suit printed in FD/FUD to take advantage of the material’s transparent properties.  The goal is to make a clear model so it appears cloaked on the table top.  Awesome idea.  In the past I’ve seen this done by recasting GW figures in clear resin, but that difficult and time consuming process requires a lot more skill and resources than 3d printing.

So Jim requested I build a Tau stealth suit model based on the XV25 stealthsuit chassis. This is the 3^rd complete figure I’ve designed and the first non-human figure.  The overall figure is up sampled from a model for fallout 3. This got me a basic pose to use. However the detail in the fallout model was marginal so all armor plates have been scratch built along with the arms, legs, and head.  A little less than 25% of the original model remains. The model was modularized to allow for more pose ability than the GW model.  I’m looking to make 2 to 3 leg and arm poses for the XV25.  I’m presently building alternate head and legs to convert the XV25 into the weaker XV15 stealth suit.  Weapon options will include the standard burst cannon and fusion blaster.  Once weapons are completed the model will be available as a single figure  to start followed by a sprue of 3 once designs have been test printed.

XV25 model, in progess.

Not long after getting the stealth suit I got challenged again by JTSexton to do more xenos bits.  This time it was for those vilest of alien raiders, the Dark Eldar.  The Dark Eldar are among the few 40k armies I don’t have.  Well, I used to have.  When the new codex was released I sold off my Dark Eldar models.  Not as a comment on the new codex but because it was a choice of spending countless dollars and hours upgrading my very old army list or find the models a home so they could see play.  I chose to get them homes.  JT is building a Harlequin themed Dark Eldar army.  Harlequins haven’t had their own codex in a decade but I see no reason not to give them some love and a Harlequin themed DE list sounds fantastic.

Now JT had several requests for the army but as I see it they all revolve around one thing, the icon of the laughing god.  Cegorach is the core difference between Harlequins and both Eldar or Dark Eldar.  A long time ago GW made a Harlequin jet bike canopy for their plastic Eldar jetbikes but no such item was developed for the beautiful new DE jetbikes.  So JT’s biggest project is the harlequin canopy.  From this initial icon I can then scale and modify the icon to make custom Harlequin helms and so on.

I started this project in a digital clay modeling software called Sculptris.  Sculptris is free and lets me start with a human face model and let me distort it like I would real clay sculptures.  From here I export into sketchup and modify the model by mirroring the design for uniformity.  Using measurements JT got me from the DE jetbike canopy I then scaled and distorted the mask shape I had made. I’ve subdivided and scalped the edges of the face to make the canopy less organic.  Next I’ll introduce the blades and modify the underside to mount on the existing jetbike chassis.

The face used as the basis for this design will then be reused as a mask to make a harlequin jetbike rider helm.  Also on the docket for this project is a series of thin chain blades for the elder and a harlequin’s kiss because the weapon just entertains me.

Cegorach Face Icon, Jetbike canopy in progress.

Just in this past week I’ve also got requests for a master crafted bolt pistol based off my current bolt pistol designs,  a preheresy chain axe, Storm Raven shoulder pads, and Red Scorpions Shoulder pads.  As I said if you want to add to my workload drop me a line here on my blog or on http://www.shapeways.com/shops/dynath.

What’s in my personal cue?  Well expect me to focus more on single projects so that I complete entire concepts to avoid loss due to hdd problems.  The first is minor revisions to the Scythes of the emperor line including the revised arms I’ve promised.  Also I intend to complete my Golden Legion figures I’ve been working on for forever.  Further down the road another custom chapter, the Emperor’s Tide, including aquatic space marine equipment hehehehe.  And eventually my first custom race for 40k, the Auspicis of Mu… And along the way with all this I’m going to work on some new ranged weapons and some melee weapons so stay tuned…