Hobby: Kitbashed 'The Masque' and Screamer Progress

It is no secret that the only thing I am good at on the hobby side of 40K is procrastinating. Now though, for a few weeks until things get crazy again, I will have more time, and far less excuses to avoid getting my Chaos Space Marines and Daemons done. Over the last two days I have been busy sorting bits, making orderss online for pieces I want to include, ripping parts off old unfinished conversions (with my converted Dark Eldar Wracks being non-identifiable now), and specifically building The Masque and starting to kitbash my Screamers of Tzeentch out of Deffkoptas.

 This is The Masque. There were two things I knew this model needed, A) a breasted and revealing torso, and B) bare legs with clawed feet. This is not misogyny, this is the bare standard to make the model identifiable. After finding the desired torso on a wych model I decided on a Dark Elf Corsair cape to spruce her up. After filing and greenstuffing the two together I took parts from two Dark Eldar shoulder pads to make hers. I also settled on a wych head. While a corsair head would have been too dynamic, I don't think I could find any which were feminine enough. Her neck line might need some liquid greenstuff which I have never used before, but am going to pick up this afternoon.

The real challenge here would be legs. While wych legs are the natural first thought, they were too small, not bare enough, and missing the claws which help create the eerie vibe held by daemonettes. I posted on my clubs facebook looking for legs, but with the holidays and such I was without luck. Enter the Kroot. These legs have several advantages, first they are bigger, giving her the inspiring presence that ought be held by a herald. They also depict motion, which is key for a model that is all about dancing. I was hesitant as the hips were way too wide, but after filing them they turned out lithe as I wished them to be.

The final step was the ripped faberic around her legs. I have never worked with greenstuff in this way before, and thus ended with a result I am not totally keep in. Part of me is considering ripping one side off and giving it another go as it is too thick. I would also enjoy any suggestions on how to to facilitating drying scupting like this as the material continued to bend inward during the drying process (I did use green stuff to try and set it in place sooner). For the arms I set on a Vampire Counts Ghoul arm to represent her thin but strong frame and a Dark Eldar agonizer to get at the more...extreme...perversions of Slaanesh. Really, nothing says "Dance Monkey, Dance," like a whip.

The other project I started was my Screamers. I decided to go more along the daemon pilot/mechanical monstrosity than full daemon engine here. All of my daemons have the same blank face helmet (Fantasy Warriors of Chaos helmets with the horns filed off), so the army gains continuity there. It seems logically to me that is screamers are jetbikes, then daemon pilots flying jetbikes could be screamers. There are two weapon prototypes I worked on. The left one has a blade made out of double layered playing cards (poor man's plasticard) cut be appear as a rounded blade. It is held in place by a flattened staple on each side. I originally was going to use sprue as struts, but the sprue was much too large. I will need to build a housing around the rokkits. The other has all of the rockets removed, and then replaced with the saw blade from an Imperial Guard sentinel. Naturally this will need some green stuff too.

There are two places where I am looking for feedback and ideas.

1. I am open to suggestions on how to fix up/cut out and replace the front section with the rokkits as well as looking for ideas on bits to put up front to represent the lamprey bite.

2. I played my first game with the unaltered deffkopta models on Sunday, and the propellers were causing problems. With the models needing to be on the little flight stands to be tournament legal the wide top made them tipsy and take up too much space. The problem is that without the top propeller the model doesn't look like it could fly. Any ideas to rectify this situation?

 Happy Holidays to all!