Wednesday, February 22, 2017

40K Inquisitorial Retinue (Part II) Adeptus Arbites Hunter/Seeker Team - Kane Corso and 'Daisy'


This past week I returned to the hobby-desk to expand my 40K Inquisitorial retinue.

This is Kane Corso and 'Daisy'. They are an Arbitrator K9C Hunter/Seeker team originally part of the Adeptus Abites police force (think of a grittier, more nihilistic version of Judge Dredd and you pretty much have it), but are now valued members of Inquisitor Rochel-Perez's retinue of espionage operatives, detectives and combat specialists.

This set of miniatures was released (I believe) as part of a Forge World special event several years ago. As can be imagined, they are quite hard to come by these days unless you know the right, ahem, contacts. In this case the source is a company named, quite appropriately, Black Market Miniatures. Anyway, I made a cautiously small order and was pleasantly surprised to receive my figures promptly, wonderfully packaged and beautifully cast in near-faultless resin.


I've painted Kane in dark green half armour, carrying a stun baton and a K9C sensory readout that is wirelessly linked to to his Cyber-Mastiff 'Daisy'.


He is festooned with purity seals indicating that he's been anointed by a priest of the Imperial cult, marking him as a man who has seen, or is about to see, some nasty, nasty things.

'Daisy' is a heavily augmented Mastiff. I was going to suggest she may be a Cane Corso (an Italian dog breed), but thought that would make a better name for her handler. :)  She's obviously seen better days, what with all her roughly installed battle augmetics and heavy burn scaring along her flanks


A good portion of her skeleton and musculature has been replaced with a reinforced chassis, various cybernetics and a bunch of neural injectors for pain-suppression, heightened senses and adrenaline boosting. 

Yes, it seems that the SPCA is sadly absent in the 41st millennium.


She's seen here going 'walkies' with her owner. I wonder if Kane cares about 'Imperial On-Leash Ordinances', or the fact that he's neglected to bring along any poo-bags? 

Somehow I suspect not.   

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

The Home of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru


I was flipping through a book on famous movie sets the other day and came across a section on the Tunisian film location for Luke Skywalker's home on Tatooine. I immediately felt nostalgic on seeing the iconic domed habitat, the moisture vapourators and Luke's battered landspeeder. So I thought I'd create a small vignette depicting the home of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, seen during quieter times, before galactic events changed everything.

I found these models as 3D files on Thingiverse and adapted them to my purposes. They were originally much larger designs, but I wanted something compact, so I scaled them down to something approximating a 10mm scale. 


Luke's landspeeder has been fiddled with a bit to make it thinner, elongated and somewhat stylized. I tried to keep to the salmon coloured paint scheme seen in the film.  




A few have asked why I didn't put in Luke or perhaps 3PO and R2D2. To be honest I've always liked set-piece scenes where the characters are not seen. Sometimes the absence of things says more than having them there. It gives the impression that something is happening out of sight, and so your mind naturally starts to question and provide a plausible narrative. Maybe Luke has just come home from checking on the farm's distant moisture condensers? Or maybe he's just said farewell to his friend Biggs and is now home for supper, trying to convince his aunt and uncle to let him join the academy. For me, the absence of characters makes the scene more compelling and interesting.  

 
Thanks for dropping by!