Kast Kreations

As Promised!

2011-06-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

As I said in my last post I was going to be finishing up the battlewagon I started a little over a year ago. Well, it has taken way too long but it is done! Here are some shots of everything put together where they belong. Both orks on the top platform are removable, as well as the turret and the grot rocket. I seriously can't wait to get this on the field and destroy some stuff. Also as promised I have been working on some non-ork stuff, that might end up going up later tonight or maybe during the weekend, haven't decided yet.

-Shawn out.

More Paint On The Battlewagon.

2011-06-13T18:55:00.001-07:00

So I have had this battlewagon sitting in my closet unfinished for WAY too long. I decided to break it out and finally put the finishing touches. Chances are it'll be done either later tonight or early tomorrow. Take a look at what I have done so far. First image is of the grot rocket that slides on and off the track shown in earlier pictures of the painted wagon itself. Next up we have a shot of the turret that is placed where the big hole in the main platform is. As soon as the wagon is complete I will take some more pictures of everything where it belongs.

PS. I am also starting work on a few none ork related minis that I have had sitting about for a while that I have gotten to work on the past few days. Looking forward to seeing what people think.

-Shawn Out

Senegal Chameleon Enclosure

2011-05-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Time for the first project dedicated to my scaley buddies. A few weeks ago I attended my first reptile show in Hamburg PA. It was pretty awesome, lots of amazing animals, some fantastic people and TONS of ideas. I ended up taking home with me quite a few animals. Two savannah monitors, a leopard gecko, a beautiful female bearded dragon and a senegal chameleon. Thankfully I already had plenty of gear at home to set up decent homes for everything but the chameleon. After joining a chameleon forum, looking at setups done by some of the most creative people, I started work on my own reptile home. I started with an old broken spy sunglass case i got from work. I stripped it down, removing all the plexiglass to make room for the plans and screen mesh. Using screen window framing from Home Depot and the screws provided with the sunglass case I created a fully enclosed living space. Building a door with the same window framing that kept the walls secure brought the whole thing together. I then proceeded to start the first application of silicon to ensure a water tight seal so not to warp the wood. I built a thin bamboo frame around the inside of the enclosure, other people had used this method to keep their chameleon off of the screen mesh, and it seems to work really well. I then worked on the french drain style system to remove any water that would build up at the bottom of the enclosure due to regular watering. A plexiglass shield toward the bottom of the enclosure would help water from splashing out and heading down toward the drain. That was done using sheets of polystyrene cut in a downward slope sealed with silicon, had a waterproof tarp glued down then sealed again with more silicon. A small hole was drilled into the bottom and a tub was sealed into place giving the water a place to go, into one of two drainage tubs located under the main enclosure. Now all this talk about water and no real talk about how exactly this water will be applied inside the enclosure. At first I figured I'd just spray him down 2, 3 times a day, but I then found out senegals, like most chameleons need much more water then that. So after seeing a post on the forums about a DIY rain system, I built one of my own. Using a 25 dollar pond pump from The Depot, some large tubing and then some small, hard black tubing I had laying around the house for some reason or another. I decided how much I was going to use and poked holes in the black tubing with a sewing needle to give the water somewhere to escape from. One test is all it took for me to decide this was the system I wanted to use, I went ahead and rigged it up with a timer I also had laying around the house for the perfect rain system. I run it about 12 times a day for about 2 mins each time. Giving them plenty of water and keeps the humility exactly where it needs to be. Lighting is another important part of the chameleons world. Two types of lighting is required to keep a chameleon healthy, UVA and UVB, UVA is the normal rays almost all light gives off, this is normally handled with any heat bulb or even spotlight. You can see from the rain system picture where the heat bulb sits making it easy for it to bask. UVB on the other hand is special, requires one of two things, direct sunlight from outside, or a special bulb, I spoil my chameleon with both, it's enclosure is right near a sealed (no draft) window but I also have a UVB bulb hard at work inside it's home to make sure even on those rainy days it gets it's UVB. Lastly I added some live plants in order to keep it as natural as I could. The plants I used are Golden Pothos plans, they are perfect for chameleons, they love water, and have huge waxy leaves that chameleons will have an easy time drinking off of. In this last picture I only have two small pothos pots but I have added two more and my chameleon loves how much it can move around its new home. Hope I didn't babble too much in this post, it's pretty late... Well enough for now!

Shawn OUT.

P.S. If you look in the background of the drain picture you can see a sneak peak of the next Kast Reptiles project.

Kast Reptiles

2011-05-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

Once again it's been quite a while. I apologize for the wait, not that many people even see this blog but I figure a sorry is in order anyway. So I have found myself expanding my hobbies in multiple different directions at the same time. It started with costuming, then jumped over to wargaming, moved onto some other applications of my talents as seen in my last post (video game kiosk), and has now taken a stop with reptiles.... Yes you read correctly. The scaley friends we share this planet with has become a new and amazing hobby. Which leads to new and amazing projects, and at that point I decided to divide my blog into mini blogs so people aren't required to scroll through stuff they have no interest in to find the goods they are looking for. I started work on two of those mini blogs today, Kast Reptiles, which will be a host to the blogging I will do in the name of my reptile buddies, and Kast Wargaming for all of my works involving miniatures and the like. Kast Kreations will still be up and running, serving home to all of my hobbies under one roof. Looking forward to seeing everyone following the blogs they like most.

Shawn out.

Video Game Kiosk

2011-02-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

So it's been quite a some time, I haven't had a time to post anything in over 8 months! There has been a ton of projects I have started and finished in that time, I will have to get you guys up to date with all the goodness. Well a good place to start is with a bigger project I did for Bossman's storefront. I had a beat to hell GameCube kiosk I had gotten from a GameStop store almost four years ago that was just sitting down in my basement collecting dust and taking up space, with my family and I being forced to move into smaller places I decided it was about time to do something with it. I took it completely apart, pealing off all the stickers, stripping it down and gave me a clean slate to work with. One of the most popular games Bossman plays in his store is Blood Bowl, so I decided to theme out the kiosk to reflect an XBox 360 game based on this popular game. Using hand cut layered plexiglass I did with a band saw I was able create an awesome effect with the paint to make it look completely 3D. Added a few more details of cut plexiglass and the finished project turned out pretty awesome! Take a look!

Old Zoggy

2010-10-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

So I have been flipping through the Ork Codex the past few weeks trying to figure out a new project to start... Yes I know, I have unfinished projects I should get done before going on to yet another. But honestly, it's gotten to the point where looking at vehicles is making my head hurt (more like my hands, popping rivets for 2 hours only to cover half a vehicle is sad). So I figured I would do a special character, no wheels, no wires, or rivets just good ol' fashion flesh and bone. I thought the fluff picture of Old Zogwart was cool, so I figured why the hell not. Went through all my bits, picked out a few things and ended up using the body of one of the bike boys, a head of a boy which I'm not entirely sure what it came from and just a normal pair of legs. I also used the arm of the boy throwing a stick grenade to use for his staff arm. Then using some copper wire I added skulls and marine helmets to his belt, while twirling the wire for the skull strings it gave me an idea for the lightning that surrounds Old Zoggy. Drilled some holes, twirled some more wire and bam, Zoggy was born. Now I saw in the fluff picture he had some snakes about him. So I got the Lizard Men, blister that came with lizards and snakes, used them to top off the whole effect, I had to completely re-sculpt one of the snakes bodies to make it wrapped around his arm. Sadly I didn't take any pictures during that process, kinda was in the zone. After some paint Zoggy is looking pretty awesome, might do a little more with his base but till then. He is pretty much done. Till next time!

Signing out,
Shawn

Painting is fun!

2010-05-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

So this is gonna be a short blog post, after starting paint on my Battle Wagon, I went and painting up the one part of the stompa that was ready for it, which was the moon stomach plate that was made using the faceplate provided with the GW kit. Once again I used JoAnn Essentials, which as I stated earlier I got at JoAnn fabrics for about 98 cents a can. Good deal considering Army Painter is like 15 dollars a can. I think it turned out pretty good, comment and let me know!

Signing out,
Shawn

Scratch Built Battle Wagon

2010-05-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

So took some time away from the Stompa to sit down and go through some old pictures of conversions that haven't been touched in a WHILE, it's been about a year now since I had worked on anything other then the stomp. A lot has come up but I got around to working on my scratch built battle wagon. It has FINALLY gone into the paint stage! But instead of skipping right to showing off the paint job since I have the pictures of the build I figured I'd show that off first. The conversion started with a World War II Lee tank model I purchased from the local hobby shop, it was about the same size all around of the GW ork Trukk, so first I cut it in half to make it a bigger badder vehicle. Then added the panels to fill in the space in between, originally I was working on a snake bite army, so adding some wood elements to the battle wagon was my first task. Using balsa wood, I created an area where the models would sit while the vehicle moved across the field. After that I moved right into doing the deff rolla, which was just made of PVC pipe and some plastic card, held to the front by coiled wire to look like large shock springs, just for detail. Took me a while but I decided to steer away from doing Snake Bites, and moved toward doing something that gave me the ability to convert more with plastic card. So I decided on doing Deff Skulls, deciding that I tore the wood off the battle wagon and built the rest completely out of plastic card. I took a picture after most of that build. Which pretty much doubled the size of the original WWII model. I also added a large cannon to the turret which was later removed and replaced with a scratch built Forge World style lobba cannon. The real trouble with completely scratch building something made for orks, is the mass amount of rivets that have to place pretty much over the entire vehicle. Here is a small glimpse of the amount of riveting I had to do. Now it was during this build I was finally able to decide I was doing my army based completely on Bad Moons, now the reason that this build had complete influence on that is as I was building the mounting for the def rolla, it turned out to look exactly like a moon. In addition it allowed me to use a lot of other armies bitz to build my army since they are in fact the riches of all the ork clans. Now as you can see from the photo showing off the deff rolla moons, I placed a large steam tank on the back of the battle wagon to power it, in addition to adding two ork boys mounted on big guns. Also adding some flaps to give the WWII treads a little more of an orky look. The lobba is mildly on diplay as well, and lastly I added a grot rocket which could be used as such during an Apocalypse battle, or as a rocket launcher in a normal battle. I was gonna buy the army painter primer they sell at most hobby shops, but 15 dollars was a bit too pricey considering most of it get covered with rust and such anyways, ended up heading over to JoAnn Fabric's and picking up 4 cans of JoAnn Essentials yellow for about 98 cents on clearance. After priming I added a mixture of tin bitz, chainmail, and badab black wash to create a rusty, oily, and dirty yellow. I also started to paint some of the units that are stationary on the vehicle, like to grot shooting off the lobba. Well thanks for traveling through this last year of memories with and extremely old conversion that is now finally being finished up!

Signing Out,
Shawn

From the inside out!

2010-04-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

After long debating with myself on if I should or shouldn't do an inside of the cockpit, be cheap and just leave it completely blank on the inside. I decided to go with setting stuff up inside so the top could be removed to show off all the orkies working to kill something. First I used some resin doors my buddy over at Bossmans's Bitz Box gave me to seal off the cockpit from the rest of the head. then using some wire and plastic card tubes did some other details here and there to give it more of a cockpit feel, since the inside of the battle wagon wasn't intended on being seen for the most part. After working around with the plastic card and tubes to give it a better feel I started work on the driver, or what might still end up being multiple drivers, haven't fully decided yet. The best choice I decided was to use the driver from the GW Ork Trukks. Now thankfully while experimenting with silicone and resin for the first time, I ended up making a mold of that exact driver! Which was fantastic because I didn't have any extra drivers laying around in my bitz. Using the resin driver I was able to convert him into an awesome Stompa driver! I then realized the back of the head was kinda lame, didn't have anything on it at all and needed something to make it stand out a wee bit more, or at least blend more with what was going on. So I added some tubes, two smoke stacks and a gobbit that I thought looked pretty neat there. Well that just about catches you guys up on my Stompa project, I will be working on it a lot more this weekend and will hopefully get some more for everyone to see. Once again if you have any ideas for awesome conversions please shoot me an e-mail, I'd love to get some input as well!

Signing Out,

Shawn

Stompa continues!

2010-04-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Thankfully when I was working on the project, I pre-thought out the idea of making it easy to transport. I made the head, and arms completely removable. After showing it off to a few people I was given the idea to use that for more then just transport. I have already started working on different arms and claws that could be swapped out to give the Stompa different equipment such as more shootas or even a large deff rolla to squish anything that gets in the way of my over-sized monster. The other arm at this time is just a mildly modified version of the guns that came with the GW Stompa kit I still have to build a whole left arm that is much more detailed and not as "weedy". Also another big issue i was have is the front of the Stompa was looking way too bland without the belly gun, I wanted to give it something to really show off the fact that they were badmoons, I figured the easiest way to do that was to make a huge belly plate that would go on the Stompa when the gun wasn't being used. First I took the faceplate that was supplied in the GW kit, cutting two of the plates off in order to get the shape I was looking for. After cutting those out I mocked up and started attaching different shaped plastic in order to get the exact shape I wanted for this belly plate. Which of course was a moon, that was the easy part, the hard part was trying to get the plates to blend with the original plastic bits from the plate. After some green stuff, rivets, and one by one slicing off some of the bits from the stock plate using them to help with the blend. This is the same thing I did with the plates that covered the arm holes. Tomorrow I plan on doing some work with the cockpit and head. Please stay tuned and check out all the goodies to come! Remember, If you have anything you want see converted, feel free to e-mail me!

Signing out,

Shawn

Putting the stomp, in Stompa!

2010-04-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'v decided the first of my creations I will be showcasing is my Converted GW Stompa. After seeing a few of them built, I had come to the conclusion that it just wasn't good enough the way it was. Sadly I didn't take picture's of the start of my Stompa, but I'll fill you in. First I assembled the body as the instructions said. This wasn't the part of the Stompa I had issues with. I then proceeded to fill the gaps where the arms would of gone with plastic card. Blending the shapes to make it appear correct when it came time for paint. I also reworked the neck using PVC pipe so I could attach the GW Batttlewagon as the head. This mod was seen in March 2009's issue of White Dwarf. I also decided the arms that came with the Stompa were now way too short to be used with the conversion and scratch built my own. I am going to apologize ahead of time for the quality of these starting pictures, I had no idea how to take picture's of my miniatures at that point. I took the time to cut out the center plate and magnetized it or order to be taking off and on, replacing it with the belly gun if needed. You can see from the picture's at this time the smoke stacks that came with the Stompa had been used. Later on in the conversion those were removed and replaced with a different style of backing I had scratch built. I spent way too many hours trying to figure out what to do with the scratch built arm. I didn't want to do the normal everyday chainsword. That had gotten done over and over again, even scratch built ones all looked too bland to me by this point. i decided to go with something a little different. the pinchers and the grinders were a perfect way to get the looking i was going for in addition to being fulling functional in battle, grabbing up enemies of all shapes and sized and forcing them into the rollers grinding them into a fine paste! Just how the warboss used to make! I added some detailing here and there, some pipes, an exhaust, and some wires just to give it a decent and real feel. The only other issue I was having was with the head itself. It was way too long, since it was originally a vehicle I chopped it down shortening the head and giving it more of an ork appearance. My thoughts are that if an ork mek had to make a giant robot, chances are he would make it to look like himself as much as possible. The nextorder of business was replacing those smoke stacks with something that has a little more detail, I wanted the back to look as if thats where the engine was, not locked inside where no one could see what was going on. After building the turbines I still haven't exactly decided how they are logically supposed to work. But I liked the way they looked and decided to stick with it. It looked kind of steampunkesk. I also added two levels to the back of the Stompa in order to give the back a little more detail including a door on the top level so they can get to the engine from the outside if need be. Well I think that is enough for right now, I will be back later today most likely to post more about my GW Stompa!

Signing out,

Shawn

Greetings!

2010-04-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Kast Kreation's! After showing off my Warhammer 40k conversions to friends of mine they all recommended that I start a blog and document all my conversions. I wanted to start by introducing myself, my names Shawn, I'm 22 and live right outside of Philadelphia. There are many projects I have already started so, throughout the next few days I will be posting the step-by-steps on the ones I have already started. I also wanted to extend and offer that multiple people have told me to, if anyone sees my conversions and has a conversion they would like done. Feel free to e-mail me and we will talk about it!

-Shawn