The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Big shootas and weapon storage

I've had a fairly busy morning, but I managed to get a little bit done so I thought I'd post it up before I moved on to the next part of the vehicle.

I produced a turret front that will hopefully work as a decent Big Shoota. It's pretty simple - just a couple styrene tubes and some sheet cut to size, but it gets the point across.

 

I wanted to show off an extra little detail that I was not planning on, but am happy with. Usually when I come up with modularized weapons for things, they tend to get lost or misplaced or I end up having trouble figuring how out to transport them from home to game and back again. Instead, I've managed to mount the extra turret weapon discreetly on the underside of the trukk for storage until I decide to change the trukk's weapons.

I figured the detail on the underside was already a lost cause because of the wiring and switch and battery compartment, so I decided the underside would also be a decent spot for extra turret weapon stowage. The left half of the last image shows the magnet that sticks out on a thick strip of styrene - the weapon slips right onto that spot and does not stick out too far, meaning I can flip the trukk over and set it down on it's tires without any trouble. It hardly even shows from the side!

Both weapon variations (rocket and big shoota) fit discreetly to the point and help keep all the parts for the vehicle together.

Now I'm going to make the driver.

Gretchin dakka emplacement

So I've been messing around a bit today and I thought I might put it up for feedback.

I didn't like the standard boy in the cupola design, so I decided I wanted to put a turret in that spot with a grot gunner inside. This is what I've banged together.

 

The turret rotates comfortably in the mount and is magnetized down. The front of the turret also comes off so that I can design a big shoota variation to change the trukk's wargear.

I'll probably do a double-barrel design with that as well just so that it fits the width of the area that the gun can magnetize onto. Then I have to add the driver in, who I think will be an ork because fitting a grot into there is more hassle than I care to go through in my current mood.

I've been considering taking the back walls and moving them out to the track edge, but I don't think I'll go with it simply because there's a lot already secured and pinned in place back there and I don't know how I would reconcile the edge's height difference between the track guard and the trukk bed. Instead, I'll make sure I add some hand-holds on the outer walls for the orks to hang from.

Also gotta make some nice big exhausts!

Man, this project is taking a lot longer and becoming a lot more involved than I initially pictured. I like the possibilities of this kit a lot, though - I already have an idea for 'theming' the trukks I next make for the squads that will use them. This is something of a generic all-purpose boyz trukk, but I think the next one I make will have a 'loota' theme to it and use a lot of rhino parts.

Hooking up the jiggawatts

And viola!

That was a little easier than I thought, actually. I got a nice new soldering iron for Christmas that behaves much better.

 

I left myself a lot of excess wire to work with which I simply tucked away under there. The switch is placed fairly simply - it's in a spot where it won't get toggled to 'on' by accident underneath the trukk's body, meaning the lights should not turn on in my transport case and burn themselves out. It's still accessible enough to toggle at will, though.

The batteries are located between the tracks and held into a tiny enclosure I made by scotch tape, so if they ever burn out I can grab 'em and replace 'em. The lights run off a pair of hearing aid batteries - you can get something like 10 for at Radio Shack, and I think they're something like 1.3v each. I never really pay attention to voltages, I just stack batteries until it works and resistors be damned. I never have the lights on for long periods of time anyway, just enough to show the occasional viewer.

Now I suppose I'll work on the cockpit.

Lights, front grill, action!

The front end of this thing is looking a lot better after a bit more work today, and I hope you guys agree!

I took the LEDs I wanted and decorated them up with dags and rivets, then secured them to the top of the wheel guards. The nice thing is that the way they are set up right now, I can actually change the LEDs in the event they ever burn out, as they're simply held in the assembly with a rubber gasket.

The front end needed some love badly, so I started adding orky teeth to the spiked ram front. It wasn't much later till I realized I didn't like the look of just the bottom row of teeth, so I did my best to come up with a grill to protect the engine and add a top row of teeth.

Pictures!

 

The LEDs aren't live yet, as I'm still working on how I want to wire the underside together.

I like the way it looks all put together, but I'm starting to regret actually assembling some parts of it because painting this will be mostly impossible. It would have been really smart of me to leave bits like the engine out, but it's already securely glued down and into the frame. Stuff like the front grill as well, I can tell, will be a source of pain if I ever decide to pick up a brush for this thing. Same goes for the track undersides and the side walls on the rear of the truck.

Still, no sense worrying about it for now. Honestly, when do I paint anyway?

I hope to get the wiring all set soon.. maybe even later tonight, before I move on to the driver area. I will certainly leave the driver out until later painting, for what it's worth.

Just a little addendum:

Thought the eyebrows were necessary.

I’m left-handed now!

It was a bit tricky to do with my left hand (I'm right handed), but I managed to make the other front track guard despite my carved up thumb.

 

Headlights will be added atop the front wheel guards tomorrow. I considered putting them up on the roll bar behind the driver, but I don't think I'd be happy with how that would look.

Just offhand, I'm not sure if I want to put the stock front plate on the trukk or not. I'm on the fence about it, because it helps make the guards blend in better but it's also kind've ugly and I like the engine exposed.

Maybe just some sort of front bumper. I don't know.

Et tu, Xacto?

After a morning of hanging out with other gamers, I made it home and managed to get a bit of time in to work on this. I asked my buddy Brian about what might be the best way to mount headlights onto the trukk, and after a bit of discussion we decided I might want to mount them atop wheel guards on the front tires. That was all well and good, but that required I make wheel guards for the front tires, and there wasn't really any spot on the model around the engine I could anchor it to, so he was nice enough to provide me with an idea - connect it to the back guards.

Seemed workable, so I set about making it.

I now have a nice big spot on the top of the wheel guard to mount a headlight! I've already sorted out a lot of the wiring, but I need to make an enclosure for it yet.

I've only made the forward guard on one side so far - I managed to get one of my nice, new, shiny xacto knives stuck in my thumb in a bit of a friendly fire incident, so I'm taking a break for a little while until it decides to stop bleeding. I still want to leave the engine open and exposed because it seems like the right thing to do.

I think I might hide the switch for the headlights on the underneath of the vehicle so that it can't possibly be accidentally turned on during transport and burn out the LEDs or batteries.

I also definitely plan on riveting up and decorating those back orange wheels, so don't you worry.

Track guards done right

Spent most of the day out and about, and saw Sweeny Todd, but in the mean time I managed to make some proper track guards for this thing, rivets and all. There's a few nice spots ripe for the addition of glyphs, but that'll come later once I figure out what I want to put where.

 

As an aside, I find this relatively hard to photograph - for some reason, the white just gets completely washed out no matter what sort of lighting I have in place, making the guards just look like white blobs. It'll photograph better tomorrow once the sun's up again, I guess.

Anyway, there's more to do still, but I thought I'd keep this rolling.

Bouncy ride

I've been fumbling around with the track idea for a little bit, but I think I made some positive headway on it last night. I wanted to fill the space between the two wheels in on other side, so I figured some sort of track bracing mechanism that goes into the middle was required.

I've also been messing around with the idea of an open track guard which I think looks passable, but I can't make up my mind. On one hand, it gives the orks aplace to stand, but on the other I don't know if the general shape meshes all that well with the trukk. I may re-make the track guards by simply gluing somewhat irregular pieces of plasticard together in the same sort of shape, to see if that does any good for how it looks in my head. I can easily picture diamond plating and glyphs riveted to the top of it, though. It's fairly simple-looking right now, but I'd remind you guys that it's still at a relatively early stage.

 

I've yet to properly ork up the track wheels, which I will most certainly do with rivets and the likes. I'm actually sort've liking the idea of leaving the engine exposed up front, but I don't know why - perhaps because I'm not too fond of the front plates that the standard trukk kit comes with. I've also still got the addition of headlights in mind for this model, and I'm working on figuring out how to modularize weapons into that little cupola-esque gunner spot.

Can’t leave well enough alone

It's invariably the case that the new ork Spearhead makes me immediately drop whatever else I'm working on in favor of some new, impulsive ideas. Anyone who has seen the way I work knows I have no problems jumping from one project to another!

So, when it came to playing with the new Ork Trukk sprue, I couldn't help myself. I've started putting this bad boy together, and it is an awesome kit - you could blindfold yourself and still put together an impressive looking vehicle with all the parts that come on it. Still, despite all the impressive parts, there's still an element of standarization in the design possibilites. You can swap front plates around, change which side the driver is on, that sort of thing with relative ease, but you still end up with a fairly similar (though awesome) design.

I, of course, never leave well enough alone. It's my job to tinker on things that don't need tinkering with! I wasn't going to be happy just assembling the new trukk kit - I needed to do some converting to make it unique. I sat down and eyeballed the kit for a while and decided on a few simple changes, the first and foremost of which would be to replace the back two tires on either side with treads for a 'halftrack' appearance that I think is rather orky.

I dug through my bits and decided that the tracks off a rhino weren't going to cut it this time - too thin, and the tires on the new kit are beefy, so they need something similar to match. I found the answer in a Tamiya Track and Wheel Kit that my local hobby store carried. This set is a must for anyone looking to spruce up some ork vehicles - I even used them on my Battlewagon scratchbuild.

I've blabbed enough - I'll get to some of the pictures.

Here is a look at the trukk-so-far. There's a lot of extra stuff yet to add, but it should give you an idea of what I'm going for with this. I actually have a couple of parts from the old trukk kits that I'm trying to mix and match in - the tires that I save from this project will go towards turning the old trukk chassis, which are smaller, into buggies. The lighter grey plate between the driver's area and the crew is one of the old trukk kit parts. Once I figure out a nice glyph or icon to put on that plate's center, I think it'll look a lot better.

Here's the vehicle from the sides:

 

That last picture shows the underside of the vehicle, and the Legos I used to build it! Why Lego, you ask? It just so happens that they are one of the easiest ways to control the spacing and positioning of the trakk wheels, making it a lot simpler to get the treads to line up properly. One of the biggest problems I had with my Battlewagon was making the treads sit evenly with eachother - this is my solution to that dilemma.

Obviously, the legos will be covered up and properly concealed once I'm done. There's also the issue of the trakks themselves - they look somewhat 'empty' or 'bare' right now, but I have plans to armor the tread assemblies so that only the bottom half of the wheels and treads are going to be visible. I might also put some more worky bits between the two wheels, depending on what I find as I sift through my bits boxes.

The weapons on the trukk haven't been decided yet. Same goes for the wargear - part of me wants to put a wrecking ball and boarding planks on this, but I'm not sure what I like yet. Whatever I add will probably be magnetized and removable, in any case.

There's still also the issue of headlights, which I hope to add with LEDs once I figure out where I want to put them and the switch to control them. I can hide the batteries pretty easily underneath the body of the trukk bed between the tracks - I can probably put the switch under there, too, actually.

More to come when I have time!