Project Tankbustas: Part 3

Part trio...

 

Stage 2 sees what it is arguably the simplistic aspect, the kitbashing of the rank & file. When it comes the older style of ork plastic Boyz, methods to kitbash a rokkit launcha are fairly well-known and relatively straightforward. I don't know if this is the case for the new Ork Boyz, GW seems to discourage kit bashing these days, so maybe not, but I digress. Making the rokkits themselves can be achieved with a bit of tubing and greenstuff, and I've done a few of those here, but I find the process fiddly as I can't cut straight to save my life. I like beads for that more these days; you'll have to look around for a good shape, but once you have it, it cuts down on faff. Alternatively, the business end of a felt tip pen has possilities, and I've used a few here. Making a shoulder-mounted, bazooka style launcher is also something relatively easy. You take a choppa arm piece, and snip off the axehead. You then take another tube, or a convenient bit of pen in this case, and have that lay on one shoulder, with the boomy bit resting on the axe handle. You still need to dress it up a bit so it doesn't just look like a tube, but you get good results with modest effort, especially as opposed to simply cutting up a shoota and plonking a rokkit where the killy bit used to be. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you have the bits spare, mind you, I was just aiming for something more involved here. It's also basically how you make Rokkit Pistols, as I have here. You get a slugga, trim off the bullet gubbins, while keeping the hand/trigger, and then attach a smaller type of rokkit up front. Barring some glue mishaps, arming these three lads was a therapeutic experience, but I was also sculpting bits for them at the same, and that experience is what's gonna be valuable to the project going forwards. 

 

 

So what did I do here in green stuff? Well, I modified each head, sculpted some armour plates, and some straps to hold spare rokkits. This was an iterative process, with putty being made into thin strips and panels, place on the model, and them smoothed with water. This is something in need of patience, which I often lack, as the two-part putty needs to left to cure and/or dry-out before putting details atop of it. Often, I went back in to trim bits with a craft knife for a sharper line, or to sand it. The heads are probably the mode involved, as these featured targeters/bionik-eyes/git-finders and the removal of ears to cover with helmets and such. Adding a hand-guard thing to the rokkit launchas was something that added at lot to the look of the thing, but didn’t require much effort. Just tidying it up once it had cured.

 

Now, I’ve got some doubts as to how this all will look with paint on it. I’ve done hats and such in decades cast, and they looked OK, but I’ve not tried helmets and armour. I may need to tweak them further. I know I need to correct that boy on right... Hopefully, they’ll be fine when I eventually paint the whole unit in stage 8.