Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Project Hellworm: Scratchbuilding a Nurgle HellDrake Part 1


Old School Terminator here with my latest project for the Chaos Marines: The Hellworm, or Maggot Dragon or whatever it eventually gets called. Having a healthy amount of Death Guard and other Nurgle-themed Chaos stuff, I naturally thought of how I would convert a Helldrake to fit in with my Death Guard ... but then I could really see it working out. I started to imagine something much fouler in my mind and with my maggot themed bases, I started to develop an idea ...

Do the Death Guard have Drakes? Hell no, they have worms"


With this in mind, I started my most ambitious project to date. I grabbed some Milliput, one of my favorite sculpting materials, some small Styrofoam balls, green stuff from GF9, my sculpting tools and a cheap Moray Eel from Michaels.


I used a Dremel to carve most of the fins off of the eel and also grinded the face off. I then turned it sideways and started gluing half-balls of Styrofoam onto what will become the underbelly of the Daemon Engine into place. After that, I took the Milliput and started creating a shell over the Styrofoam in order to turn the eel into an armature for what will become the worm.


I started digging through my bits box and found a set of Mawlok jaws to cut up and use as a mouth. I then grabbed a strange bit that I think comes from the Hellpit abomination that I got during a bits trading night and set it up as the eyes. I worked some green stuff in to see if it was to my liking ... and it was.


So, I broke into my other bits from Dark Eldar bits from the raider to Tyranid venom cannon bits and glued them into places where I wanted them and started laying in more green stuff. I then tool a wedge tool and started to sculpt the skin by pulling and poking the green stuff to fit the look of rotted and torn skin and flesh.


I liked where it was going, so I added more. I also added some vestigial little leg bits as you would see in an inchworm or grub. I also took care to sculpt the flesh into winkles and ridges to fit the bent position of the worm. The underbelly started to get some bits added as well, but I haven't photographed that yet.


At the end of the first session, this is where I am at and I plan to finish the lower end of the head face area tonight.

The idea behind it comes from the idea that the Daemon engine is a simple machine that has been corrupted and sacrificed the flesh of the citizens of an invaded world and then given life by being bonded to a powerful warp entity by a Warpsmith. I read a lot about how the daemons "wore men as somebody would wear a mask" in Fear to Tread and I wanted to run with that idea, so he blend of Machine, Daemon and the flesh of the dead is what I am hoping to achieve in this project.

As time goes on, the body will be finished, it will receive a cool base (covered in foul things of course) and it will also receive wings or some other manner of flight!

That is it for now, but be on the look out for Project Hellworm posts as they will be popping up as time goes on.

I would Love to here what you think and your feedback as this project progresses, so please hit me with your comments! Now, enjoy your next meal with this thing in mind!

17 comments:

  1. That is truly an impressive scratch building work. And the extensive range of bitz to pull from is to be admired as well. I'm very interested in seeing how it turns out!

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  2. Looks great! Can't wait to see the progress. I was going to make my Nurgle Helldrake a gigantic fly based off the Fantasy Ork spider.

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  3. Cool. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

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  4. Sweet monkey Jesus that is gonna look hot when it is all done. Crap - that could be an awesome Forgefiend shooting puss all over teh enemy.

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  5. Already looking excellent, OST! The eyes in combination with that horrible maw are truly disturbing! Very much looking forward to seeing where this is going!

    As for building a Nurgle flyer from the WFB Spider, behold the greatness of GuitaRasmus's conversion:

    http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/990/395043.page

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    1. That was one of my inspirations when it came to the actual idea of a nurgle helldrake existing and because this has already been done ... and so well, I wanted to do a unique take!

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  6. This has me thinking of other Heldrake ideas...Something like a scaled up blight drone, but with fly wings instead of jets

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  7. Looking good, man! I wish I had half the greenstuff talent you do!

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  8. Very nice start. Love the concept and the execution is quite inspired

    If I may make a suggestion based off of you concept for the machine though. If you've ever seen Tinfoils "Harrowed" Daemon army, he works bodies from the WHFB corpse cart into his daemons, and since yours has the fluff of being an amalgam of corpses fused into one form, if you could incorporate those bodies into the mass of the Wyrm, like having faces scream out from the sides or arms flailing out, it would add a new layer of grotesqueness(if such a word exists) to an already delightfully putrid flyer.

    Keep up the awesome work
    And Death to the False Emperor

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    1. Thanks, Trupie, I have already got it covered. I have corpse cart parts around to use and also have been weaving skulls into it. I plan to have the underbelly ripped open a little to expose wiring, hoses and "scenes" of mass bodies inside it. Tinfoil's harrowed were very much an inspiration for the texture of the model and I love his daemons.

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  9. Right now I am looking at fitting the terrorgeist wings into some hydrolics and yes, once Posed, it will have a very Chinese dragon feel for a maggot.

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  10. I love it! I had been thinking of doing something in the same vein. I'd been thinking about using a dragon. This is much cooler though. Looking forward to seeing this finished!

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  11. Very interested to see where this is going. Well, actually, I know where it's going. But I want to see the end result. So far, that Worm looks pretty damned cool indeed.

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  12. Not sur eif this shown in the other links as it's broken for mre but on White Dwarf Daily there's this fella:

    http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/wnt/blog.jsp?pid=4900016-gws

    I'm more excited about the blight drone style rotors than the spider legs so I certianly think that's how you should go with the 'wings'.

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    1. I feel like when I go to events and I see stuff like this, I have seen the rotors a thousand times. Don't get me wrong, it is impressive and hard to pull off, but I really think I am going to go with wings on this one.

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  13. That 'strange bit you mentioned is actually the amunition of the Skaven Plagueclaw. Verry Impressive work you got there n.n

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