Blood Raven Space Marine Armour Project

Hello folks



Welcome to my WIP thread for my Space Marine Armour project. A bit about me; I'm 25 from Scotland, UK and a 'noob' but keen armour maker. Like many of you I'm fairly new to this forum, I stumbled across it after getting involved firstly in Deviant Art (http://niallcampbell.deviantart.com) then searching on Google for ways to make armour/props and getting told about the 405th by people I met through DevArt.



While I aim eventually to make myself a set of Spartan and hopefully Ghost Recon/Gears of War armour, my main project to start off with is a suit of 40K Space Marine Armour. I've spent a few days reading the stickies, PMing some fellow 40K Armourers here and now I've pepped a few pieces to show you below. I'll try and update as my project progresses to keep you all in the loop.



Thanks to the following members who have all given me great information, advice and inspiration (not to mention use of their Pep files!): Brashsculptor, Nintendude, Amancue, Samuray, Judge and Chwbcc. If there are any other 40K'ers on the forum feel free to message me or write below any advice you might have.



Thanks for reading my wee intro - and now...on with the show!



Helmet: OK so first of all I barelled straight into pepping a file...how wrong was I not to scale first! The fruit of my efforts is displayed below. This needs no words other than *facepalm*.

As you can see it's far too big! A lesson to everyone not to just hit 'print' haha 21 sheets of cardboard later I had this:







Scaling Method: I’ve tried a mix of methods (my 'print an image and measure it' effort is displayed below) and I haven’t settled on any method in particular that works that well yet. I'm going to try just measuring my head/limbs etc and trying that out, adding on an inch or two for padding here and there. If you guys can point out anything wrong with my scaling system as detailed below I'd be grateful







Shoulder Attempt Number 1: As you can see I didn't take my lesson with the helmet to heart to begin with - my first shoulder was again printed off the bat on default scale settings - tiny wee thing that even a Sister of Battle would laugh at!!







Shoulder Attempt Number 2: What do you guys think of the scale? Do you think it should be a wee bit smaller? It’s curently 415mm high based on my scaling sheet above. I guess it's kind of hard to tell without a chest piece or helmet to show with it.







Chainsword and Bolt Pistol: The sword was based round a balsa wood shape and built up with sheets of insulating foam, covered in good old paper maché and painted. The pistol was free carved from a single block of insulating foam hence why it's a bit sketchy looking. I may redo these at some point once I've got the actual armour made.







My aim is to paint this in the chapter colours of the Blood Ravens. Now I’d LOVE if someone could please (with their kind permission ) adapt Samuray’s or Judge’s armour piece to incorporate the Blood Raven chest symbol insted of the Imperial Eagle. Unfortunately i’m not used to Pepakura but I'm going to give it a try myself. For your reference here's a picture of what I'd like on the chest in place of the Eagle:







Chest Piece: I've had fun tonight making the chest piece - 90% pepped (too tired to cut out the rest!) and it fits...just haha. I measured across my shoulders and used this as the depth for scaling Judge's original design. I added on a few cm's but it is still a wee bit tight. I think it will do in the end though!







Chest Conversion: I had to do a conversion on the chest piece to get my helmet to stick inside - what do you guys think? I think it turned out pretty well for a quick improvised fix. It's a bit weak at the moment but resin/fibreglass stage will fix that!







Backpack: Having lots of fun with the backpack and I think the scale is going to be spot on Thanks for the tips Judge!!







Helmet Number 2: Started making a Beaky helm to fit in my second chect (normal neck size, unconverted!) I'm not convinced it's going to be 'tall' enough but we'll see.







Belt: First attempt - came out fine if you ask me, I'll probably stick with it!







Shins: I've done both shins now, but these are just a few shots of the right one I took on the first night after making them. Let me know what you think - tall enough?







Colour Scheme and Ideas: Been messing around with colour schemes and ideas - so far I've come up with the image below. I'm going to try and scratch build some 'wings' onto the helmet and add on the cloth towards the end. Designs to be confirmed of course, these are all WIP shots after all.







Overall Assembly: OK Here's what I have so far. I'm working on adding the chapter symbol and the forearms right now. What do you guys think of the scale of the shoulders? I think they may be slightly too tall (like a few cms).







Good luck with your armour projects everyone, I'll try and update as regularly as I can If anyone has any advice, hints, tips or constructive criticism I'd love to hear it.



Cheers,



Niall.



P.S. Here's a few of my work area

Awesome work man, I really love the sword

agreed! Chain sword = AWESOME!!!



warhammer FTW!!! keep up the good work

Epic Chainsword CS, and the 2nd Shoulder looks about rightish mine look that big when placed on my own shoulder w/ out the armor thier unproportionally huge,.. but then if you look @ the actual figures thier supposed to be

awesome work so far cant wait to see more

Awesome work, good to see another SM build. I love the chainsword and the bolter, but I wonder if the helmet isn't a bit too big. Looks like it would have problems moving in the neck of chest armor. But maybe it's just an optical illusion.



Anyway, good luck with the project! ^^

Thanks for the comments guys - don't worry Memnonic, I'm rebuilding the helm. As I said above I printed it off before I had the concept of scaling nailed down

If I were you, I'd use the blank chest file thats floating around out there, build it, and then add a couple of layers of the pattern you want on the chest in cardboard? Would probably be considerably quicker and easier for you.

Why didn't I think of that haha Thank you for the tip, as you say it'll likely be quicker and easier. I think I have a copy of Judge's 'plain' chest so I may be able to use that



Working on the arm files at the moment. Hopefully a pic or two tonight.

Nice work so far CS. Shoulders will look huge until you have the chest to balance their size. That's when you'll find if they're right size or not.

I agree with Krovikan's chest suggestion, make the blank piece then build it up with your design.

When you do your helmet, you may find that you'll have to narrow it slightly to fit in the neck ring. That's if you use my chest file. Memnonic & I have pics in our threads that will show you where we narrowed our helmets, mainly the ear pieces. They don't stick out as much anymore.

Chainsword is very cool. If you're keen on pepping one, Nintendude has a file.



Keep it up, looking forward to seeing more.

I pepped an arm last night - so far all I can say is I think it's again too big in diameter - the length for the forearm is OK but there's no way I'd be able to wear the upper arm, elbow joint and the rest of it I don't think!



I'm going to start working on Judge's chest file as soon as my box of card arrives - I feel I need to get the chest right first before I can get the others scaled correctly.



Hopefully the card will arrive today/tomorrow



Edit: Also making a trip to Halfords later to pick up a respirator and some fibreglass stuff

Hi folks,



I've updated my original post with some pics of my chest progress - it's just about there. Should be complete by tomorrow



Cheers

How'd I miss this? It's great to see another WH40k suit topic, and I can't wait to see all the finished products of what we've all done.



But yeah, great start so far, the chest is a real pain to work with, but well rewarding once it's done. As for the rest of the suit, you going for anything specific? Captain? Flamer? Lightning claws? The way I worked out what I wanted was to make the 'me' miniature, and it's a great reference.

I've uploaded a WIP colour scheme shot to the initial post.



I will post pics of my rescaled helm and chest tomorrow



Laters!

Hey folks - please see first post for another photo update.



This time I've added in photos of my chest conversion and what the chest/helm/shoulders look like on me at the moment.



Any hints/tips/advice appreciated!



Cheers,

Great plan for the whole suit, should be an interesting outcome.



As for the suit itself, it looks as if the torso is underscaled by a lot, although I could be wrong, it just looks a bit awkward there compared to the size of the helmet and the shoulder. The helmet and the shoulders look well scaled and pepped, so grats.

Hiya,



It may just be the fact that I haven't got the belt on or made a lower torso - I can't actually make it any bigger as I find it quite hard to have my arms 'down' as it is. If I had it any bigger my arms would be sticking out most of the time haha. But I may make a new one at some point...I'll see how it looks in the end!



Working on backpack at the minute.

Yeah the arms, mine are exactly the same, I can't get them down to my sides at all (I'd be surprised if anyone here could) I think I might actually crop mine down, make a little incision in order to accommodate for my arms once I've resined it.



Good luck with the backpack, I've yet to make mine, and I'm not really looking forward to it.

Hi folks,



Can anyone tell me if it's possible in Pep Designer to separetely size Height/Depth/Width without affecting the other two stats? i.e. is it possible to decrease width without altering height? I ask as I still believe my helm looks a bit wide but I can't make it any narrower without the height decreasing.



Some WIP shots of the backpack to upload later on tonight/tomorrow (got the top half done )



Oh also - I was wondering if anyone would be able to unfold Nintendude's Plasma Pistol design for me (can't link the file at the moment as I'm at work).



Cheers peeps!

Unfortunately I have found only one way to do that export the model rescale I. A 3d app reimport the unfold again

CelticSpartan said:

Hi folks,



Can anyone tell me if it's possible in Pep Designer to separetely size Height/Depth/Width without affecting the other two stats? i.e. is it possible to decrease width without altering height? I ask as I still believe my helm looks a bit wide but I can't make it any narrower without the height decreasing.



Some WIP shots of the backpack to upload later on tonight/tomorrow (got the top half done )



Oh also - I was wondering if anyone would be able to unfold Nintendude's Plasma Pistol design for me (can't link the file at the moment as I'm at work).



Cheers peeps!

Click to expand...

In order to change the scale of one of the axes without changing the others you have to:

1. Export it to an .obj

2. Open it in a 3D modeling program

3. Export that to an obj

4. Re-unfold the helmet again in Pepakura Designer.



It's a real pain.



On the up-side, since you won't modify the vertices of the helmet, you can use the original unfold as a basis to unfold the helmet the second time around and take out some of the guess work.