The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Brand new pair of shoes!

Okay. I cast it. I may make another, as it's fairly easy and this one has a few air bubbles in it, though thankfully not on the surface texture. Ironically, I actually completely forgot to put mold release into the mold before pouring, but it still came out fairly readily.

 

Not too bad, really. I'm going to start adding detail to the original now.

Fancy footwork

Got a bit more of the shape done, and I think most of the curves are taken care of.

 

It's not exactly like the drawing. The scale's the same, but the foot narrows towards the back more than the original illustration. This was to make my life easier with these curves, mostly. I think I'm going to add that circular ankle joint, then make a mold of it before I add the extra toe bits. I don't want the feet to be completely symmetrical - that's not orky. Just similar in shape.

I'm wondering if the seams between the plastic and the putty are going to be noticeable after a coat of primer. I can't feel anything when I run my finger over it, which implies it's a fairly smooth transition, but the gray putty I used was cheaper than greenstuff, and it gets sort've translucent where it gets thin (like right where I spread it over the seam) so I can't visually tell. I may add a very thin layer of putty over the toe again just to hide that line down the middle, though I think it'd be fairly invisible with primer.

The casting material is stuff I got for my birthday out of a Micromark catalogue. I've no idea what it's actually made of, but the mold-making component seems to be like rubber when hardened and the material you cast with seems much like resin.

Stompy feet for the Stompa!

I started work on the torso, but had a hard time visualizing it, so I thought I would move to working on one of the feet so I could get proper size dimensions in horizontal terms. The problem I'm encountering with this is that I'm not sure how to tackle the curves of the feet - I've looked at this stompa, which has a similar design, but it seems he used foamcore to create those curves, and I don't have that available to me. I decided to try to sculpt them from scratch, but it feels like a tremendous amount of work for something that I'm sure could be done some easier way.. it just seems too complex to bend plasticard to those shapes, with the odd curves they have on two axis.

 

Once again, it is actually to scale with the drawings. That ork's thrown in the pictures for scale purposes. Sorry the shots are a bit blurry! I'm going to make one foot, and using my newfound mold equipment simply cast and make another so I don't have to bother with all this curves garbage.

Nice cans!

Alright. I started making a very basic frame shape to which layers upon layers of armor will eventually be bolted to.

 

It's made from an old poster tube that I had laying around. The front half of the tube is going to be the grot cockpit - I'm going to try and fit loads of controls in there, and 3-4 grots. I actually think I might use some snotling models, despite their smaller stature, because they're easy to pose doing interesting things. I think it'd be kind've funny to have one at the main foot controls (in the middle) with another one clamoring behind him to try and see what's going on, inadvertantly covering the pilot eyes with his hands as he shoves the pilot out of the way.

Also, for the whole engine-section, I'm going to combine a bit of scratch engine work with parts from the chemical plant kit that I've seen put to such good use in the past. winkingOrk.gif

While the PVA glue I used to reinforce the shape of the thing dries, I went ahead and riveted the arm up a bit.

 

I think it's done for now, so I'm setting it aside.

The power klaw to end all klawz

 

I'm trying to be faithful to the sketch while still incorporating some of my own ideas, such as the pulley wires that would control the arm's operation. It's actually exactly to scale with that picture when the sketch is viewed at 200% zoom. (The entire gargant is built generally following this scale) It lacks a bit of detail and a lot of rivets at the moment, but I like to wait on rivets and do them all in one fell swoop. There'll be a few stray armor plates attached to the arm, though. The upper arm section looks a bit short because of the angle I had to stand it up at to get the claw to balance. I used lego for the tubing... I also used lego for the joints, as I have no way of cutting proper plastic circles, and they were readily available. I also thought of something interesting...

‘Dey call me Stompy!

It all began with this really phenomenal art I found on a different forum (I think it may have been Warseer). It was being touted as possible concept art of GW's stompa that they may or may not be releasing with the new codex (in 2055.)

I liked this illustration a good deal, and I didn't feel like working on my other projects, so I just started on it after figuring out if GW would sue my pants off or not. The plan is to add to the mechanics in the drawing as I go - like a pulley system or something creative. Mostly I figured I'd use the sketch as a reference and fill in the gaps that it was vague or unclear on.

And so, it begins!