Astra Militarum Conversion: From Cadians to Canadians

the astrom militarum the mostly human Defense Forces of the Imperium with thousands of planets within the span and reach of the Imperium itself there are most of these providing troops to either planetary Defense Forces or The Wider astrom militarum Army and a lot of these have their own particular regiments and styles some of these we may know like the death core of C which are very much based on World War gas masked up soldiers or we have the Katan jungle Fighters very much based on Rambo therefore it's always kind of surprised me that the main frontman of the group we have especially as it's in the form of a combat Patrol the Canadians and these just look like futuristic soldiers they don't look particularly styled like some of the others so what we're going to do is take this box and convert these troops up a little bit to make this into a proper Canadian combat Patrol when we kick off the build we are first going to start with the 20 infantry men these can be built out pretty much the same as as the instructions tell us to we're going to be building this to align with the combat Patrol rules meaning that we're going to have one of each special weapon as well as both types of Sergeants however we are going to want to stop just before we start building out the arms guns and putting the heads on the models as these are going to be the areas we are going to be converting in order to give our combat Patrol a distinct Canadian unique aesthetic now with the conversions naturally we can do this to any sort of style we want here I wanted to increase the length of the rifles to give the models a little bit more presence and to do that we're going to be using some bayonets and we could go out and just pick up some 3D printed or 3D print our own little bayonets to attach to the current lasz guns alternatively what we're going to be doing is going out and buying a set of solar auxiliar Las gun sections which conveniently comes with 20 models with L guns and bayonets which is once we've done the special weapons for our combat Patrol happens to be the exact right amount of L guns we need for this combat Patrol to convert the rest of the models so we're going to be taking this and essentially cutting off the ends of the guns and using the bayonet on our models obviously we can take any other bits from this kit that we might like across the rest of the conversions in order to do this what we are going to want to do is carefully remove the end of the barrel section off of the standard 40K Las gun and then come in and do essentially the same for the 30k version except on the 30k version we're going to be removing the barrel just past the power section of the rifle we may need to on occasion go in and clean up a couple of fingers depending on the hand placement on the 30k kit then using a little bit of plastic glue we can go in and mount the end of the 30k rifles onto the modern Las guns this gives us a slightly elongated rifle in comparison to the original 40K La gun this brings us to the other change I'm going to be making to every single rifle and that is to attach some Scopes and here we've got some 3D printed Scopes which you can buy online or if you have a 3D printer just print the files itself and what we want to do is attach these to all of the guns unless you're from a Games Workshop in which case I cut all of my Scopes off of other 40K models and then attach them to my guns and they're absolutely not 3D printed Parts besides that you may be wondering why I wanted to attach Scopes to all of my Canadians rifles and a fun fact you might not know this but up until 2023 I believe the longest recorded kill shot in a military conflict was actually held by a Canadian Special Forces member at around or over 3,500 M I believe so I thought as a small nod to that exceptional longdistance shot in a battle Zone it would be quite fulfilling and quite nice to attach these Scopes to all of the guns to represent that so let's get our 3D printed or completely legitimate Games Workshop Scopes attached to the L guns taking our 100% genuine Games Workshop Scopes we can take some superglue and then glue these to the top of the LZ guns trying to make sure that the Scopes line up nicely with the barrels that we've already glued on once that is all done we do have a final step just to finish off the guns and this is going to be the addition of some camo or combat tape to do this we can take some very thin masking tape here I'm using some 1 to2 mm wide masking tape and we can wrap this around the guns trying not to cover any of the hands or magazines on any of the models because that wouldn't make a lot of sense once we are going around and doing that we do want to make sure that we cover some of the scope itself as as well as wrap it around the barrel that we've glued on this will help to stop any of those areas coming off in the event that we give the model a knock in the future finally we can just run a little bit of thin superglue over all of the tape that we've put down and what this will do is secure and fix it into place so we can be 100% certain that it's not going to come off and unravel later on in the life of the model using this masking tape and putting it on the model to represent combat tape does have a couple of purposes and a couple of benefits first off we can use it to simulate the combat tape that's actually sculpted on the model making it look as if it has an actual purpose besides that what we can also do is use this to bring in a few of the colors from our base naturally soldiers might want to camouflage their weapons so that they don't stick out as much in a combat environment by using something that represents the area that they're in so we can pull that in nicely using the combat tape and the final benefit is that we can kind of use it to hide the seams on both the scope and the barrel if we tape it across those areas and it will also hold them in a little bit better if we do end up giving them a little bit of a knock so there's a couple of benefits all across the board but once we've done that we've attached the bayonets the ends of the barrels and the Scopes and the tape the arms and the guns are essentially done and we can either glue these on if we're not going to be subassembly painting the models or because I will be doing that I'm just going to use a couple balls of blue Tack and we can stick the arms in the correct placement before we finish the models though there is a final area that we need to do for a conversion that is quite key and that is going to be any of the helmeted heads are going to get a nice conversion to turn our modern helmets into the typical round brimmed hats of the Canadian Mounted Police to achieve this we do need to take some thin plastic card and then cut this into rings these rings can then be used as the brims and when cut to the right size we can use a small amount of plastic glue to mount them to the back and the front of the helmet meaning that we only have a small area to make up due to the fact that heads aren't A Perfect Circle these gaps can naturally be filled with things like green stuff but for Speed what I'm going to do here is take some plastic sludge which is just sprew melted down in plastic glue spread that across the gaps just to quickly fill them out and then later on when it's dry we can come back and file or sand them so that they're nice and smooth these little discs were actually cut out using a Cricut style electric CNC cutter for plastic card and things like that so I'll try and remember to put the measurements that I use down in the description below and if I have forgotten let me know in the comments and I will reply or pin a comment with the information needed hopefully though I will remember but in regards to the actual conversions that's the bulk of the unconventional conversions done the rest of them were kind of let's say conversions of opportunity so naturally we've got the 30k kit as well as the 40K combat Patrol the actual Vehicles so the Sentinel and the mortors were built out exactly as per instructions and I'm going to try and tie them in with paint Scheme as opposed to tying them in by putting something stupid like a sniper scope on top of a mortar which I thought would just be a little bit silly as I said the rest of them were just what was available so naturally we could swap out pieces from the 30k kit into our 40K kit things like this Commander for the command Squad what I did was take the pistol arm from the 30k kit which has an older fashioned Plasma Pistol as well as swapping out the saw that is resting on his arm he's kind of got a chain sword that's leaning against it I've swwa that out for a raised sword from the 30k kit so small changes like that that don't cost very much and can just be easily swapped out we also made throughout the rest of the kit but that is it in regards to the conversions but I didn't want to leave you just there I'm not going to have time between now and when the video needs to go out to paint the entire combat Patrol but what I do want to do is run through how we're going to be painting the bulk of the Infantry so that you can see how it's done and we're going to be doing it to a very simple tabletop standard essentially just using a bunch of different contrast paints and a very few amount of layers given that we're going to be using contrast for a vast majority of the models we're going to naturally be needing a lighter undercoat so here we went for a nice zenial then we can jump into the actual painting and all of the upper armor and all of the clothing are going to get a coat of a bright red contrast as always with this being a contrasting method we want to be careful when we apply it because we don't want to get any of the red contrast in an area we're going to apply another different color of contrast because then we will get a distinctive color difference in those areas so we just need to take our time work around and apply the neat red coat on top of all of our Canadians conveniently there's actually a couple of documentaries floating about around the Canadian Mounted Police and specifically around their uniform care of the uniform and things like that so I have been using that as a little bit of reference and inspiration and what we need is a couple of different colors for the trousers and Boots the trousers are going to get a dark Navy which we're going to be making by mixing a black and blue contrast whereas the boots are going to be getting kind of a reddish brown leathery tone which we're going to be mixing with a brown and a dark red contrast mixing these in roughly 50/50 each gives us a nice tone and because I know that there's going to be a lot of possible troops and things like that for an Imperial Guard or astr militarum Army I decided to mix up a couple bottles of these colors just getting up a pet and dropping it in and labeling it for future so that if I ever want to paint a vast amount of Canadians I have all of the colors I need ready to go once all of our mixes are done we can first take the dark Navy and what we want to do is carefully go around and apply this to all of the trousers and Pockets doing this in a batch painting method makes this nice and quick we can go from one model to the next covering all of the trousers and by the time we get back to the first model we started with we can do the same for the boots because the trousers will be mostly dry there with the boots we're going to be taking the dark red brown mix and again covering over all of the boots also making sure to catch any undersides of any lifted boots this means the model's armor is essentially sorted but we still have a fair few elements remaining things like the bags the couches and things like that and there we're going to be using a brown contrast which will render them essentially neutral in the overall scheme we then want to take advantage of this brown contrast being out so what we're going to do is paint the entirety of the gun the scope and any metallic metals as a brown contrast layer using this brown contrast here is quite convenient when we're painting the rifle because naturally we've covered a lot of the gun with combat tape in the form of masking tape there's a lot of details that are quite easily hidden and the properties of contrast is it's going to seep into all of those recesses and give us a nice decent shadowy base coat to work from for any of the guns and the metallics when we're doing that and we're painting the straps in this brown as well we're painting the back straps as well as all of the pouches we don't want to catch any of the front braces or front straps of any of the models and the reason for that is we're going to be painting that in a completely different color and it's easier to not blend up from a brown to the color we're aiming for so if we can avoid them it just makes it a little bit easier these straps and belts are going to be painted in white just to give us a little bit of separation and because we've used a zenithal we can't exactly go straight in with a white contrast it won't give us the best outcome so what we're going to actually be doing is starting off by painting in a couple of layers starting from a mid skin tone as the base coat we want to start from here and start to layer up going into a very light flesh as the second highlight then once we've caught nearly all of the areas with this lighter flesh we can bring up the brightness of it a little bit more by mixing in some off white into our light flesh in roughly a 50/50 mix this can then be used for the final Edge highlights and also to pick out the most raised areas which sets the stage perfectly for the the final step of applying a white contrast and what this will do is add back in some of the extra detail as well as a little bit of shading for us personally I quite like how this method works for tabletop white by using the warmer skin tones and then applying a cooler contrast over the top they kind of neutralize each other and give us a nice clear white that we can then build on in future steps with highlights if we want to in regards to other areas of the model in painting there's a couple of bits I'm just going to kind of skip over so things like the face obviously we can paint the faces in many different ways many different skin tones and things like that but for the essence of speed essentially here I just gave every single one of them a warm skin tone base followed by a light skin tone highlight and then a flesh wash just to give us some simple skin and that was done on the faces as well as the hands just to keep everything consistent but what I do want to spend a little bit time on is looking at the actual metals and the guns which is is a little bit more exciting in the regards of quick tricks hopefully all of our metals have already been given a brown base coat so what we're going to do is utilize this and just give a small amount of metallic shine and we can achieve this by a simple overbrush using a brass on all of the metal areas this will give us a nice really simple Edge highlight that also will articulate the metal Essence giving us that nice reflective shine then what we can do is tackle the wraps on the actual gun now that the metallics have been painted and these are going to be painted in a clean coat of whatever color we're going to be using and as I said relating possibly to the base here we're going to be using green rubble and green plants on the base so we're opting to give the wrappings a green base coat and layer which works nicely with the colors of the base this essentially gives us a fully painted body we've got everything done now we've got the guns the metals the armor the clothing everything sorted but there's one thing we're missing we haven't touched the iconic hat that round brimmed hat that we spent so much time making and because these are normally black rather than us painting them in a zenithal and then painting them back to black we just saved a little bit of time and these ones did not get a zenial undercoat meaning that we can just jump straight on with our first steps for highlighting the blacks for this really quick black method what we want to do is work from a black base coat which is easily achieved and we're going to go around and do a nice array of both broad highlights as well as sharp edge highlights and we're going to be using a light flesh this should help to build out some wear and tear along the hat and some of the softer edges and that's what we'll do with the broad highlights whereas we will then be defining the clear shape of the hat using some broader stronger Edge highlights once all of these highlights of all of the types are dry we can come in and give the area a black wash what this will do is darken down the last stages as well as desaturating the warmth from the skin tone giving us a really nice quick black hat which means that we can then move on to the final things like the face masks which can either be in our I would say base coat color of whatever bases are so in my case green or as we're doing here we're going to be painting them also in black and that gives us 20 painted infantry for our combat Patrol and these guys are really nice and easy to achieve we've just done essentially contrast layers and it means that we can then go back later on once the rest of the builds are done and then build out some highlights just to push the tabletop quality a little bit more so this is my Canadian Defense Force and obviously yes guys I am aware that it's not actually Canadian in the book it's kadan but I kind of found the parody of Cadian and Canadian a little bit more amusing than the relationship of the Imperial Army in regards to the astrom militarium and their mindset and the old school British Empire which is similar to the color scheme that I wanted to use for these guys so I thought that I would give a notd to the Canadians and go with this sort of style it also means that I got to experiment on ways to make some nice Canadian style hats from astrom militarum troops so overall I really like these guys I have been doing a lot of projects recently that are kind of externally expired and if you wanted to see one of those inspiring videos where I've looked at some sort of external Source material do stick around because we'll be touching on that so you are going to want to check out in fact it's here check it out here this is the video where we build Mario we paint Mario as a Space Marine otherwise do remember to subscribe so that we can see you next time

Channel: TheMiniPaintingPage

Views: 565

Keywords: warhammer, 40k, cadian, canadian, cadia, canada, mounties, 17th centry british, astramilitarum, how to paint, how to convert, kitbash

Id: qZuYywzjKPo

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024