What's on My Desk: Another Look at Two Favorite Projects

This week I'm revisiting two projects, one from a year ago and another from only a few weeks back.  

I'm excited to show off a revisit of the extreme Ghetorix conversion that I originally did for long-time customer Michael P.  Kevin M. saw the conversion I did for Michael last December in the galleries and knew it was the next piece he wanted for his Circle or Orboros army.  I really enjoyed working on Michael's E.G. and was eager to give it another shot.  Let's take a look at the work!

The extreme warp wolf model is a full pewter piece, which brings a whole list of challenges when attempting to do even the simplest manipulations to the model.  We live in a resin and plastic age, but there is something to say for a stout pewter model, it has a certain gravitas.

The E.G.'s right arm needed repositioning so that it could hold its axe with both hands.  A move of 1/4" was needed to bring the arm back and away from its body.  Since I was working with pewter there was only one thing that would do to get the job done, the bone saw.  After cutting about a 1/8" into the top of the E.G.'s shoulder I brought out another heavy duty tool (one that I have only used in this conversion), a pair of adjustable Irwin toothed pliers.  The teeth on the pliers do a moderate amount of damage to the arm, so a good amount of resculpting is necessary to bring the arm back to form.

Some expense was shaved off this piece by bending the extreme warp wolf's existing fingers to hold its axe instead of resculpting each finger for a perfect grip.  The one I did for Michael was a complete resculpt of each finger, which is great, but this method is excellent when trying to keep costs low.

When all is said and done, this version of the extreme Ghetorix conversion takes seven hours and is a piece that I'm proud to put the Monster Lab stamp on.  I even like the way the left hand is lightly gripping the axe haft, it's like the force behind the swing is so great he's having trouble holding on!

Last month I showed off my second original sculpt for casting, a dragon chariot base.  I'd like to take one last look at the piece and a few castings that were made of it before it leaves for the Netherlands and becomes a part of the client's product line.

Jeremy G. over at Prairie House Miniatures did a fantastic job casting and resculpting the base, creating four test casts.  I was really pleased with how the piece turned out, it looks even better as a single cohesive resin sculpt.

It was a proud moment packing the dragon base and its copies away for mailing to their owner, and another exciting step down my road as a professional sculptor.  I can't wait to do more!

That's it for this week, come back next time to take a look at Michael P.'s Fimir themed army which contains two nasty demon princes and a custom Llamasu!

Extreme Ghetorix Conversion

Last week I mentioned that I've been hard at work on many sculpting projects this month.  This extreme warpwolf to Ghetorix conversion is one such project. 

Let's take a look at the work that was done.

This conversion was commissioned by Michael P.  One of his requests was to keep the extreme warpwolf's hands instead of the ones attached to the Ghetorix's ax.  I really liked this idea and got to work resculpting three fingers and a thumb on the right hand and four fingers on the left to give the hands a proper grip on the ax.

The original horns and head-blades were used from the conversion kit and a new hood was sculpted to bring it all together.

The extreme warpwolf really is a great model, super dynamic with surprisingly good balance even though the model is very top-heavy.  The only negative I could find to the sculpt was that it needed a ton of gap-fill, but that's to be expected with any sizable metal model.

A large amount of cutting and resculpting was needed to get the right arm into position.  The tricky part was aligning both arms, hands, and the ax so that they looked natural.  For the first time in awhile, the bone saw and heavy pliers were summoned from the bottom of my hobby box to get the job done. 

The final touch to the conversion was modeling the streamers trailing back from the Ghetorix's right arm (seen here supported by my finger).  They weren't glued on at the time this picture was taken since the model had to be shipped to Michael P. and I didn't want them to be damaged.

That's it for this week, thanks for stopping by and checking out what's been going on at the Monster Lab.

Happy holidays and good gaming!