The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Lit up with Waaagh!

Thinking to myself that his base was a bit too tall, I grabbed my dremel and a cutting wheel and took a stab at carving it down to be slightly less thick. In doing so, however, I realized that I had made a bit of a mistake! I have coin-cell batteries which are basically the same dimensions as a quarter, and battery holders that fit them that I intended on concealing on the underside of the base. Unfortunately, I had cut too much of the base's height down to adequately fit the entire battery holder.

After a bit of swearing and contemplation, I hacked the battery cell holder itself apart and took the metal contacts out, resolving to build the battery enclosure into the underside of the base.

An hour later, I have this ugly little gem to show for my efforts:

Like all of my electronics work, it's pretty terrifyingly ugly, but damn if it doesn't still work. The gray stuff is a two-part epoxy called 'mighty putty', which can be obtained here. I would seriously suggest that anyone who does converting on a large scale grab some of that stuff. It mixes up easily, dries in under five minutes, and creates rock-hard holds. I used some of it on my old Stompa project as a structural support, and I have no doubt in it's strength. In this particular instance, I used it to hold the contacts stable on the underside of the base and to stick some of the extra wire down. There's a tiny switch stuck to the underside that you'll be able to see, as well, anchored by the putty. I put the switch on the underside for one simple reason: back when I did my old Guntrukk project, in the days of yore, I implemented the switch that turned the lights on and off on the exterior of the model, hidden inside a 'rocket'. The problem this led to was that every time I tried to transport it, the switch would get toggled, and subsequently run the batteries and LEDs down to nothing. What this suggested to me was that any time you work with electronics on a model, you want the switch to be recessed or tucked away somewhere that it can't accidentally be switched, hence its placement underneath the base.

When all the wiring is said and done... it lives!

 

The staff is noticeably dimmer than the eye LEDs largely because it's a different type of LED - the one lighting the eyes is a Surface Mount LED, which is a tiny square that projects the light in a decent arc, whereas the one that I was able to fit into the staff was your standard rounded-top LED, which projects light forward in a cone. The cone of light in the staff, however, is pointing upwards, meaning the light coming out of the eyes and mouth is mostly reflected off of other surfaces inside that skull first.

Despite that, it's only a tiny detail, and I think it looks fine. Certainly too late to change it now.

Anyway, the model's roughly 85-90% done, and needs a couple extra tweaks and additions. I'm very happy with how he looks currently, though - I got over the fact that the staff wiring was fairly obvious going down the chain by convincing myself that I'll make it look like rope come paint-time.

What’s weirder than two bases?

Wurrzag's another project of mine that fell on the backburner and stayed there for a little while, but it's been more than long enough to finish him off, so I'm getting off my lazy butt and doing it!

First order of business was to scrap the old base. Despite being relatively close to what I had originally pictured for the warphead's base, it was a bit too messy and not defined enough to suit my needs. It also left hardly any room on the underside for the requisite electronics I had to install, like a battery or switch. I went rummaging and came up with this old lid instead which is plenty roomy on the underside and had a nice flat surface for me to work on. Then, I grabbed some of my thicker styrene, cut a circle out with a jeweller's saw, and used the same saw to carve the disc into 'fragments' which I then roughed up with a knife and glued at angles pointing up towards the middle, to create a 'the earth is upheaving' look. A bit of putty underneath the pieces and around the edges, and viola, we have a new, much improved base.

 

The next step was to get Wurrzag onto the base. I managed to hide one set of the wires - the ones for his eyes - by coiling them around the rope hanging from his back and down into the base. The other wires that lead to the LED in the staff were twisted to look like rope and looped around the chain of one of the fanatics holding Wurrzag to the ground. The main supporting wire that holds most of his weight (the metal one) was subsequently disguised with the addition of a 'wrecking ball' weight at the end touching the base.

 

The only thing I am having a problem with right now is that visually, the front seems kind've open and empty. I'm considering maybe getting thin flying bases or some other relatively invisible support, crumbling some cork, and suspending rocks 'floating' in the air maybe an inch to half an inch off the ground on the base, to make it look like there's a whole lot of power going on.

Another thought I've been entertaining is to have that non-staff hand clutching something like a fetish. I have a squig foot I've been saving for a while from when I removed its legs and replaced them with tires... He could have a lucky squig's foot charm in the other hand, maybe.

More to come!