Simple Sculpting

Hi,
It's been veeeery quiet on the hobby front during the last weeks. Lack of time, in general. Bad timing for a new blog, but can't be helped...

I have been pushed by a friend (Ok, pushed is a bit hard... motivated...) and his new army to build one myself (yes, another project...). He is putting together a chaos army for warhammer 40k. I already have a 40k army, but, as I said, it's not playing the game that motivates me, it's building an army!

So I've toyed around for the last week with different ideas, but found each army to have Huuuuuge drawbacks (modeling-wise... I'm not even getting into the gaming aspect): Orks and their general goofiness, Eldars and their power rangers aspect warriors, imperial guard with their 700$ minimum starting force... space marines with their "I already own one" reality...

Then, I remembered a few things: First, I can build stuff... second, I have more than a few sprues of plastic bits, mostly orks, fantasy zombis, a few skavens, some chaos... And one prototype:

The idea here was to build a poor guy who's right side have completely mutated while his left remained more-or-less "stable". The metal plate in the back was turned into a "something" outlet with tubing still attached, and paint-wise will be complemented by the metal plate on his head. The pictures don't really make this detail stand out, but by chopping off most of the width of the original ork neck, I obtained a long "giraffe-y" neck. The only obvious error I did was to underestimate the ork posture. I did try (look at the right ankle) to make him stand a bit more upright, but the end result really is far too leaning foward to my taste. He should be falling on his face... well... maybe he is...

All said, I built this guy relatively rapidly, it is meant not as a masterpiece, but as one of the grunts that will make this army, so, building time is an issue... as a bonus, in this project, I will use green-stuff a lot, which will train my skills with it, something I have not done for quite a while.

I will then try to build a complete mutants force. very "mad max" like for the vehicles, which can be represented perfectly in game with orks. As I will probably use the Orks army book to play these, I will use mostly ork bodies (and as it happens, I own many-MANY orks that I don't want to paint as orks, so...), so they will be easily identifiable for anybody. The main positive point in this idea is to have an original army. Not original as in "nobody-ever-did-anything-like-it" but at least original as in "cannot-be-obtained-off-the-shelf".

Painting it is my next goal...