So what is "Actual Scale"?

Over the years myself and a few other like minded individuals have pioneered a technique which has become known as "true-scale" a process that involves making marines bigger basically.
For myself this began way back in 2002 with my White Scorpion marines seen below. Not content with regular plastics I wanted something bigger that fitted with the background material surrounding the Astartes. I wanted larger than life heroes.

My first Truescale attempt.


This process was later refined leading to my Pre-Heresy World Eaters and the more successful Gothic pattern marines which I created initially for a Dark Angels army and later used on my Pre-Heresy Night Lords.
None of which were ever finished but both provided me with an invaluable insight to how to make marines look that more imposing on the tabletop.

"Gothic pattern" Dark Angels


"True Scale" Pre-Heresy World Eaters



Actual Scale Astartes



The Actual Scale marine concept came about sometime later, in fact it was a combination of curiosity and the release of the new plastic Terminators that led me come up with the idea of really big marines worthy of the title Astartes.
Actual Scale differs from True Scale in that it is an attempt to make marines that are proportionally in scale with the other denizens of the 40k universe rather than just make bigger marines.
Compared to regular human models they stand at approximately seven foot six in scale terms, towering over the regular plastic marines and terrifying your opponents.
Over the next few updates to this tutorial I will be providing details of the my most requested tutorial to date, hopefully catering to most skill levels.
Although the process has become mostly associated with Pre-Heresy I will be demonstrating different techniques that will allow you to include these behemoths in your regular and Chaos Space Marine armies.


So what do I need?

First of all you'll need the following recommended components to build your own Actual Scale astartes:

Terminator Legs
Terminator Assault squad Storm Shield arms
Terminator Stormbolter arms
Terminator shoulder pads
Spare plastic marine arms
Marine Heads/helmets
Greenstuff or Procreate
Plastic rod (or bits of sprue will do)
Sculpting/modeling tools such as the GW sculpting tool, a sharp modeling knife, clippers, etc.
Polystyrene cement/Super Glue
Spare weapons such as bolters.

Creating one of these Astartes will seem daunting at first due to the amount of greenstuff work involved but don't be put off just yet. I'll be doing my best to provide step by step instructions that will result in something that looks like this guy here.




With a bit of practice and experiance you'll be able to create more varied positions and armour variants but for the time being we will be focusing on constructing a stripped down Mk VII marine.

Sculpting the Legs

This is going to be fairly image intensive as I'm going to be explaining the finer points of some simple techniques to improve the quality of your GS work.
I used the following to work with the green stuff, a simple GW style sculpting tool and a small tub of vasalene.

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The trick to working with vasalene is to apply it to the flat underside of the rounded end of your sculpting tool by lightly dabbing it in the tub and then wipe it on a spare bit of cloth or rag. Avoid doing this with tissue as fibres may attach to the vasalene, ideally you want a thin greasy film or residue left on the end. You can do the same with water but in my experience this is the best technique to use.

Preparing the Legs.

First off you need a pair of plastic Terminator legs. For the time being I want to keep the tutorial simple enough for everyone to have a bash at regardless of skill level so I'll be making an MK VII style marine.



The first thing that I have done is to base the legs on a standard infantry base, this is more of a personal preference than a rule of thumb. I like big marines but prefer them to be based correctly.
Once that's glued in place and dry I've cut the top of the rounded part that connects to the torso flat in preparation for the torso later int he tutorial. I will be demonstrating how to sculpt the entire torso but don't feel that you need to do that if you're not up to it. You could use a regular marine torso at a pinch if you wanted to but he'll be a bit thinner and not as imposing.



As you can see here I've removed the thigh plates at the top of the legs. This isn't one hundred percent neccesary really but as I'm going to be demonstrationg how to model the thigh armour it suits my needs here. If you want you can just work around them.

The Greaves

The Greaves are the lower half of the legs, the large armoured part of the leg that protects the shins and partially covers the feet.
The key to making the legs is that it's basically filling in the gaps on the terminator legs.
Place a a blob of GS in the centre of the leg like this:

You then flatten out the GS filling in the gap so it looks more like this:



To achieve this look you need to use the following techniques with the sculpting tool. As I'm self taught I don't know the technical terms that are used so will be using my own to describe my methods.

Smoothing out the GS

Using the flat rounded end of the tool you roughly press the GS in place pushing it out to the edges to fill the gap.



Don't worry about filling it all the way if there isn't enough GS as you can add another blob whilst it's still wet and work it in by smoothing it out.



Which gives you something like this



The technique for creating sharp edges is fairly simple and we'll be looking that in the next part.

To get the GS smooth you can used the following methods using the round end of the sculpting tool as seen. These techniques are best used for large flat areas but can be adapted for other means.


Rubbing

This is a simple method for getting the area flat and for spreading the GS out. It's just a simple matters of pushing the GS outwards towards the edge and moving the tool in an up and down motion afterwards to flatten it out.
Some pressure is applied at first but at it takes shape less pressure is used.



Smoothing
This is the second step and a good one for getting that smooth surface that you are after. Both techniques here (rubbing and smoothing) use the vasalene method and are done straight after applying the GS. Smoothing can be done anything up to fifteen or twenty minutes after the model has started to cure. In fact it is worth coming back every five or ten minutes for the first twenty minutes to smooth the GS areas over again.
To smooth the GS lightly move the tool in a circular motion over the areas. Concentrate on small areas at a time and only apply extremely light pressure.



Before moving on with the main tutorial I'll add some bits about forming hard edges.

More to follow...

Looking forward to the next part, I may use this to make a commander for my Marines :) Really nice work!

This has the makings of a great tutorial mate! I've put a link to it in our Tutorial list!

Doghouse i always love your stuff, this is no exception.