The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

If I said you had a nice body…

Just a scant two months ago, I sent my warboss bike off to the disgustingly talented Nozeminer, from The-Waaagh.com's forums, for a bit of work. Particularly, I asked him to sculpt me a mean, green, half-machine ork rider to represent Zanzag Barga, my ork Bikerboss. I told him I basically did not care about the time frame in which the model was done, which meant he could work on it at his leisure. Since then, he's put together some absolutely phenomenal work, which I feel compelled to share.

 

If you read this link, which leads to Zanzag's fluff, the model makes a lot more sense, but to recap: Zanzag is an ex-fighta-bomma pilot who lost his entire right side, clean down the middle, in a suicide run. To reward him, the meks and painboyz built him a fancy new bionic replacement for all the parts he lost. Unfortunately, due to it's weight and bulk, he's not able to fly anymore, so being an Evil Sun at heart, he turns to bikes as a way to get his thrills.

The model's theme borrows half from the Terminator movies (Ahhnold!) and half from WWII bomber aesthetics. Noze did some absolutely fantastic work on this guy so far - you can clearly see the bionic half of his body, and the bionic foot is a nice touch. The real work of art is the head, though - that half-bionic grin is just insidious.

I've given him a bit of input in terms of concept and ideas, but aside from that I've pretty much let him run wild with the sculpting, and he has done an absolutely incredible job. I'm not sure how long it'll be till the whole model's done being sculpted, but every time I get an update from him it gets harder and harder to wait!

Noze has also had the foresight to leave the model in a couple separate pieces.Given how awesome this biker is shaping up to look, I've decided to go whole-hog on the mini and light him. When I get the miniature back, I'm going to attempt to make a cast of the head, and then use that cast to drill out the 'bionic' eye and slip a red LED into his noggin (I'd hate to accidentally slip up and ruin the original head!) It should give him that authentic 'Come wif' me if ya wantz ta Waaagh!' terminator look.

There's a couple other things that need to be done to this model (particularly, the bike) after I get it back from Noze. I would love to add a grot hanging off the back of the bike, and I set aside the weedy runt from the Shokk Attack Gun kit that is getting 'sucked in' to the vaccum port on the gun for this purpose. Unfortunately, in the interim of sending this bike off for work, I seem to have lost the little guy, so I'm going to have to come up with an alternative. The bike's also getting a nice, big banner to trail behind it. I have some funny ideas for what sort of things could be drawn on the banner, but I'm going to wait until a bit later to let that cat out of the bag.

Anyway, there you have it. I get giddy whenever I look at this guy, and I can't wait to get him back and finish him off. Thanks Noze!