Overview - Major models to date

Major Models

This being an overview, I decided to start at the beginning of my Warhammer based mini dioramas and this was the first.  I used the Lord of the Rings Cave Troll and the Ork war boss, Ghazghkull Thraka, switched parts around and came up with this triumphant beauty. At this stage I realised that my greatest enjoyment was in making the bases and scratch building the peripheral parts such as the banner, skull bomb etc. The banner is painted with a shark drawn by a student of mine when in Gr.4 (he got married last weekend, so it was quite a while ago). I have always kept exceptional attempts by my kids and this was a doozie. The giant skull came about because without something to hold it up, the figure's face would have been covered by the banner - this started a long line of skull use.

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The next dio was really ambitious and I don't  remember why it got so complex, except that I had the remaining parts from the previous models (ork war boss and troll) and they went together to make one humongous ork who demanded the power of a whole factory. The dio was called "Powa to da ork" and it won my first gong at my model club's annual competition - once they decided on a category to put me in. It used three other ork models, all operating parts of the generating equipment which fed power to the central figure on his plinth. I made a real mistake in not painting the cables before fixing them in place and there were 19 of them. A valuable lesson learned.

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You will notice a similarity between the black stands in these first three dio's. Because the shape of the construction above is different, the stand had to be made to mirror it . They were built as a hollow box with a similar top and bottom, central support walls and a flexible  plastic outer layer. Whatever base I created was given an appropriately shaped stand. Thank goodness I managed to go circular on No.2 at least. The dio above is called "Beware Behind" and shows an Imperial Sentinel -a manned, camouflaged walker- being stalked by three genestealers (Tyranid warriors). The"nids" have good reason to plan this ambush as the Sentinel is in the process of squashing one of their mates in that reedy pool. The third one is around the back of the cliff as I like these scenes to be "in the round". 

Each time I make a model I like to try something new or different from the last, and in this one I used rigid urethane as the cliff, fashioned a twisted tree-like growth with wire and Das, added real bromeliad roots to the main trunk and tried my hand at modelling water. Standard techniques such as cutting, pinning and repositioning plastic models were used to make them fit where I wanted them and tell the story of the action.

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This dio came about because I had made a major character - Nurgle's Huntsman-  out of  a simple plastic Space Marine. The conversion of models in the gaming world is common but to carry it out seamlessly is the trick. I lengthened the figure (they aren't very big), did a head swap, gave him larger ork arms, modelled a chain mail lap lap and the best bit, used  an upside down, hollowed out ogre's head as the shield behind his head - now a zombie's. Well, after all that and at that stage not having anybody  in the know to appreciate it as a single conversion, (no Games Workshop in Cairns), decided he needed somewhere to call home, hence dio No.4. 

 I made the castle out of casting plaster pieces poured in rough "wall" moulds -really just rectangular plastic boxes - and carved the blockwork into them with a sharpened screwdriver. The overhanging lintels were added as raw wet plaster in situ and carved quickly before drying too much, then all the pieces were assembled onto a larger plaster base, itself carved to resemble the underlying rocky landscape. Super glue was used along with some pinning, to join all the elements as well as to seal the plaster prior to painting.

As I was in the plaster mood I decided that the Huntsman needed a faithful "hound", and so carved a giant tentacled slug creature to fit under his right arm. This monster has left a slime trail leading from the portcullised entrance of the main building- portcullises take some making and I was finding that everything in this dio was challenging and that's before the painting!

Games W'Shop Zombies really got a workout on this project in that they furnished  a row of wall trophies, the support brackets for the central structure, food for the Red Terror on the right and the impaled victim on the roof. The banner is my most ambitious attempt at freehand painting in this scale and is a portrait of the GW Nurgle Prince model with the obligatory flies. This is planted through the body of the aforementioned zombie on the roof of the keep - he's a zombie, he felt nothing, - nothing.

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At last a change of direction, away from GW and on to a themed event in my modelling club. The theme was Movies, anything and everything. Other members got on with their Sherman tanks, Spitfires and sundry other legitimate offerings while I decided to scratch build the Reek arena beast from one of the Star Wars movies. This was built using a standard - wire framed, alfoil bulked, Das covered - method, as are most figure models. The skill is in getting the texture of the skin and any relevant facial expressions correct. Well, an angry expression and an impressed, lumpy skin did the trick but as  I wanted to enter it into the main model competition at the end of the year, I decided  to place it on a simple dioramic base evocative of its arena days. I really like this guy and looking at it reminds me of all the dinosaurs yet to be made -remember the Iguanodon scientist ?

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Back to GW and this really big model. Those figures are approx. 30mm and it takes a lot of them to cover this behemoth -also a hell of a surface area to paint. Why? GW released their giant Ork walker called a Stompa which sold for $160, however you could buy three 1:35 scale Tiger tank kits from a really good manufacturer for this amount (the Tiger tank is always the standard). So I made my own, saved the money but what had I bitten off?

I built the vehicle in modules - legs, hip structure, neck pod and head. This head section was once the turret of a 1:16 scale T-34 tank by Trumpeter, which I inverted so that the larger opening was at the top and would be visible when filled with stuff. Inside I used the kit's gun breech but added an ork loader, slightly confused as to ammo choice, there being piles of shells everywhere, all different. The overall colour being yellow says that this machine is owned by the "rich gits", the Bad Moon klan and their half moon symbol is visible in many places around the vehicle. Behind the large one on the top is the maniacal driver, while at the back are two gunners being directed by a small ork or "grot" wildly gesticulating on a microphone.

The neck pod is attached to the head section by the same circular connector rings as found in all tank kits. This allows me to detach the whole turret by a half turn and makes transporting the very tall model much easier. As any show or competition is at least an hour away, ease of packing is a very real issue and to be able to break down a large model is important. 

I really liked the way the hip section worked out because I had to make hemispherical forms for the leg connections and for a dirty great backwards facing gun. These tricky shapes were vac formed (heated plastic sheet sucked down over a pre-formed shape, in this case a hemisphere). My home made vac former using the household vacuum cleaner worked well and this is not usual when you make a special tool to do a specific job. What often happens is that (a) it doesn't do the job, (b) you only ever use it once and (c) you come up with a better alternative which was staring you in the face all the time.

The leg sections were relatively straight forward and made with sheet styrene, Evergreen rod and tubes and a plethora of odds and sods. Rivets cover the whole vehicle as orks are not into aerodynamics, so the lumpier the better. This suits my own philosophy well and I had a great time just sticking stuff anywhere and everywhere, the more spikes the better and don't let a surface be accused of being smooth.

When it came to basing the model, I wanted a ruined factory look- that's what orks do to factories- so I built a number of different sized I-beams out of flat styrene sheet. These, along with some perforated steel and gauze off cuts, were just built up until the model was supported by them but didn't dominate them. I had fun running lead solder lines under and through the maze of beams so that no matter where you look there is something to see. The orks are not the only creatures on this dio as I added a few of their mortal enemies, space marines! They are hidden in this view but are only a scouting party and the orks are unaware of them. That is the point of a diorama - there is always a story. 

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If I thought the last model was large then I forgot the "Mega Mek Ork". I won't go into a lot of detail here about this build as it deserves an entry of its own, but the way it came about is interesting. A shop in Townsville which sold GW products wanted a large focus piece and the owner, having seen some of my entries in the model club competition, asked me if I could come up with such a piece. He initially wanted a Titan -  a gigantic walker, a God Machine - but having seen these done before, I realised that the amount of effort to do it properly would be out of the question. Think a year !

Another option, I thought, could be a Squiggoth, a huge quadrepedal, short necked, howdah backed Ork  transport lizard. On looking these up, they were all really very similar with little scope for individualism. Then I came across a character in a GW specialist game ( Inquisitor) - this game was I think, a role playing game which used 54mm figures, the standard size of military figures in most international painting competitions. The character was called Krash Krieger, a chrono gladiator. He was an amalgam of a man and machine who only stayed alive while he was fighting. So imagine a zombie- like man with huge mechanical arms and a generator on his back to power him - all the things to make me quite excited. Making the man into an ork was just a sensible decision as the Krash character and the game Inquisitor are not well known to current GW followers.

 The model is huge. It weighs 5kg and would barely make the 18x18x18 inch dimensions allowed in the Open Category of the Golden Demon competition. As I sold it to the shop, all I have is a life sized photo of it and the setup you see above is how I took those photos - seemless background, reduction of shadows etc. Before it was delivered to its final home, I entered it into my club's major competition and it won both Best of Show and People's Choice so I suppose it paid me back in kind. I do miss his smiling face though. I wonder if I should make him a mate?

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"Korpus Festerheart" is the name of this hideous character and is the reason I have not done any entries since May. I am entering him into the 2012 Golden Demon, Games Workshop painting competition in the Open Category (mainly because he is too big for any other). Not quite as big as the mega ork but it does weigh 2kg and is about 33cm high. It is a 3D copy of the famous Adrian Smith monochrome painting and because of this presented an obvious problem -what does the back look like?

I have seen the figure represented a number of times as a wargaming, (28mm) piece, but I hope my larger interpretation meets with approval. Once the show is over and I have him back in the cabinet with the other crazies, I will devote an entry to his build.

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