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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 3, 2018 11:40:21 GMT -5
I thought a great first thread in my very own sub-forum would be a project that came to me in a prophetic dream from Mork himself (or maybe it was Gork ). On a long forgotten battlefield in the far distant future, an Evil Sunz Big Mek was offended by the sheer weediness of an Eldar Avatar. It was thin and graceful and no proper gunz that shook the ground with explosions. He decided that he would fix and improve the Avatar to be a true and 'proppa' stompa that would be a right killy "Orkvatar" - It starts here with the torso and four legs of a Defiler
- the defiler cannon is replaced by the cannon from a Leman Russ
- The shoulders are bulked out by large tank wheels from the Russ
- The 'hips/waist' is from a dreadnought and the legs are pinned to that and green stuff is used to smooth out the joins
- The frame of the feet are from the bracket/frame for the dozer blade from the old Imp Guard accessory sprue. That frame happened to fit the doubled-up legs perfectly.
- The feet are then boxed in by 'plasticard' which in this case is old expired 'Visitor' access cards from an old job
- The toes are the ends of a tank trap/barricade from the same IG accessory sprue
***EDIT*** Please click on the pics for a bigger better view. I'm only hitting on the high points of the steps I did. So if you are curious about anything I did or the thought process I was using while building this, please ask. I was standing on the shoulders of giants while I built the Orkvatar, so I would like to pay it forward by helping to answer the questions of other crazy Meks out there.
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 3, 2018 11:53:54 GMT -5
The next time I remembered to take a picture I had worked on the arms a fair bit. The arms from the defiler have had all of the Chaos icons dremelled off and those ugly claws have been removed. The ball joint on the arm fits really well into the center of the tank wheel shoulder and allows great pose-ability. The blades from the dozer blade accessory make great fingers for power klaws and the toothed cogs parts that had been salvaged from the defiler claws were used as spacers between the fingers. They really help sell the whole functioning hand look. That's all the time I have right now for this trip down memory lane. I'll post more of the old pics from time to time.
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Spectre Senence
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Post by Spectre Senence on Apr 4, 2018 22:45:28 GMT -5
You always did some great Ork conversions. Thanks for sharing that one
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 5, 2018 13:55:07 GMT -5
Lots of time and progress went by before these pics were taken. The arms are pinned and glued in place. The sponson flamers were done using a small tank wheel filed and glued to the flamer. The small tank wheel fits perfectly into the mounting bracket for the Hunter-Killer Missile. A pin runs through the bracket and wheel allowing the flamer to pivot. Armor plating has been made for the legs using more of the id cards and rivets made with a 1/16" hole punch. The head is made with the turret from the Leman Russ. The turret is facing 'backwards'. Where the cannon barrel was is now the back of the head and that gap is covered by the engine grill cover that would have been on the engine deck of the tank. The lower jaw is the piece that would have been on the back of the turret. The gun in the eye is an old 'eavy bolter from the metal Lootas and the hatch on top the head is from an old metal ork dread. The axe is a Tau rail cannon that has been orkily and securely chained into the hand. No amount of glue would hold that axe onto the small contact surfaces of the blade fingers so that chain is doing the real work of holding that in place. The blade is made from the lids of multiple generic gladlock sandwich boxes. There are five layers there building up the blade edge with ork glyphs cut into the outer layers and the blade itself was dremeled into shape. That really helped give that 'hacked out with a torch' look to the blade.
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 5, 2018 14:01:26 GMT -5
Here you can see the back of the head better with the hatch and engine grill. You can also see where a barrel from one of the scenery packs has been added with copper wire to hold it in place. A grot crew from an artillery piece fits perfectly in the back of the Defiler body. The plasticard on the hips was curved by dipping it in ridiculously hot water and burning my fingers while curving into place.
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 15, 2018 17:21:07 GMT -5
In this close-up, you can see all the detail on the head. The left eye is made from the lanyard hole on the ID card. The right eye is a Gaze of Gork with a 'eavy bolter through a round piece of id card. Lots of orky teeth are liberally applied right to the face! The shoulder pads really bulk out the body and give a good and proppa look to him. Cutting out the right shape was a challenge because I had to picture what the shoulder would look like finished and curved and then draw it out flat on the card. They were shaped with the hot water method. Then cross-stitch canvas was used to create the grid texture, and strips of playing card and rivets make up the trim.
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 15, 2018 17:44:03 GMT -5
Another challenge was finding solid contact surfaces to glue the shoulder pads on to. The only way to get it done was to shape and re-shape the front/top pads until it follow the curve of the torso well enough to glue decently to the body. Once I got those in place it was much more simple to put the back of the pads on. If you look up in the corner join of the pads you can just make out the L-bar that I used to reinforce/support that corner. The familiar playing card trim and some bits were used to dress up the back. For a final pic to this thread, here is the Orkvatar, pretty much finished, with a choppa boy for scale.
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Spectre Senence
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Post by Spectre Senence on Apr 15, 2018 21:31:45 GMT -5
Great thread, such a cool conversion
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 16, 2018 11:44:35 GMT -5
Thanks! It'd be cool to get it dusted off and use it in a game sometime.
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karg
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Post by karg on Apr 18, 2018 8:44:02 GMT -5
Can't wait to see it painted! I'll fight it any day. ^_^ Hopefully the Ork codex has some good rules for looted vehicles, rather than the tacked in White Dwarf version from last edition.
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Post by Fabricator General on Apr 18, 2018 11:49:23 GMT -5
It has a quick panicky "night before the tournament" paint job on it now, which is seriously ugly. I doubt it will ever be in an Ork army again, but it be used in one of the "figure agnostic" games if we think of a scenario that could use it.
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