Saturday, February 19, 2011

Converting Arachnarok into a Tervigon: Part 1 (Project Dryder)

 Old School here and through the wonders of time-travel, DFG has possession of an Arachnarok (the huge spider from Fantasy) and I am hard at work turning this beauty into a Tervigon! I have literally just begun the process and have taken some photos of the actual Arachnarok sprue and have some questions for the readers to help guide me in this process.

Let's start with the sprue. The sprue is awesome as the entire spider comes on a seperate sprue from all of the little goblins and their platform (those bits are awesome too, though). What this means for the potential converter is that online bits traders will likely sell sprues complete for less than the cost of the actual kit. The kit itself is great. Following much of their recent work, GW has produced the sprue in such a way that the mold lines are minimal and hidden or completely non-existant (much like the blood crusher kit).

For the Tyranid converter, there are a number of conector peices for the legs that, when assembled seperate from the legs, make four chimney peices (two larger, two smaller) for the Tervigon's back abdomen. I will show those off in part 2.

Of course the highlighty of the whole sprue is the abdomen ...

 ... the abdomen is seriously huge, which is good as we want our mamma bug to have a big ol' booty! Here are a couple comparison shots:


Alright, so it is huge, but it happens to be just about the right size to pair up with the Carnifex torso. My conversion idea is to make this Tervigon in the aspect of a Dryder (basically a centuar-spider) and I have two ideas that I am looking at, but I am having a little trouble making up my mind: On one hand, I am leaning very heavily toward the Upside down carnifex torso as I like how it takes away from the "converted carnifex" look and the torso meets up with the spider's body perfectly!


On the other hand, I could go with a more common tyranid look and go with the forward leaning bug below - I just don't think it will look as cool as the first idea once executed. What do you all think?

All in all, I am super exited to be on the forward edge of making this conversion and can't wait to see it made whole and painted. Rest assured that I am planning to convert the abdomen so that the spiders are not visible or that they are replaced. Also, the extra leg joins will be covered properly and Tyranid "chimneys" will be added to the spider half of the model. I am going to convert and magnetise a set of arms that will be ready so the Terv can be armed with any of it's arm biomorphs. Also, during the painting process, I will use sand medium to add texture to the carnifex half of the model to mirror the texture on the spider.

Any and all feedback is welcome, so hit me up!

12 comments:

  1. I really like the upper upside down tervigon. I really like the dryder/centaur look. The other looks like a land train. Great looking model.

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  2. Thumbs up for the drider look; but I'd consider gs'ing the head to the front w/o the fex torso, and using carapaces and/or more gs for armor and ribs. Crushing claws might offset the depth of the model, but positioning with the large fex scytals should do the same. Not sure if trygon claws are thicker?

    Very jealous - can't wait to see more pics!

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  3. I knew someone was going to make this conversion as soon as the Arachnarok came out :P

    It looks awesome so far!

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  4. I say go with the first picture. Ascetically it looks more unified. The second picture just looks too streached out/ carnifex stuck on a big spider.

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  5. I'm in two camps here...

    The first is that I really dig the Drider in the first conversion option.

    The second.. well, I'm with Ghostin and think that you might do more justice to the Tyranid model range by using the head without the tyranid body, and then build up the carapace on the spider body using tyranid parts an dgoign from there... it also might not be as huge that way.

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  6. Although the first pic initially looks better because the bitz seem to fit nicer. When I look closer, the way I see it is that the first one reminds me of a snail, and the second one reminds me of a slow moving heavily pregnant snail! So my vote goes for the second one, I am sure that when it's finished with green stuff and the like, it would all match in.

    Looking forward to the final result

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  7. I like option one, however the extra height may make getting cover an issue. You also end up with a lot more legs than the standard six.

    Not fond of option two. I might try putting the 'fex head straight on the spider and modelling the carapace.

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  8. First one.
    I'm really loving the whole ALIEN Queen idea.

    You do know that you can make ALIEN eggs by gluing 2 adrenalin sacs together?

    I did this once for objective markers and had little green stuff face huggers crawling out of a few :)

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  9. Love Option One. I was waiting for someone to post something like this! very curious to see how it turns out!

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  10. I love to concept but don't you think it might look to much like the catapliller from alice in wonderland.

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  11. Great idea. Can't wait to see the finished product.

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  12. Yes option one is my vote too. the body flows better and i think the upright proud centaur look works. curious to see what else you do with it!

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