Tag: wargaming

Imperial Fists Apothecary Biologis

On By Chris B.In Imperial Fists, LEDs, Leviathan, Social Media, Space Marines, Technical, Warhammer 40,000Leave a comment

This week I’m showcasing a very special project – an Apothecary Biologis of the Imperial Fists. I am donating this miniature to The Apothecarion project, a fundraising effort for a charity that supports survivors of childhood cancer. Members of the online Warhammer community are donating Apothecary miniatures, and anyone can buy tickets to enter the raffle for a chance to win one of four ‘reliquary’ display cases full of donated miniatures. If you enter this raffle then this is your chance to not only own this miniature, but also raise money to a great cause!

Modelling

When I was asked to take part in this fundraising project and donate an Apothecary, my mind immediately went to the Leviathan Apothecary Biologis. Until recently I had no clear plans for this miniature as it didn’t really fit in with my Flesh Eaters. But with this community project to inspire me I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to do with this kit. This Apothecary includes three LEDs to create its effects; one in the helmet, one in the task lamp, and one in the Vivispectrum sample chamber.

The glowing helmet eye lenses were created using the techniques detailed in my LED Eye Lens Tutorial, including the TruOpto 1.8mm Red LED.

The task lamp was created following the same principles as the helmet, in the sense that it’s a resin cast. The lamp uses a 3V yellow 0805 SMD chip LEDs connected to a 47 ohm resistor (also available pre-wired from Small Scale Lights) to provide the illumination.

The Vivispectrum sample containment chamber was the most complex part of the conversion. Thankfully it is hollow, but I had to carefully cut out and file the chamber windows. The ‘xenos sample’ is made from the tentacled maw of a Ymgarl Genestealer. I painted the sample and the inside of the chamber before proceeding to the resin pour. Will the chamber with resin was intended to give the impression it was filled with liquid. I used PVA glue to temporarily fix a thin piece of plastic over each of the four windows, then poured UV Resin from Green Stuff World into each half of the chamber. I then cured the resin with a UV Torch.

The final touch on the Vivispectrum chamber was adding the 3V Flickering Green 0807 SMD chip LED to the inside of the top of the chamber, facing downwards. The connecting wire runs up through the arm and then down through the torso and legs. I chose a flickering LED to give a sense of motion to the sample, and hopefully the impression that whatever it is, it’s still alive!

Each of the three LEDs described above are connected in parallel to a single 3V CR2032 coin cell battery and miniature switch hidden under the base.

I did originally also plan to illuminate the wrist-mounted computer screen. The wrist unit is actually cast in resin in preparation for this. But I decided against it in the end as I was concerned it would draw the eye away from the much more interesting LED effect in the sample chamber.

Painting

When it came time to paint this miniature I went with Imperial Fists as they are of course one of my favourite chapters. This was quite a complex miniature to paint, both in the amount of detail and the range of colours used. There’s a little too much info about all the paints used to include in a single blog post, but I’ve listed my recipes for the off-white and yellow armour below. The whole miniature was undercoated with Chaos Black spray prior to painting.

  • Yellow Armour
  • Averland Sunset basecoat
  • Yriel Yellow layer (2-3 thin coats)
  • Casandora Yellow shade
  • Fuegan Orange shade in darker areas (slightly watered down)
  • Mournfang Brown shade in deepest recesses
  • Yriel Yellow edge highlight
  • Flash Gitz Yellow fine highlight
  • Dorn Yellow fine highlight on sharpest edges
  • White Scar dot highlight on sharpest edges
  • Off-White Armour
  • Administratum Grey basecoat (two thin coats)
  • Apothecary White Contrast shade
  • Corax White layer
  • Skull White highlight

So there we go, something slightly different this week. Don’t forget to follow The Apothecarion project for updates, and please buy tickets to enter the raffle for a chance to win this miniature! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.

Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inable Snowman

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Orks, Warhammer 40,0005 Comments

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the Red Gobbo, so here’s my take on Games Workshop’s 2024 Christmas miniature, ‘Da Red Gobbo’s A-Bomb-Inamble Snowman’! Most of my LED miniature projects are meant for gaming so it’s always a nice change to paint a display model at this time of year. You may remember my take on Da Red Gobbo’s Surprise and Da Red Gobb & Bounca from previous years.

Modelling

Each year when the new Red Gobbo is announced I’ve check the preview images for signs of sculpted Christmas lights and other light sources to work out how many LEDs I’m going to need to order. This year had fewer than normal. The grenade fuse was an obvious one, but there were also lights on the wire connecting the bomb timer to the snowman. As these are partially hidden, I thought it might be fun to compliment them with an additional light on top of the bomb.

The object on the end of the grot assistant’s hat are open to interpretation. They could be lights, but I decided that making them lights would draw focus away from the Red Gobbo himself, so I painted them as sleigh bells instead!

The grenade fuse effect has been created from a Yellow/Amber 0805 Chip LED (3V) coated in acrylic gel, as per my Simple Muzzle Flare tutorial. To give the impression of sparks flying out of the fuse, I also added some very small lengths of fibre optic cable to the gel before it hardened. If you don’t want to purchase a full reel of fibre optic cable for this, you can simply cut small sections from a child’s toy using a sharp hobby knife.

I thought it might be fun if the LEDs connected to the bomb wiring were flashing, to help sell the idea it was counting down to detonation. The LEDs used were Red 0805 Flashing Chip LEDs (3V), flashing at approximately 1.5Hz. Each LED has its own inbuilt timer, and interestingly you can see minor variations in the manufacturing process mean that the frequency of each LED is very slightly different, so they slowly move out of sync. This was unintentional, but I don’t mind as I think it adds to the countdown effect – it reminds me of the lights on the Predator’s wrist-mounted self destruct mechanism!

Painting

Painting this miniature took longer than I expected. It felt like a relatively small miniature, but there were a lot of different colours used and areas of high detail. I mostly followed my own Ork-related paint recipes found in this article and the suggestions for previous Red Gobbos in the Citadel Colour App. I did consider using snow flock or texture again, as I had previously with Red Gobbo & Bounca, but I decided against it as I didn’t want to risk obscuring the details on the base.

I repainted the snow on this miniature because I wasn’t happy with my first attempt, and to be honest I’m not sure I’m 100% happy with the final version. But ‘perfect’ is the enemy of ‘done’, as they say! The snow recipe I settled on is shown below. All paints are Citadel Colour unless specified otherwise.

  • White Snow
  • Corax White base coat
  • Apothecary White shade
  • Skull White heavy drybrush
  • Fenrisian Grey thin glaze in areas of compacted snow (e.g. footprints)

I shared this tip for painting miniature Christmas baubles with last year’s Red Gobbo, but I’d like to share it again. base coat the bauble in a light silver like Runefang Steel, and then apply two coats of either Spiritstone Red, Soulstone Blue or Waystone Green. This gives a lovely glossy, metallic festive finish!

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed my latest take on the Red Gobbo. I wasn’t the only one to make an LED Red Gobbo this year – check out these other versions from warhamster_king_of_leds and therealmcrafter.

I still have a few more miniatures that I want to get finished before the end of the year, so please stay tuned over the Christmas holidays. As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please remember you can also find me sharing my work on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter/X.