Gargant--Seven

Okay, so, ready to apply logic and geometry to a problem?

I want a jaw that sticks out an angle, kind of like the one on the Stompa.  Now, If I have a straight line and wrap that around the base of the head, it’s going to stand straight up at a 90 degree angle to the table.  Likewise, if I trace the outline of the base and wrap that around... well, it’s going to lay perfectly flat.  Zero angle.  Make sense?

So, what I need is an arc that’s between a straight line and the curve of the base.  And I’m willing to bet—based off my great scores in high school geometry—that if I make my arc halfway  between those two extremes, it should connect in a way that gives me a 45 degree slope to my jaw base.  Or something very close to that...

HOLY CRAP! GEOMETRY WORKS!!  I guess math and science are still the way to go...

I glued my new jaw base in place.  A few cardstock strips helped make the whole thing a bit more solid.  I put some clothespins around the jaw to help hold it in place, but to be honest it was pretty solid from the moment I attached it. i still gave it plenty of time to dry, because I need this to be solid if it's going to hold the weight of the teeth at that angle.

Helpful Hint—Just another reminder—because this is an Ork project I didn’t do a lot of measurements.  If I did measure things, it was more to make sure angles matched than anything else.  The joy of Orks is that 99% of mistakes look like planned details.

Next I took apart that whole daisy-chained tooth construction I’d put together at the end of last week’s post.  Someone also pointed out that all the teeth I made were pretty even, size-wise (which isn’t very Orky), so I also made a new tusk for one side of the jaw.

Once this was done I went through and added a bunch of detail to the jaw.  A lot of it was edging-pieces, because I want these teeth to look clean and sharp.  There were also some random armor panels here and there. I also cut out any excess material from the cardstock base that showed between the teeth.  I used a pair of scissors for most of it, and some of the fine stuff I cleaned up with my sprue clippers.

I also added some pieces onto the head itself and the horns.  More cardstock plates, some foamcore scraps, stuff like that.  And there’s still at least a hundred rivets in the future.  For the moment, though, I let the whole thing sit and dry.

Now... I mentioned last time the need for shoulder-mounted dakka.  That need still exists.  And these magnificent horns, even cut down, still eat up a lot of shoulder space.  This bothered me for a bit until I remembered how much of the old gargant art shows weapon emplacements mounted up on gangly scaffolding or scrawny mechanical arms.  All of that suddenly made sense...  I’d already planned on some flakkgunz  for one shoulder and a missile pod for the other.  I decided to put the flakkgunz on scaffolding and the missile pod on a smaller version of the arms I’d built as, well, arms.

I did the rokkit pod first, just because it’s easy.  I wanted to make it look kind of like a real-world multiple rocket launcher (or a big Whirlwind, if you prefer).  It’s really just a basic box, very easy to lay out and assemble.  Wider than it is deep, deeper than it is tall—about 3 1/2" x 3" x 2" .  The only measurement I cared about was the front, because I wanted to try something clever there.  We’ll see if it works in just a few moments...

I plotted out a 3/8” border inside the front panel, then marked off what was left into a 1/4” grid.  This will let me place rokkit covers/ tubes in a more or less regular pattern.  I don’t mind if there’s a little variation, but if there’s too much it won’t be clear what this is.  I tried to shade it a bit to make it clear which grid squares were which, and to give me an alternating pattern.  I used my 1/4” hole punch to make a bunch of disks, dabbed some glue, and then put them all in place.

Helpful Hint—Probably goes without saying, but a hobby knife is perfect for this sort of positioning.  A sharp pencil works well, too.  Fine point, solid, easy to direct.  It helps get these little pieces right in place.

Once the disks were on and mostly dry, I assembled the box.  I clamped the tabs with clothespins at the early points, then just held it together with my hands as it neared the final joins.  Once I felt confident it was solid,  I added on a bunch of detail pieces.  I made a simple  “sun screen” to overhang the rokkit silos.  Also some cardstock plates and panels that gave it a little more structural integrity.  This whole thing will also need to get a few hits from the rivet fairy.

(The rivet fairy is a magical creature who lives about one week in the future.  I keep hoping she’s going to do all these rivets for me.  So far... no luck with that.)

With that together and drying, I turned to the flakkgunz.  If you remember the first Apocalypse book, there was a nice flakktrukk in that, and I decided to use it as my basis for the gargant’s flakkgunz.  I cut four pieces of cardstock about 4 1/2” long and 1 3/4” wide, then put a good curve in each one, lengthwise, by working them around my hobby knife.  These would be my barrels.

But I’ll talk a little more about them next time. I’m running a little bit behind and I want to get this posted.

Next time, flakkgunz, the Gaze of Mork (or possibly Gork), and some engines for this beast.  We’re closing in on the end.

Garagant: Part VI

Many, many thanks for all your patience.  There were conventions and edits and then an anthology.  But now I’m back.

Speaking of anthologies, check out that new one over on the right.  I now get to call myself a canon X-Files writer with my story “The Beast of Little Hill.”  It’s fun, you’ll like it.

But let’s head back to the Gargant...

To be honest, I’ve avoided the head until now because it’s going to need a lot of work.  Like any vaguely-humanoid model, the head’s going to be the first thing anyone sees—people look to the eyes.  So if I’m going to focus my attention on any part of this, it needs to be the head.

First thing was a face plate, much like the ones on the Stompa.  I’m keeping it simple and just going with the more blocky one.  I cut a foamcore rectangle that was about 3 3/4” by 6 3/4” wide.  Then I cut a 1/2” x 1” rectangle off each of the bottom corners to give it a stylized skull look.  The two eyes.

Helpful Hint—Mentioned this before, but foamcore is always two cuts, at least.  Always.  When you try to go through foamcore in one cut, that’s when you get all those beads and tears and rough edges.  Use a fresh blade in your knife, do one light pass, then one final pass. I usually do a third pass just to make sure I’ve cut through the bottom side of the foamcore.  It takes a little bit longer, but it makes all of this so much cleaner.

Now, once I had these little bits carved out of the face, I made a very shallow trench down the center of the back.  Not even halfway through the foamcore.  It was one pass with the knife, then one or two leaning the blade either way and just letting gravity do the work.  The point is to remove a thin wedge so I can bend the foamcore just a little (maybe 15 degrees) without leaving a harsh wrinkle or crease in it.

I glued the faceplate on the front of the head and added two spacers out on either edge to help keep everything solid.  Then I balanced the head on its back and set a bag of lentils across the plate.  That sat and dried for about half an hour while I went to work on the horns.

Helpful Hint—A bag of lentils or split peas is a great, cheap way to help stuff dry in place.  It has a good amount of weight, plus it’ll bend and flow over whatever you put it on like a not-quite-full beanbag—letting you keep pressure on almost any surface.  Plus, the lentils are good for you.

Most gargants don’t have horns.  I don’t know why, because horns seem to spill over to every other Ork vehicle.  And I wanted them to help balance out the squatness of the head..  Probably wider, blockier ones to go with the usual Deathskull esthetic.  So I sat down with a piece of foamcore and plotted them out, shooting for about 7” so they’d be twice the height of the head itself.  I liked how they turned out, but realized one problem as soon as I held them up to check the look.  They were too wide.  The horns covered the entire torso and pauldron area—and there’s supposed to be some shoulder-mounted dakka up there.  So, I immediately trimmed about 3/4” off the inside of each horn.

 

Next I took the triangular scraps from cutting the horns out and glued them on to the front and back of the horns themselves.  I made sure front and back pieces all lined up with the side edge.  It gives the horns some bulk, plus it means there’s more area for the glue to grab and hold them in place.  I made sure everything was lined up and then set a book on top of these for about ten minutes.

I glued the horns in place.  I had to hold them for about five minutes.  They sit a little forward on the head, not quite halfway back.  I also used the scrap pieces from the faceplate to make a nice solid block between the horns, the head, and the base piece for the head.  I’m really happy with how they look.  To be honest, it’s got me thinking of some punny Japanese robot names for the Gargant.  Gorkdizer.  Great Morkinga.  Gorking.  Dangork Ace.

Anyway...

It struck me while I was thinking of names, though, that the horns almost look too good.  For an Orky creation, they’re just too symetrical.  I’ll make a point of trying to set them apart when I add the detail next weekend.

Next up was the jaw. I thought about how to do this for a little bit.  I briefly toyed with the idea of cutting the jaw as one piece and curving it with the same “wedge” method I used up above with the faceplate.  Thing is, I’m running low on foamcore and I’m trying to keep costs down on this, so I didn’t want to risk wasting a piece.  I decided the best path would be to cut out the “teeth” individually and then work them together into the jaw.

Thing is... this turned out to be a lot harder than I expected.  Because they’re flat, the teeth don’t get a lot of contact against the head’s curved base.  They also don’t get a lot of contact with each other because the angle-out means they actually lean away from each other.  What little contact they make isn’t enough to counteract the angle.

I tried three different versions of this and couldn’t get any of them to work.  Things kept falling apart.  And I was running out of glue.  My last attempt was to create a sort of “belt” of teeth, with the hopes I could bend it into position.  It didn’t work, either.  Not in a way I liked.

But it got me thinking...

Age of Sigmar

Hey, there.  I’m still getting caught up on things after two back to back conventions, so I haven’t made any real progress on the Gargant.  Probably won’t this week, either, because edits are due on Friday.

However... it’s a pretty standard tradition for my friends and I to have a few (read: several) drinks the night before San Diego Comic-Con and play a game or two.  And this year, we decided to take Warhammer: Age of Sigmar for a spin.

Now, I’m not going to talk too much about the actual gameplay.  Marc’s posted a simple battle report and some thoughts over on Atomic Warlords.  But I did want to mention a few things, more from the hobby/modeling point of view.

First, Age of Sigmar was a lot of fun and very easy to pick up.  If you have any familiarity with tabletop games, you can sit down and be playing in about fifteen minutes absolute tops.  Probably much less.

Second, it’s a very cheap game.  The rules are free. The war scrolls are free.  If you were a Warhammer player before, you already have a ton of models (and the rules are extremely thorough—they cover pretty much everything).  Even if you’ve only played Warhammer 40,000 before (like me), you’ve probably got a few models kicking around that you have for conversions.  There’s also a lot of folks online selling older models or pieces from the old Island of Blood starter set. And past that, there’s probably going to be some folks rage-quitting and dropping their models in the bits bins or putting them up on eBay.  Which brings us to... 

Third, or maybe second-point-five... you don’t need a lot of models to play.  Because there’s no force organization chart or points minimum, it’s possible to play Age of Sigmar with as little as one model.  It has lots of single-model battle scrolls.  A knight on horseback.  An Ork.  A witchhunter. A Skaven warlord.  A wight king.  That’s all you need to play.  If you happen to have a small squad or unit of some sort, that’s even better.  I spent a day digging around through my random bits and discovered I had almost fifty viable units, spread over nine different races/ factions, some assembled, some in parts.  Get three or four units (or even just models) for the same army and that’s the basis of a solid game.

Fourth, (or three, depending on how you read the last one) there is paperhammer scenery for Fantasy settings.  Lots of it.  Warhammer and Mordheim both have a collection of useful templates, ranging from a burned out farmhouse to an elaborate inn.  Plus I’ve talked before about other cheap scenery ideas that would work in a Fantasy setting.  I’m thinking I might have to try a few simple ideas for a graveyard, a simple building or two, and maybe even some ancient ruins.

Now, I can see where the rules could be frustrating to an established player, especially a competitive one.  As a new player, though, without any preconceptions of how Fantasy should be played, I think it’s a great little game. And it means I’m going to get to build and play with a lot of things I’ve had kicking around for ages for one reason or another.

I’m sticking Age of Sigmar in the win column for now.  Your thoughts may vary...