The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Klaw v. 0.5

I put this together as something of a proof of concept of the idea that all of the boyz might have similar, taloned feet. It's really basic, but despite that the fiddly size of it is a bit time-prohibitive. It took me about half an hour just to make one foot.

Maybe I can make one really good one and cast it, but that'd be fairly complicated. I'll think about what I'm going to do with these a bit longer for now.

 

Going to have to brainstorm a bit more, maybe. The reading describes them coming down on the enemy with 'iron boots', which is another possibility I guess I could consider.

Delaying tactics

I'm sort've delaying right now. I have what I think is an absolutely brilliant idea for his klaw-feet, but I'm waiting on negotiating a trade before I say anything concrete about it. The bits I want for it are sort of exotic, but they fit perfectly. While I delay, I thought I'd work a little bit on his hat and finish it off.

I filed everything down nice and smooth, and used a tiny angled file to carve a little niche in the hat between the brim and the peak for the wire to go through. The darker green line going across is floral wire that I picked up at michaels - I wrapped it around over the brim of the hat and with a pair of pliers twisted the wire tight behind the back of the head. Then, I put a little dot of glue in the back so the wire would stay in place and snipped the excess.

After much frustration trying to sculpt a tiny little glyph on the hat, I went an alternate route and shaved a plastic one off the front of an ork boy'z belt. It's not exactly the cleanest of jobs, but it still looks better than my attempts at sculpting a glyph that tiny.

I don't want to work on the jacket until legs are in place, and I don't want to work on the legs until I know if I can get the bitz I'm trying to currently trade for. With all that in mind, I'll probably spend the next few days working on the other stormboyz that comprise the Vulcha Squad. On that note, I'd be interested in hearing if anyone had any clever ideas for how to make these boyz? I'm considering giving them all chaos-raptor-esque talon feet so they have a theme to them. Of course, theirs won't be nearly as sophisticated or fiddly as what I have planned for Zaggy.

You aren’t important without a big hat

I've not had the time I was hoping for to work on this project today. Most of it has been occupied with impossible amounts of fretting over writing my law school personal statement, which I am glad to say are now done. I think. Maybe I should edit them one more time.

Anyway, in the time I did have I figured I might get to sculpting Zagstruk a fancy commissar hat like he has in the art. It's not exactly perfect. Once it's had a chance to cure overnight, I'm going to grab a small file and sharpen off some of the edges like on the brim of the cap. It's also become painfully obvious that my placement of his bionic eye is too low compared to the rest of his face, so I'm likely to either pull that off and redo it, or simply sculpt a matching one on the other side to balance it out. Not sure yet.

 

After I file the hat a little bit, I'll add the strap going across and a teeny, tiny ork glyph if I can manage to make one that small without losing my mind. I have a few ideas for how I'm going to approach the feet, but I'm holding off just a little bit until I can find out if I can get the bitz I want, or if I have to scratchbuild the parts instead.

How I learned to love the grot bomb

While Zag's body was drying, I thought I might do something with the ruined back end of the grot bomb I've been hacking up. I made a cute little piece for when the supa-rokkit fired off my gargant totally misses, which is shockingly common despite the fact that it hits on a 2+. I don't really have anywhere else to post this, so...

 

One of the back fins was missing when I got the model, so I just plasti-carded up a replacement real quick. I'm looking for an alternative to the cotton right now. Steel wool doesn't look too bad.

Anyway, stuff has finished drying. I've been looking at this and trying to plan out how the pose should go, and I think before I sculpt the jacket I should probably do the lower half so I can understand the flow of the model properly first. I'm going to diverge from the codex art pose a little bit - I'm probably going to pose him with both arms outstretched to the sides and the right leg extended straight down to deliver the klaw blow, with the left leg bent up.

I thought I'd take a shot of how it's going so far. I'm using one of the fantasy black orc heads like I've seen on another zagstrukk model. It's a damn near perfect match to the art. Have to figure out how I'm going to go about sculpting a commissar cap yet, but I've flattened the top of his head in anticipation of it.

 

The rokkit's obviously huge, but that's intended. Just going to be figuring this out as I go, I suppose. Legs don't seem like a bad thing to work on next so I can figure out what angle he's going to be at for the jacket, etc. The slugga's a bit modified, half because I can't leave well enough alone, and half because the listing in his codex mentions a 'personalized slugga' which he uses to execute morale-failing orks, commissar style.

Not sculpting! Anything but that!

I actually did a bit of digging, and I think that despite my best efforts I'm going to have to do some sculpting on this one. I have a stormboy nob body for if this totally fails, but hopefully I won't have to resort to messing that thing up. I hacked the torso off the last spare nob body I had and started dremelling it all down to bare metal. Basically I just wanted to get something the approximate size and shape of an ork nob torso to sculpt over.

That's the forgeworld fighta bomma pilot on the left, the rokkit in the middle for scale, and the completely wrecked nob torso on the right. I stuck the torso on an armature. I plan on sculpting a jacket and straps on that torso similar (hopefully) to the fighta-bomma body, using it as a reference. I'd honestly be hacking apart the fighta bomma body right now were it not for the fact that he has a spent parachute part on his back that would create so many problems that it's not worth the trouble.

The plan right now it to sculpt some under details like stitches on a shirt across the front of the chest. I don't have to be too precise about how I do this right now mostly because when it's all said and done there will be straps covering the front of the chest, as well as the jacket, so you won't see much of the actual ork body underneath. The jacket's obviously going to be the hardest part, but with the FW one nearby I should have a handy reference.

Fly in to da danger zone!

Oi!

It's pretty much fact to anyone who has read the new ork codex that Zagstruk is damn near mandatory for ork armies now. His new rules are incredible. Power klaw feet that strike at initiative 4? Deep striking and assaulting on the same turn? Truly awesome. I obviously need some stormboyz, and a Zagstruk to lead them. Might as well get started on a Vultcha squad, eh?

Here's Zagstruk, for those of you outside the loop.

Pretty awesome by all accounts. As I am prone to do, I started with modelling the most visible thing in the picture - the choppa. It's still a work in progress.

 

Handle is from one of the fantasy ogres. I hacked off the blade and started replacing it with my own. It looks like there's a rokkit booster on the side of Zagstruk's sword, but that would be so fiddly and tiny I decided a simple cylinder would do for now. I also chopped a part off one of the ork shootas that had a gauge for the side opposite the boosta. Persumably it's a fuel gauge or altimiter. Assuming it works at all, which is a fairly big assumption given orks. I have to add those spiky bits to the back of the handle still.

During the course of working on this, I found myself in a conundrum as to what I would make his jetpack look like. Since he's Zagstruk and all, he's the biggest and most important stormboy, and as such should have a suitably enormous contraption on his back to hurtle him through the air. Still, it was one of the parts that the art clearly avoided, so I got to wondering for a while. Someone else over at The-Waaagh was working on a Zagstruk model a while back, and they were also wondering what sort of jetpack to give him. They posted this little line of dialogue:

I figured as the greatest and most revered of the stormboyz his jump pack would be the closest to a ballistic missile or something fired off of a Gargant.

Hah, fired off a garga-... hey, wait a minute.

A... a grot bomb? You know, I actually have a spare one of them. I got it busted-up... the grot pilot was damaged beyond recognition and some of the back fins were missing.

Hmmm.

It's pretty obvious what has to be done.

 

This is going to take a while, I think.