Mark is a long standingmember of the ’EavyMetal team, and ismainly responsible forproducing thewonderful scenerypieces you see in White Dwarf and ourarmy books.

You can see plenty ofhis work in Town Cryer,as Mark wasresponsible for lots ofthe Mordheim terrain.Mark maintains thatthe more bizarre andfrightening elements ofthe Mordheim scenerywere all part of hisbrief, and are in no waya reflection of hismental state.

While we were paintingup armies for CodexEldar, Mark wasinspired by the flurry ofeldritch activity tocreate this fantasticconversion. He’s verykindly allowed it to beadded to our Biel-Tanarmy, but has warnedus that he might wantto steal it back, as heis thinking aboutentering it into theOpen Competition atGolden Demon.

Because of the vagariesof warp travel andmagazine publishing,by the time you readthis, anyone going toGames Day will alreadyknow if he won!

by Mark Jones

Welcome to ’Eavy Metal Masterclass, anirregular series of articles, where weintend to unlock the darkest secrets ofpainting and modelling. This month welook at Mark Jones’ wonderful Eldar WaveSerpent conversion.The Wave Serpent is an Eldar transportvehicle, which mounts twin shurikencannons to provide fearsome covering firefor the squad it carries. Games Workshopdoesn’t currently produce a model kit forthe Wave Serpent, so Mark decided to do aconversion based on the Falcon grav tankkit. As inspiration, Mark used severalillustrations of Wave Serpents, TimAdcock’s Epic 40,000 model, and he alsohad a chat with model kit supremo JesGoodwin. The rest is down to Mark’s ownfevered imagination. Take it away, Mark…

Before Construction…Mark: If you are going to attempt thisconversion, you should read through thewhole article once to get an overview,before starting each section. This is not aparticularly difficult model to make, but Iwould recommend that only moreexperienced modellers have a go at it.I’ve listed a number of tools and materialswhich you will find useful when constructingthe Wave Serpent, but you may be able tosubstitute some of them for otherequipment you have to hand. Remember,this is a guide to the model I made – feelfree to experiment and try your own ideas.

WAVE SERPENT

Hull pieces

Transport piecesTurret pieces

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Wave Serpent Templates

H1 x 4H2 x 10

H3 x10

H4x 10

Tr1 x 1

Tr2x 1

Tr3x 2

T2x 1

T1x 1

By Mark Jones. Painted in the colours of the Biel-Tan craftworld.

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Templates1. I used several pieces of plasticard for thismodel, and we’ve provided templates so you cancopy them. The easiest way to do this is by tracingor photocopying them and then transferring themto your plasticard sheets.You may have noticed that you need two differentthicknesses of plasticard to build this model. Thefollowing templates should be cut out on the 1mmthick card: H1, H3, H4 & T1. The remainingtemplates, H2, Tr1, Tr2, Tr3 & T2, should be cutout on 1.5mm thick plasticard. Once you havedone this you can start on the next stage of the conversion.

Transport Bay2. Start by constructing the extended crewtransport bay.

Take the two ‘dog leg’shaped plasticardpieces (Tr3) and glueone to each side ofthe Falcon rear crewcompartment pieceNo.8. You should testfit these pieces first to make sure they fit correctly. Tostrengthen the joinbetween Tr3 and thecrew compartmentcut out four smallerpieces of scrapplasticard. Glue them

over the joins between the crew compartment andTr3 on the inside of the compartment.Finally, to complete the extended transport bay,take piece Tr1 and glue it to the top of the crew

compartment piece No.8. Then glue the Falconrear hatch No.9 to the back of the crewcompartment. Once this is dry, take piece Tr2 andglue it into position underneath the crewcompartment piece No.8 next to the rear hatch.This should complete the extended transport bayready to be fitted to the back of the Falcon hull.You should now put the assembly to one side andstart building the Falcon grav tank. You can ignorethe turret assembly stage. The extended transportbay should be fitted to the model at the lower hullassembly stage, and don’t glue any of the probesinto place.

Please note, the rear of the Falcon lower hullNo.3 half will need to be modified slightly toallow a good fit with the extended piece, sotest fit it before gluing in place. After you havefitted the extended transport bay into placeyou are ready for the next stage.

Turret Filler3. Glue the circular turret filler T1 to the top of theFalcon upper hull No.14 to cover up the originalturret mount. If you want you can carefully boreout the tram lines shown on the template to givethe multi-part panel effect that is on the rest of theFalcon grav tank.

Front Fins5. Round off the front of the Wave Serpent byadding fins to the Falcon’s upper hull piece No.14.These two ‘Fin’ shaped pieces H1 are each madefrom two pieces of 1mm plasticard glued together.Glue these onto the front of the upper hull (seepicture below for position). When the glue hasdried and the front fins are secure, they will needto be filed or sanded until they match the profile ofthe front hull. Once this is done, glue the Falcon

Before you start constructing your Wave Serpent you should read through these instructions carefully and takecareful note of the modelling materials and tools that you will need. Remember when cutting out the WaveSerpent templates to make cuts away from your body and fingers.

Modelling Materials: model filler (green stuff), plastic tea spoon, plasticard (1mm & 1.5mm), cocktail sticks,0.9mm brass wire (or paper clips), a Falcon grav tank kit and two shuriken cannons.

Tools: scalpel, steel ruler, clippers, polystyrene cement, superglue, cocktail sticks, pin-vice and drills, needlefiles/fine wet and dry paper.

CONSTRUCTING THE WAVE SERPENTPainting Thorns...How do theymanage topaint allthose thornson the side ofthe Biel-Tanvehicles? Wellwe asked’Eavy Metal

painter Martin Footit, who wasclosely involved in developingthe Biel-Tan colour scheme, toshow us how it’s done…Martin: When we first started tolook into painting the Biel-Tanarmy we felt it needed a devicethat we could incorporate intothe already striking green andwhite colour scheme (check outthe Aspects of War Eldar articlefeatured in this White Dwarf formore pictures of this fantasticarmy – Fat Bloke).We experimented with many ofthe Eldar runes, shapes andpatterns, until we came across athorn pattern featured in many ofJes Goodwin’s early Eldarconcept sketches. I tried thispattern first on a jetbike and itlooked just right. I found I coulduse this pattern to add variationto the Biel-Tan units and to breakup the large flat areas that youfind on Eldar vehicles.Painting the thorns, like mostdetail painting work, takes a littlebit of practice to get right. Takeyour time and don’t worry if youmake a mistake. The way webuild up the thorn pattern meansyou can easily rectify anymistakes later.

1. When doing detail work Ialways thin down the paint I amusing with water, as this allowsthe paint to flow off the brusheasier. To start painting the thornpatterns you should first paint athin line where you want thethorns to go. Try to keep thepattern looking random. Alwayskeep the lines curved, no straight lines, and aim to keepthem a uniform distance fromeach other.

2. When you are happy with theway your pattern looks youshould then increase thethickness of the lines.

3. Finally, to finish off thepattern, you should paint thethorns. This is not complicated atall – just paint little triangles withthe point of your brush, onalternate sides of the lines. It isat this point that you can tidy upan blemishes on your lines byturning them into thorns.

by Martin Footit

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upper hull into place.

The Turret6. The new turret was made by carefullytrimming away the handle from a plasticspoon. Drill a hole on each side of the newturret so a cocktail stick can be glued in place.This will form the mounts for your shurikencannons or any other heavy weapons you wantto put on the turret. Then place your turret ona piece of 1.5mm plasticard, draw round it andcut this shape out. This is the base of yourturret – glue it into place and then use filler andsand paper until you have a seamless joinbetween the two pieces. Glue your weapons

into place on the ends of the cocktail stick.Glue piece T2 into place on the upper hull (see picture above forposition) and then drill a hole big enough to fit a cocktail stick.Finally, to finish off the turret assembly, drill another hole roughly in thecentre of the base of the turret and glue a cocktail stick into place. Thisis so we can mount the turret on the hull and allows it to turn.

Hull Field GeneratorPlates

7. Now for the tricky bit! Beforegluing the hull field generatorplates H2 into place, take a fileand roughen up the lower hulland the edges of the upper hullslightly. This is to make gluingthe plates on easier. For a finalcheck to make sure the pieces

line up well and sit in place, do a dry run, sticking them in place with bluetac. Stagger the fit as shown in the picture above. Once you are happythat all the plates fit, glue them into place.Quick tip: Mark glued the plates on one at a time. After he had stuckthem into place with blue tac, he pulled off one plate at a time and thenglued that plate back on. This way he ensured the fit of the plates did notchange.

The Probes & Finishing Off8. The two probes at the front were easy to make, but quite tricky to glueinto place, so I would consider them as an optional extra. The larger onewas made with pieces from my bits box, the core is a piece of thin plastictubing, with varying lengths of brass tube glued along its length (youcould wrap wire around it instead). The spike at the end is made fromyet another cocktail stick. The smaller probe is made from the originalFalcon sensory array piece No.6, cut up and glued back together.All the final detail can now be added if you want. The thick ribbed pieceson the front of the wave serpent where made from pieces of plasticsprue frame from the Falconkit. The piping on thegenerator plates wasmade from pieces of thinwire and the small discsare cut from roundplastic sprue (spearshafts or plastic bannerpoles). The hullgenerator plates wherethickened up by gluingpieces H3 & H4 to theplates. The rest of thedetail is made up frombits and pieces left overfrom the original plasticFalcon kit.Congratulations youhave built your WaveSerpent – now paint it inyour chosen craftworldcolours. I built my WaveSerpent as a show piece,and I am thinking aboutadding it to a dioramaand entering it in this year’s GoldenDemon Open category.

This month’s awesome issue features an absolutely stonkingcover by none other than Kev Walker. The cover heralds thestart of a brand new story from the incredibly popular Titan

series. Princeps Hekate commands the Titan ImperiusDictatio, mighty war machine. This time they face one of the

most deadly enemies in the galaxy, a species so violent itthreatens to consume every living thing – the Tyranids.

Also in this issue is another episode of evil deeds from MalusDarkblade. Having escaped from the clutches of the Dark

Prince, Malus has uncovered a vital clue to Tz’arkan’swhereabouts. Meanwhile there’s more intrigue and insidious

Chaos plots in Inquisitor. And finally there’s the secondepisode of Kal Jerico – The Motherlode.

WHM#23 • OUT: 7th OCT • ONLY £2.00

TM

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