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So I don't know if I'm actually going to have time to work on this thing or even finish it in the forseeable future thanks to the amount of time school's comsuming, but I figure it doesn't hurt to throw up here.

I'm working on a rough boss biker plan. I've come to the conclusion I have to scratchbuild most of it to get satisfactory results, as trying to make a warboss bike out of a normal boy'z bike and legs is not going to be nearly impressive enough. I drew out a general plan, which I'm hoping I can keep to:



That's my general plan, anyway. I've been trying to make it roughly to scale with the picture in the top right corner - if your monitor is at it's native resolution, that should be roughly the size of the finished project.

I started with the gas tank and general body of the thing. I'm just trying to come up with something I can build off of later. The rear wheel's an extra-widened older edition bit, and I think I'm going to end up using one of the newer warbike wheels for the front.

Anyway, this is as far as I've gotten in about a day:







We'll see how it goes. I need to widen the area underneath the tank and seat and add some more mechanics, but I think I might move to the front and get the front wheel on there so I at least have some sort of full chassis to build on.

I can't see any of those.

It looks like it will be really awesome -- love the multitude of exhausts ^_^

looking good. My only concern is could you have saved a lot of work by converting a Chaos bike instead? (Hey, do one of those as well!)

I like the widened wheel, presume you'll be adding some new-style tyre reinforcing detail later.

is that gas tank carved out of solid plastic?

Brilliant stuff, as usual, James!

Looking good. I too wonder about that tank. Sculpted?

And rivets in the gas tank? Thats orky...

I love your concept art Ein. Being a rider myself, I prefer the trimmed down, simple, clean look on motorcycles, and I try to impart that in my modeling too. The new bike sprues are a bit too busy for me, but I really dig what you've done with them in your unit so far. Also, widening that rear tire gives it a nice bulk, though I see some greenstuff and filing in your future there

And always, it's your little details and touches that really seal the deal. The gnarly Wazza glyph riveted to the tank is delicious, and oozes character (and possibly petrol)

Totally game to see where you take this one, keep it up.

The gas tank is actually made of resin. I was making molds earlier this week for an unrelated project, and I just made extra recesses in the mold to house some extra resin I poured in to make the general shape of the tank. Then I just filed and sanded it down a bit more to get the proper shape and clean up any defects. It's easier than carving from a block of plastic, all in all, but only marginally.

I've been working on front forks to get a general gist of size:



And a standard warbike for scale:



You can see it's slightly larger, and by the time we factor in the extra length from a wheel guard and exhausts it should be notably bigger than your standard warbike.

The big pain is figuring out how to properly attach the forks to the frame around the tank area. The stock warbikes don't give any consideration to actually turning the forks - it's just one straight piece of plastic. I'll probably end up doing the same, to be completely honest.

I approximated a way of joining the front forks to the tank area, so I went ahead and attached the two pieces. I think I'm going to leave it at this point for tonight and pick back up on it for tomorrow. I need to widen the underneath of the bike's 'frame' and definitely fill in some of the dead space below with more worky engine-type bitz, but I'll come back and look at it fresh tomorrow after I'm done with an apocalypse game.









Considering ripping that 'intake' thing off from the bottom and working on that area fresh again. I don't like the intake I made much, and I think it's going to end up obstructing a lot of the stuff I want to add. We'll see.

looking great

idea - as you don't need the area behind the seat for the gun mountings, put the engine there? Or since the boss's such a show-off, have an engine there as well as in the normal location?

I'm not hating the air intake thingy - I'd leave it unless you invent something cooler, and I suspect it will hardly be visible anyway once you put the guns etc there

Really loving this!!! Definitely an idea I might steal, I'm finding some of the new Orky vehicles way too "busy", to my mind, they are all out war machines, and yes every Ork will Kustomize his wargear and vehicles, but not to the point where it's more like riding in an Indian taxi than an Orky deathbike!!

Keep up the good work buddy, I'm sure the late nights slaving away at the plasticard and the lack of sleep due to filing/greenstuff duties won't affect your grades too much!

I said I was done for the night, but I was feeling restless, so I pulled the intake off the bottom of the bike and started fiddling a little bit. I'm not very happy with the stuff I've been trying:



It's a bit weird because I am trying to consider how to add the exhaust pipes where I want them without them also interfering with the placement of the engine and foot pegs. I have considered moving sections of the engine to the rear, but I still want it to look pretty bikey, and there's a lot of dead space up front that needs filling anyway.

I've been looking at using a trukk engine, but it's a bit too huge. If I'd started with it as the body of the bike, perhaps, that might have worked better, but it was an option I overlooked.

I'd sort out the seat next, and the boss's legs - that way you'll know where his foot rests need to be, probably somewhere on that bit you've just added. Then you can add other bits to suit.

Re the exhausts, if they all run along under the engine, parallel to the ground, like on the marine bikes, then they shouldn't get in the way of legs etc.

Ooh, a bike based on the trukk engine, good idea, that would make a great Wazdakka model!

On my Boss bike (its actually a quad and almost 1.5 times the size of the regular bike) I simply cut off the engine bits of the side of the regular bike and pasted them on the side of the wider frame, effectively spacing them and putting an airscoop in between making it look like an engine again. it worked quite well for me, maybe thats an idea?

I like so far but i would love to see heaps of gunz and a 'uge motor

Well, my car broke down this morning, so I wasn't able to head to the apocalypse game I was looking forward to. I've instead tried to make the best of things by working on the bike a bit more, digging through my Trukk kit parts to try and find suitable bits to flesh out the underside of the boss's bike.



Still a work in progress. The part between the bottom of the engine and the gas tank (with the round vertical cylinder at the front) is not glued in place yet, but I think it fits the spot fairly well. I'm just trying to sort out where the foot pegs should go - they'll probably be built further out from the bike around that general area. It's important to bear in mind that the seat will get some greenstuff 'padding' eventually, which will fill the space up and help lift the boss up from the ground, so the foot pegs would probably have to be right below the gas tank.

Anyway, still a work in progress. Looking at it, I don't think I've built the front forks and wheel in such a fashion that I could add a blocky wheel guard like in my original sketch, so I may redesign the wheel guard to a degree. I think it needs one so the wheel does not look so visibly tiny.

If your lifting the Boss that high, you could take exhausts from each side just above where the horizontal bar piece is you've added under the gas tank and the bit that's not glued yet? There's a flat panel that's just crying out for somrthing... if your footpegs aren't there then it's the ideal place for a set of manifolds leading back to some huge tailpipes

Engine's looking great.

I don't think you need a full front wheel guard, just a small mudguard which will also form the base for the gunz mounting.

How are you planning on making the boss's legs? GS? I remain concerned that leaving that until later could result in an awkward rider pose due to the bike design - sorting the legs out now will avoid posing problems later.

Clang: The reason I am avoiding mking the rider is because I'm going to have help. Once I'm done making the bike, I'm going to be sending it to one of my friends who is incredibly talented in the ways of sculpting. He'll basically be manufacturing a biker boss from scratch to fit the bike properly and maintain the appearance I have in mind, since my own sculpting abilities aren't nearly up to the task of making a warboss from nothing. That said, I am just going to have to eyeball positioning for now.

Coming together great, engines looking mean, cant wait to see the rest of it built.

BDA

Okay! It's looking a tiny bit more bikish - I've emulated the design of the belt on the plastic ork warbikes to add a mechanism that looks like it conveys power to the rear wheel. It needs a fair bit more detailing, but that's not happening tonight, I think.





I have to fill in the empty area above the engine bitz, obviously, but that'll come in good time.

Ooh - I love what you did with the intake and engine gubbins. Nice stuff. And the belt drive is pretty awesome.

Working away at the bike a little more. Added the basic seat to the bike, a little bit to the engine area upfront, and a pair of foot rests for the eventual warboss rider. The engine area might look a little sparse right now, but the red dots on the image indicate where I plan on putting exhaust pipes leading from the bike, which will help fill up that area. I need to do some minor detailing to the area behind the foot pegs, and then I may as well go ahead and start making the pipes themselves, since I'll have to also attach them to the rear of the bike in the areas they run along.

Little steps, anyhow.

looks great though i really want to see dakkakannons on it

looks good keep it up

Spent a little time working on the exhausts. There's going to need to be at least two more on this side of the bike, and then five on the other side. Only fitting for a boss's bike.

Jeez, it feels like you work almost as quick as I can read the thread!!!

Nice exhausts... If your pipework is as good in steel as it is in plastic I'd get you over here to make up some tubes for my V8!!!

how are you doing your pipe bending - hot water, candle flame?

Thats starting to come together very nicely. I like the exhausts very much. You cannot have too many orky pipes on the machinery.

Your modeling threads are a treat!