Following on from my earlier post about making some truescale 40k space marines, I decided to have a go at this technique without using terminator parts. Whilst I certainly agree that terminator legs readily make up for the loss in proportionality in "heroic scale" models, they are pricey and potentially more time consuming to produce than making best use of normal space marine (and chaos space marine) legs.
One of the critical choices to make in creating some true scale conversions is where to add extra height. In general, I think avoiding the central regions of the thighs and calves is a good move if you're not the most expert model convertor (or perhaps: don't have ready access to plasticard for adding the appropriate extra height and are worried about obtaining a good smooth finish to sliced in half greaves).
For me, this means selecting between:
(1) The knees;
(2) The hips;
(3) The waist.
Or some combination of the above.
This is with or without potentially bulking out the torso so that the marine looks beefier. I decided against this latter point as I wanted to use some Anvil Industry and Forge World parts for my torsos are I really don't want to be hacking apart resin in a vertical slice -- particularly on terminators.
So, for these models pictured below, I went for a slice just above the knees. This has the added bonus of being able to re-position the legs in a more dynamic pose (which is one aspect that I really like about these kinds of conversions, as evidenced by my Gun Kata style marine). All I've done here is break the legs above the knee using a knife and then pin them with an added gap of around 3mm (ish). The emphasis here on the ish is fine as not every human being is the same height, therefore I'm not too concerned if some of the true scale marines vary in height a little bit: just so long as they're taller than regular marines. And: adding height to the thighs ensures that the hands reach down the appropriate length of the body, rather than implicitly being able to touch the ankles from a standing position. (I also checked this assumption by measuring the ratio of my own thighs to calves length, and comparing to average human data: the space marine legs really do have calves that seem a little too long in ratio to the thighs. Yeah, I know, that was probably going a bit too far for 40k conversions).
Cutting at the hips is also viable, but (as I discovered) takes extra effort when one greenstuffs up the gaps as these locations are pretty close to one another; meaning that the greenstuff really needs to dry on one side before tackling the other. With cuts at the knees, I can work on both legs without waiting for the other one to dry so long as I'm paying a reasonable amount of attention. But perhaps one leg cut at the hip, and one just above the knee might also work well -- I'll have to try that at a future date.
I do intend to add a touch of extra height at the waist with these guys as well: once I've filled in the gap above the legs with some greenstuff. I intend to do this by simply adding another 1mm of flattened greenstuff on top of the legs (in the convex hole at the bottom of the torso) when I glue the torso on. This at least won't make the belt be out of place and require more labour intensive work to set right.
Finally, the observant amongst you will notice that the legs on the right are chaos space marine legs. I worked hard on these to scrub away the general chaotification and make them appear a bit more like Mk.IV or Mk.VI style armour.
Time to get out the greenstuff now!
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