Underworlds Warband - The Faceless - WIP

Finally, the converting part of my Warhammer Underworlds Stormcast team is finished - now it should be much easier.

The idea went through several stages and evolutions, but the source of it was Ana's (from Gardens of Hecate) brilliant take on the same kit, which can be found HERE. I wanted to do something similar, but also not copy it blatantly. Then I saw THIS artwork and I realized that I can make heavily armored counterparts to the cultists that I made for my zombie legion. At that point, I decided to get a Shadespire box to try this idea out. There are only 3 Stormcasts there, a perfect amount to test out this idea. Besides, I heard good things about the game itself, so trying it out was a bonus. Then I spent several months developing the idea in my head, sketching various options and looking for inspiration on the internet.

The Faceless were the final result of all that deliberation. Heavily inspired by Dark Souls aesthetics, I made my Stormcasts into creepy, otherworldly knights that hide their faces and identity behind elaborate, sculpturesque armor. Each one has a leading motive, starting with the helmet which then affects all other parts of their equipment. As their name suggests, there will be no faces on their helmets - only animals or geometric/abstract shapes, the more inhuman, the better. I have many, many more helmets/themes planned, should I someday decide to expand on this idea.

As a side note, this was probably the first time when I was doing so much precise sculpting on such (relatively) small infantry miniatures. It required different methods and I learned a lot during this whole work. Hopefully, future projects will benefit from this.

EDIT: The painted group can be seen HERE.

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The whole warband, the Faceless:

As a comparison, the original ones, as envisioned by Games Workshop (not painted by me, pictures taken from GW's website).

Now, the individual knights. First comes the leader, the Crusader. He is obviously inspired by the Pyramid Head from the Silent Hill franchise (especially the movie version) and the artwork I linked above - but he was also thought as a knightly variant of my zombie cultists. In the beginning, I wanted to make the whole team look like that, but I had too many interesting ideas for other knights to just dismiss them like that - the Crusader remains as the only one left from that first idea.

The second one is the Bull. It was this idea that made me scrap the concept of making everyone a pyramid head. He was partly inspired by Smough from Dark Souls, especially the part with the 'fat armor' and helmet visors being hidden in its 'neck'. The rest are my original ideas.

And the third one, the Vulture. This one I made the last and was inspired by THIS and THIS artwork. I had the least ideas for her and made her last, but as the sculpting progressed I was getting more and more into it and I am pretty happy with the final result.

And a bonus, here are the renderings of some of the more geometric helmets that I have in mind for the future, mostly the ones that I could model digitally. Many of them are taken from various pictures found on Pinterest. It's also a quick example of what color I have in mind for the Faceless - well, maybe a bit rusted than that, but you get the idea.

And to add even more to this already long post, this is a 52nd regular weekly post. This means, that I managed to keep up the pace and have at least a bit of progress every Sunday for a whole year. Let's wish for another year like this!