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Squiggoth 101How to make a bullet magnet
OK I thought, options for acquiring a Squiggoth include…
The sane choice would be to get the plastic dinosaur but, hey, when did I ever claim to be sane? Polystyrene it is then! Now to work out how to make a giant scaly war monster out of crumbly white lumps….Hmmm.
With all the PVA dry, I started to crave the shape I wanted for the model out of the mass of polystyrene. This is best done when you are up on brownie points with the spouse, the ‘white xmas’ effect is not always appreciated! You can be fairly drastic during the cutting as it easy enough to fill in holes by sticking a bit more polystyrene onto the model if you’ve hacked too much off.
After drying the model was ready for the addition of detail. I began with the larger armour plates around the neck, thighs and tail. These were made from the cardboard that you find on the back of A4 pads, thick enough to look meaty on the model but thin enough to cut and bend easily. I also placed a line of plates around the belly to give the impression of a harness to hold the howdah on the Squiggoth. These plates in turn were detailed with small circles of card punched out with a hole-punch which look like bolts. Rather than model toes, I choose to use the same method to give the Squiggoth hoofed toes. The skin now needed texturing, this was done using a small modelers glue gun. I slowly worked my way over the model putting blobs of glue to give it a bumpy scaly effect. When these were set I filled in some of the gaps between the blobs with split lentils (this proved to be very tedious giving me even more reason to dislike lentils).
With the main body of the Squiggoth complete I commenced work on the howdah. This was fairly straight forward as the main structure was made from foam-core. I made an open box plan which enabled me to cut the majority of it out in one piece which was then scored and folded into shape. Separate pieces were used to make the raised platforms at the front and once these were glued on the whole thing was ‘Orkyfied’ using different types of card for armour plate and various bits from the bits box to give it that ‘lived in’ look. With construction finished the Squiggoth needed a lick of paint. Both the Beast and the howdah where sprayed black as an undercoat. Strangely enough this took the best part of a whole can of spray! He is a big bugger after all! The howdah was quick to paint as it only needed a heavy dry brushing with Tin Bitz for a metal look. To pick out the details it was also dry brushed with Bolt gun metal and lightly with Mithral Silver. The addition of Orky transfers brought it a bit of colour but I didn’t want it to be too garish as that’s the job of the Boyz! The Squiggoth also had its armour plates dry brushed with Tin bitz, Bolt gun metal and Mithral Silver. With the plates complete I began to paint the skin. This was done with Dark Angels green followed by a heavy dry brushing of Goblin green. To highlight the scaly parts of the skin I dry brushed it with Scorpion green. The mouth and eyes were painted with Blood red and once dry the mouth had a wash of red ink to give it a moist look (lovely word: Moist, Nyuk! Nyuk!). I gave the teeth, hooves, horn and tusks a lick of white paint and then went back and stained them with Flesh wash to ‘dirty’ them. Some Bolt Gun metal on the tusk caps, some brown dry brushed on the belly and two blobs of Black for the pupils meant that he was finished! Sweet! One angry looking Squiggoth! Hmmm… let me think….can of black spray was £6, some glue sticks, maybe £3, assorted paints and a bit of milliput, about £6 (if that). Oh and most importantly – everything else, card, polystyrene and those bloody lentils approximately £0. Yep, zero, zip, squat diddly! One giant Squiggoth all for the bargain price of about £15. Cheap as chips! (sorry) Hmm….what next Hierophant or Warhound?… Nathan White
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Having
dallied with the oh so subtle joys of Orkdom over this past year I decided that
I needed to take my Ork warband to the next level and the only thing that can
achieve this is a Squiggoth!!
After
a long think (about forty winks) I decided that the best way to approach the
project was to have a ‘spine’ upon which the polystyrene could be attached.
I created a cardboard frame, the frame helped me visualize just how bug the
Squig’ was going to be whilst giving the structure some internal strength.
Once the rough Squiggoth shape was cut and glued together I began to stick
overly large chunks of polystyrene to the cardboard frame with PVA until the
whole thing was covered.
Having
got the basic shape for the wee beastie the next stage is to cover it in
polyfiller. This serves serves several functions, it fills in any gaps between
the blocks of polystyrene, it coats the model ready for spraying at a later
time, and it smoothes out the contours of the model. Once its dry, the
polyfiller can be sanded down to get rid of any unwanted ‘blobs’. The
sanding makes the model a bit dusty so I opted to give it a quick coat of
thinned down emulsion, I had some spare white household paint which I mixed with
a touch of green ink to make it easier to see which bits are covered, easier
than painting white on white!
In
the mouth I placed chopped off cocktail sticks to represent the (pointy) teeth
and around the mouth itself I used milliput to create the lips. As the
polystyrene tusks could potentially be knocked about during transport and gaming
I wanted to make them a bit stronger. Milliput was used again to give them ‘caps’.
This should protect them quite well as Milliput is tough stuff once fully cured.
