Hounded

Last week I posted some WIP images of my Warhounds; today I wanted to post a quick update showing how I'm getting on!

Fulgur Manus (Lightning Hand)

My first Warhound, Fulgur Manus is now complete and ready to march out alongside Ferrum Domminus at the ToC Walk this coming weekend!  These are just some quick pics that I snapped; I'll be doing a full post on my maniple once I've completed the final Warhound.

Excidium Rex (King of Desolation)

My second Warhound is only about 50% complete, so I only have a sneak peek for you today.  His Carapace is nearly complete and looks a lot better in real life!

A journey into the Dank...

As well as Titans, I've been working on a Troggherd.  I've enjoyed playing Age of Sigmar 2.0 and have started planning a narrative campaign day for my local gaming centre here in Sheffield (The Outpost).

The premise is that the player warbands have discovered entrances to an ancient underground cave network and seeking both riches and glory, have entered the maze of tunnels in the hopes of claiming a worthy prize...

Although I don't want to give away too much about the event, there will be a number of treasures and upgrades which players can acquire through various encounters and battles throughout the themed day.

To represent these powerful artefacts and whimsical trinkets, I've started sketching some little vignettes for reward cards.  Below is a selection of my favourites so far although you'll have to guess for yourself what they represent...

Warhounds, Princeps and Troggoths, oh my!

Previously on Kaiju country... I spoke about the Titan Owner's Club Walk 2019.  It's shaping up to be an absolutely incredible event and in preparation, I've been working on the two Warhounds for my the Titan Maniple that I'll be taking to the event.

With little over a week and a half left before the event, I've been steaming through the project and believe it or not, am actually on schedule to have everything ready in time!

So, how are they looking?  Here's how!

Fulgar Manus (The Lightning Hand)

My first Warhound has taken a substantial amount of time, but is almost complete!  Between the complex pose and base, a considerable amount of time went into the build phase of this titan.  I don't regret it for a second, but it's taken almost as long as my Reaver titan to complete!

Colour Scheme

Working out the colour scheme for my Warhounds was tricky as I wanted to tie them in with Ferrum Dominus, but didn't want them to end up looking like Legio Ignatum whose modern incarnation now confusingly looks more like the original Epic Legio Metalica designs.

With the Adeptus Mechanicus originating from Metalica adopting white as one of their primary colours, I decided to try and shift the focus away from yellow, with my spot colours being predominantly black and white.

That said, I still love yellow and also wanted to tie in with my Knights Raven who feature yellow (How confusing!!)…

So, here are a couple of the initial rough designs I came up with...

Fulgar Manus actually ended up being pretty close to the design on the left as you can see from the following pictures...

The direction of the white chevrons was changed and the cog design was simplified in the final design.  The engine covers, shoulders and arms are not yet complete, but aren't far off at the time of writing!

Here is a WIP shot of the carapace in progress.  It looks pretty rough at this stage, but it gives you a good idea of how everything is laid out

I'm super pleased with how he's looking; in particular, the base is coming together well.  It will need some light flocking but the destroyed knight is complete

WIP Images of the legs and base:

You can just see the Waist magnet which is invaluable for transport



Freehanding the Malinax symbol on the tilt shield was fun :)

Anyone for Chess?

 

Excidium Rex (King of Desolation)

By comparison, I thundered through the build stage of Excidium Rex, taking just over a week including his base!  He's now base sprayed silver and is in the paint phase, although I don't currently have anything outside of WIP build images to show you.

Unlike his hound brother, I actually built the base first, with a pose in mind then constructed the Warhound to fit.  This was also a far quicker build because there was far less pinning to do - both of Rex's feet would be taking the weight of the body instead of just one!



I wanted the City base of Ferrum Dominus and the more rugged base of Fulgar Manus to be tied together with this guy, so he's posed with one foot on a defence wall which separates the city side of the base from the outdoorsy side

I deliberately posed the hips at a slight angle to imply that the foot on the wall is actually clinging on with the toes rather than just standing bolt upright

Aside from a pin going up from the base, through the feet and into the ankle ball, the only other part which I decided to pin was the hips given that they would take a fair amount of stress with this pose

Again, I magnetised the waist to aid transportation

With the toes and pistons in place, the build is far more convincing

As with my first Warhound, I had to hide the hip pins with a cap on each side.  I simply used some spare Imperial Knight components on Rex.

As well as the toes gripping the wall, you can also see that I have added a crotch banner in this image; again take from an Imperial Knight kit

I wanted to make my hounds noticeably different, so carefully shaved off the existing details...

...and added some new ones!

Sub assemblies held in place to gauge how the final build will look 

When adding the waist magnet to the body, I found it necessary to drill all the way through.  In order to hide the hole and add a nice little detail, I made an attendant servo skull attached to a magnet topped with matching kick-plate

This servo skull was actually taken from the Tech-priest Dominus kit with a piece of extra cable and an arm from one of the skulls which came with the Warhound kit.  I chose this one as it's large enough to still be seen within the cramped interior!

SERVO-SKULL GETS TO DRIVE...

...and reminds me a lot of Ed-209 after his head pops!

And finally, here's a quick sketch up of how I want Rex's colour scheme to look.  It will probably all hinge on how well the Legio symbol translates into a stencil!

Princeps costume

Previously I showed you some images of the Princeps Cuirass which I made - well, I didn't stop there.  To really get the most out of the armoured Cuirass, you'd need to have a greatcoat underneath.  Despite searching high and low, I couldn't find a suitable garment which would work right out of the box so had to resort to a good old needle and thread.

To begin with, I managed to find an old burgundy coat at a charity shop for just £3 - bargain!  Once I had put it through the washing machine (as it stank of old ladies and cabbage), I started by removing the belt which was made from the same material as the jacket.  I kept this for use later on.

I think removed the buttons, sewed up the pockets and repaired a couple of seams on the basic jacket.  Now that I could test the fit, I found that the jacket was a bit short in the arm, so extending the cuffs was the first order of the day!

Here's the jacket mocked up with the collar, cuffs and some other bits including buttons

In this picture, you can see that I have added a black leather Aquila shape on the chest along with edging in black and white leatherette for the buttons. You can also see the black leather cuffs which now extend the jacket perfectly to fit me!

As I wanted the jacket to look like an actual officer's dress uniform, I decided early on that it would need both frogging on the chest and some pretty fancy epaulettes.  Note that the Aquila shape in the above picture was added as a base for the gold frogging in the final incarnation.

The cloth belt which I had originally removed was perfect for making epaulettes.  I cut both ends off, made a spatula shape from thin EVA (which would fit inside to give it some stiffness) and cut out some black leatherette to act as a cover.

The basic components of an epaulette

I started by sewing the leatherette over the round spatula end

Then I added the belt end sock thing with the straight leather section on the outside

After folding in the edges, I pinned and then sewed the leatherette in place

Next I sewed the end of the edging securely underneath the round end of the epaulette.  Note the taped end was snipped away once it was secure

I then sewed the edging all the way round and fastened it in place under the circle on the other side

I then pinned on the gold frill...

...and carefully sewed it in place

And the finished product with a button added

 In my next post, I should have some more pictures of the jacket along with the Cuirass and some other little accessories that I've been working on!

And finally...

If you're still reading, then you probably came for some hot Troggoth action as hinted in the title of this post.  Well, your reward is this heavily converted Aleguzzler Gargant which is being added to my Troggherd!  Enjoy! :)

So many shrooms...

Hi pet dragon was clearly loved

His interests include nights out clubbing

Toe crack spores.  Yum.

Golden Demon Entries 2019

Previously on the Road to Golden Demon...

In my last post, I spoke about what I'd be entering into Golden Demon this year.  Now I'd like to show you the finished entries and talk about them and the event briefly.

In the end, I completed all of my entries, submitting 7 pieces (listed below) on the day.  Although I didn't take home a trophy, I was very pleased to get a Finalist Pin for my Mollog's Mob entry.

To be completely honest, I was surprised I even came away with that as both the quality and volume of entries was absolutely staggering!

1). 40k Large Model: Genestealer Carnifex
2). 40k Vehicle: The Fisher King
3). AoS Large Model: The Frost Giant
4). AoS Unit: Mollog's Mob
5). Middle-Earth Model: Sauron the Necromancer
6). Diorama: Throgg Vs Karanak - Khorne's Vengeance
7). Dual: Titanicus Scale Imperial Knight Vs Gorkanaut - Clash of Iron

My Golden Demon 2019 entries just before setting off for Warhammer fest!

As I've covered them several times in the past, I won't go over my first three entries again - you can find them easily with my blog tags.

I'd like to run through entries 4 to 7 though, with some nice images of the completed miniatures and a few WIP pictures for the ones I haven't shown on the blog before.

Age of Sigmar Unit:  Mollog's Mob

I love to make things; that much is obvious.  I think I'm pretty damn good at it.  Unfortunately, my painting is distinctly average.  As Golden Demon is primarily a painting competition, taking home anything at all was going to be a big ask for me.

So, imagine my delight when I received a Finalist pin for Mollog's Mob!  I worked so hard on these guys and I'm really glad that was recognised!  For anyone not familiar with the Golden Demon awards, there are trophies for Gold, Silver and bronze, then a small number of finalist pins (normally 2 or 3 per category) for people who made the final cut, but didn't quite make the trophy shelf!

Kevin Chin's original Mollog cover image is just amazing and was hugely influential when I came to choosing Mollog's paint scheme

I wanted Mollog and his minions to be framed in a cave setting to really capture their troglodytic lifestyle!



The entire box scene was made from scratch with inserts for each character.  The addition of skulls, mushrooms and slime pools tied everything together nicely.

At Warhammerfest, Seb Perbet described Mollog to me in what I believe is the best way ever - he's the king of the morons!  A Troggoth so stupid that only complete fools would

Although it's difficult to see in these pictures, I extended the patterning on Mollog's skin well beyond the etched surface.  The whole model was a joy to paint and I'd highly recommend the kit!

Mollog the Mighty!  Mightily stupid maybe...

Bat Squig!

Stalagsquig!

Spiteshroom!

Prolonged exposure to Dankhold Troggoths can yield unexpected pin badges and fungal growths...



Middle Earth Category: Sauron the Necromancer

I showed this entry as an early WIP in my last post; below you can see some completed images.  I feel that this entry never quite came together the way that I had originally envisaged in my mind's eye.

I originally wanted to sculpt fire out to the edges of the arch to make the eye of Sauron with the actual model as part of the flaming effigy.  This idea had to be scrapped because I was running very low on time.  As you can see, the final entry just didn't have the gravitas I was hoping for and I wasn't surprised that I didn't place with it.

Diorama: Throgg Vs Karanak - Khorne's Vengeance

Throgg fends off Karanak, Khorne's Hound of Vengeance amongst the red dunes and boulders of meteoric iron in Chamon, the realm of metal while the fate of those who fall to Khorne's wrath is revealed below the desert sands...

 This piece was a labour of love from start to finish.  I had always wanted to paint Throgg the Chaos Troll King since it was released around a decade ago.  It was only when Games Workshop offered him briefly as a soon to be retired miniature with their made to order service that I decided to pick him up for a Golden Demon entry.

Finding someone or something for Throgg to do battle with wasn't easy - he's a large model and his pose is normally rather static.  When the new plastic Karanak sculpt was released as part of Wrath and Rapture, I snapped up a spare which a friend had after buying two copies of W&R.

I estimated that Karanak would be roughly the right size and that with some tweaking to Throgg, a scene with the two grappling for supremacy could be engineered!  I carefully cut the stone hammer from Throgg's foot and moved it to his raised hand, re-sculpting the haft and flat top edge to make it look as though the previously idle maul was now swinging through the air towards Karanak!

But Throgg wasn't having everything his own way as Karanak's bloody mouths and his savaged forearm show...



The detail in this miniature is simply amazing.  The chompy mouths are just awesome!

To offset the removal of the hammer, I built up a sand dune over a huge skull for Throgg to stand on as he grapples with Karanak

Aside from adding gore to the mouths, Karanak needed very little alteration.  Again, this kit was a joy to paint with the intricate scaling and Khornate symbols cut into his flesh.  I decided to paint his fur as flames to make him a more intimidating foe for Throgg!

I loved painting this cloak.  Tiny thread veins on the inner and outer surface are hard to see in these images, but the large flat areas really allow for these sorts of detail to be added.  I hate the axe in his shoulder though.  I must have snapped the shaft at least 5 times...

In this image, you can see the strings of gore on Karanak's three gaping mouths and the metallic boulders propping up chaos detritus which has been left to the desert sands...

The skulls of worthy foes claimed by Khorne tumble through reality until they emerge through the flaming sockets of giant stone skull pillars jutting from a lake of burning blood...

...trophies for the God of War!

Dual: Titanicus Scale Imperial Knight Vs Gorkanaut - Clash of Iron

Although this piece didn't place (it was originally intended for the small scale category, but was moved to the Duel category instead), it got a lot of attention on the day.  People genuinely couldn't believe that I was made enough to make the Gorkanaut from scratch.  Well, below are the WIP images to prove my insanity! :)

The Gorkanaut, base and building were all scratch built.  Even the Knight had to be re-posed!  I altered his legs, arms and shoulder pads to give the illusion of him running at full pelt towards the slower Gorkanaut!

Steaming round a blown out building, a Knight of the noble House Raven prepares to crash into a hellish Ork contraption!

Painting this Knight gave me such a headache!  I used a selection of transfers to faithfully replicate his 40k scale brethren's heraldry.  I took them mainly from the Armiger decals, but also borrowed from the Mechanicus infantry sheet as well.  The tilt shield and hull symbol were painstakingly cut down in size from the Armiger hatch emblems. It took ages, but was totally worth it!

Painting the Gorkanaut was pretty straight forward as I simply copied the 40k scheme including the chequer pattern on the hull which looks great in this scale!  If you look carefully, you can make out faces and patterns on the missiles...

I was quite pleased with the exhaust array despite gluing my fingers together several times trying to get them to sit correctly!

The Gorkanaut picks his way over a crater while an Imperial Knight charges at its flank...

I like this image as you can see just how tiny and detailed the finished Knight really is!

The completed Gorkanaut before painting

 

Again, this is a great WIP image as it shows just how tiny the Gorkanaut is!

So what's next?

Well, I have 1.5 28mm scale Warhound Titans to complete before the Titan Owner's club walk in June.

Although the hounds will be my main focus for the next month, painting Mollog and Throgg really gave me the urge to create a Gloomspite Gitz Troggoth army so that I can play some casual games of Age of Sigmar.  Below are some WIP images of my first Fellwater Troggoth - he's nearly finished and has some friends on the way too!

Until next time fellow Troggoth Herders, fare well and don't eat the purple shrooms!