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.