Soul Drinker

This is my first real conversion. A Space Marine of the Soul Drinker's chapter. The idea for the conversion came from my brother, then I remembered a bit from the second Soul Drinker's book, The Bleeding Chalice:
"We've had to take two Marines from Squad Luko off-duty entirely - one has claws that can't hold a boltgun and the other is growing a second head."

He / they were made from two AOBR space marines, which is why the right arm is in that slightly awkward position. I used bits from the Black Templars upgrade kit for the sword, pistol, bolter and shoulder pad (I filled most of the chapter symbols off but the parts are still recognizable from the chains). The base was ready-made, I don't remember where I got it from. I magnetized the left arms and shoulder pad to be interchangeable, and there's also magnets in the base. This was my first real use of green stuff, and it left something to be desired, but fortunately most of the crappy bits are hidden from normal view by the boltgun and backpack.

Typical pose. I chose two different helmet designs to make it look less symmetrical and more chaotic.

A shot taken without the camera flash. The arm can be rotated to vary the pose.

Shoulder pad. This was made by filling Black Templars symbols off a shoulder pad and green-stuffing a chalice symbol. The original shoulder pad actually had a skull that I cut off then later decided to try to blend back into the chalice. It didn't work very well, but it's still a little more interesting than just the chalice on it's own.

Backpack. The cables in the middle came from a flagellant from the Witch Hunter's inquisitor kit.

Right view with the bolt pistol arm.


The magnets on the arms and shoulder pad are 2mm diameter. If I was to do it again I would use larger magnets, if I had only relied on the 2mm magnets I don't think it would be strong enough. However I used a larger magnet recessed in the body and covered it with greenstuff except for a socket for the arm magnets. The combination of the stronger magnet and the tight-fitting socket holds the arms reasonably well.

I put a lot of effort into this one, not just in conversion but also in painting. Overall I would say this is my best work yet. The highlighting over the purple is a little too subtle while the highlighting over the black might be a little too obvious. I had some trouble with the gold and ended up using too many layers but in the end it turned out OK. I think I should have thinned the paint a bit more before painting the sword as it doesn't look very smooth, but it's not too bad and the "power-lines" look decent. The purity seals are better than my previous efforts - I managed to paint some pretty fine lines on the seal on the boltgun, I wasn't even able to repeat that for the one on the leg.

I've left him glossy for now as it seems to bring out the colours better and I've been having trouble with my attempts at matt varnishes. You have to apply matt varnish very thinly or it becomes glossy, so I'm planning to get some acrylic medium and use it to thin down some matt varnish so I can apply it more generously and hopefully get more even coverage. I might use it on this guy if the technique works, we will see.