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Powered Lizardmen Engine of the Gods
Hello all, So a long time coming, here are the pics of my Engine of the Gods. I will detail background, then creating, a bit on painting, and general thoughts Background: The engine of the gods is a rare choice in the lizardmen “Red Host of Sotek” army list from the Lustria book but it is conversion only. This new dinosaur is called an Arcanadon and the Engine is the thing on the back. GW is not making the model; the pics you have seen of it are an awesome conversion via a carnosaur, saurus bits, milliput/greenstuff, wires, and 3 forgeworld knarlocs (which he cut up). In the fluff stories, the ancient old ones/slann weapon on it’s back pulls comets out of space and bombard the battlefield. Since I want to have one of each model with rules for it for my army, I decided to make my own… I wanted it to be something different, hence the funky engine on it’s back. I decided to try and get it ready for the GD in UK 2005 in sept. So in july I began work on it. Sadly, I was never happy with it enough to take, as my painting isn’t good enough for GD quality, so I new I would never get past selections, and for such a large model, it’s not worth the hassle of transport. About 2 weeks prior to my flight to the UK, I stopped working on it. In reality, I was going to UK to meet a girl that our families were trying to have us talk and see what happens (Indian families; what do you expect..hehe). My mind was too occupied with this and I couldn’t concentrate to work on this as I should. (I’m much more concentrated now for my Paris GD entry for April, although now the problem is, I just don’t think I’m good enough to pull of what I am envisioning…hehe). Construction: The body frame is made of around 30 feet of coiled alumnoid armature wire (that’s what it says on the packet and I used all of it plus more..i may have misread it). Then for the main engine, took apart a plasma ball (yes, you read that correctly), and friend (thanks Tim) unsoldered it from the circuit board, and attached longer wires, and attached the main coil to a block of wood. This wood I greenstuffed into the body frame. The wires run down it’s back left leg and into what was a housing of apoxysculpt and plasticard, to look like rock. Some pics below of it during construction. http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02255.jpg http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02252.jpg http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02180.jpg http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02235.jpg http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02260.jpg http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y293/StarFyreXXX/DSC02307.jpg The base is apoxysculpt on hardboard with stones, and woodland scenics realistic water added. It took about 3 bottles of it to reach the depth I wanted. The materials used in construction: • Aves’ Studio’s Apoxysculpt • Kneadite plumber’s putty ‘brown stuff’ • Kneadite ‘green stuff’ • Plasma ball • Wood • Hardboard • Plasticard • Silicon rubber • Various glues • Costume jewelry chains • Saurus sprue parts • Chaos sprue parts • Belakor, archaon, ogre, and beastmen head/skull • Skeleton sprue parts • Empire soldier sprue parts • Galrauch horns • Lord kroak palanquin horns • 3 bottles of woodland scenics realistic water. • Fine electrical wire Painting: Painting was done somewhat in a rush as I had to try and get it done before the flight…I’m not really happy with the paintjob and I know since then, as I have gotten better at blending, I think I could make the skin look better. But I just don’t want to keep working on it…I have to stop! Hehe There is some freehand on the banners held by the skeletal victims tied via coiled wire to the horns. One banner says “Lustria is Death”. Also a chaos symbol on a banner in the sand partially visible on the beach front below the head of the dino. The showcase wooden base was done by Jeff Wilhelm (thanks bro! all your bases rock!!!) General thoughts: What I think of this is the following good and bad… Good: • I am very happy with having a unique conversion/sculpt here…if I ever field a red host army at a tournament, I certainly have somewhat of a showpiece model for the army • I did learn quite a bit about sculpting large models, so my next sculpture, to start late may/early june (the AD&D Dark Sun dragon of Tyr, Borys, based on the artwork by Brom) hopefully I can use this learning to my advantage. I will definitely work harder on the armature and with no electronic components, don’t have to worry about that aspect. • The stonework for the engine I think looks really good :D very happy with it. I think I am good at making cracked stone…heh so hopefully I can do it again for the base for my paris entry… • It works!!! (see below) Bad: • I’m not happy with the paintjob as I mentioned. I did rush it since I wasn’t concentrating on this fully or spending as much time as I needed. Too distracted. Vincent Hudon told me for my current WIP for Paris GD in April, to spend the time it needs, but now I am more relaxed about it and concentrating more so I believe I can get it done if all goes well for most part in feb and march. If I were to do it again, I would have started sooner and concentrated more to exemplify the paintjob as well as I could. • It stopped working in early December. I ended up cutting open the casing for the circuit board. It appeared there must be a leak as still wet realistic water had seeped in. I got rid of it, and filled the casing with silicon rubber. Then last week I resculpted a larger lid shape which can be removed now. Hence it looks a bit rouch and larger than the rest of the base section. At this point, I just want this to be over with. It thankfully works as the pics show… (yay! More points for it working?!? Hehe) • There are problems with the sculpt that some of the plants hide along with the deep water. My errors due to rushing and not knowing enough about sculpting when I began. • Stuff I put on the base (skulls, weapons) are all lost in the depths of the green tinted realistic water hehe. So that Effect I thought would be cool…I messed up..oh well. Total work time…I’d imagine with design/sculpting, wiring, painting (I even had to bend heavy armature wire into a strange shape to suspend the dino in mid air so that I could prime and paint it properly!!!), it could easily reach over 175 to 200 hours but not sure. Also my original sketches…no idea what I did with them. Or the spreadsheet with measurements I did based on measuring the arcanadon in the lustria book, then checking the angle and estimating it with how large I wanted mine to be and using those measure ments and sketches as a basis for the original armature. Also, I would sculpt the head more carefully to make it much nicer and change how it looks. I’d get rid of the head frill thingand probably make the head more smooth and larger bone horns on the side of it’s neck. Well..that’s basically it. Not sure what else to say. Not as good as I would have liked, but considering I rushed aspects of it, I must say it was still fun to do and is definitely a showpiece when I look at all my lizardmen models (even the ones better painted) beside each other… Oh, btw, for those who may be wondering or haven’t heard, Shilpa and I are getting engaged soon :P so atleast that went quite well :) :) (Cedric aka Greenstuff on CMON spoke to her actually when I was in the UK) hhehe :) :) On to the Paris entry which I have to finish (as my dad says, Shilpa wants me to enter the Paris GD, so I have to do well…yeah….right….) hehe :D PS: Ogrebane..there...it's done..stop complaining :P :P
Posted: 22 Jan 2006
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