Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Build Part 7: Badges, Patches, and Other Widgets

In case you've been following along, I apologize for neglecting to write up the rest of the build notes for the Space Marine build.  If you're just now stumbling across my blog, you can find the other parts of this build by following these links:

Space Marine Build Part 1: an Overview
Space Marine Build Part 2: the Backpack
Space Marine Build Part 3: the Boots
Space Marine Build Part 4: the Rubber Bits
Space Marine Build Part 5: the Helmets
Space Marine Build Part 6: the Hands

Now onto the next part: decoration.  Because giganting superhuman warrior-gods don't look right without all the trim:


Read on for details.



The best part about the Space Marines and the Warhammer 40,000 universe in general is the infinitely customizable nature of it all. Even within chapters with clearly delineated livery and heraldry, there's countless options for making your characters your own. Each individual piece can be tweaked and converted and made into something unique.

This is the fun part.

Since I was making more than one suit, it was even more important to differentiate them from one another in as many ways as possible.  I suppose I could have made them look like they were all from different chapters, but I really wanted the group to look like a cohesive unit when they were together.  Instead, it was vital to make them all individuals while still maintaining consistency in colors and unit markings.  The plan was for the paintjobs to make them brothers but the details to keep them from being clones.

Since at least three of them would have some sort of winged icon on the chest, I began by sculpting out a pair of wings:



With the sculpt finalized, the next step was to begin the moldmaking process by building up a clay drip wall:

The sculpt was then layered over with silicone rubber:


Over the silicone I built a fiberglass mothermold to keep everything lined up.  Then I pulled it all off of the sculpt, cleaned out all of the clay, and cast the first pair of wings:


It turns out they fit:


After casting multiple pairs of the wings, I set about sculpting the individual icons to go in the center.  First, a skull:


Then the Imperial double-headed eagle:


Finally, I sculpted out the winged sword motif of the Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines:


In between chest sculpts I put together some of the small detail parts for the legs.  These were mostly made by putting scrap blocks of wood on the forming table while making other parts.  After some fine trimming and shaping, the resulting little plastic boxes became the vents and patches found all over the miniatures:




The last little detail to add to the build was the pile of random purity seals.  For starters, I pressed the end of a brass rod into several large wads of clay to give the impression of a wax seal approximately 1-1/4" in diameter.  Then I stuck some found items into a few of them before spraying them with a gloss coat.  After making a mold, I cast copies in red-tinted resin and they looked like so:


For the printed fabric portion, I used a product called Printed Treasures, a cotton fabric that comes in 8.5"x11" sheets that you can run through your inkjet printer.  You can pick it up at your local craft store or by clicking HERE.

Once the lettering was printed, I peeled off the backing paper (which keeps the fabric from crumpling up and jamming the printer), cut the strips of lettering out, and soaked them in tea to give them an appropriately aged look:


For the lettering, I started by combing through the 40k rulebook for different prayers and litanies that seemed appropriate to the Space Marines.  Then I realized that nobody was going to get close enough to actually read them, so I started just stacking up blocks of text and running them through the Google Latin translator to make them seem more significant and meaningful than they really were.  These were the longer strips of cloth and they were filled with things like the lyrics to the Mr. Ed theme song or Ke$ha's "Tick Tock."

Still, the most important seal, which I made sure to put on the left shoulder of each of the costumes I made, was this one:

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