Gargant, Pt Two

Okay, the main sections of the hull done, and it matches up well with some of the ideas Marcus had about basic gargant size and structure.  I decided to start layering on some details. 

The first thing was extra foam plates on the sides, front, and back.  They’re just big pieces of foamcore that overlap seams to make joins more solid.  They also add a bit of bulk in key places and (in the back) help smooth transitions between the abdomen and thorax.  I toyed with the idea of adding one to the top of the head, but I’m going to hold off for a little bit.  It’ll be an easy thing to add after the fact.

Once those plates were dry,  I added some runners along most of the corners.  They’re just 1 1/2” strips of cardstock that I scored and wrapped around the edges.  They reinforce the whole structure and also help hide any messy foamcore bits.

Helpful Hint—Always over-fold any of these pieces that go around corners.  Fold them almost in half and let the corner itself hold the piece open.

Also, it’s probably worth mentioning that I haven’t glued any of these big components together yet.  A big reason is just storage—I don’t have a place prepped for it yet, so it’s more convenient to squirrel away when I can break it down into its core parts.  It also makes it a bit easier to put on some of these detail pieces when I'm only dealing with smaller components.

Next, I decided to add some pauldrons.  I didn’t have arms or shoudlers yet, but I knew where they were going to go and figured it’d be better to get them in place now rather than waiting to build weapons. Each one was a 5 1/2” x 4” rectangle of foamcore held up by right triangles that were more-or-less 4” on their sides.  The sizes are a bit random because I just happened to have some scraps that broke down this way. Thankfully, Ork construction techniques are very forgiving.

I flipped the thorax upside down and built the pauldrons to it so they’d be flat and level with the top (this whole area will probably end up with some shoulder-mounted rokkits or something).  I built the triangles underneath the rectangles so they’d be supporting that weight, not just the glue.  I also tilted them out a bit to leave room for “movement.”  Once they were dry I flipped it right-side-up again and added some more strips and squares of cardstock inside and outside the “shoulder pad” to help support it and hide some of the rougher foam edges.

Helpful Hint—I tried to bend the corners down on all of these cardstock panels before I glued them in place.  The glue’s going to make them curl up away from the foamcore, so if they’re bent down to start with it just makes things easier.

Then I cut up a bunch of squares and rectangles.  There were a lot of different sizes, but I tried to keep them all about 3” square or smaller.  I ended up with about a dozen of them.  This is going to be a first layer of Orky “armor plating,” and also help cover up some more of the bare foamcore edges and joins.  They can be a bit messy and crooked—this is Ork workmanship, after all.  It is, as I mentioned before, very forgiving.

The next wave of “plates” got rivets before I glued them on.  Lots and lots of rivets, made from the 1/16” hole punch.  I decided to put them on first because, with the somewhat haphazard style of Ork construction, it’d be easy to miss them later

I layered these on top of  the earlier plates.  I didn’t want to cover every inch of the gargant with these—I could and it’d look cool, but it came down to a time issue.  I could spend the better part of a week doing nothing but plates and rivets.  I’d rather just give the sense of it being completely built of scrap.

I also let a couple pieces hang down around the bottom of the abdomen to create the “skirt” effect that we see on the Stompa.  It also helps sell the idea that the entire hull is just random plates rather than a solid block.

Helpful Hint—Might sound obvious, but once the skirt goes on, the abdomen has to be up on the feet.  It won’t be able to sit flat anymore.  I don’t need to glue the feet on yet, but it’ll need to at least balance on them.

You’ll notice I’ve left the front of the abdomen kind of bare.  This is because I know the gargant’s getting some kind of belly cannon, but Marcus and I haven’t quite decided what kind yet.  I’m also toying with the idea of a big skull icon that will wrap around said cannon.

More on that in a few days over at Atomic Warlords, along with some other ideas for dakka-fying the gargant.