Targeting Squig

The next squiggly beast for my Gorkamorka mob is ready to go.  This little beastie is based on the standard plastic targeting squig from the Flash Gitz sprue, though he didn't seem smiley or toothy enough for my Morkers, so I gave him a pair of tusks and a big grin and now he fits in great.

The conversion wasn't terribly difficult.  The tusks are from some Space Marine lightning claws, which I then sculpted his big underbite around.  Fairly simple, but I like the way she turned out.

I painted this squig the same way I painted my others, though the eyeball gave me a lot of trouble.  The eye itself turned out great, but the little targeting reticle ended up giving me a lot of grief.  The first time around, I just drew it on with an ink pen, which gave me a nice thin, straight line that looked great.  The only problem was that as soon as I tried to put some gloss on it, it smeared all over and I had to repaint the whole eye.  Of course, having done it perfectly the first time, I ended up splodging it several times with a brush.  In the end, the center of the eye had so many coats of paint that it was starting to look like it was wearing a contact lens, which I guess is as good an explanation as any as to how these things supposedly work.  In the end, the only real complaint I have is that since the black lines are a bit thicker now, it kind of breaks up the gradient and makes it look really yellow in the middle and really orange on the outside, rather than a smooth transition.  Were I to do it again, I might try having the whole center of the eye solid yellow with the washes only around the edges, but I'm still quite pleased with the finished look.

I decided to give this squig to Shifty, my Kannon-toting spanner boy.  I removed the boss pole from his backpack to add the squig perch, though I also made some modifications to his kannon, adding an ammo feed to the bottom.  I wanted the ammo to look a bit like the rounds from the old Ork Biker autocannons, but a bit smaller.  I got a bunch of random ammo clips from the Flash Gitz sprues, but the ones I managed to find were all either too similar to normal shoota ammo (which I removed to convert his kannon) or were too weird looking.

In the end, I ended up just building my own rounds out of plasticard tubes and the tips of some plastic golf tees, which were rather difficult to work with.  They're still a bit on the large side, as the cartridges are as big as or slightly larger than the action of the gun, but they look good and orky.

Also, since I how have two removable squig perches, I have the option of swapping them around...

...which could be handy if Grizwoad ends up getting a bunch of good shooting skills again.

Nob's Best Friend

My next squig for Squig Week is finally ready to go.  This little guy is an attack squig for Grizwoad, my Nob, though he would also make an excellent mimic squig or squig parrot, since I made this guy to sit on his shoulder.

This guy is based on the little attack squig from the nobz sprue, though I always thought that he looked kind of weird sitting on his perch atop that really tall back pole, so I chopped him off and made it look like his perch was bolted directly onto my nob's shoulder pad.  I also shaved off his hair and gave him some bony spikes, which I liked much better.  Finally, I gave him a pair of goggles just like my squighound.

It was kind of fiddly work with such a tiny model, so instead of modeling lenses in greenstuff like I have in the past, his goggles are actually made from tiny glass beads.  My first time using them, but I like how it turned out.

I also did a bit of touch-up work on Grizwoad while I was at it.  I repainted his big choppa using better paints, and although the streaky texture from the other paint still shows through a bit if you look really hard, the new coat (actually more like two coats, as I kept splodging) is definitely an improvement.  Attaching the squig, fortunately, wasn't too hard, as his left shoulder pad already had a couple of bullet holes in it.  I just drilled one of them out so it goes all the way to his pelvis, and now he's got a perfect squig mount that blends in perfectly.

On to the next squiggly beast...

Squig Week!

Greetings everyone, and welcome to Squig Week!  One of the additions we made to our house rules for Gorkamorka was the inclusion of a squig market where players could go and buy little squiggly beasts for their gangers.  Thus far, no one has used them, because almost no one has any squig models, other than the ones we used for the Squigpede in our first campaign two years ago.  So in the spirit of testing our house rules, I've been slowly acquiring squigs off ebay for the last few months, though this is the first one I've actually managed to convert and paint up.  There's no way I'm going to get all of them built and painted this week (some are still on the sprues), but I'm going to see how many I can get ready for our upcoming game.

Even with his cool shades, this guy is easily recognizable as one of the old metal Warhammer Fantasy squigs.  I thought this happy-looking guy would make a nice addition to my cheerful Morkers, so I gave him a pair of goggles to protect him from the desert sands.  The original model is designed for a slotta base, so I chopped off the tab and pinned him to some interesting looking scrap.  I like how the broken conduit full of cables turned out, though in hindsight, I could have made the break in the pipe a bit more jagged to show off the cables a bit more. Still, I'm quite pleased how it turned out.

Painting my squighound involved a bit of trial and error.  My usual red scheme using Agrax Earthshade made all the little recesses by his scales way too dark, so I decided to try using a glaze for the first time.  A nice coat of Bloodletter calmed down the crazy contrast I was getting and gave his skin a good strong shade of red.  I also decided to make his spikes look extra jagged by painting the lines on his horns, rather than just using a shade like I usually do.  It took way too long on this spiky guy but I like the finished effect.

So now Slash, my runtherd finally has some help keeping the grots in line.  Now I'll just have to see if I can save up enough teef to actually take him in a campaign...