Kitbashing & Conversions

A glowing weapon, eye lenses or rune can be the perfect focal point for a conversion, drawing the eye to the parts you've swapped in. Brushstroke breaks it into a dead simple plan: decide where the light comes from and how far it spreads, paint those sources solid white, make sure the nearby edges are highlighted, then tint the lot with a thinned contrast or glaze paint before adding white back in the centre. He shows it on a Necron in blue, green and red, so you can see how changing one glaze changes the whole glow.

Have you ever added a glow to a converted model? What did you light up, and what colour did you go for?

The quickest way to make a kitbash look like it was always meant to be one model is often the paint, not the parts. In this one, Trovarion shows how working from a limited palette (picking a handful of colours from the colour wheel with a "gamut map" and mixing everything else from them) makes a miniature look far more harmonious. He paints a whole figure from a single themed set and keeps a single saturated blue as the star. It's a brilliant mindset for conversions: when the arms, heads and bits all come from different kits, or you've mixed plastic parts with the 32mm minis we print here at Nebulous Models, a tight shared palette ties the lot together.

Do you plan a colour scheme before you start a kitbash, or work it out once it's built? How many colours do you usually allow yourself?

Not every kitbash has to be a huge conversion. In this one, Bash & Brush builds a whole kill team where each model gets its own role (comms, grenadier, marksman, leader) just through careful bits choices. Shaving off detail, adding pouches and gear, and borrowing parts from other kits all show how a few small swaps can tell a story. He also covers smoothing carved plastic and finishes with a weathered paint scheme, so there's plenty to pinch for your own squads.

What's the one bit you always reach for to make a rank-and-file model stand out?

This episode of Squidmar's Miniature Masters is all about kitbashing. Each painter gets three very different kits and has six hours to turn them into one brand-new character, then a day to paint it. It's great for ideas: you see how they pick which parts to keep, blend the joins with putty, and keep the silhouette reading as one model instead of three stuck together. The judges' feedback along the way is basically a free kitbashing masterclass.

If someone handed you three random kits tomorrow, where would you start: the pose, the head, or the story?

Welcome to Kitbashing & Conversions! Share your conversions, kitbashes and custom builds, show how you painted them together, and swap tips on blending parts from different kits.