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Welcome to my Alienid website! This is a little site I put together to showcase my army and also give folks some info on how it came about and how I made them.

I picked up my first Tyranid in 1997, just to paint it. It was the original Carnifex, one of my all-time favorite models. After that, I picked up a few here and there, but I never completed my army. I painted them in a dark green & bone color scheme, and I thought they looked good, but they were lacking something "special". So, when I started to get burned out on painting Necrons all the time, I decided to paint up some of my old Tyranids that I haven't gotten around to yet. But, I thought since GW seemed to base them on the Alien movies, why not convert all of my Tyranid heads to look like Alien heads? I wasn't out to copy the movies directly, instead I want a tyranid army that resembles the movie aliens. I'm not some kind of Alien nerdboy, I just wanted an army that was unique.

The conversion was simple. First, I cut/filed off the head "plates" if any. Then, I took a wad of green stuff and just smoothed it out over the eyes, adding little ridges down the side. For the warriors, I started with a long wad of green stuff on the back first to get the shape and let it harden, then I did the front part. For some step by step instructions, check out the guide.

For the paint job, in the movies the Aliens look mostly shiney black, but I knew that wouldn't look good on models, if they were just pure black. So, I started with a black undercoat. Then, mixed up a dark gray color that was almost black, and drybrushed it heavily all over. Next, I did a very very light drybrush of space wolf gray to pick out the highlights. Then, I did the same thing with mithril silver, but added the silver heavier on teeth, tallons, shells and hooves. After that, I went back over the heads with black ink to really darken them. Last, I sprayed them with Testors gloss varnish and that was it! It was very quick and easy, and came out with great results.

The Hive Queen was a bit harder to do, I used pictures of the queen from Aliens and tried to sculpt her head like the movie. But, the regular Hive Tyrant head was fatter, so I ended up adapting it a bit.

 

UPDATE - 9/26/08: I decided to move all my photos to my album on Warpshadow. Seems like a good place to keep them and there's tons of other great nids from all the other members :) So check out my gallery over there :)
http://album.warpshadow.com/v/Alienids/

UPDATE - 9/18/08: I finally finished my Trygon tonight :) Check him out! And for some info on how I built him here's a link to my WIP post on my club's message board. Wadaya think? Next on the list I will be building 2 new carnifexes, but this time I plan to use magnets for every arm so that I can always chage around how they're equipped depending on how I want to use them in a game.

UPDATE - 8/17/08: I have a few new projects in th works! Currently I'm converting a carnifex into a Trygon! I have a project log going on my club's site, here. I bought that model as part of the Crusher Brood box set, my 2 other carnifexes I plan to build with magnets for different weapon options.. I'll post tutorials when I start that project. I'm also trying to get ahold of some old Tyranid models. The #1 thing I am looking for are the original metal hormagaunts. They're perfect for Alien conversions since they have the long heads and all. If anyone happens to have any for sale or trade, please please please email me! :) If you have them still in a blister I'll buy you a new blister of your choice and we can trade straight-up.. if they're already built or painted I can also buy you whatever you feel is fair for a trade and send it, or use Paypal, etc. Another thing I'm looking for are the old smaller sized plastic or metal Hormagaunts, either with the fleshboreres, or the stranglewebs and spike rifles too.

UPDATE - 7/6/08: It's been a real long time. I've been playing Imperial Guard lately, what can I say, those tanks are addictive. But now with 5th Edition I'm getting back into the bugs at least until the new Guard codex comes out. I will be adding some new ones and hopefully taking new pics of everything once I move and get a more dedicated gaming / modeling space for myself. But for now, check out my Carniphant Apocalypse Datasheet. If you ever want to convert a fex up like that, feel free to use those rules for it, if you opponents will allow it. It's basically just using Carnifex stats but paying for all the guns and biomorphs to make him real tough. Enjoy!

 
 
Here are a few other places around the web that no Tyranid fan should miss!