The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Lights, Camera, Squiggoth!

In sticking with my youtube promise for this project, this should hopefully help to clarify any questions.

Plumbing the depths of madness

Oh ye of little faith, behold!

Ya might have thought I was crazy, but tell me if this looks all that bad.

 

Barely a seam, eh? Alright, there is a seam, and there are a couple marks on it, but nothing that greenstuff can't superficially fix. This all gets easily hidden underneath the howdah anyway.

But wait!

 

A hatch! And underneath? Batteries and the circuit to amplify the speaker, in a compact (hah, not really...) box!

 

Enjoy this! It's a view that nobody will ever see of a squiggoth's rock solid resin insides. About two hours of dremelling with a very dedicated sanding drum carved this out.

It's alright, guys. You can say it. Come on, do it with me.

Woohoo!

I might not have been as mad as I seemed.   Youtube video will be coming up soon as an overview, once I relax a bit.

Hit it with the biggest choppa!

I'z been shown a vishun uv Gork and Mork, an I hadz ta get to werkin' on it!

DIS CHOPPA IZ TOO WEEDY FER DA JOB, SO I'Z UPGRADED TO A 'UGE CHOPPA!

It wot took me'z bout half uv one-a dem 'ours to chop my way out da uvva side, but I didz it!

 

Ya'z see, I'z gunna hollow it out and put all da worky bitz inna 'iz gutz, and close 'im up, but not 'fore I putz a hatch in da top fer changin' da batt-rys. Dat way it'z all sealed up good so'z I can put wot-evah howdah I wantz on da top!

I ain't no zoggin' madboy! Just youz give me a little bit ta prove it.

(It was an astonishingly good cut, actually. I missed everything of importance with the saw - avoided the armor plates, the legs, even the squig-wang on the underside. I'm going to hollow it out and remove the top of him as a hatch which will hopefully be hidden or concealed by the howdah. There's a couple cuts there as I worked up the nerve and broke jewellers saw bits that were far too weak to do the job, but those can be easily concealed, and the actual cleft cut itself is a nice and simple repair with a bit of greenstuff 'round the underside that nobody actually sees.)

But wait! It gets worse!

 

It's times like this I wish I knew electronics so I didn't have to bother with all this work, but so be it. That marked out block is going to be removed tomorrow courtesy of my dremel.

Out of my gourd

I knew there was a reason I wasn't working on that squiggoth project. Left alone in the darkness of my display case, it was forced to asexually reproduce to keep itself company!

 

I'm obviously batshit crazy. I've come to terms with that. I did manage to get the new one for pretty cheap - , shipped. Honestly, though, between these two models and the stompa I can play retarded amounts of orks, which will be perfect for Apocalypse.

It's actually a bit weird. The new one needs a bit of cleanup, yes, as it's former owner did some things I don't approve of, and I am going to need to break it down to components to easily put the speaker in, but the new one is a better cast than my first. What the hell, Forgeworld? For example, see the feet; on my first, I have this webbed 'clump' of crap between the toes that I thought was standard. It's impossible to remove because the resin is so thick, though... whereas this new one has perfectly cast feet. Certainly makes my first one look cruddy by comparison... I guess quality control's a bit lacking.

I plan on putting speakers into the new one as well, yes. My plans for the method of music have changed significantly, though. My biggest obstacle was figuring out how, if I put a speaker in, I would make both of the squiggoths sync up with sound - if I put two mp3 players in, it'd never, ever match. Instead, I have come up with what I think is an ingenious solution - radios! I have an FM broadcaster on my 60 gig ipod for my trips in the car so I can listen to my own music, which means all I would have to do is toss a small pocket fm radio into each squiggoth. I'm pretty sure I can get a pair of them for ridiculously cheap as it's the sort of trash marketed at joggers and bikers.

To try and make them a bit different, I'm going to be scratchbuilding howdahs on both. I also think I'm going to leave the tusks off of one and instead replace it with a big, chunky iron gob akin to the one on the smaller FW squiggoth.

All in due time, anyway. I have a couple other things to finish up with before I can get to working on these!

D.J. on a budget

So, while I was at Syms today picking up a suit I was having tailored, I remembered that I have yet to actually obtain the MP3 player that is going to be at the heart of this project. Fortunately, somebody at the clothing retailer is completely batshit insane and decided that selling cheapass mp3 players there would be a great idea. I managed to score a 128MB Coby MP3 player which is more than adequate for my needs!

It's not something I would ever consider getting to actually use as an MP3 player, but it is pretty perfect for what I need it for - runs off a single internal AAA, and all the buttons are on one side of the mp3 player, meaning I don't have to rig up some ornate contraption to control them inside the howdah. I also managed to score both it and another cheap set of speakers for possible mutilation, as well as a USB cable, for .99, which seems more than fair, really. The only downside is I can't pick and choose tracks with a visual menu, but I guess if an ipod shuffle user can manage like that, so can I.

At this point I'm basically resigned to scratchbuilding a new howdah, but putting it off until I have some concrete ideas about what I want to do with it.

Ponderous predicaments

Alright - no video with this one, as it's not so much progress as analysis, and I can't really film effectively in macro.

I've spent the past few hours really thinking this squiggoth over as to what I want to do. The first speaker's fine - I actually spent a little time hollowing out the back of the throat a bit more and carving it so the acoustics would project forward a bit more, and it's ended up being notably louder.

 

Here's a view from the side of the howdah so you can get an idea of how much clearance there is already between the body and howdah...

 

Of course, the 4x AAA batteries have to be put somewhere as well. I'd shove all this stuff inside the squiggoth and be done with it, but I couldn't get to any of it in there - it would suck if I had to remove the squiggoth's head every time I wanted to turn the speakers on or use the mp3 player.

I should mention a few things:

1) I do not want the speakers or electronics to be visible anywhere. Having it exposed somewhere, be it on a tower or mounted on the howdah or anything like that, isn't really what I want to do. I think it'd be far more... interesting.. if I just kept all of that stuff concealed so that people would walk in on a game or something, hear music, and ask where the hell it's coming from.

2) This will probably not be based. This is a gaming model for me, and I think a base would make it a bit too unwieldy.

I've seriously been considering doing one of the following things:

- Now that the speaker's louder, I may ditch the 2nd one all together, as I haven't figured out a place where I can logistically fit it. Under the howdah's a nice thought, but I don't think there's room for it, and even if I hollow the back down (which I have held off doing so far due to fears of ruining the model) I don't know if it's worth the trouble.

- I could build an entirely new howdah for this thing. I'd probably model it after the Dawn of War howdah, except that it's closed-topped. I don't even know if that matters, as it's technically not a vehicle (It has wounds and such) but I am under the impression that for WYSIWYG rules I need to emphasize that orks would be firing from the howdah. The upside to this is I could design the howdah around the speaker and electronics, and maybe even add a few extra lights or something. I almost don't want to do this because it'd be such a pain in the ass to build something that fits as flat on the squiggoth's body from scratch, and I don't really have a plan for what I'd make if I did this.

- One of my friends had an interesting idea while watching me dremel - he noticed the smoke coming off the dremel bit because it was getting ridiculously hot and saw the smoke coming out of the squiggoth's mouth, which I'm told looks pretty cool. I wonder if it'd be possible to put a smoke machine inside the squiggoth's head - one of those evaporators, you know, the stuff you see in Spencers. Kind've a silly idea, though - it'd most likely wreak havoc on the paint, and I don't think it's quite as cool as sound.

What do you guys think? I've hesitated to mess with the squiggoth's back so far mostly out of paranoia of wrecking the thing - when I went to the hobby store today and showed the guys there what I was working on, they basically all called me insane for even considering taking a power tool to it.

Even Rocky had a montage

I have been messing around with video editors. My production values have gone up dramatically.

I have also filmed myself using a tripod this time around, so you may all grimace at my twisted visage.

And oh yes, there is a montage.

When good zippers go bad

I am a monumental idiot. Somehow I can operate power tools like a drill press and such just fine. I was dremelling out the back of the squiggoth's neck for a speaker mount.

Of course, when I was done dremelling, I took my coat off and started shaking the pounds of resin dust off it. Shaking it vigorously so as to remove all of the resin dust, I managed to whip the rather large zipper around at a high speed and directly into my right eye, giving me quite a nice shiner.

So, to recap:

Power tools? A-OK! Zippers? FAIL

Anyway, here is the next step of youtube videos.

It cut me off at the very end when I was talking, but you get the idea. I'm going to have to bitz order some goff rokkers, I think.

Riding the Squiggoth of the future

Yes, I know I am bouncing around between projects like a kangaroo on acid, but it's just the way I seem to work. I've been messing around with preliminary ideas for my squiggoth at the moment.

The idea: The squiggoth will be a roving bar/combat heavy support unit that both keeps my army well-watered down with fungus brew and deals out some seriously scary damage.

The twist: The squiggoth will have a built-in MP3 player and speakers and will be broadcasting music on the table while I play with it. This includes orky wardrum/battle music, squiggy roaring, and or course, some music to drink to!

I was planning on putting up my pictures and stuff in a post and detailing how I was going to put the speakers in before I realized it would be stupid without.. well, sound, as proof of concept. So I have decided to saddle astride the wave of the future and make a video post!

The sound is about 1-2 seconds behind the video, but I blame youtube for that (even though I'm fairly certain it's my fault). Enjoy my sexy, dulcet nerd voice as I get this idea started.

More to come!