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All of the most fun projects start with 'I couldn't help myself...'

This is one of those.

I was reading about the new Orky tidbits in Apocalypse: Reloaded and something stuck out to me, big time. The new strategic asset, 'Rokk Em, Boyz!'. I won't get too specific mostly because I am not 100% on the rules myself (since the book isn't out yet!) but from everything I've read, the strategem involves hurling 1-3 giant asteroids from an orky tractor-beam ship up in space down onto the board. They cause an apoc. template hit, and scatter d6 FEET.

This is what those of us in the business of being orks like to call awesome.

So Ein finds himself with a little bit of time on his hands this morning, and starts thinking to himself. What should he work on? Troops? Bah. Too much work for me to bother with right now, I don't want to desprue all the crap I have. Big things? Squiggoths and baneblades can wait, I'm not feeling it. Oh wait! How about a strategic asset that doesn't even require a model to use!? Bingo.

So, let's think about this for a moment. Asteroids hurtling onto the board from space would probably cause more than just a template hit - it'd probably leave something behind. Well, you could go ahead and model a big giant rock stuck in the ground as a terrain feature I guess... But...

See, the way I sees it, orks wouldn't hurl just random asteroids and meteors down from the skies. Though the orkiness of such a thing is undeniable, I pictured something a bit more... fun.



That's right. Giant rock fists 'N feet rainin' from da skiez like da handz uv gork an' mork 'emselves!

The easiest way to do this was to use the moonscape craters that GW put out as a base. They already have roughly a 10" blast footprint on them, and you can easily just build off of the nice, flat middle crater.

So, off to my garage I went to cut, carve, and generally mangle foam. Since this is a very spur of the moment project, I screwed the foam together. It holds just as well, and glue takes days to dry between sheets of this stuff because it creates an airtight seal, and PVA glue needs air to set. Hot glue tends to destroy this stuff, too.

Anyway, after 10 minutes or so, I emerged from the garage covered in pink insulation foam and carrying a prototype 'rokk'.





They're pretty rough, mostly because I don't feel bothered to smooth them out any. I'm going to be covering the whole thing in putty anyway, so that I have a harder working surface that I can carve rocky gouges out of. Because I'm covering this in a couple mm of putty all around, there's some pretty big gaps between the fingers on the hands (so I have thick enough putty to put on and carve). This is also why the screw heads don't matter to me at all - nobody's going to see 'em anyway.

I'm trying to figure out what sort of putty would be good for this. A bit of research tells me magic sculpt would be great for what I'm trying to do, but I don't seem to have a source of it anywhere around, so I may just go ahead and use my 2 part plumbing epoxy that I have in my garage. It dries rock-hard and there's lots of it. The only downside is that it has like a five minute working time before it hardens, but for a spur of the moment project I suppose it'll do.

Oh also: how does the idea of a rocket booster in the back of the hand sound? To help orient the knuckles down and add some extra oomph once they hurl it down from space.

Rokkit boosters sound ace. This idea is made of awesome in it's purest form, eats win for breakfast and poops genius.

I lotve it!

I was actually considering making a "Rok". The asteroid fortressy things that the orks hurled onto Armageddon, as ready made bases of operations.

So when I saw this thread I immediately thought "damn, Ein beats me to it..."

But this idea rokks!
Oh, and rocket boosters. Definately rokk´it boosta´s!

Rocket boosters are go!



I'm going to go out and pick up some milliput for this.

Xanthos wrote:I lotve it!

I was actually considering making a "Rok". The asteroid fortressy things that the orks hurled onto Armageddon, as ready made bases of operations.

So when I saw this thread I immediately thought "damn, Ein beats me to it..."

But this idea rokks!
Oh, and rocket boosters. Definately rokk´it boosta´s!

I was actually thinking I might put a door on the other side (the back of the hand) so that these could double as orky drop pods, if I were so inclined.

Dude it looks like one of those old school Japanese manga robots who's hands get shot off!!! I love it! Maybe put an ork at the base in a cool old school Tranzor Z pose or something like that!

Thanks,
Chappy P!

Now that would be a good idea, nice looking, and funny too!

As always, impressive, imaginative stuff.

Wow man you just finished Wurzaag and you are already off to your next OMFG project, well if this turns out half as good as your others it will be a site to behold. Keep the pictures coming I really want to see this thing take shape.

Looks like a fist punching the ground.


I AM IRON MAN!

These are great,

I gotta have some

HFN

I laughed so hard when I saw this.
Its just so... random, nay, orky.

I must agree, Ein.
You're pooping genius again.

I do have a couple suggestions, though...

1) What about dual boosters, instead of just one? Kind of like on the back of a Land Speeder.
2) An Ork (or even grot) driver sticking out akin to the grot bomb, modeled to look as if he's being held in the fist?

--Yet another of your threads to watch.

Eric

Magical: I liked the simplicity of a single booster. Two would have looked too cluttered.

So I went ahead and used the Prang DAS clay I got this afternoon on the foam fist. It's a bit unweildy - it wouldn't 'stick' very well to the fist, probably because there's not much for it to grab onto to begin with.





It's a bit lumpy looking, but who cares? I figure once it hardens I can sand it smooth(er) and carve at it with the knife a bit, and if I dig too deep and hit foam, I'll just cover that area with some PVA glue so the foam doesn't melt. Right now, honestly, this project could go either way, depending greatly on how hard this stuff ends up, so we'll see how long I have to leave it alone before I can tinker with it some more.

on the base of the rokk have the 3 rocker orks from the classic orks

Whilst I like the idea and execution, I have a problem with it. If you're firing rocks from such great distance, they will be traveling at such a speed that it will destroy itself upon hitting the planet. Would it not look more real if it were virtually destroyed? I can see that it would be hard to make look like a fist and also look destroyed, and I can also agree that the 40k universe (especially the orks) is not a place where 'real' matters, but it just seems somehow....wrong....

InyokaMadoda wrote:Whilst I like the idea and execution, I have a problem with it. If you're firing rocks from such great distance, they will be traveling at such a speed that it will destroy itself upon hitting the planet. Would it not look more real if it were virtually destroyed? I can see that it would be hard to make look like a fist and also look destroyed, and I can also agree that the 40k universe (especially the orks) is not a place where 'real' matters, but it just seems somehow....wrong....

You're overthinking this. How about the space rock that it's carved from is especially hard, so it survived?

jamsessionein wrote:

InyokaMadoda wrote:Whilst I like the idea and execution, I have a problem with it. If you're firing rocks from such great distance, they will be traveling at such a speed that it will destroy itself upon hitting the planet. Would it not look more real if it were virtually destroyed? I can see that it would be hard to make look like a fist and also look destroyed, and I can also agree that the 40k universe (especially the orks) is not a place where 'real' matters, but it just seems somehow....wrong....

You're overthinking this. How about the space rock that it's carved from is especially hard, so it survived?

Yes, I guess you can justify it that way, which kind of works. But, if the rock is hard enough not to be pulverised to dust, it would have to be chuffing hard. Meaning that a) It would smack a far bigger hole in the planet's surface than the blast crater, and b) how would the orks carve it and stick a rocket in it?

Sorry, didn't mean to ruin the fun......

Simple, orks teleport the crap out of that rock.

Shadow_Strike wrote:Simple, orks teleport the crap out of that rock.

To 50 foot above the surface? Nah, not orky smashy enough.

The thing stays together cuz da boyz know dat Gorkz (or Morkz) fist an' feet don't go crumbly! Deyz Ded 'Ard Gawdz! Nice work Ein!

I think I prefer it lumpy. Gives it a bit of the "hewn from a solid rock" feel.

How about 5000 feet above the surface and THEN fire the rockets! That'll fix 'em. Stupid 'umees!

Ah, stuff it, I'll stop thinking too much about this. Anything that leads to massive ork hands smashing those stupid marines can only be a good thing!

InyokaMadoda wrote:Ah, stuff it, I'll stop thinking too much about this. Anything that leads to massive ork hands smashing those stupid marines can only be a good thing!

Good, because otherwise I'd have to point out that we're talking about semi-sentient, hyperviolent fungus with space weapons attacking an empire run by a dead guy in a box 40,000 years into the future, protected by 'roid raging 13 year old boys.

So yeah, Big fist-shaped rocks from space. Pure win.

jamsessionein wrote:Magical: I liked the simplicity of a single booster. Two would have looked too cluttered.

Did you just say it would have looked too cluttered?

Did you just say that it might have made the ORK CREATION look too cluttered?

See, now, had you just said, "I don't want to," I'd have bought it... But "too cluttered?" They're ORKS!
Besides... I've seen some of your other creations. You don't have a problem with ork clutter.


It's looking good, Ein.
I'm in the "Keep it rough" camp.
Regardless, though, I know it'll look good when you're done!

Eric

InyokaMadoda wrote:Whilst I like the idea and execution, I have a problem with it. If you're firing rocks from such great distance, they will be traveling at such a speed that it will destroy itself upon hitting the planet. Would it not look more real if it were virtually destroyed? I can see that it would be hard to make look like a fist and also look destroyed, and I can also agree that the 40k universe (especially the orks) is not a place where 'real' matters, but it just seems somehow....wrong....

If you look carefully the rock is depicted on the moment of impact, thereby explaining why the rock is intact.
Disregarding that fact that most meteorites that hit our own earth's atmosphere bounce back in space, pulverise or burn away. Only small fragment land on the earth's surface, but by then they are reduced to the size of coins. The larger ones are not larger than a football (that is a soccer ball for most of you). Only every 10000 or 100000 years meteorites the size of a car hit the earth.

But anyway, that doesn't matter. If enough Orks believe something works, than is does work. Have you seen any believable Ork Fighta-Bomba that would fly if it was real?

Well, okay.

I was trying not to work too hard on this project because it was supposed to be sort've a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I'm starting to approach the point where I'm regretting that decision.

I let the putty harden for about 24 hours and tried carving into it a bit. The results were a bit... poor. DAS is okay for getting a rocky covering, but you can't carve much texture into it.

I scratched my noggin for a little while, and dug through my garage. I found a spray can that's supposed to spray a stucco-ish texture onto walls for painting purposes, so I sprayed the whole fist down in it, grabbed a sponge, and tried roughing the surface up a bit so there might be something to drybrush on later.

This is what I ended up with:





It's okay. It's not quite got the hard, rocky angles that I originally envisioned the fist to have, but I guess it works. I grabbed a saw and cut a bit off the front of the fist so it sat 'deeper' into the crater.

I'm debating what to do at this point. I can either prime it and paint it and see what happens or scrap it and try making another one. If I do decide to keep it, I need to anchor it properly into the crater, since there's a gap about 1mm high in some places between the flat bottom of the fist and the curved inside of the crater.

I like the texture, I'd definitely paint it before deciding what to do, but I think it's a winner. A drybrushing should really bring it together.

I like the au natural look the texturizing spray gave it. On my screen, it looks slightly pitted and textured like the great asteroids from Empire Strikes Back. I envision Orky krews hewing away at this fist up in space whilst being pelted by debris from the clashing of giant rocks.

I think after it is primmed and dry brushed it will turn out just fantastic it has the right look to be a carved asteroid. An interesting idea though since asterois usually have small holes that run all the way through them either painting them in or acually drilling in a few holes to make it look like it was at one point an asteroid may go along way towards making it seem more beleivable, just an idea. Good luck and I hope it turns out well cause if it does I may just make one of my own