The origin of inspiration

Entering Armies on parade 2013 has made me sit down on think about the origin of inspiration, certainly from an artistic/modelling perspective. For this year's entry mine was one of the great number of Space Wolves entries and as far as inspiration always a simple choice for me as many years ago when I last had a 40k army it was space wolves so the history was a well known beast to me. Using this knowledge of the background fluff I selected an iconic location (in this case Fenris the space wolves home planet) for this kind of work I always think it's best to use something instantly recognizable to your target audience,  this in many way will dictate the look your finished work should portray.

The Finished Item

Considering this my process then considered what troops I wanted to build the display around and as in this case I was working on a fairly short timeframe needed a quite small force with a big presence I opted for the good ole thunderwolf cavalry with Canis Wolfborn and Wolf guard terminators watching on.
Given the selected force and location I had chosen the most sensible environment for these guys to be in would be some sort of training environment  with the safety of the fang either on the board or 'visible'
All that remained then was to finalise the look and create some signature sections and that is the key part. For this peice I was to a certain degree my own muse but often (and for 2014 this is true) although she knows next to nothing about the game system or universe my good lady wife is a great source of ideas and vision. The tricky part for me is translating her brain into vision and within the scope of the game world.

Some of the smaller and more hidden details