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No hobby progress to report. Been a bit uninspired with modeling so I decided to take little break and work on other stuff. It's not necessarily model related but figured i'd drop this project off and wish you all safe holidays!

Cool. Hope you get your hobby mojo back in the new year.

EDC

Holy crap, that's awesome! Crazy skillz there, Nova....

See you in the New Year!

Progress update.

Doesnt look like a whole lot but it took a surprisingly long time to get the legs built how I wanted them. I wound up creating ball sockets for the legs & arms to keep the my options open for posing and just use sticky tack to hold it together for the time being. Just to add credit where credit is due, I took a lot of inspiration from the link below. Kanvass does some absolutely amazing work.

http://www.the-waaagh.com/forums/?showtopic=52604

Legs look spot on from this view. I think one thing a lot of Ork scratch builders get wrong is leg length, usually making them too long. You seem to have nailed it though. Orky proportions maintained!

Cracking effort so far dude! And good spot on the length of the legs, matphat.

What caught my eye was the greenstuffed boot. Although it might not look like much, I appreciate how hard it is to get a boot to look 'right' ie not too cartoony.

Excellent work. I'm really looking forward to seeing this mek done.

Those legs are phenomenal. This Mek is going to look amazing when he's done!

EDC

Thanks gents!

I was a little worried about getting the proportions right but you guys have set my mind at ease. Aside from the legs, The boot is probably my favorite part so far. I just imagine this mek making his left leg a little less bulky so he could still wear his lucky boot (+1 to krump'n bugs).

Got some progress done on the arms last night. The idea right now is to make a shokk attack gun but more like the body of a mini gun where he has to hold it from the back and front grips if that makes sense.

Heya gang,

Been dedicating all my time to wedding planning lately, but now that i've finally tied the knot I can get back to the hobby! Decided to pick up where I left off on da baddest mek I could build!

Here he is all primed and ready. I'm actually a bit nervous to start painting this guy as he's probably my favorite build thus far. Hope you all enjoy!

That's awesome. Gotta love that massive boom-stick.

EDC

Thanks man! I figured it was go big or go home on this one

Awesome to see you back in action, Nova, and congrats on getting hitched!

I LOVE that Mek! What an f'ing badass! Is that the Attack Squig from the Grukk kit or is it a kitbash? Either way, I love it!

AWESOME BOSS!!!

Wow! He's huge! That's going to be a joy to paint. Nice work!

Thanks guys!

Maybe i'm just overanalyzing but the power claw looks so small in the pictures... trying to resist the urge to alter it...

 NidLifeCrisis wrote:
Awesome to see you back in action, Nova, and congrats on getting hitched!

I LOVE that Mek! What an f'ing badass! Is that the Attack Squig from the Grukk kit or is it a kitbash? Either way, I love it!

Nid! Thanks a bunch man! It is the squig from the Grukk kit but I added an iron gob, mechanical leg, & faceplate to make him fit in with the mek a little better. I'm still pretty inexperienced with greenstuff but trying to look up more techniques to get the look I want. I think it turned out "ok" but i'm waiting to see how it looks painted before I make a final judgement.

Looks really cool! I'm not sure if I hit the right button for comment, but either way, your stuff looks amazing! Is any of it playable in game? Cause if conversions and scratch-builds are, then I was lookin' at making a battle fortress. Do you just have to make your own data sheets?

Michielmaesen wrote:
Looks really cool! I'm not sure if I hit the right button for comment, but either way, your stuff looks amazing! Is any of it playable in game? Cause if conversions and scratch-builds are, then I was lookin' at making a battle fortress. Do you just have to make your own data sheets?

Thanks Michiel!

I honestly don't play too much anymore which is why i'm trying to sell some of this stuff over on the trade forum. When I did play, it was always with a few buddies and we would just proxy most of it or make special rules. We've used the big ork tower (AKA Da Bruza Kruza) before and just rolled a scatter dice every turn to have it move about randomly / ramming anything in it's way I think it just comes down to the people you play with and having a discussion before the game. From what i've seen though, most people have been pretty cool about it.

On a separate note - I'm out of town on business right now which will give me time to figure out a paint scheme on this guy. I wound up downloading a drawing app on my phone and came up with an idea for some grott koptas made out of ping pong balls. Thinking I could add a sea mine element to make them kamikazes!

Ok so I wanted to wait until everything was finished to post pics but I was honestly just really excited to show off some progress. I decided to go all out on this model, trying out new techniques with greenstuff, modeling, painting & photography. Overall I really feel like some personal growth was achieved with this one. Just need to figure out the base and it will finished but If anyone has any last minute ideas or critiques to make the finished product better i'd love to hear them! Anyways, hope you enjoy and looking forward to your feedback!

p.s. could anyone recommend a good tool for creating these tiled images? The one I used was ok but it was kind of basic. Hoping for something that might allow for some editing or zoom features.

Man, tough crowd this week. No thoughts on this one?

11/10 Would mek again. It looks fantastic, maybe a bit too tall, but that just makes it more imposing. I wish I had that kind of skill.

I just love the Squig, so vibrant. He turned out excellent and you have a really nice effect on the scope, looks very sharp!

Thanks guys. He is definately a taller model. Probably right around 3 times the size as an ork boy. I was a little worried about the nmm on the squig but I think it turned out ok on the gob? First time trying out the lense effects and it was truely a pain in the a%# in the first try but got a little easier after that.

Back with some minor progress. The base is all finished but now i'm having issues getting the final photos due to this new camera i'm working with. For some reason I can't seem to get the white balance / depth of field worked out. When trying to take the photo against a black background it tends to really pick up the light on the black cloth so i've moved to a white backdrop with some minor success.

I've never really done much with basing so this was a fun little experiment. I decided to go as far out of my comfort zone as possible and try all kinds of new techniques. Overall, I think the base could use 1 or two more elements like some cat tails or tinted water, but i'm pretty happy with it as is. I assume that this is pretty basic for most of you out there but it's all new to me so I've got some notes below.

A few notes on the base..

Airbrush:
Besides the occasional masking for patterns & basing, I've never really used my airbrush in any kind of official painting capacity. I know some people are really anti airbrush, but I really like the shading it allowed for something like this. I don't think i'd ever switch over to just airbrushing, but I think it's an awesome tool to employ along with brushes & other techniques.

Rocks
I decided to use insulation foam and cut it into the general forms I wanted. They didn't look great at that point and were not sturdy at all, so I thought "what could I do to strengthen these up and add texture?" Conclusion - Why not dip them in Resin? The resin gave a nice thick coat and really rounded out the jagged edges of the foam. I actually really liked this look as it gave a nice departure from the standard jagged rocks you usually see on a base and seems to work with the water effect as if the rocks had been weathered down and round over time. After that I added the white spots to add a little more texture and give that look of water that had dried, leaving behind the trace minerals over time. This was done by heavily watering down some white paint and dabbing blobs here and there. I played with the water spots a little more by adding some more water to thin it out more in some areas, or just pushing the blobs around as they dried a little to leave a little ring behind.

Water
I have never used water effects before and did not know I would need to keep applying thin layers over time. This literally took days of just adding layer after layer. On the bright side, the viscosity of the "real water" gave me a larger margin for error when evening out the height of the water around the edges, so that was a plus. I do like the water effects but in retrospect, I need to find a way to make it more visible by adding in some sort of dye or maybe darkening the edges of the rock where the water would cover.

Moss
Ok so the moss looks way better in person. to get this effect, I used a medium grit sand paper and ground down some spr, collecting the leftover dust and mixing with the waaagh flesh color. Once I got the desired consistency I was able to apply to the rocks and get the texture in the picture. Overall I thought this was a really cool effect but i'll probably try to add in some more color variation with a bluish wash next time.



So what do you guys think? Did I nail the effect or was it only a partial success? As always, tips, tricks, or criticisms are greatly appreciated!

Added note - I downloaded some high rez gradient backgrounds today to use as photo backdrops. I'm going to see if I can get these made up at a local printing shop without losing too much quality. If it all works out, I'll post pics, pricing, and the links to the original image in case anyone is interested. From what i've seen so far these backdrops can be crazy expensive, so hopefully this works out as a nice cheap alternative without losing out on quality.

Well i though it was actual rocks glued on so i think its a smashing success.

maybe could do with more moss

Thanks Desu! Definately going to keep playing with foam rocks in future builds. Adding more moss now!

All finished! Got a little delayed messing with the camera settings and fixing the mek up after my cat knocked it off the shelf.

Hope you all enjoy!



Ork boy for scale

Absolute killer of a model! Mad dakka, just what you want for a Mek.

Kopta ideas look good too, cant wai to see how they turn out, might have to get my hands on some ping pong balls if it turns out ok.

So overwhelmingly awesome! Nova the Mek Guru!

Such a cool mega warboss/ mega BigMek. Love the use of the rail gun and truck engine, the head is the perfect fit and the squig is an excellent addition. Great model (paint job is pretty dam awesome as well)