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I've been lurking around Dakka for a long time now and recently I've been admiring all the work that people are putting into their armies as a result of starting project blogs.

Seeing all the great conversions and paintjobs has inspired me to start up a blog for an army I've been wanting to play for years: orks.

With the release of Assault on Blackreach and a great 5th edition codex, it seemed like the perfect time to put all of my orky aspirations to the test. But building and painting a horde army (something that really feels orky) seems pretty daunting. I've always been a slow, but pretty ok, painter, so typically I've stuck to really low model count armies (my first tournament army was a 24 model Deathwing army back in 3rd edition). Orks are going to be quite a departure from the small army trend, so this blog is going to be about figuring out how to paint quickly while still building and painting in a way that looks good on the table. Or at least in a way that I think looks good.

Of course, since I'm starting an ork blog, I figured the best way to get going was to build a Big Mek that I could have looking over my shoulder while I try to figure out where to glue that next gubbin.
So, I introduce to you RustGrubba NugLutz, Da BigBrain of Mork (or perhaps Gork):



He's wearing a very kustom force field and a sort of burna/klaw combo, so I can field him with either, depending on where my list needs point trimming. A good friend from my gaming group gave me the forgeworld nob biker head for some conversion work I did for him. (I got the better part of that deal. )

Since I'm using a bunch of Blackreach boyz for my list to start with, I'm going to be building choppy boyz for the core of my force. I figure NugLutz's KFF should be able to help the boyz get where they're going in one piece until I get vehicles wrapped around them for extra protection.

I hope to get some paint on NugLutz and some boyz soon - the boyz will probably get the paint first, so I can try out some new, fasta techniques.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

And thanks for checking out my work.

That's an amazing Big Mek conversion! I rarely see Meks that look mean, but this guy definitely does. I can't wait to see what else you'll come up with.

Aww yeah!

Fantastic, clean, orky konversion there.

Army profile article, pics of painted minis, pics of other konversions, and any WIPs that you don't finish by the end of paint night must be shared!!! Just ask me at the end of paint night to snap some pics in my light tent

Let the evil 'monkey on your back' that is the P&M blog fuel your creativity and productivity!

Awesome Conversion, More pics please!

Awesome conversion!! what did you use for the wires running into the various parts? Guitar wire?

Love da Mek, so much dakka

Quite a beautifully orky Kunvershun.

Just a problem with the Power Klaw, how's he supposed to grab something with it if the Flamer is in the way?

And I who for just a little while felt proud of my own orks.

Now that's a proppa looking Big Mek! Really great job on him.

A question about his wrench in his left arm - that looks like it is partially made from a warbiker arm for the haft of the wrench, but where did the front of the wrench come from?

Wow! Thanks for all the input and inspiration!

-Stretch - The cabling/wiring all over NugLutz is mostly guitar string and a little bit of green "floral" wire. Why it's called floral wire, I'm not sure, but it bends nicely and holds primer really well, so I'm not complaining.

-!? - Yeah, the burna-klaw might be a little troublesome, but I mounted the burna head on a piston with a hinge, so I figure NugLutz just swings it back out of the way when he wants to shake someone's hand/rip them in half with the klaw. It's probably a bit of a stretch... but I have a feeling that most of my ideas from here on out will be too.

-GrimTeef - The wrench is made from a nob choppa arm. I cut the choppa head off just below the blade and replaced it with the wrench head from a mek-boy's backpack (from the burna/loota box). It's a great bit for mekky fun.

I haven't gotten anything but primer on NugLutz yet, but I did get started on my quick-and-dirty Warboss conversion. He's a Blackreach boss with just a nip and a tuck here and there. I gave him a plasticard iron gob and a slightly bigger shoulder-plate to put glyphs on. Oh, and I turned his shoota into a kombi-skorcha. This is probably just the first version I'll do of him, so I can get in a few low point games with a painted HQ.

Without further delay, I give you the first, WIP (quick and dirty) version of Warboss GitSmack Daemonkilla, Da Arch-Krumpa of da Riven Cluster:



He's pretty much just base-coated except for the skin of his face, his mouth, the skin of his arm, and the checks on his loin-cloth. I tried to make the skin where is claw is jacked-in to his arm look iritated, yet orky.

Thanks again and I hope to have some more pics in a day or three...

Great use of bitz on the Mek. Also, your warboss is pretty sweet. I can't wait to see more of your work.

I like the boss, adding the jaw plate and shoulder plate is a nice simple way to bulk the AOBR boss up.

That loincloth is so painfully well done. I get away with ork checks because I just say 'they are orks they can't make straight checks'. But those are beautifully done, and the half checks half red looks great.

The skin tone is great too. By adding that little bit of warmth to the green it looks a lot more like skin and a lot less like a plastic toy. The pink of the mouth and the inner lip draw the eye up to the face. Even moreso when you get something on that gob.

Can't really see the brusing, agitation on the skin, but I think I see it... a little blue and purple washing? What I can see looks pretty good.

I'd ike to see him finished off soon! Doesn't look like you have much further to go. Once hes done you'll have a nice center-piece... or half centerpiece along with the big mek.

Wow, you have serious skills with the old paintbrush. And modeling, nice one.

I finished up the old Warboss last night and just took a couple of pictures of him:

From the front:


With a little bit of his bosspole showing (I really need to work on my photography skills ):


From above:


The glyphs on his shoulder-gaurd roughly spell out GitSmack.

I still need to figure out how I'm going to finish up the base (and the bases on the whole army). I'm considering adding snow, since I frequently play against Shep and his Vostroyans on his home table. At very least, I will be going with some rough, city-rubble dry-brushing and some dead static-grass.

As always, any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated.

I'm going to get to work on some boyz next and hope to have enough time to get a unit of 20 AoBR choppy boyz (with their PK nob, of course) done by this weekend. Wish me luck!

Wow! Great clean paint and I like that you didn't "jewel" the lenses. Actually reminds you that "yeah, this thing on my face is electronic" with the red-orange-yellow glow. Nice!

GJ on the Warboss man; love the checker design on his loincloth. Looking forward to see the finished mek.

You finished him?

Please bring him to paint night tonight!

He looks fantastic man!

Thanks again for the feedback!

I decided to get a little bit of the nitty-gritty part of my army project done next... I finished up a unit of 20 choppy boyz. They could use another go-over for extra details (tatoos, touch-ups, maybe some static grass, etc), but they're ready for the table without too much embarassment.

I'm not 100% on the color of the bases, but, like Shep was saying at paintnight, "they need to look like someplace you wouldn't want to be". I want to give them sort of a blasted urban look, so I went with Scorched Brown as a base and different grays as the drybrushing highlights. I might play around with some other looks, but I'm just glad to have them based and ready to play for the moment.



And, as a sign of things to come:



I needed a pain boy for the nobz that will be riding with my Warboss. I thought the regular pain boy seemed... well, really cool... but also really small compared to the orks he was cutting on and cyborking. In stepped the new plastic nob box... and out stepped a bigger pain boy.

I'm not sure if Big Mek NugLutz will be getting paint next or if I'll need to work on a ride for the boyz (read, BattleWagon) or even just a few more boyz for the list while I'm inspired to bulk/speed-paint)...

Thanks for the extra inspiration!

This is fantastic! I'm not a huge fan of the metal painboy so I might take a shot at making a plastic one, keep up the great work I'll be sure to check up often!!!

Looking good! Did you finish up that battlewagon last night?

GitSmack wrote:Wow! Thanks for all the input and inspiration!

-Stretch - The cabling/wiring all over NugLutz is mostly guitar string and a little bit of green "floral" wire. Why it's called floral wire, I'm not sure, but it bends nicely and holds primer really well, so I'm not complaining.

-!? - Yeah, the burna-klaw might be a little troublesome, but I mounted the burna head on a piston with a hinge, so I figure NugLutz just swings it back out of the way when he wants to shake someone's hand/rip them in half with the klaw. It's probably a bit of a stretch... but I have a feeling that most of my ideas from here on out will be too.

-GrimTeef - The wrench is made from a nob choppa arm. I cut the choppa head off just below the blade and replaced it with the wrench head from a mek-boy's backpack (from the burna/loota box). It's a great bit for mekky fun.

I haven't gotten anything but primer on NugLutz yet, but I did get started on my quick-and-dirty Warboss conversion. He's a Blackreach boss with just a nip and a tuck here and there. I gave him a plasticard iron gob and a slightly bigger shoulder-plate to put glyphs on. Oh, and I turned his shoota into a kombi-skorcha. This is probably just the first version I'll do of him, so I can get in a few low point games with a painted HQ.

Without further delay, I give you the first, WIP (quick and dirty) version of Warboss GitSmack Daemonkilla, Da Arch-Krumpa of da Riven Cluster:



He's pretty much just base-coated except for the skin of his face, his mouth, the skin of his arm, and the checks on his loin-cloth. I tried to make the skin where is claw is jacked-in to his arm look iritated, yet orky.

Thanks again and I hope to have some more pics in a day or three...

Woo! can you tell me how you achieve the colors of the banner / klaw at this stage? it looks like real steel!

This entire army is fantastic ! I can't wait to see the mekboy painted up!

Where did you get the wrench in his left hand?
I recognize that you cut an axe head off of either a nob box or the storm boyz box but where did the wrech part itself from?

Another week, another bit of insanity...

First, thanks again for the encouragement!

@Somnicide - Didn't get the trukk finished last night, but I'll throw up a WIP of it today... you might get a kick out of it.

@LunaHound - The steel look is almost too easy for words, really. It's just a good, even layer of Boltgun Metal with a nice, wash or two of Badab Black and a little bit of Devlan Mud and Gryphonne Sepia here and there for variation. These Citadel Washes are just friggin magic. As long as you let your first layer dry, you can keep adding layers and partial layers to get really nice, dark, gritty, yet still metallic metals.

@Foda_Bett - The left-hand wrench head is just cut off of the backpack of the mek boy in the Lootas/Burnas box. When I opened that box, I knew I was going to have some fun bits to chop into, and that one is one of my favorites.

Now, I didn't get a ton done this week (before or at paintnight) but I got pretty close to finished on a mob of trukk boyz and got started on their ride. Oh, and I got a tiny bit of base-coating done on Big Mek NugLutz, but ran into a time-crunch that left him at such a hideously early stage, he wasn't even ready to WIP yet. :p Sooo... I'll hopefully be getting some more paint on him in the next few days... hopefully.

In the meantime, I think I've decided how I want to paint my vehicles. I like the idea that my trukks and wagonz are hammered together from what's left of the destroyed vehicles of my warboss's enemies. Since I mostly play against Shep (Vostroyans) and Somnicide (Templars/Daemons) I started here with the front end of my first (very WIP) trukk:



I'm going to hit many of the panels with red (red paintjob), but there's going to be a lot of raw, rusty steel and scavenged chunks of other vehicles represented. I might try some scale ork graffiti, but I don't want to heap too much extra goofiness on these guys right away (they seem to have plenty to start with )... I'd rather have orks that look like you wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley, or in a light alley, or really anywhere without a lot of distance between you and a bolter in your hand...

At any rate, I hope to have the trukk finished up by next week and NugLutz to a point where I'll want to put him in front of a camera.

Thanks again for checking in!

As always, C&C is welcome!

Wow, that looks awesome! Man, I wish my crosses were that good, I am gonna have to get you to give me the magic secret you use.

Beautiful armour plates!! it'd be great to see photo's of the profile and above of the models. great paint job.

Hey! Gimme back that piece of my tank! I need that! Haha, excellent work on the trukk so far, I'm just waiting till you finish before I start on any ork vehicles. I want to get all of the ideas you come up with in my brain.

... just a really quick update...

Ok... so I got a little painting work done on my trukk yesterday. I still need to finish up the driver and gunner (I didn't include them in the pics) and it may need to be muddied up a little on the tires and such, but otherwise, I think it's ready to go table-top.

From the front (with a templar termie helmet, courtesy of Somnicide):


From the side (the boyz wanted to paint it red to make it go fasta, but got a little carried away with some checks):


And from in the trukk bed (I was playing around with a new technique for rust by mixing crushed pastels and Gryphonne Sepia citadel wash to lock the pastels in place - that goes for all the rust on the vehicle):


Like I said, I probably need to muddy it up a bit and I may add a new panel color or two from new opponents, but once the crew is finished, I'll be ready to throw some boyz on it and send it into battle.

Let me know what you think...

That's that for now... I hope to have something else knocked out by the end of paint night tonight, thought I may not get pics until this weekend.

Thanks for checking my blog!

Waaaaagh!!
Keep up the good work.