Planning and Designing

I've acquired way too many daemons than I know what to do with now.  Not that I won't use most of them, but I've definitely done the "acquire minis" part of the project first, rather than anything else.  Also picked up a bag of daemon spare parts that will make good corpses or kit bashing.  I don't have everything I need yet; notably a Great Unclean One and a Keeper Of Secrets are absent, but I've got enough to get going for... Years.

I've decided the entire project should be done in chapters based on how the entire piece splits into smaller units.  This is strategic, to spread around the type of tasks.  I can see it already - I'll build a wonderful base, do heaps of conversion work, then have no motivation to paint anything.  If I can interleave painting with other tasks, that should break up any monotony,  I hope.  I may also learn new things and come back and re-do some of the older pieces.

Thoughts and ideas...

I need to make the rank and file troops look different.  Otherwise the duplicate models could be noticeable.  The new Mutated Chaos cultists from 40k were just announced and they look great, and they don't appear that space-y.  They'll slot right in as "fillers": paint them the same colour and they'll look like a massively mutated trooper of any Chaos god.

The troops also need to look like they're fighting - most model poses are walking towards or about to fight, very few have strong action poses that could be considered mid-battle.  There will be a lot of little conversions to add momentum to their postures.

Bloodthirster in the middle, or tw0? Locked in combat with a Great Unclean One and a Keeper of Secrets.  Should be somewhat easy to convert.  There are other Bloodthirster-like models too (but it'd be pretty expensive to go buy Skarbrand or Ka'Banga just to use him for spare parts).  I got a BNIB Bloodthirster for only slightly under retail price, one of my more expensive acquisitions.

The Great Unclean One looks tricky to convert, as it's just one blob of plastic.  The idea is to have it being sliced into by the Bloodthirster, just taken a mortal wound.  It'd require a lot of sculpting, not least of which is his smiley grin would have to be turned into a howl of pain - so a complete facial rework.

A Keeper of Secrets engaging the Bloodthirster from the flank.  A little tricky as well because the current model has the Keeper just strolling calmly.  The old metal metal Keeper looks like it's charging, but the detail on the new model can't be beaten.  They do have long limbs though, which with some pinning and sculpting could be turned into a very dynamic pose.

The Lord of Change: hovering or flying off to the side, being manipulative.  Very Tzeentch.  Calling in a wave of new daemons: Screamers, coming out of a portal maybe, or just riding a wave of warp energy.  Going to be difficult to convert, as the GW model is hunched over and standing on the ground.  Doubly so because the Lord of Change model that I've acquired has come fully assembled - makes it harder to take apart, and I don't have the sprue spares.  The neck is tricky too...  It's all stooped down, where as I'm thinking arms and head stretched up and out.

I've acquired a Slaanesh Seeker Chariot, as well as a host of Seekers and Daemonettes.  I've also got some Bloodcrushers... Perhaps the Bloodcrushers charging the chariot and almost upending it.  The chariot takes up a lot of space though, it's almost as big as my hand.  Some of the volume are spikes though, and if it was in the midst of being tipped over, it wouldn't take as much horizontal real estate on the diorama.

Learning Blender

I thought I'd try Blender as a 3D modelling software.  I've used CAD software before a long time ago.  CAD may have been easier to get going, but thought a full 3D modeller would be more useful in the long run.

Blender is overwhelming.  I watched a few hours of a basic Blender course on Udemy to familiarise myself with how to drive it.  Even after that, still took me hours to work out how to slice and intersect geometry to build what should have been the simplest symbol: Khorne.

I eyeballed a few online references, but otherwise it's measurements and angles are my own.

Got through the Khorne, Nurgle and Slaanesh and was onto Tzeentch's symbol when Blender crashed and I realised I hadn't even done an initial save file.  Very lucky, Blender has an auto-save feature enabled by default.  That saved me an entire evening!  I've now got all four symbols in a Blender file, laid out like my sketches.

As with the Khorne, all other symbols are my own measurements and design.  Tzeentch is a little different to how it's usually depicted, however I wanted the "tail" to overlap with Nurgle so there was plenty of opportunity for a fight between them.

I wonder if I can get GW miniature sizes online (measurements for the ones I don't own yet), then do little placeholder stick figures or cylinders to plan out where each will go?  What's also missing is any sort of attempt to map terrain height, especially the Tzeentch "wave" of energy which will be where the long tail of his symbol is.

Google News predictions are amazing some times: I was recently informed that there are phone apps that have some rudimentary 3D scanning software.  That might just do it: I don't need it to be super accurate, I just need the spatial dimensions of some sample models so I know how big the base should be to fit in everything I want...  Or perhaps to constrain how large I make it!