Modelling: Brass Scorpion

[Aidoneus]

I checked around a bit and didn't see any good Brass Scorpion tutorials here. I've just made one myself, and figured I'd share my method. I apologize for the quality of the pictures because 1) I took them with my laptop's built-in webcam, and 2) they were all taken after I assembled the Scorpion. I did the best I could, and hopefully you can make sense of what's going on.

 

First thing's first: you will need 2 Defiler boxes for this. The only pieces I used that weren't from those kits were the immolator flamers I used (as you'll see, flamestorm cannons would work too). I suppose you could use the heavy flamers from the Defiler kits, but those are a bit dinky for my tastes. Second, these sections can (for the most part) be done in any order. I'm not even writing them down in the order I did them (especially since I jumped around a lot).

 

When finished, your Brass Scorpion should look something like this:

 

Brass Scorpion, Side

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo33.jpg

 

Brass Scorpion with Defiler (the defiler is actually a bit closer than the scorpion, so the size difference is actually slightly greater than it looks)

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo32.jpg

 

Brass Scorpion, Front

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo34.jpg

 

Brass Scorpion, Tail

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo35.jpg

 

Brass Scorpion, Painted

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo2-3.jpg

[Aidoneus]

Body

 

Start with two standard Defiler bodies (the part the legs attach to). These are different from the Torso, that the arms attach to. That comes later.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo1-2.jpg

 

What you need to do now is to chop the front end of the bodies off. The cut should go directly through the middle of the circle that the torso would mount to, right through the square hole in the middle. Here's the piece that will be left over. It's not scrap though, so make sure it stays intact!

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo3-2.jpg

 

Once you've done that to both bodies, you should be able to put them together, with the cut ends touching. Because you cut halfway through the one circle on each, when you put them together it should look whole again.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo4-1.jpg

 

Head

 

This will be made out of the torso of the standard Defiler. Go ahead and assemble one Defiler torso, but be sure to leave the back off (the part in the picture below). You should be gluing together both halves of the gun, the top, bottom, and both sides of the torso.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo6.jpg

 

Now, for that back panel. Cut directly below the two vents, leaving the tubes/wires with the lower half. Here's a picture of what will be left over (this is scrap).

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo7-1.jpg

 

Tthe lower half of the panel you just cut will go where it belongs on the Defiler torso. Don't glue it just yet though. At this point, your scorpion body will not quite fit into the back of the defiler torso. Trim it down so that it can fit in well once the lower half of the back panel is on. I wish I had a better picture of where to chop. There was one tiny bit in the middle of the top, and one bit on each side of the body that needed to be trimmed, plus just a little bit on the bottom to fit the curve of the defiler's back panel. You'll have to figure it out from there, or just do what works for you. Once you've sorted that out, go ahead and glue on both the back panel and the scorpion body, like so.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo8-1.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo9-2.jpg

 

Shoulders

 

By this point, perhaps you'll have noticed that defiler torso's shoulder sockets are not the same on the right and left. This will have to be rectified before we can move on. Cut out some card to fit in the hole of the larger socket (the model's right). I used regular craft glue every time I attached card to plastic, and it seems to have worked well. Then, get out the second left side panel from the other defiler kit. Turn it so the outside is face down, and use the interior wall to guide your knife as you cut out the circular panel. Here's what will be left over (this is scrap). Glue the piece you just cut out onto the card in the right shoulder.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo11-1.jpg

 

After that, you'll need to get two of the hatch openings from the chaos vehicle sprues you were given. You need the one that is missing in the picture below. These should fit perfectly into the two shoulder sockets. You'll need to cut and glue card to fit in the holes, so you'll have something there to glue to later. Once you've done that, go ahead and glue them in.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo10-1.jpg

 

Finally, you'll need the actual literal sockets for the arms' ball joints to fit into. Remember when I said earlier to keep a piece of seemingly scrap material? Specifically, the one pictured below? Well, at this point cut off both ends, so you have just the two sockets without the bit in the middle.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo12-1.jpg

 

Now just glue those into the shoulders, like so.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo14-1.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo13-1.jpg

[Aidoneus]

Arms

 

These are a piece of cake. Just assemble two regular Defiler claws, and then chop off the big blades on the back of the wrists. If you have the immolator flamers like I did, they fit right onto the back of the wrists with absolutely no work, like so.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo15-1.jpg

 

Honestly, I wanted to use Flamestorm Cannons. They're just so much more bad-a$$. I even have spares from the Crusader I made! But I searched and searched and searched (and then a couple more times. seriously), but could only find 1 of my 2. So I had to go with the immolator guns. If you have access to them though, I recommend Flamestorms. You'll need to heat up and bend the tubing that would normally connect them to the fuel tank (which you don't use), so that it lies flush with the armour on the back of the arm. You'll also need to file down to of the spikes on the side of the arm's armour panel where the tubes will connect, in order for them to lie flush. You'll see what I mean if you try it. Here's what it would look (something) like.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo16-1.jpg

 

Tail

 

This is probably the hardest part. It's certainly the most complicated. Still, it's not all that bad once you've gotten things figured out. First off, don't glue ANYTHING until I say to. Now, you'll need all the pieces for the remaining two Defiler arms. The way things are going to go is that the two smaller upper-arm pieces will be the base of the tail, and the two larger wrist pieces will be the upper parts of the tail. You should be able to get the rough idea from the picture below. For easy reference, there are 7 joints involved (counting the connection to the body as joint 1 and the connection to the gun as joint 7, and including the solid "joints" in the wrist pieces), and therefore 6 segments in between those joints.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo17-1.jpg

 

Take the two halves of one upper-arm segment. What you need to do is to carve out the sphere part of the ball joint that would normally attach to the defiler's body. Make sure the cavity that's left in the end of the segment will fit around the ball joint on the same end of the other upper-arm segment. Here's a picture of the part you're cutting off (scrap) next to the segment it comes from.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo18-1.jpg

 

Once that's done, you can glue the two halves of that segment together. That will be segment 1 later. Set them aside. Next, take the two halves of one wrist segment. This will be the end of the tail, where the gun attaches (segments 5 and 6, because of the solid "joint" in the middle of the piece). Cut off the gears on the end that the fingers would attach to, so they leave a flush surface for the gun to attach to.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo21.jpg

 

Next, take two of your remaining finger pieces, and chop off the actual finger part (scrap), leaving just the circular joint where they would attach to the wrist. You're going to use these joints to attach the two wrist segments to each other.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo20.jpg

 

Go ahead and glue the two halves of your other wrist segment together. That is segment 3 and 4. Now, I don't have a good picture for this, but what you need to do now is take the wrist segment you were working on earlier (for the gun to attach to, segments 5-6). Take the half with the gear for the upper-arm to attach to. This is going to fit in where the fingers usually go in the other wrist segment, that you just glued together. However, the gear-looking joint at the base of segment 5 needs to be trimmed down significantly to fit in the space the fingers would normally go on segment 4.

 

After all of this, take all your tail pieces except for segment 1, and glue them together. There should essentially be a regular defiler arm (upper arm and then wrist piece), but instead of fingers there will be another wrist piece on the end. Make sure to keep glue away from the movable joints (there are 2 of them). After that's together, attach segment 1 to the bottom. You'll want to pin this joint, as it's not all that solid, and there is a lot of weight on it, and not at the best angle either. Pinning solves all.

 

Finally, it's time to attach the whole thing to the scorpion's body. Here, you might want to pin the pieces in place as well. I didn't, but I somewhat regret not doing so. Now, you need to cut the end of segment 1 so that it fits flush against the very back of the body. Pick the angle you want it to come out at, and slice straight through the center of the circular joint. If you can, try to save the peg going through the center of the joint there, as it will give you that much more surface area for glue to stick to. I then slapped a couple armour plates on the back of the tail for good measure. I also put the normal back-of-the-wrist armour plates where they belong (shown in the painted picture, but none of the unpainted pictures).

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo26.jpg

 

Gun

 

Last, but certainly not least, the Scorpion Cannon. The way i did this was to basically make a twin-linked autocannon, but then shove a third autocannon in the middle. First, cut the ammo feeds off 3 autocannons.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo22.jpg

 

You're going to end up fitting these into the armour plate that normally covers the linked autocannon on the defiler. The middle gun will be slightly forward of the other two, giving the whole contraption the appearance of being very pointy, like a scorpion's barb. You'll need to trim everything down a decent amount for things to fit together. Then just glue the guns into the armour plate, and glue the armour plate to the end of the tail. Last, there's a little armour plate that will fit perfectly underneath the gun, connection to the edges of the armour plate on top, and nicely encasing the back ends of the barrels.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo23.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo25.jpg

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j88/Aidoneus42/Photo24.jpg

 

And you're done! Add some panels to cover the holes in the back of the body, put something in the top of the torso as a head (or just eyes if you think, like I do, that the torso itself makes a good head), and sprinkle with armour plates and spiky bits to taste. I hope that's helpful.

[commander alexander]

Very nice Aidoneus ;) .

[Dungar]

wow that's really good nice job

[twistinthunder]

indefinitely more helpfull than the old us sites one which they no longer have.

 

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