Ork Runtherd Conversion

The next member of my Morker Mob is finally finished.  After months of being hopelessly understaffed, Grizwoad has finally hired a Slaver to help him with his organizational development.  He comes highly recommended, with extensive experience in boosting productivity in the scrap mines, maximizing performance on the battlefield, and positively impacting a mob's bottom line.  Hopefully, he should be able to "recruit" a couple of grots by the next time we head out into the skid.

This conversion has been in the works for quite a while.  As I mentioned before, I based a lot of my conversions off of Paul Bonner's artwork.  This guy in particular was based on the Mek with the top hat from the old Rogue Trader Ork book.  I thought he had an appropriate sense of style that would fit in with my band of crazy spanner boyz and gearheaded yoofs.

As you might expect, project turned into quite an eclectic bit of kitbashing.  I ended up using bits from the Ork Boyz sprue, the Runtherd, Warbiker Mob, Crypt Ghouls, and, of course, the head from the Painboy.  I'm surprised I don't see more conversions with that head, since it's got so much character.  It's one of the few smiling Ork figures left in the range, and it's also got a much less boxy face than most of the current models.  It made a good fit for my dapper Rogue Trader Ork.

Since I had a whole pile of the standard, squatty Ork Boy legs in my bitz box, I had the grand idea of simply repositioning a pair of them for my runtherd. Not surprisingly, trying to straighten one of their legs was quite an ordeal. I chopped off the leg in question and then separated it again at the knee, pinning the two pieces back together.

It gave me the position that I wanted, but also left some pretty big gaps that I was going to have to fill with green stuff.  I was quite pleased with the end result, which blended fairly well with his original clothing.

Since I clearly hadn't made enough work for myself by chopping apart his leg, I decided to do the same thing with his arm.

Of course, after cutting a big wedge out of his arm and then evening up the two pieces, I was left with a pretty big gap that I was pinning back together.

It took three or four layers of green stuff to flesh out the arm.  I also added a wider barrel to his slugga to make it look like a more customized weapon.  The final step was sculpting some muscles back over the new arm.  I toyed with the idea of just wrapping his arm with bandages, or having some bullets, teef, or other trinkets covering up the gap, but I'm glad that I just went ahead and sculpted muscles back on.

I didn't have anything suitable for his hat and pipe, so those I had to build myself from wire and plasticard.

Despite having my carefully bent bit of wire as a base, my green stuff pipe ended up as a huge blob that resisted any attempt to be smoothed into a tube.  It took a great deal of filing after the putty had dried just to get round again, let alone pipe shaped.  Eventually I got it into the rough shape, cut off the end and added a rim, which finally made it start looking right.

Fortunately, the hat was much more straightforward than the pipe.  A straight-sided cylinder stuck to the top of his head didn't look much like a hat, so the first step was adding some green stuff to make it flair out a bit at the top.

Once that bit had dried, I added the hat band, feathers, and the bones of some small unfortunate creatures.  The final step was adding the brim of the hat.  I'd left a bit of plasticard to give it some structure, but this was still probably the most difficult part of the process.

With the hat completed, I was finished modeling.  I was left with seven different sub-assemblies, plus the base that needed to be painted before being glued together.

Attaching the Painboy head to the Nob torso was actually a bit difficult, as it's sort of a snap-together model.  I had to carve out the interlocking neck bits, pin the two parts together and then sculpt a new neck.

All together, the finished model was pinned in six different places.  There might be as many pins in his head alone than in the rest of the mob combined.

Check out that hand-crafted Ork bum...

I think I'm better at modeling than at painting, but I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.  I ended up changing my mind a few times while painting, so his shirt went from black, to red, and then back to black.  Quite a few other parts went through a similar number of superfluous paint jobs before I was finally satisfied.

I also made the head of his staff interchangeable, so it's easy to switch between a Grabba Stik and a Grot Prod, depending on whether the runtherd is focusing on "recruitment" or on "boosting productivity."

Next thing to do will be getting some runts together so that our runtherd has something to herd.