Black Templar skin.

[MadMaffMan]

I have been looking at all the new GW Black Templar models lately and was thinking of making a Black Templar specific skin. Not being a BT player and not having the new codex i was just wondering what is fluffy for a BT skin as i have seen different schemes in both White Dwarf and on-line.

What colour should the eyes be?

Do they have a Tac symbol on their right pauldron?

Is the chest eagle gold?

Do they have trim colour on the shoulder pauldron?

Should they have clean or dirty armour, in nearly all pics that i have seen they look like they are clean.

And lastly, as the skin would only be playable as a Black Templar is it even worth doing

[IBBoard]

Black Templars don't have Companies, they have Crusades. That means they don't use trim, they just use various heraldic symbols of their High Marshal on banners.

Eyes normally look best red, and because they're out on crusade then their armour is often a little dirty (just look at some of the artwork, the cover of the UK WD312 is best)

Chest eagles are often white, black or silver. As for Tac symbols - it seems to vary. Try to find some pictures that show shoulder pads, but some just have little litanies (sp?) while others have small symbols and others have pretty-much normal symbols. From the odd organisation of the Black Templars, there's all sorts that they do!

Just read the GW UK page - http://uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarin ... ktemplars/

It'd be worth doing if you think it's worth doing. There's a to do list hanging around if you fancy something boring, but the Black Templars badge and banner are some of the top downloads, so I could see it being quite popular and it sounds like it'd be more interesting for you. If you do it in the right way, it might work quite well for other chapters as well (almost 'crusade-templars style' skin more that 'Black Templars')

[MadMaffMan]

Holy Emporer......can you beleive it. I had WD312 but never read it for some reason.....DOH!

*digs WD312 from bottom of large heap of mags*

I see that Assault marines some times have red trim, it's a shame that the Tac and Assault marine share the same WTP file.

I love all the purity seals and litanies used instead of the Tac symbol, it would be so cool to have a mixture of skins used in any one squad instead of just the one.

Man.....those new Termies on page 36 really look the biz....may have to buy some of those guys.

I think your right about making it a Crusade skin instead of just BT, it would give it more widespread appeal.

I'll have to take that to work for a read tomorrow.

P.S. Will there be a chequered Ork MAN at all, think that would go great with the other Ork skins you have done.

[IBBoard]

LOL, yeah, WD312 is the major Black Templars one I'm not so sure about the shoulderpad trim though, that might just be Matt Hudson's army/crusade (all of the models have the crosses on their faces, which is something he did). I think I saw some pictures on the GW website of Assault Marines and they still have black trim.

As for checkered Ork skins - MAN? Mega Armoured Nobs? I've not played DoW much so I still get confused by some of the names

[MadMaffMan]

Yup....MAN = Mega Armoured Nobz, just wondered if you were going to do any.

By the looks of it your correct, the red trim on the assault marines looks like something that Matt Hutson did himself. I'm not sure i like the crosses on the face of the Marines helmets either and he gave them yellow eyes....

[IBBoard]

Yellow? Did he? I didn't pay that much attention As for the crosses, I agree. It looks OK on the Marines but not on the Scouts/Neophytes.

I might do a checkered Mega Armoured Nob texture at some point, but it'll have to wait a while - I have an exam in 12 days, another in 13 and another in less than 20, so revision is having to come first :\ But anyway, that's off-topic for this thread

[MadMaffMan]

Well i've sorted out the basic colour layers for a Black Templar colour scheme, i copied the colours from WD312 so it should be fluffy.

I have used the basic SM wtp file from WA 1.41 which has fixed red eyes, and removed the Tac symbols from the right pauldron and that horrid winged eagle on the boltgun.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00066.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00068.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00067.jpg

Now i need to decide what type of Icons and Purity Seals to put on and how to do the litanies on the armour. Would it be best to 'hand paint' them or is there another way

[MadMaffMan]

Just a quickie, i've been messing about with the litanies on the armour. I tried using a very small sized font, both a Bold font and one called BlackAdder. I think i prefer the BlackAdder font, looks more like hand written script. The bold font looks like it was stamped on, and i get the impression from the fluff that these litanies are individually handcrafted by the owner of the armour before battle.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00070.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00069.jpg

I know the pics are a little small but what do you think
Should i make the lines of script even smaller and have more lines. Or larger so you may be able to read it.

These are just test litanies, i was just checking out if the idea would work.

Also has anyone got any tips on how to do a good purity seal as every one i have done looks like it was made by a 5 year old with crayons.

[IBBoard]

For purity seals, I'd recommend looking into Games Workshop's example one they show when they talk about Space Marine honours and badges. Copying and pasting it is a bit of a cheat, might have copyright issues and might not look so good, but I'm sure you can use it as a 'basis'.

As for the litanies, I think they need to be smaller. Less is more might be the maxim you need to follow - just like how you never try to paint actual text on to models, it might be best if you try to give the impression of a litany rather than having an actual litany.

The Space Marines themselves look about right, though. Are the shoulderpad trims on the trim? And is anything trim2/eye?

[MadMaffMan]

I have reduced the size of the litanies and added some extra litanies to the legs and knee pads as per the GW fluff, see what you think.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00071.jpg

Is the text still to large? I did try making it smaller with more lines of text but it all seem to blend together and just looked like a large white patch of armour. Also i found out that text comes out in reverse on the models, very strange

The litanies are REAL litanies taken from the GW book The Infantryman's Primer, i know they are to small to read but you never know they may actually bless the armour.

As for the eye/trim2 layer i moved the chest eagle and skulls to that so you can pick your colour, i have seen BT's use black, grey and bone white. This will also mean that the skin could be used by other Crusader chapters i hope.

Now to try and do some purity seals.

[IBBoard]

The litany on the kneepad looks a little strange, and I'd possibly try to align the text more to the edge of the shoulder pad instead of center aligning it (people don't write center-aligned ) but other than that it's great You could possibly fit a little more text in by writing it as different lines, instead of what appears to be one block of text and hitting 'enter' for each new line.

As for reversing the text, it doesn't actually suprise me on those shoulder pads just means you've got a bit more work to do with them to get it right

[MadMaffMan]

Well i've finished the litanies and adjusted the colour layers and dirt layer to match them. You were quite right that the centre lined text looked odd, i've adjusted it and managed to reduce the text down using a new font that Mirage Knight gave me. Now there is more lines and it looks much more like the fluff images that GW produce.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00075.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b357/ ... c00076.jpg

As you can just about see from these silly little pics i have managed to make two different shoulder pauldrons, one for the Tac squads and another for the Assault squads. This breaks up the whole army and provides a little variation in the army as a whole.

There are no purity seals yet but they actually dont seem to need any, maybe i'll save the seals for the BT Termies which are next on the hit list.

[IBBoard]

Yeah, they look better for the litanies. I'm glad someone gave you a better font - the font is everything when you're doing small work! I like the extra little bit of symbol (can't quite tell what it is - too small!) on the Assault Marine shoulders

As for the purity seals - Space Marines sometimes have a couple, but not always, so I think leaving them until the Termis sounds like the best plan

[MadMaffMan]

Someone on the Relic forums suggested using Imageshack, i'd never heard of them but they seem much better than my current image hoster.

So here's a couple of bigger pics so you dont have to strain your eyes at the monitor.







If these dont work then i'll go back to what i was using before.

[IBBoard]

Ah, it was Photobucket causing the small sizes - I thought you just had a 56K modem or something and didn't want to upload huge images

The text isn't readable, even on the new larger images, but it definately works on the 'looking like a litany' front it's one of those where it's looking best to give an impression rather than do it perfectly. I'm still trying to work out what the symbol on the Assault shoulders is though