The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Pistols at dawn

So, I started making the gun barrels. Nothing tremendous yet, but you should be able to get an idea of where I'm going with this. Large recoil kannon up top, big shoota down below - the Kannon will be fed enormous shells that move down a small conveyor into the chamber, loaded by a single grot at the top - this is based on an old OOP Armorcast Model design. The machine gun will be belt-fed. The kannon has three recoil springs to help reduce the kick from when the kannon fires and keep the stompa from falling.

 

There's obviously a lot more detail to go on these, I just thought I'd post things as I made them for the sake of having sequential steps. The shell is drying at the moment, and then it'll get a mold made of it just for simplicity's sake and I'll cast half a dozen or so.

Big gunz will win the fight!

I've been thinking about the weapon... I've seen a few gargants with the chain-belt fed approach, but I think I might try something different. I'm thinking of a sort of giant revolver mechanism at the moment where there's five chambers and each time it fires off a round it rotates into position for a grot to load another shell into the open space.

Of course, that idea doesn't work well with the two barrel design on the illustration.

 

I played around and came up with a mock-up of what I was thinking of for the revolver approach, but it ended up looking a lot like an imperial guard nade launcher... and I really think this thing needs more than one gun on it's arm, but I'm not sure how to revise it. The revolver design doesn't work that well with two barrels, though. Maybe I should have a large revolver barrel and a small minigun / gattling gun mounted below it? Like a big big shoota, perhaps.

Just a different concept. I'll sort this out eventually.

Makes a Mek proud!

 

I'm almost done with the engine aside from some riveting - you can see where according to the dots. I also added a removable grot for the moment - he looks good, but not quite right. I need to work on it some more. With any luck I might get to the armor plating by tonight.

VDR? More like Very Dumb Rules!

Since I have nothing better to do at work...

I'm probably going to cut it down to 1,000 points even. The front and side armors are ramped up because of the armor plating, but the back's a little weaker due to exposed engineering. I gave it souped-up engines and made it agile because it's small, and damnit, it's running. The Twin-linked Kannon represents the background arm's weapon, the zzap gun will probably be the 'Gaze of Gork' eye-laser thing, the 'Mega Blast Rokkit' is the closest I could get to having a grot bomb launcher since I don't know the rules, and the CC weapons should be evident - one underneath the gun barrel, the other is the entire claw arm. It's also come to my attention that 6 structure points is ridiculous. In my defense, I've never done anything with VDR before ever. I'm going to cut the structure points down to 3 and leave 3 force fields, I think. I don't want this thing to be too cheap, honestly, as I want to have an army fielded against just it. I'll cut the values by more if I field it included in an army, though, although I think the armor values I have will stand, as this thing is really just thick plating to the front and sides. I might weaken the back a bit more, though.

Combustion and Destruction

This is where I stopped at last night... I'm not sure, what else does this need? (aside from some rivets) I'm thinking a huge exhaust or two. Also, that white plate next to the fan will turn into a gauge thing when I get around to it.

 

I see a bare spot above the large gray wheels on either side... not sure what I can pop in there, though.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Stompmas.

Got a bit more done.

A word that I made up (but may well exist) will be the order of the day - chain differential. I was staring at that sketch thinking when it suddenly came to me - my army wears chains, why not use them in a mechanical fashion? So, here's what's going down - the engine's sole purpose, aside from powering the legs, will be to crank chains in a wheel in a very medieval fashion. On either side of the main engine, there are wheels with chains lashed around them functioning as pulleys of a sort - these chains lead up to the shoulder area, where they sit coiled around the shoulders. The idea of this is that when the chains are cranked down below, it rotates the shoulder joint, moving the arms.

 

I have more to do to the engine, of course, and gaps to fill. Still, the arms are minorly reposable. I have to add exhaust pipes and more things that project off the back a bit - it's too level.

We’ll make it Orky!

I think I'll be using that engine. I didn't bother casting it before I glued it in earlier this morning.

It has much orkification pending. I am going to the hobby shop at present to get more plastic for tubing, though, but before I left I thought I'd put up pictures.

 

A Proppa Engine?

I found a rather interesting piece from an old zoids model. It seems begging for me to use it as the engine, or at least center of the engine, for this stompa save for a few details: 1) It's a bit more.. how shall I say, streamlined? Than would suit an ork vehicle. I think, anyhow. It's got lots of fluting and stuff that I think is a little elaborate for the purpose of a stompa. 2) It's not my own creation.

1 I don't actually have as much a problem with as I do 2 - I'm thinking that if I'm making this thing, I might as well make it and not use shortcuts like this - but it does fit fairly well, honestly. I'm thinking I'm going to whip out some plasticard and roughly copy the design and shape, but not to a T, so I have a reasonable facimile that doesn't look more elaborate than would befit the stompa. I realize I've already used parts from something else at the piece that connects the legs, but consider that that won't be nearly as visible, focal, or important as the engine will.

Upward and Onward

 

I've hooked the legs together with a center plastic piece from an old walking toy I had laying around - it's the right width, which is good. The putty is there to reinforce the ton of glue that is attaching these legs together, as they are a touch on the heavy side and hard to lock in that pose. Hopefully when it all dries it'll be solid enough to start building ontop of. None of that putty should really be visible when the whole thing is said and done, it's just a structural thing - the torso ontop and the armor skirting will prevent people from looking too far up under it to begin with. The legs also ended up leaning over to the back leg's side a bit (check the shot from the front), but I don't actually mind it, as it seems to give the whole thing a bit more canter and attitude than if it was just perpendicular to the ground.

As you can see, I cut another cylindrical frame for the body, but I really don't know if I should even bother doing that. It just seems like entire curved surface doesn't fit it properly - maybe it's because it doesn't have the armor plating to reduce the curves down and bulk it up, I don't know. I'm not sure where to go from here - I could try building something like a half-circle ontop of the black center piece between the legs and working from there, but I'm not sure.

This cardboard needs a bit of cleaning up.I wrapped plasticard around the outside, but the cardboard I used as a base is 'hairy' and won't stay as a clean edge, if you know what I mean.

Sketching it up

So, google sketchup is a little easier to use than I thought.

 

It looks a little wide from the front, but any narrower and the feet would be too close together. Just thinking about this thing in three dimensions helps a great deal, though.

Also, obviously the engine will be built up enormously. I didn't feel like doing the whole thing.