Bobby Wong won the 2001 Golden Demon awards Slayer Sword at the US games day with his magnificent Bloodquest squad. We invited him to tell us how he went about producing these amazing models and heres what he said ...
Introduction
My Bloodquest Squad entered in the 2001 US Golden Demon competition, actually began life a year earlier. Although the conversion of the principal characters
were finished, I ran out of time in June 2000 to paint them. My plans thwarted, I decided to enter only Captain Leonatos in the WH40K single miniature category at the US Golden Demons. Leonatos earned me a 1st place Golden Demon, and encouraged with my good fortune, I revisited the other members of the Exiles with renewed vigor and excitement.
I decided early on that all the Exiles, from mighty Cloten to Scout-Novice Proteus were special characters, and as such each miniature deserved special attention conversion-wise, so they would be easily recognizable by fans of Bloodquest. I didn't include Menelius, Furion, and Valerius from Book 1 since they didn't survive into Book 2 of BloodQuest. I'll save them for a future project someday. Captain Leonatos, Sergeant Tranio, Veteran Brother Cloten, and Brother Palemon were converted mainly from the plastic Space Marine Tactical and Assault Squad sprues, while Scout-Novices Lysander and Proteus are metal castings. To convert these miniatures, you will need greenstuff (now whitestuff to us Americans), and for strength, I would recommend you pin the miniature together with wire (paperclips work well). Test fit the miniatures with adhesive poster putty before assembly to fine-tune the pose.
As a modeler, I have to tip my hat to Jes Goodwin for sculpting such a wide variety of plastic legs, arms and heads. I didn't appreciate this until I realized how easy it was to recreate all the Exiles using mainly plastic parts, without the need for sculpting
such difficult items such as heads, etc. Despite similarities in their Adeptus Astartes power armor, each character had specific details that help define their look. I'll elaborate more when I discuss each character in detail.
References
Naturally the best source of visual reference is the Bloodquest comic strip featured in Warhammer Monthly. Another excellent reference for Captain Leonatos is
the Warhammer Warriors series of combat action books. Leonatos is depicted in various action poses, and I found it to be a good source of inspiration.
