Building a Lunax7070 Space Marine: Dark Angel

And you scorch the land.

Over the last few months, we have been converting and building a true-scale Space Marine from a multipart resin cast from Lunax7070. After extensively modifying the basic components for the legs and body, we created a silicone mold, allowing us to cast the modified pieces multiple times. Having completed this first part, we wanted to actually build a Space Marine out of some of the cast pieces, as a proof of concept. Although the components had been modified to help with the assembly process, it still took quite a bit of effort to build a model, and I wanted to talk about the process here.

The model's head was converted from one of the original 3rd edition tactical squads (rebreather head), due to its larger size relative to more modern Space Marine heads.

It took a lot of experimenting to come up with a pose for the legs of the model. Although the ball bearings aided this process, they still allowed for a huge amount of flexibility, which if I was not careful could have resulted in a very unnatural looking model. Ultimately, I decided to make a simple striding pose. After gluing the pieces in place, I used modeling putty to fill in the flexible material around the joints. For this, I used a mixture of green stuff and Apoxie sculpt. After filling in the gaps, I allowed the putty to harden for about an hour before using a modeling knife to press in the ribbed detail. Giving the putty time to partially harden makes this process much easier. One of the knee pads came from the plastic primarch Guilliman model, the other lion design came from a shoulder pad from the Karl Franz Warhammer model. For feet, I ended up finding the Primaris Phobos armor worked perfectly (from the Shadowspear box).

The model's arms were converted from the plastic Guilliman model.

The arms and head were pieces I had not previously converted or cast, and had to find suitable substitutes. This proved to be much harder than I anticipated, particularly for the head. Since I wanted the model to be a Dark Angel, my first thought was to use the winged helmet from the FW Lionel Johnson model. To my amazement, despite the Primarch being huge, the helmet is the same size as a regular plastic Space Marine helmet, despite the included bare head being larger, making it unusable. Next I considered the plastic Guilliman model, since it had a helmeted head option and the model is quite large. To my amazement, this helmet is also tiny, the size of a regular Space Marine helmet. Going into the project, I knew finding a good head would be difficult, and that GW is terrible with scaling their models properly, but I am still baffled that both of these potential options were so small. In the end, I remembered that the original 3rd edition Tactical Squad had a rebreather head that was much bigger than all of the subsequent unhelmeted heads (one of the few cases where GW corrected an “error” of proportion in subsequent releases). I was fortunate to still have one of these old heads, and upon inspection the size looked pretty good, although the design made it look like their lower jaw was surgically removed (because it is so squat). To rectify this, I spliced the bottom of Lionel Johnson’s helmet to the head, making it longer. I used modeling putty to unify the two pieces and add some additional details.

The plasma pistol was converted/cut-down from a plastic Delaque plasma pistol.

Fitting with this theme of dysmorphia, the plastic Guilliman’s hands (and the new plastic Abaddon) are also tiny, the size of a regular Space Marine, rather than the more sensible terminator size. His arms, however, are larger, and with some cutting and sculpting, I was able to repurpose them for this conversion (replacing the hand with a terminator one). The one is a power fist, which looks roughly to scale, and calls forth images of the classic Karl Kopinski Crimson Fist artwork.

The new Dark Angel is massive, towering over a Primaris Space Marine and absolutely dwarfing a regular FW Iron Armor Space Marine.

Having recently purchased the plastic Delaque weapons box, I decided to use it to convert a plasma pistol for the model. The plasma weapons in the box are quite thin, which is rare for a GW weapon. Curiously, the plasma pistol in the box is virtually the same size as the plasma rifle. With this in mind, I took one of the pistols and cut off roughly ⅓ of the weapon. I was able to attach this to a terminator hand, and with a small amount of sculpting, had a suitable plasma pistol! I did add a few additional details, like rear sights with pieces of plastic card, and replaced the barrel with a piece of brass tubing.

The Dark Angel is also substantially larger than more recent human scale figures, such as the converted Sisters of Battle retainer on the right.

I am really happy with how the Dark Angel turned out. It was nice to finally build a model with all the pieces I had been working on for weeks, confirming that they all fit together properly. It was also great to see the silicone model was usable, and could be used to create more true-scale Space Marines in the future. With how much effort the process was, I doubt I will build many more, but it is nice to have the possibility. The next task is to get the models painted! Comments are welcome.

- Adam Wier