Modelling the Mega Mek Ork Part 1

 

 

This is the model I call the giant Mega Ork Mek which was purchased by a friend of mine  for his shop, as a centre piece and focus point. It is large - it weighs 5kg and is about 50cm across the arms. The inspiration came from the specialist game in the Games Workshop world, "Inquisitor", where there are characters called Chrono gladiators (humans with mechanically enhanced bodies), who fight all comers    until they run out of time, (something like that). I saw a picture of one of these called Krash Krieger, and decided to do him as an Ork instead.

The first thing I had to do was get the dimensions of a basic ork and transpose them to a plan from which all the other parts could be gauged. Once the proportions of the ork were  correct, then an armature could be made in wire.

Here we see the armature against the full sized plans, both front on and side views. I photographed the miniature from all angles and enlarged them to the correct size so that it is simply a matter of transferring dimensions from plan to model when making any part.

The head is the most vital part to get correct and the enlarged photos were a big help in such a detailed area. I started with a block of balsa mounted on a stick and basically roughed out angles that conform to an ork's physiognomy. That strongly jutting, chinless lower jaw dominates the side view as well as the huge area of mouth. The holes in the balsa allow any putty to be 'keyed' into the base material -it gets a better grip.

At the time I was building this model, I had not started to use Apoxie Sculpt  and the material I preferred was Sculpey. This is wonderful to model with but does require heating to make it hard. On such a large build as this one, the heat source had to be something other than the kitchen oven, but I had  a paint stripper heat gun that, with careful use, would do the trick.  You can heat parts a number of times, just to harden them and allow more work to be carried out, but this tends to make the surface brittle so judicious use was made of it. Too hot for too long and the surface blistered and bubbled.

 

After quite a bit of modelling had gone on, we come to this state of the head. The block of balsa still at the back of the head will be the strong junction with the wire armature and the deep groove visible fits over one of the wires and is pinned, glued or wired in place.

 

I usually use aluminium foil to bulk up my armatures. It is available, cheap, easily manipulated and can go quite a way in setting up the musculature and body contours as well. Great stuff! With the use of a hot glue gun and a small hammer, the stuff even stays where it's put - always a good thing

The moment of truth - head attachment time. At this point it seems a little top heavy but remember that the head has all its flesh whereas the body has yet to receive its layers of Sculpey, let alone muscles, skin and clothes, weapons and grime.

 

Orks don't have much in the way of good posture and are rather hunched, muscle bound creatures, so I needed to add a large shoulder and back piece. This was done in one hit with a block of balsa attached at the top. It could have been done in foil, but I think I chose one block as it could have had a function when some of the mechanical superstructure was to be added later.

So far we have seen the use of wire and foil, to bulk out the body. Now it is the turn of Celluclay, a type of instant papier mache, most often used to make groundwork for military dioramas. This covers the whole body, except the head, and prepares the surface for its layers of Sculpey. By using such a homogenious and well covering material as this, any highs or lows in the foil layer can be smoothed out and, most importantly, less of the expensive Sculpey, needs to be used. The rule seems to be - inside layers cheap, getting more expensive, until the real surface is rendered in the best stuff you can afford. You get what you pay for! (Yes I was making a dinosaur, the same way, at the same time )

Next entry, we will get mechanical!