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I like how the body is turning out, but the head seems off to me. I'd offer advice, but it all revolves around pulling apart or removing the head, and I don't think you'd consider that a option this far in.

Excellent blog! I swear I was planning on doing the exact same thing, except that I got my Mumak body from a bits grab bag. I will have to completely scratch build the head for mine, though, so I really appreciate your WIP shots of head construction. Great idea using dead sprues as bone structure! I've purged all my dead sprues recently so will need to dig some up... but I think I will combine sprues for straights and wire hanger pieces for curves.

I think the size of the head looks dead on, considering a squiggoth is a ginormous squig. I do have to agree that the squareness of the lower jaw seems off, though. If you put a bit in his mouth (like for a horse), or a chain hooked to the corner of his mouth for steering, maybe it would look like the weight pulled the mouth square? You would only need to add the inside part of the jaw where the outer lips got pulled back, if using the piercing in the mouth corner idea. I hope that makes sense. I can see it clearly in my mind but I don't think I'm describing it clearly. And I seriously can't think of search terms for google images that will not get me in trouble. Even easier, you could simply put armored cheek plates on him... or just leave him as is. It is totally up to you of course!

I think the tail looks fine in proportion to the body, and I love the tail armor plates. You could have done a little curly pig tail and it would look great!

Excellent work with use of the battlewagon for the howdah... it definitely looks orkified. I can't wait to see him all armored up. I think armor will make the whole thing finally come together!

What colors are you going to paint the beasty and the howdah?

Rose_Mountainz: Not too long before the painting starts.

Mu: The head is great completely oversized, how I wanted it really, very orky I think.

Gathering Storm: I did try a horn on its head, seemed like something that should work without question, however strangly it simply looked like the squiggoth was wearing a party hat so simply gave that up as a bad job. Think it was because of the difference between the position of the eyes on my model and the position of the horn and the position of the eyes on a rhino.

Some_Call_Me_Tim?: Agreed

Arakasi: Point taken about the tail. was much happeir with it once I had some more armour plates close to it. See below. Didn't go too heavy with the armour plates, mind.

Really the build was coming to a close by now. The only things left on the list was some final howdah details (glyph plates etc), some crew and some armour plates for my squiggoth. I also had the base to make which I planned to convert from the War Mumak one, that will get its own seperate entry.

I didn't want to go over board on the armour plates as this would invariably cover up the skin and my much loved green stuff work. I really wanted to leave most of the skin exposed as the skin, to me, is always the most interesting part of a model and has the most depth of colour after painting. So I simply wanted to concentrate on problem areas and drawing the eye away from them. This, as Arakasi pointed out, was the too square jaw and the somewhat limp tail.
So going with that I simply decided on some armour plates at the top of each of the legs sized proportional to where I planned them.





Also needed were some characterful crew. I planned a pair of crew "manning" each of the supa lobbas, a driver and two twin big shotta gunners for in the side compartments. All were built in the Squiggoth howdah ensuring a good fit.

Also, as a bit of a last minuet experiment, I had a go at fitting the battlewagon top cover and that fit so that was also added as a painting sub assembly, still unsure if I wanted it in the model I decided I may aswell paint it then decide if I wanted to keep it.



I'll leave it to people to guess who goes where.

Looks pretty sweet to me

That is one nice looking war beast you built!

This is really awesome. You've got mad GS skills...

I do, however, think the legs are a little thin to support that gargantuan noggin. Otherwise, that's gonna be awesome painted.

getting there man I am really liking it so far

The mouth is not all that bad just call it loud mouth!!

I always find that custom modeling jobs really come together once their painted. I'm sure it'll look great.

Gymnogyps: I put this up as a blog so that if anyone ever wanted to say recreate the steps/learn from my mestakes then they could. I think the squareness most probably originated from the abit too square bone structure, saying that I couldn't have got it as well defined without the bone structure so would simply have to build it differently or file it more into shape. Like the little curly pig tail idea, that would have looked very funny. I get what your saying about the chains into the mouth similar to the original squiggoth. Very good idea.

SilverMK2: Does to me too.

Corey85: Thanks

All: Will be taking people through the painting soon, hoping to be more brisk with that mind.

Very impressive conversion! Nice work. I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of the finished product on the tables.

Nice work so far very good work with the green stuff
i think the head is ok on the boy its the legs that look a little scrawny to me or maybe just too tall?

but again very nice work with the green stuff looks very detailed

Awesome work! Very impressive! I completely understand where you are comming from wanting to have something unique! Can't wait to see the painting process!

Very nice conversion! The only thing is something about the head looks strange

Myrlyn: Thanks, have yet to get the chance to use this guy in a game. Though I'm waiting for just the right moment to unleash it on my brothers' Space Wolves.

All: Thanks for the great comments.

Before I delve into painting the base must be first finished.

The War Mumak comes with a finely detailed base, sadly detailed with dead lord of the rings models and scattered weapons. This of course just couldn't do.

So using a combination of junior saw and filling I cut off the top most layer of the base. Then using pasticard filled the gaps left in the base by me doing this.





Wanting something of a scenic base. I went for the usual detroyed battlefield debris look, with a destroyed trukk part, ruin and tank trap. All things my Squiggoth would readily smash into the ground. Also building up using sprue bits I created some foot positions for my Squiggoth so that it was in the most menacing pose possible.







To cover over the still showing LOTR base and the sprue bits I applied plenty of sand with PVA glue. The Squiggoth was now ready for some paint.

Haha, that looks pretty cool from the front

I can't wait too see this finished.

Really looking good, alot of work has gone in

I would consider reworking the head however, the mouth is great, the top of the head doesnt do it justice.

The only problem i have is that the head is bigger than the body....

otherwise, its fab!

I've been watching this thread for a while, and it never stops being fantastic. Great work.

I deeply want this to be painted Orange, Squig style.

Matrim wrote:The only problem i have is that the head is bigger than the body.... otherwise, its fab!

Yeah, It's super Scientific Fact that Squigs are 90% head...

Panic....

Panic wrote:

Matrim wrote:The only problem i have is that the head is bigger than the body.... otherwise, its fab!

Yeah, It's super Scientific Fact that Squigs are 90% head...

Panic....

Think someone maybe talking in a facetious manor that is, for once, not me!!

Panic, by this I can asume your 100% behind the large head?
How is the Kan Wall coming along anyway?

It came together really nice 2 thumbs up matey can't wait to see it painted!

Next up would be painting. I started as most would with such a large and formidable beast, with the skin. I wanted something deep, rich and fitting of my army. It needed to be green (sorry disty) and it needed to be darker then the orks in the rest of my force but most importantly it needed to have variety and depth. These could only mean one thing. Plenty of highlighting, building up varied, rich, heavy layers, and plenty of heavy washes to darken and mucky the skin.

After the standard black spray I started off with a fairly normal coat of Dark Angles Green.





Then a heavy, all over highlight of Knarloc Green with a large brush.





Followed by an all over wash of Devlan Mud to darken the Knarloc, mucky up the beast and bring out all the wrinkles on the model.





This wasn't the skin finished, before I got too indepth with the skin I wanted to bring some of the other areas of the model up to scratch.

Your sculpted skin looks like it fits right in with the actual model with those highlights letting us see the texture in more detail.

Having thought about this long and hard. The question was still relevant. What colours to paint the howdah?
I have a, mostly, goff ork army which is prodomenently black but that would IMO be a poor colour choice for this as for one I had already denominated the squiggoth as Snakebite.

To my opinion Snakebite clan doesn't have a prodominent colour scheme for painting metal. They tend to go with browns and green. To me that would be pretty boring and the squiggoth was already going to be greens with some brown.

I wanted something textured and deep but contrasting with my Squiggoth. Snakebites clan are weather beaten.
Hmmm... Weather beaten metal - Rust.

Perfect, textured, deep, matching the clan symbols on the howdah and contrasting with the Squiggoth.

Having not done rust effect before I looked for a good quality tutorial online.

Finding the Eavy Metal one I started here.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=&pIndex=5&aId=6000022a&start=6

However skeptical I'd get thye results, I needed to test it, preferably somewhere small on the model:



Not a hundred percent on this I decided to drop the last step and replace all chainmail highlighting and drybrushing with boltgun instead. Also the second step of Devlan Mud wash was replaced with 2 washes of Devlan Mud. It was also lighter than I wanted so a wash of Badab Black (not seen in this picture) was needed.





After botgun metal painting.





After two devlan mud washs.





After bestial brown stipling.





After blazing orange stipling.

I cant wait till this is done, it will look magnificent!

The beast looks amazing and the drybrushing and washes bring out so much of the detail.

Very nice

As painting continued and before I got too stuck into finishing off both the skin and the howdah I decided that I really wanted to get the other details of the Squiggoth in. The mouth, the teeth, the straps contecting the beast to the howdah all were yet to do.

First I picked out all parts I wanted base coating in scorched brown painted (straps, teeth etc.).

Then both the tougue and gums were painted with hormagant purple.



The tungue then highlighted with red gore, then blood red, then the whole tongue given a red wash.
The gums were highlighted with warlock purple then given a blue was.


The teath and tusk were painted together and was a build up through varrying stages toward the end of each tooth/tusk. The idea to give them a very unclean but sharp look.

Each building up toward the end, the order went:
scorched brown (already mentioned), snakebite leather, bleached bone, all over wash of Devlan Mud, bleached bone, skull white, kommando karki.

Also done now was the straps holding the howdah to the squiggoth using varrying combinations of snakebite leather, bestial brown, bleached bone and devlan mud wash and all over a scorched brown basecoat.



The metal areas on the howdah were then picked out with boltgun metal and the whole thing given a light dry brush.




Model so far