Now that all of the main pieces are made, it's time to get into the details. At this stage, they're huge, but the suits still look pretty naked. This will not do.



The reference artwork from Warhammer 40,000 has all sorts of amazing little details on these suits of armor. Each and every suit is customized with all sort of badges and trim. To keep things simple and relatively quick, I settled on only the very basic bits of trim. Each suit ended up getting a winged icon of some sort on the chest and a handful of purity seals.



Since I didn't want to sculpt wings over and over again, once I had a pair I was happy with I went ahead and made a mold so I could cast copies and simply glue them onto the armor. To differentiate one suit from the next, I made different icons in the middle of each chest after attaching the wings. Using an epoxy putty product called "Magic-Sculpt" I was able to create a unique sculpture for each one which later hardened and became at least as strong as the resin and vacformed plastic pieces. The first one I sculpted was a skull, then the imperial double-headed eagle, and finally a winged sword.



For the purity seals, I started with a few lumps of clay and pushed a cylindrical object into them to give the impression of wax seals. In the center of each one, I stuck a found item to make them more interesting (things from a small skull sculpture to one of my rank devices from the Navy). Then I went ahead and made a mold so I could cast copies of them in resin.



The ribbons hanging off of the seals are supposed to be inscribed with various litanies and incantations about victory and bravery and devotion to the Emperor of all Mankind. Rather than simultaneously developing my calligraphy skills and carpal tunnel syndrome, I opted for printing out the text using an inkjet printer and a few sheets of Printed Treasures printable fabric, This stuff is a lightweight cotton fabric with a paper backing adhered to it so you can run it through your printer. Once it's printed, you peel off the paper backing and you've got a piece of fabric printed however you like. Pretty nifty.



For the actual text, I found a few things I liked here and there, but after a while I realized that nobody's really going to read them. That's when I started really having fun with them. I started by feeding long strings of text to the Google Latin translator. The text in question included things like the lyrics to the Mr. Ed them song and Ke$ha's "Tick Tock." For some reason I get a chuckle out of the idea of the Saviors of all Humanity waking up in the morning and brushing their teeth with a bottle of Jack.



I also made it a point to include at least one on each suit which detailed Games Workshop's copyright policy with regard to fan-made costumes and a disclaimer stating that these costumes are in no way officially endorsed. These are the largest fo the purity seals and can be seen on the left shoulder of every one of these guys. It's important to make that clear.



After I'd cut each of the strips of text out, the next step was to age them by soaking them in a cup of tea overnight, then singe the edges lightly to give them the look of old paper. The strips were then glued to the back of the resin seal.



The last little touches were some small vent and patch details I made using rounded rectangular scraps of MDF and cast blocks of resin here and there. These mostly show up on the legs, but I'll attach some to the arms and chest at some point.



Sometime later I'll go back and sculpt out a few more random icons to attach to these suits. As any Warhammer fan knows, your character becomes 12.6% more badass with each additional skull icon you attach to him.



