“I have bested horrors that chill with a gaze and tempt unreasoning terror. I have faced death eye to eye and blade to blade”
Long in the making, years of handcrafted opinion and vision has led me here. The first battle brother of a new astartes force. Honed down to almost hundreth of a millimeter accuracy, this secretive kill-marine represents my ultimate vision to what space marines are, and how I want to portray their qualities.
Centuries old behemoths of war made possible by lost technology from an another age, it is equal parts blessing and a curse to be recruited into their ranks. The warriors easily tower over mortal men and cause feelings of pure awe among those who ever witness their presence, but their humanlike features also betray their age and emotional bandwidth. Their movements are purposeful and almost predatorily natural in battle, yet seeing human form so out of scale causes a slight unease. They are by no means slow or cumbersome, but there is an unidentifiable ponderous quality, like the centuries of war and the mass of armour is trying to pin them still.
I reckon space marines are more like old farmer’s tractors than modern SUVs; their whole presence just screams inescapable purpose.
The one I’m presenting here, first of many, is kind of a prototype for how I want my next army to feel. Cold, purposeful, ancient, and almost holy in their severeness. This is what the utter mandate of the Deathwatch does to men and to gods. I haven’t included many ornaments or external features, because half of the objective was still to gain knowledge about the mass and composition of power armour. It is extremely near my ideal, but the next one I’m already building has a few minor changes done.
Thank you for reading so far. On to the pictures:
And how he fits within the world of the Forest-Stalker..
IRON SLEET 
This is going to be SO FUCKING GOOD!!! What a brilliant, humble, impactful start. It makes me happy in so many ways… The one area of constructive feedback would be to steal little parts and details from the razor sharp new plastics to lend a few focal points that go beyond what 3d printing can yet do. A belt buckle, an =][= symbol, some chain… I’m also slightly petrified about the snow on the basing. It ends up being so definitive and restrictive of the terrain that these thematically can fight on top of.
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Yeah, some sharp storytelling bitz will come for the next iteration. Struggling with how to get DW shoulder pads into this scale.. Sculpt on top of 3dprint & cast perhaps.
About the bases: well, wynter IS coming.. but we can have a chat about that!
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Lovely colour palette. He looks somber, resilient and has an air of confidence about him. Great work on the mini and the base. Cheers. IRO
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Cheers! The palette was tough to capture but will probably get more force from repetition across a unit
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It has been awesome following this project progress! You have done quite a lot to address some of the issues I have with the current marine models, particularly in reducing the the thigh gap and adding an abdomen. Both of these elements make the model look more anatomically correct while still reading as a Space Marine.
There are a few things that I think could be adjusted to make the marine even better! The first of which would be shortening this shins a little. As they are now, they are longer than the marines thighs, which does not look natural (too long shins was one of the elements that really made the new plastic Guilliman model look bad, in my opinion). Reducing this might also help alleviate my other concern, which is that his arms seem too small, almost minuscule when compared with the rest of the marine. I suspect you wanted to try to prevent the need to digitally print arms too, but I think it would help convey the mythical killing machine status of a Space Marine.
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Very impressive Toni!
All that hard work has really paid off. Can’t wait to see a complete army of these guys!
For further tinkering I do agree with Eric about the shins and personally I think the feet should be bigger to stay true to the classic astartes silouette.
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Ha! You should’ve seen the first feet I printed 🤣
But yeah, more to come!
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Thank you! The shins are so long because they hide so much of the knee and ankle, but I promise see what shaving of <0,4mm does. I know that any more and I lose what I was striving towards. Approaching opinion again!
And let me know how casting shoulder pads turns out.. (see reply to migs's comment above) 😜
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Casting is going really well. I have just constructed a pressure chamber to do the casting in. Casting under pressure (~40-50 psi) removed nearly all of the air bubbles and imperfections seen on my initial casts. The final thing that I am in the process of doing is getting a vacuum chamber to use when making new molds. This should ensure I remove the air bubbles from the molds themselves.
I would be happy to help you cast some Deathwatch shoulderpads or any other components you create for your true-scale marine project.
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tbc on email!
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Great work! Can’t wait to see a whole army of these guys 🙂
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Indeed stunning work Toni!
Surprising but great to see the first of these behemoths turned into a Deathwatch Astartes. Makes wonderful sense. Hopefully some Ordo =][= on their way too 🙂
Looking so much forward to see this project unfold.
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Ordo Xenos =][=…
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Indeed, and a powerful one.. An inquisitor with command of an expanded kill-team can’t be just any small time rosette waver..
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Pretty darn sweet!! I think you have absolutely nailed the scale. In the artworks the astartes have enormous shoulderpads, chest armour and shins which don’t translate that well into miniatures, but you have managed to find just the right size imo. Great work and absolutely my fave take on deathwatch.
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Happy!
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Very nice mate, he certainly cuts an imposing and chilling figure… bloody scary! Gorgeous painting too – looking forward to seeing more 🙂
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Utterly fantastic work 🙂 and I love the evocative storytelling and vision you have for what Space Marines are like.
As a small aside, I didn’t know Bill Nighy was a perpetual…
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Lofty goals, and a very nice start on realising them. Looking forward to more 🙂
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lofty indeed.. luckily this project is as much about the “supporting cast” as it is about the big honking marines
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Awsome work! I’ve always loved truescale marines, and yours look wonderful
On the subject of truescale marines, apparently 8th edition is finally pushing GW to make their own. I saw a picture of what looked like a Duncan paint guide with some very nice looking truescale marines in it. I’m not sure if I’m allowed put it up here but if anyone’s seen it I’d like their thoughts
I’ve always wanted to do some, so I was wondering wether they would be the way to go
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Yes! We’ll see how they fit into things once there’s more to look at. The picture doing rounds now is a bit too small to see if they’ll end up useful yet..
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Great work. How dou like new Cypher model? I think it is nice to work on, to create fine agent/opperative model.
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