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.

Spanner Boy

I've now added a third spanner to my tiny Morker mob in hopes of getting another vehicle after the next match.  I call this one Shifty.  Instead of scratch building tools for this one, I used the wrench and backpack from the Lootas sprue and focused my time on building him a kannon.  I tried a few different guns for the base, including the big shoota from the Ork Boyz sprue, but in the end, I settled on a standard shoota, since it worked better for the pose I was going for.  I removed the magazine and built a new barrel out of plasticard tube.

I'm quite fond of the various packs that this guy carries around.  I'm especially pleased with how the patchwork leather wrench holder turned out.  I think the random bit of scrap he's standing on is from the Assault Marine sprue.

I almost gave up on giving him a smile because it was so hard to even get a file or clippers inside his helmet that I didn't want to try to do any modeling in there.  I'm glad that I tried anyway, because his smirk is one of my favorite things about this model.  He might even be my favorite of the three...

...though it's pretty hard to pick a favorite.

Gorkamorka Morker Mob

After a great deal of coercion, I have begun work on a Morker mob for my friend's Gorkamorka campaign.  It's a bit hard to find the old Gorkamorka Spanner Boyz these days, so I set out to convert my own.  I also always thought that it was a bit odd that the Games Workshop Spanners were generally less armored and less heavily-armed than the other Ork models.  They even used to paint them a lighter color of green, which always made them seem a bit more like newly hatched Yoofs than aspiring Meks.

In any case, my main goal was to recreate the two old Spanner Boyz, one with a welding torch and one with a bag of tools, using mostly bits from plastic Orks.

I decided to build the welding torch out of a bit of plastic tube and some copper wire.  The business end of the torch is the hilt of a Sicarian Ruststalker sword.  The wrench is from a charm bracelet.

While I like the Ork plastics, I found the choice of dozens of different snarling faces a little bit underwhelming for making a Gorkamorka mob.  I really like Paul Bonner's artwork and the amount of character that he is able to give to his Orks.   To that end, I decided (for better or for worse) that I was going to sculpt smiles onto all of my mobsters.  I also decided that I'd give this guy goggles to match his buddy.  As I recall, I made them by slicing up a couple different sizes of spears.

 I had to fiddle with the goggles quite a bit to get them to fit him right.  The end result is that the two lenses are slightly askew, which actually ended up looking kind of cool once I painted it.  He ended up looking particularly deranged.

As much as I liked the charm bracelet wrench, I wanted to keep all my Spanners looking unique, so I decided to scratch-build a pipe wrench for the next one.  I started with a choppa from the Savage Ork sprue (I think), cut down the blade and added some other bits and some plasticard.  The teeth on the wrench are the bottoms of two shoota magazines and the threads for adjusting it came from an Imperial Guard vox caster.  The rest of the vox caster got turned into a makeshift radio that the Spanner carries around in his pack.  His face took a lot less sculpting (though his arms took a fair amount of work to reposition) than the other Spanner.  I added some little balls of green stuff to make the lenses of his goggles convex so that I could paint them up like the other one as well as the obligatory smile.

This spanner ended up with a rather eclectic assortment of gizmos in his pack, including the aforementioned radio, a spare wrench, a hammer (another purchase from the charm bracelet store), and some assorted munitions.

All things considered, not a bad start for my Morker mob.  Next on the agenda is converting up a Nob to lead them in their quest for scrap and glory.