Thorssoli's Vacformed Warhammer 40k Space Marines

[thorssoli]

I've been contemplating this build ever since I finished making my vacformed stormtrooper armor in 2002. After discussing it at great length many times, doodling out countless sketches of the pieces and parts, and untold hours of studying the miniatures and source artwork, my friend Matt and I finally started on it yesterday morning.

The beginning was modest enough. We began with a piece of 2" insulation foam:


Then we cut out the outline of the shoulder plate and checked to see how it looked:

The plan is to make a full-scale suit of armor. This means that a normal-sized person will be looking out through the throat of the armored Marine.

Satisfied with the scale and shape of the first slice, we made a series of smaller slices:


Then we laid them all up and glued them together with Gorilla Glue:


After gluing them, we bound them together with a customized strapping system referred to among professionals as "duct tape:"


While waiting for the glue to set up, I did another test fit:


Once the glue was set, the next step was to smooth out the edges with a combination saw, a body rasp, and a flapwheel grinder. Still, there were recesses that needed filling. To fill the grooves I used a little bit of urethane expanding foam:


With a bit more sanding and grinding, the general shape was pretty well established:


In the next day or two I'll be posting pictures of the last little bits of smoothing out the shoulder plate as well as the first couple of pulls on the vacforming table.

Stay tuned...

[vshore100]

That bad boy is gonna be huge! I can hardly wait to see more.

[Starvinartist80]

man you have a ton of projects going. Looks like you really got motivated to work. I'm a big Warhammer fan so I'll be keeping a close eye on this one.

[tsau-mia]

This.

I'm always impressed with your builds. I saw "Warhammer 40K" and I thought "meh".
Then I saw "Thorssoli" and I just had to look.

[thorssoli]

Thank you all for the kind words. Feedback is fuel for these projects. That and caffeine...

The foam is only for this early stage of the project. I'm using it to get one or two pulls vacformed. Once I have those pulls, I'll reinforce them with fiberglass and use the reinforced pulls as vacforming bucks.

Yesterday I layered over the shaped foam block with some urethane resin. In this case I added enough microballoons to make it into a thick paste that I could trowel over the whole thing. At that point it looked like so:

I also added some red pigment to the resin so it would be a similar shade of pink as the rest of the foam.

Once I'd sanded that smooth I added a bit more resin with fewer microballoons. I was in a hurry at this point, so I switched to the black resin:


Once I had that layer smoothed out, I went ahead and made a pull:


It came out somewhat okay, but it revealed some trouble spots for the form that I'll have to work on. The plan will be to do these things in pairs, so I'll need two good pulls to turn into forming bucks. They'll sit on the forming table like so:


Here's another idiotic test shot for scale:


I'm starting to think I'll have to sculpt a larger helmet.

Stay tuned...

[XxCALIBERxX]

Very nice. I always though that it would be a pain in the arse being a Warhammer 40k Space marine in battle, those shoulders would definately get in the way. :/.

How do you keep up with all your projects man!? You're always at it! Inspirational stuff. .

[Starvinartist80]

Thor,
I assume your making a standard space marine and not a terminator. If so then you have the scale just about perfect. If you sculpt a new helm I wouldn't ad more a little width. The heads look crazy small on miniatures.

[thorssoli]

It'll be a standard Space Marine, yes. I've been thinking of doing a Terminator as well, but that'll be quite a while from now.

I've started working on the grill-type helmet (Mk8?) and it'll be a tiny bit wider than the beaky helmet shown in the picture above. I'll post pictures of it as I get closer to having something finished.

[madmodder]

awesome job! interesting method I might just steal it when I make my big daddy costume lol. you always have the most different but totally awesome techniques lol

[thorssoli]

Not too long ago, the good folks at Obscurus Crusade started unfolding the 3D models from the new Space Marine game, so I spent the afternoon today cranking out a full-sized version of the pep model from the game. Here I am test-fitting it while it's in progress;


It's big:


Really big:


I could almost fit two of me in there:


Here I'm wearing the helmet so I can see through the eyes and the chest is sitting down all the way on my shoulders:


Given the way that fits, I'm still confident that my plan to wear the helmet as a hat and look out through the neck will look the best:


Now I need to reinforce this piece with fiberglass, fair everything out so it's nice and smooth, then cut it into segments that I can form copies on my vac table.

Stay tuned...