After the Japanese turned their backs on the glory of the Empire, we could use some a new CC specialist amoung our ranks and lo and behold, with IA we got one: the Húláng. Now, the Húláng does have its own share of issues, but in Vanilla YJ I have managed to use him fairly successfully with smoke support, so I really wanted to stop proxying him with the LE Crane (who fits the profile quite well) and get him his own miniature. Like many of you, however, I wasn't really sold on the official miniature, but luckily I managed to snag one at a nice discount from my trusted online store to give it a chance. Sadly, the sculpt didn't exactly convince me even when I held it in hand. The main offender is the head, which looks like a Space Marine Chaplain and somewhat out of place in Infinity (or my perception of it, at least), but then there was also something weird about the pose and I decided to get my hands dirty and make it work somehow. I still had a spare Wu Ming Chain Rifle dude who is an amazing sculpt but has never really seen any play in my lists, so my first idea was to take his head and transplant it onto the Húláng. I then quickly realized that the solution was actually much simpler: Just put the Húlángs arms onto the Wu Ming and call it a day! Spoiler After a bit of bending here and there, I am really happy with how it turned out. Húláng sound like exactly the guys who'd casually roast some unfortunate guy from the hip, offering as little as a glance while they go up in flames screaming. Yes, that's the stuff I like to think about. Now I just need to fix a few details like the position of the sword arm, the D-Charge pouch that goes on his lower back and maybe a little manbun/ponytail, but I'm not 100% sure abot that one yet. Let me know what you think! EDIT: Added the final picture
Very nice! I'd leave him bald and tatoo his face, jaguar style. They're supposed to be criminals and stuff after all!
Not sure if my painting skills can accomodate for that, but I will definitely try it out - love the idea! Something I forgot to mention: The Wu Ming also comes with an SMG strapped to his back, so you could easily convert the other loadout for the Húláng as well.
Here's my latest conversion: The Nisse HMG Spoiler I needed the HMG loadout and didn't want to ruin the beautiful MSR sculpt from OP: Icestorm, so I ordered the original sculpt, despite not being super excited about it. The quality is nice and I just love the flowing coat, but something about the pose really irked me. I'm a sucker for exagerated or badass poses, action movie style, so out came the tools to make it happen. After a bit of dry-fitting the pieces, I figured out what pose would be the most satisfying for me while reasonably easy to achieve. After a small cut between the weapon stock and the biceps, the gun arm was bent in place to accomodate the hip fire pose. The left arm is sculpted palm down, but, miraculously, this works really well in combination with the rail on top of the PanO HMG. Again, after a bit of bending and twisting, the Nisse now presses down on his weapon to compensate for the recoil while delivering suppressive fire. Oh, and no silly antenna on the helmet. I stuffed that hole with putty. I hope you like it.
Next stop: Kuang Shi Mecanically and fluff-wise, I really enjoy the darker side of Yu Jing, so these lobotomized cyber slave-zombies are just my thing. Problem is, the new sculpts have a few problems, like the open visor on one of the females and the fact that two out of 4 are not even carrying Chain rifles. So out came the tools to make it happen: Spoiler I managed to get my hands on two boxes for a nice discount, so I could combine the "right" parts into 4 chain rifle Kuang shi: - 1 standard male model - 1 converted male with different torso and both arms replaced - 1 converted female with only the head replaced - 1 converted female with different torso, both arms replaced and an altered pose Most of this could be accomplished by making a few cuts and bending legs/arms into the right positions, filling up the gaps with modelling putty. The head swap on the female model was easier than anticipated. I just clipped off both heads below the cables, filed the surfaces flat and glued the correct head to the torso. The second female was the most difficult, because I wanted it to look different from the other female. The Kuang shi only have one legpiece for each the male and female variant, so the variation has to be achieved by the different torso and through altering the pose by other means. I kept the general running pose but bent the legs slightly to give her a shorter stride and a slight lean, which turned out to be a nice effect. I hope you like them!
@Knauf Very nice conversions. Sometimes it is simple ones that make a model work better or give it a unique take. Keep up the good work on these and thank you for taking time out of your day to post them.
New: Yan Huo and Mad Traps (proxies) Another package arrived today, what an amazing Infinity week! This time around it's the Yan Huo HRMC, which is possibly one of my favourite sculpts in the whole range. Just look at that guy! Even though his profile is somewhat of a victim of power creep, I deem him still strong enough to bring the pain to my opponents regularly with that BS 14 HRMC. And who knows – maybe N4 will be kind to him ... No conversions for this guy, just a slight alteration of his overall angle, achieved by putting a bit of modelling putty under his right foot, so he is not quite as hunched over. I pinned the HRMC because the contact surface is tiny for such a big lever and this also allows me to fine-tune the angle of the gun to make it look proper in the overall composition (a bit outwards and not exactly parallel to the way he's facing). As for the Mad Traps, these are proxies I saw someone suggest recently on 4chan (thanks!) and, in my opinion, they look awesome. I'm not a big fan of the official sculpts or the chibi designs associated with CBs S1 bots in general, so I was looking for someting more devious looking and well ... available for my Yu Jing. The sculpts are called "Glass Spiders" from the wargame "Frostgrave" and with the right paintjob these will make for pretty nice walking adhesive grenades. You can get 3 for around 6 bucks, so two packs will net you 3 pairs of Mad Traps, which is a reasonable price (no bases included!). Enjoy! Spoiler
New: Tiger Soldier MSR I finally got around to converting this personal favourite of mine. The MSR was taken from a Celestial Guard sniper, but I had to cut up the right arm substantially to make it look natural. This also involved cutting off both shoulder pads and the head to reposition them and accomodate for the new weapon/pose. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with the final result and, from now on, this bad boy will have a proper miniature to represent his loadout: Spoiler
Today I received info about my freshly painted Hulang conversion by Studio Jolly Roger. I think they did an outstanding job: Spoiler
Re-K0NNECT by Robot Rocket Miniatures and WIP Shikami Today I have something special for you. This gorgeous miniature arrived yesterday and will be used as a scenery element for my JSA themed board: Spoiler Another Japanese friend, who was doubling as a scale model above, is also in the works. I combined the two Shikami sculpts into a new pose by cutting off the tactical mud(?) and playing with the angle of the right foot. I also gave him the contender (because I love the weapon sculpt) and cut the right arm at the elbow and wrist to realign them and produce this slicing pose. I thought it looked really dynamic and a nice side effect is that the sword doesn't stick out as much as it did before. These things tend to catch everywhere and bend out of shape. There is still a good bit of sculpting work to be done on both arms, but the rest is pretty much done. I hope you like it: Spoiler
RIP Tiger MSR Uuuugh I want one too but I know I can't paint well enough to do the damn thing justice
Rip indeed ... I guess I can still use him in casual games. Neither can I. I'm still debating whether to paint it like a brass/jade statue myself or have it commissioned for a more detailed paintjob.
New: Neko Oyama / Domaru After a bit of a break, I'm back into the fray with a fresh new kitbash for my JSA. Neko is quite outdated and I do plan on fielding him quite a bit, so I decided to make an N4 proxy version of him. Spoiler I got the Domaru with the double blade pose as part of a split box deal, because he has a nice and dynamic pose befitting the background. The right arm with chain rifle was borrowed from the stellar bare headed Wu Ming sculpt who I repurposed earlier for my Hulang kitbash. The coat was taken from the second Shikami sculpt. I had this guy lying around unassembled and since I'm never going to field two of them (and the fact that his sword is very flimsy and was terribly bent out of shape), I decided to completely take him apart and use his parts for more ... productive purposes. The next step was the most work intensive. I had to cut out the original breast plate off the coat, cut the domaru torso into shape and combine the two with a lot of filing and bending. The back piece is just tacked on with some modelling putty. I'm fairly happy with the result, as the coat does make him stand out some more - and it's a nice hommage to the original Neko. The head is also taken from the shikami, because I never liked the domaru helmets. Weirdly, the head with the little pony tail is slimmer than the one without (you get one bare head from each shikami blister). The slimmer head did look a bit too small on that massive domaru frame, so I cut off the hair and combined it with the slightly bigger head. This adds a little quirk to the model and, again, is a little nod to the original Neko. There are still a few gaps to fill around the waist as well as some texturing around the neck and armpits, but this is basically it. I hope you like it!
