Thougts on: Salamanders Heraldry

So, I gave it a hard thougt once more: In which way am I going to display the Company and Squad affiliation of my Marines. The official heraldry / insignia has changed a few times and lacks in consistency to satisfy me. So first off is a short overview of official heraldry:

3D Test Print: Salamanders Shoulder Pads

I recently ordered a few of my Salamanders Shoulder Pads at Shapeways to test the level of detail of their materials.The results are pretty much as expected.

"White, Strong and Flexible" (WSF) has a low level of detail and it has a rough surface which makes it improper for printing shoulder pads. The advantage over the other materials is that it's the cheapest meterial.
"White Detail" (WD) has a good level of detail but appears to be quite brittle and seems to have difficulties with the roundness of the shoulder pad (there are many gaps on the surface).
"Frosted Detail" (FD) is much more expensive than the previous materials and shows a great level of detail but has also a slightly rough surface. In some places the material seems to blur, so that the level of detail didn't come out so great there.
"Frosted Ultra Detail" (FUD) is only a little bit more expensive than "FD", has a great level of detail and a mostly smooth surface. For items as tiny as these shoulder pads (0,98 x 0,54 x 0,82 cm³) it is the perfect material.

The picture shows the shoulder pads as they arrived. So they are untreated at the moment and might come out better if treated properly.

left to right: WSF, WD, FD, FUD; at the top: original

More Shoulder Pads are done! Part II

I did the design for two more shoulder pads the last days.

Assault Squad

Command Squad v2

The last one looks a lot like a shoulder pad shown in Index Astartes.

More Shoulder Pads are done! Part I

As I like the idea to use flames as squad markings I decided to create shoulder pads for them as well.

Tactical Squad

So far I am tending to use this one as mark for the tactical squads. The following one I designed for the command squad.

Command Squad v1

Salamanders Shoulder Pads are done!

The first printable shoulder pads are done! I am totally pleased with the result (with the look on the computer, at least). Unfortunately it'll take a while till you can take a look at the final print, since I mean to do some more awesome stuff with these 3D-modelling tools and Shapeways charges 9.50 $ for shipping. So we just have to be patient...
I suppose its not that interesting for you to know how I actually created the shoulder pads. Anyway, if I'm wrong, let me know and eventually I might put up a short tutorial some day. So I skip the technical part and let the pictures speak!

Trooper - left shoulder pad

What am I doing here?

So, here I am! I have no intend to lose many words on why I finally got myself into blogging or who the hell I am (most of you know me anyway, I guess). I thought it would be much more interesting to focus an what I'm actually going to do here. So far I got myself into Warhammer 40k, Battlefleet Gothic and Dystopian Wars. The biggest project of all are my beloved Salamander Space Marines. I started them during 3rd edition at very young age (around 14). According to this age my miniatures looked ... hm hard to tell ... really crappy. Ha! So I sold them to start from the beginning.

I am going to show you mostly Salamanders stuff here. First of all will be the creation of the 3rd Battle Company. Right from the beginning, step by step.
I am starting with something extraordinary. As GW has decided to fill the Salamanders not up with their love, decals really really suck and I'm not that good at freehands, I decided to create my very own shoulder pads! At the moment I am working with some 3D-modelling software to accomplish that aim. When the models are done, they'll be printed by Shapeways (yes, it actually is called "printing"). Using Google SketchUp 8 and 3ds Max 2012 I designed a plain shoulder pad that matches pretty much the original. Next step is to model the chapter symbol.