Friday 22 July 2011

Creating a Space Marine Chapter - The End is Near!


The end is near! Just one more twist in the tail left. To all those of you that are following this series I wish to explain the time frame involved in this creation of mine. I began the creation of my chapter with the purchase of the AOBR box set about 3 years ago now. Part One of my series took me about a year to get the Tactical Marine (blue and red scheme) squad fully painted, I was still mostly  into Warhammer Fantasy at that time. The U-turn followed about two months later, so a year and 10 months ago, with the new red and green scheme shown in my previous post.

Back to the story. After staring at my red and green miniature for a week I just couldn't see my chapter coming together. I was at a loss, should I try another scheme or change the background or just plain use a standard marine chapter? At the end of this agonizing week I decided to do two of the three.

First up, I put My 'Order of  Navaar' Chapter on ice. Both the colour scheme and the background, well at least some of the background. I did this because I like what I came up with and perhaps in the future they will take the field ready to purge all the Emperors enemies from the galaxy. For now though they would be placed in deep space hibernation (a storage box).

Secondly I needed a new scheme and a revised background. Since, at that time, I was more into Warhammer Fantasy I thought of how that could maybe help me. I collected an Empire Army and really enjoyed the various colour schemes, heraldry and fluff each province had. I had painted up my Empire Army in the Talabheim red and white scheme (read 10 years ago). Later I was drawn to other Provinces like Nordland with their nautical theme. Another province that caught my eye was the Averland Province with their black and yellow scheme and solar motif.





Of these two Provinces I liked the black and yellow scheme the most and set about creating my Space Marine Chapter using this scheme on the Bolter and Chainsword site.

This is what I came up with.

First scheme.

This scheme has it all, its unique, has one red arm to symbolize the blood spilled, black torso for the new background symbolizing the Chapters mourning the losses of their brothers and now the yellow/gold arm to symbolize the sun rising the next day over a victorious Chapter at the 'Battle of Blood River'.

Finally everything I wanted!



 Second scheme.

Here I was playing around with the various colours and looked at the possibility of a robed Marine. Everybody like robes, right?


 Third scheme.

Again, just playing around with the scheme to see what it would look like without the red.


 Ah the sweet taste of success! I lovingly took my test Marine into my hands and began to paint the first version of my scheme onto him. Admiring the brush strokes bringing my Chapter to life...two days later I looked proudly at my first recruit with his defiant gaze and ............to be continued


Please let me know what you think.

Vitor

PS : Next Up - Creating a Space Marine Chapter - Finally!






6 comments:

  1. I really like this colour scheme, for me the first scheme is best. The robed one is cool, but nowhere near as menacing as the first one. Third one is just too plain

    ReplyDelete
  2. Robes YAY! The first two are better than the last one - as a word of warning black can be difficult to get right sometimes, think carefully about the effect you want to create! Good luck on this one then! :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very cool! I personally like the first scheme (Red and yellow arms) the best, and feel that the second (robed) scheme could be a perfect way to do veterans for the army that ties in nicely with the first scheme - I'm looking forward to seeing the third scheme version that you've painted too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice, I like it.

    Can't wait to see the test mini!

    One idea that came to mind, and not sure how it would work, but what if the red shoulder pad was black and just the arm and hand were red? Create an off-set colour to the red? Not sure, it was just something I thought of but don't know how it would look.

    But, I think I like this scheme the best.

    Good stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Of the ones posted, I liked the third one. It is simple but effective. Honestly, the Red/Yellow combo (even with all the black) says Howling Griffons to me - especially after the IA book had a variant colour scheme for them. Mind you, the black with yellow arms for me also makes me think of Imperial Fists (kind of a Fists + Black Templars thing going on there), which isn't a bad thing - and as a long time fan of the Imperial Fists, is something I am probably more prone to seeing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm in the beginning stages of starting my own Space Marine chapter, so I found this series very interesting! I already know what models and which codex I want to use, so I'm starting to work on the fluff/color scheme now.

    Since I'm scratch building the vehicles, I should have plenty of time to come up with the fluff and color scheme before I'm finished.

    Again, great series!

    ReplyDelete