The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

The start of a character

So, a while back I wrote up my somewhat wordy backstory for my ork army.

A dude named Zsoulless has been posting at The Waaagh for a while now and started posting some completely, ridiculously awesome Ork art that he has been doing in his free time.

Kaptin Badrukk, the meanest Flash Git in da 'ooniverse:

The artist's personal Big Mek art for his army:

I sent Zsoulless a PM asking if he did commissions, and he asked what I had in mind. I pitched my ideas at him. In my backstory, I laid out a number of orky characters that are in my army: Wurrzag da Weird, the feral-esque Warphead, Booma da Big Mek, the chief architect of all things explosive and stompy, and Warboss Gargrim "'Uge'" Mungus, a massive ork warlord who has an unusual fondness for grots.

He said he had been looking for a couple neat ideas to draw out, and after a bit of discussion where I explained a couple facets of the characters that I hadn't yet written out, he started drawing. The results? Awesome:

This sketch by Z is of Booma with his signature weapon, da Boomhamma, a bionic arm, and a Kustom Force Field generator. It's still a work in progress, but holy crap guys, tell me this isn't the coolest thing. When he's done, he's given me permission to ink the thing and color it in. While I have no artistic talents as far as illustration goes, I can certainly wield photoshop well enough to manage that.

I get inspired by good artwork, and this is one hell of a kick in the ass to actually build a proper Big Mek model to represent Booma. That little project has rocketed it's way up to the top of my to-do list! I'm going to try and model as closely to his art as I can within reasonably boundaries.

This is the starting point of the Boomhamma. It's obviously one of the biggest identifying features of the character, but I thought it was still looking a little plain, so Z and I talked it over for a little bit and he bounced this sketch off me, which I really liked:

The general idea would be that one side has the 'mork' face glyph, and the other will have 'gork' on it, so that Booma can hammer the ork gods into unwitting skulls.

I believe these glyphs originated froma user named Kr00zA over at The Waaagh, in which case, thanks mate.

I spent the morning working on matching that art. Working on the head of this hammer has been some of the fiddliest scratchbuilding I've ever had to do, particularly that glyph, but I think I really like this more than the other designs. This is the 'gork' side - the 'mork' glyph will go on the opposite end when I get a proper chance to do it.

Also, I sculpted booma a larger tooth to match the art.

So there we go! As the sketch develops, so too shall this model.   It's been really great working in tandem with Z, as I like having someone to bounce ideas off of, and his art is an incredibly useful tool while modelling.