Skilly Creamer

 

I love the new Screamer-Killer model. It's a great modernisation of the classic angry bowling ball creature, a real stand-out from the the Leviathan box. 

It's also not retro enough. 

A few years back, I got hold of a bag of resin offcuts from Mierce*. They do some absolutely brilliant miniatures, but they weren't cheap. The bag promised a ton of misshapen models at a low low price (still not exactly low, but you know this hobby) and it didn't disappoint. 

Amongst my Norse faction bits were several trolls, a massive giant torso and a pair of bodies from one of my favourite models in their range - Blood Maw, the vore! 

Looks great, doesn't he? Very much the Shambler from Quake writ large. What I had of him, though, was two copies of his torso (no legs or arms) and one of his head (but with no teeth). 

He's a lot less impressive like this.

I really wanted to do something with the bits that would do him justice. Problem was, my green stuff skills weren't up to matching the lovely skin texture, and my wallet wasn't up to getting the actual bits. After pondering over my options for a long time, I got as far as fastening the head to one of the bodies and then improvising some teeth from cocktail sticks. And then I got stuck, pleased enough with the resulting British Dentition, but really not having a good plan for limbs. 

Until now! After lingering in the bits box for about five years, the Screamer-killer gave me an idea. I could use the shell of the new carnifex to build around the solid resin core and get it to look more like the old original fella. Here he is, just to jog your memories. 

Old Huggy himself, the genestealer who just never stopped eating.

The new one is push-fit, which means he's in a fairly minimal number of bits. These all clip together like a Kinder Egg toy, very neatly and with little fuss. Unless you want to do something else with them, then it's all bother. 

I used the three main carapace sections and spread them out, one for each shoulder and the central scales for the top of the back. These were stuck down with big blobs of white milliput, which I then smeared out a bit to give more of the shape I was after. 

I assembled the leg sections, then cut away the thigh, keeping only the heavy scaled bits. The Vore had thighs, at least, so I reckoned I could put the plastic shins on those, then decorate the thigh with the scales and blend them in as best I could with the clay. 

And so it went! The only extra stage was to use tin foil to pad out the torso. Wadding this up and using it as padding was cheaper and lighter than solid epoxy, and meant I just needed a thin cover over the top. 

Now, it wasn't perfect - my sculpting skills are nothing special. I did manage a reasonable approximation of Tyranid anatomy on the thighs and back, though, and frankly that huge mouth draws so much attention that my shoddy work isn't the first thing you see! It was still missing something, though. 

I reckoned that was an extra pair of arms, in the end, to fill the gap between the foreclaws and the legs. Tyranids are supposed to have six limbs, generally, but I don't think this guy will mind. If I'd had any crab claws left, I'd have used those, but the Carnifex scythes were what I had left, and they plugged the hole nicely. 

Painting followed my usual scheme (Biel-tan green wash, Kislev flesh, Warpstone Green Contrast, broadly speaking) with one important difference. Which was that when I went to varnish it, I picked up the wrong can without looking and hit him across the forehead with a light spray of Wraithbone!

Once I'd finished swearing, I had to go back and redo the top of his head. Half an hour of frenzied work got him fixed. Lucky that my paint scheme was mostly based on washes and contrast over wraithbone anyway! What he lost in some of the detailed highlights on the carapace, he gained on the plasma glow, which came out better the second time around. 

He looks quite crabby from the back. Apart from the stocky legs, of course. 

Plasma glow with the flash on

That's him done. He's massive, bigger than the original and much heavier, as you can see next to the hapless Possessed. The original plan was to do all the Leviathan marines first, but sometimes you get inspired with something. Best to ride that out, I reckon, but back to marines next!

There is, of course, a spare torso I need to find a use for sometime. That's a challenge for another time, though. Speaking of challenges, Stylus got that giant's torso ages back. I wonder if he's feeling inspired yet?

*Mierce are actually about to get a lot more affordable, they're changing their old resin to a newer plastic resin that's going to cut their costs roughly in half. I still haven't decided if that's good news or not (wallet!), but well worth checking them out!