Monday, December 13, 2010

Tyranid Harpy WIP! Carnifex + Malanthrope

 Just because I know everyone loves to stare at bare plastic models, I want to show off another creature I am working on for my Nids: The harpy. Basically, I went for a smaller build due to the fragility of the creature itself. The codex can say what it wants about these being the size of trygons, if they don't have trygon stats, I am not building them to that size. With that being said, onto the WIP ...

 Alright, the body and head came from the carnifex kit. I love the old sniperfex head and decided to use it for the harpy. The wings come from a daemon prince kit from Capt Obvious (got me three of them!) and the tail end is from a malanthrope kit I just happened to have it my bitz box (found it next to Hoffa).

The arms are from the carnifex deathspitter arms (totally useless in this dex) and some spare venom cannons I had in the box (pretty self explanitory conversion, but e-mail me if you want details and I'll do a walk-through when I build the next one).

 My first worry was the wings and whether or not they'd be big enough, while at the same time, I wanted the harpy to be able to fit into buildings and terrain without having to worry about it fitting (like my Nurgle DP and his balrog wings). All in all, I think they look pretty good.

 Those two curious lumps are not the harpy's lady lumps or any other nasty thing you had in mind, but rather spore mines. Spore mines are one of the things I love about the harpy and my wife for that matter - she shoots, she flies, she poops bombs! Anyway, the idea of these mines nesting around the creature's abdomen is what got me thinking to use the malanthrope body. I just pictured the bombs nustled in and holding on with their tentacles.
Here is a shot of the harpy next to my other WIP Nid project the Enzyte-fex and his massive inferiority complex .. er rupture cannon!

Anyway, I really like showing WIPs even when they are in an embarassingly shabby WIP state because I think some folks start converting something and then feel like it isn't going to look right or isn't going to pan out and they never finish it. Keep pushing. I have had some projects that looked horrible right until the last bit of green stuff or litterally the last bit was glued in place and all of a sudden they looked great. Hopefully, posting these shameless WIPs will keep some people converting.

With that said, let me know what y'all think so far ...

3 comments:

  1. Looks good, although the wings feel a bit small. It would be ridiculously hard to do anything to scale those ones up, though, so I can't blame you for leaving them as-is.

    I like the tail, and I'm totally with you on the Sniperfex head. Have you considered melding the two arms together? I think using the Deathspitter arms (so bad!) like that was a neat trick, but the having "two" guns like that feels a little weird to me.

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  2. Yeah, I toyed around with making a single gun, but the arms were asymetrical and I had to think of how a creature like this would fly and it seemed that to fly with any agility at that size and without real legs, it would need to have balance, so I went with the two gun approach. It does kind of bother me. I have also thought of an underslung gun that the arms feed into, like a smaller version of the T-fex gun, what would you think of that Puppy?

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  3. I have been putting off making my own harpy for a while (they are just hard to keep alive...but some games, soaking fire is their job).

    I have to agree, with its wounds and toughness, it will be a 60mm base for mine as well. I love the balrog wings, but I also find them too large.

    What we really need for a harpy (besides a kit), it a torso in-between the carnifex and a warrior. I think that would make a good harpy...

    Thanks for the post!

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