Over the past 4 months I have been working on converting a
knight porphyrion to chaos. I started this project after realizing that converting a warlord was a scale that I had never attempted, and may be out of my abilities. I felt a Porphyrion, while much smaller, is more similar to the warlord in structure than a reaver is, and decided if I could finish it, I would test my hand at a warlord (eventually). Last week I glued the arms in and am proud to say that it is a complete model. I plan on showing it at Armies on Parade in the upcoming weeks. I also had recently failed at every event I entered in the warhammer weekender at the citadel. I had high hopes I would place 3rd in something with my previous models. It was a blow to my pride as a painter and converted. I decided I wanted to do something so spectacular and never before seen, that it would be impossible to ignore it. At the same time, I play against commission painted armies pretty often, one is a high tier Den of Imagination army. I'm sure many of you can relate when your opponent gets complimented on their armies constantly, and you don't. I wanted to be the one who's models caught the eye of a passerby for a change. So there was a bit of chaos fueling emotions that motivated this build.
Without further wait, here are some pictures of the completed model. I do regret the poor photos, I am currently moving and everything is packed up. I was just too excited to wait to share this.
I also have uploaded the
WIP shots I took from this
build to my gallery and am slowly updating the description of all of the images for a sort of walkthrough.
I believe I am the first one to corrupt a Porphyrion, which does give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, though if I am mistaken, please let me know!!! Now for an
FAQ with all the questions I was asked as I built it:
How could you ever do that to such an expensive model?
Originally it wasn't easy, there were a few days where I kept thinking, "you could not do this and just paint it nasty, or use it for imperial". One day I just didn't think, grabbed the shoulder armor and drilled a hole right through it. Once that was done it was very easy to keep destroying it. The original plan was to corrupt a Warlord, if I can't damage a $500 model, then how would I damage a.. too expensive to think about model. To me, it's art, and art can be expensive!
What did you use for the armor decay?
All of it was done with a dremel. The rust was all done with a series of different sized
bits similar to this one and the slashes were done with a very small circular saw bit that I purchased from a wood carving magazine.
What is the technique for the rust?
Prime black, apply brown to taste (vallejo armor brown was mine), Thin vallejo grime rust and apply consistently all over, optionally you can do a thinned wash as well. Apply a very, very thinned weathering powder/pigment binder/flowaid mixture to the entire thing. Repeat to taste. Lastly, drybrush/highlight/sponge some silver onto the edges and tips.
Is that leg solid green stuff?
It is green stuff, but it is not solid. It is several "sheets" of green stuff wrapped around the leg. It's kind of hollow.
You are an insane sculptor, how did you do it?!?
I used insta-mold press molds on several of the models in my collection. The leg is mostly from the new great unclean one. In the album you can see how I applied the sheets, and sculpted them together. The chaos spikes are from my Chaos Warhound, the mouth is from a Plague toad, spine from Scabeiathrax, teeth are not greenstuff, but they are from a Giant Chaos spawn. There may be bits copied from Cor'bax utterblight as well.
How did you get the tree to bend?
Tons of patience, a heat gun, and more patience. Plastic can be warped with heat, but it also has a high chance of melting and fights against you the entire time. Several pieces broke, the mold lines became more exposed, and in general, it was the hardest part of the conversion. I have no regrets, but don't look forward to doing more.
Is it 100% GW?
Yes, every part on this conversion is from Games Workshop and Forgeworld. I guess the exceptions are bits of paperclip that I used to create the joysticks that the nurgling is using.
What did you reference for the leg?
I looked at a ton of images of bad bruises and wounded flesh on google for about 2 hours. I tried to do the same for the open wound on the hull, but it didn't turn out quite as I expected.
What did you use for masking?
Mostly silly putty. At times you can see painters tape and some wax paper, but mostly silly putty. It works great, and I rarely have issues with it. After a while it will lose the stickiness that makes it great as it is filled with paint. It's super cheap though.
Please let me know of any questions, comments or criticism you have. I may make some small adjustments to it as I take higher quality photos in the future and would love to hear what else I could do to improve the model.