andes' Gargantuan Squiggoth project

[andes]

What does every BeastWAAAGH! need? Bigger squigs, of course! What's the biggest? Apparently, the Forgeworld Gargantuan Squiggoth, so in I go with both feet.

 

The box arrived this morning, let's take a look.

 

He's certainly a good looking fella:

 

 

 

It's very, very big:

 

 

 

This is everything you get in the box:

 

 

 

Here are the smaller pieces that were in the bag:

 

 

 

Plus, instructions:

 

 

There's also a few sprues of plastic ork Boyz.

 

The first order of business is cleaning up the pieces: removing gates and flash, washing the parts in mild soap and water (a couple of times, I expect... I've been hearing stories of very persistent mold-release compound needing a lot of work to remove), then filling bubbles and reinforcing any miscasts.

 

It's going to be a fun project, will post progress and interesting learnings here.

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes
fixed broken images

[andes]

Made some progress. I cut off all the resin gates; the smaller ones trimmed ok with diagonal cutters, but the big ones required some serious work with the razor saw. Serious work.. the blocks on the squiggoth head were chonky. Once they were all off, the next step was general cleanup, mostly scraping with an x-acto knife, but some filing was needed. Overall, the castings were really clean. I'd heard a lot of stories of crappy FW castings but overall this guy is almost flawless. Almost.

 

Two pains-in-the-butt: One of the squiggoth's feet had a BIG flat chunk of resin on the bottom. It was too flat to saw off and too big to file, sooooo..... Dremel. I put a dust mask on me (resin dust is nasty stuff, you do not want to breathe it), a sanding drum on the Dremel and got to work. Made a serious mess, dust everywhere. Next time I'll get the shop-vac running alongside to catch all the dust.

 

Second pain in the butt was the main body of the howdah took a hit during shipping. I suspect the squiggoth body (3.5 pounds of solid resin!) bashed into it, resulting in a couple of cracks. One crack was pretty small really, I just touched it with some thin CA glue and it is fine. The other needed a bit more work, since the edge of the howdah was almost completely broken off. For that one, I did the same trick with the thin CA glue but I also applied a layer of epoxy putty on the back side to reinforce. A bit of sanding and good as new.

 

 

Along the way I washed everything in warm water with some dish detergent, rinsed in clean water then let it dry. I don't see any mold release agent anywhere, but the real test is priming (fingers crossed).

 

Assembling the howdah was... interesting. The parts don't exactly fit together, they more have the potential to fit together. It's a model where the parts have a standard deviation and you're just trying to get as close as possible to a valid build. Most assembly was done with regular and gel CA, but there were a few spots that needed filling with epoxy putty. Nothing major, after all this is orky and ramshackle is the norm, just a few gaps that were larger than I was comfortable with. I'll not be so lucky when I get to assembling the body; that head ain't gonna be secure with just CA. I'll have to break out the two-part epoxy glue for that.

 

Anyways, here it is. 

 

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes

[andes]

The time is right... back to this project

 

With both the Squiggoth and the howdah built and primed, it's time to lay down some basic colors. I've never painted anything like this guy.. the biggest model prior was probably my Knight and the flat body panels on that model are nothing like the organic curves of the Squiggoth. Fortunately, Vince Venturella has a Maw Krusha tutorial that I think will work really well as a guide for the Squiggoth.

 

 

I laid down a basecoat of VMC Burnt Red, then pretty much followed Vince's recipe from the tutorial: strong drybrush of VGC Sunny Skintone, followed by successive airbrushed layers of Contrast Ork Flesh + ochre ink, desaturating with white ink for the final couple of layers.

 

Airbrushing a big model like this is really, really fun. It's a lot more forgiving than smaller models, you can experiment without feeling like any small mistake is a strip-and-repaint event. I have a couple of spots that are a bit spattered (Contrast paint plus ink is pretty thin, and the pressure was a bit high at first, dialed it back once I noticed what was going on) but I think the upcoming glazing and shading steps will cover it up no problem.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes

[Valkia the Bloody]

What an awesome project.

Looks like a lot of (very fun!) work!

[andes]

With the skin tone roughed in, it's time to move on to the armor plates. I've gone back and forth on what color they should be. My main kulture is Evil Suns, so red is the obvious first choice but that can lead to a very Christmas-y model. I'm considering playing all my Snaggas as Snake Bites, so beige or brown would be a possibility but that might be a bit boring, visually. Could also go black, or steel. Decisions, decisions.

 

After laying down a good coat of matte varnish on the skin (to protect), the next step is to mask it all off. I originally planned on just using masking take (Tamiya for the edges, then blue painters tape for the bulk) but a fellow from my local club suggested using silly putty. I've used silly putty on smaller models, but didn't even consider it on this big guy. I just assumed I'd need so much of the stuff that it wouldn't be feasible. Once I thought through his suggestion, it seemed like a "Why not both?" situation.

 

 

I had two "eggs" of silly putty on hand, and that turned out to be juuuuust enough. It would have been a bit better with one more egg, but it was fine. I used the putty on the tough-to-get-to and oddly sized areas, and the Tamiya tape on straight-aways and edges. I then loosely applied the blue painters tape to cover the large areas. I made sure the blue tape was well stuck on top of the Tamiya tape, but delicately attached to the painted skin... I didn't want the stronger adhesive on the blue tape to lift any paint.

 

It worked out quite well. I had a few spots where I nicked the paint on the skin when removing the silly putty (using a dental pick... next time I'll use a wooden toothpick) but they're tiny and will be easy to fix. The tape came off fine, and I didn't get any overspray. Mission accomplished.

 

 

Obviously I decided to go with the red. I kept it low key, and shading and weathering will calm it down even more. I like it.

 

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes

[Khornestar]

Oh gosh, so cool! Not something you see all the time. Nice work!

[andes]

Thanks for the kind words, Brothers.

[andes]

With the skin tone and armor taken care of, it's time to shade this big fella. In this case, I'll be airbrushing on Mig Starship Streaking Grime, which is a grody green color. Normally, I do my airbrushing in my office/hobby-room but since the streaking grime is an enamel paint my wife wisely put her foot down and made me apply it outside. This was a very good thing, because the stuff stinks. It stinks when applying, it stinks when drying, and it just kind'a seems to stink all the time. If I'd have sprayed it in the house, no matter the ventilation strategy, I'm convinced the smell would never leave.

 

 

It was a windy day. I hoped that spraying in a box would reduce the effect the wind would have on spraying, and also limit overspray so my porch wouldn't end up grody green in places. The box helped with the overspray problem, but really didn't do much against the wind. It was really hard to apply the paint evenly from my airbrush... if I got too close to compensate, I got pooling. If I got farther away, the paint just wafted away.

 

Ideally, I would have waited until I got a sunny day that wasn't really windy, but those are few and far between here alongside the Columbia River in the Spring. Gotta take what you can get.

 

 

You can see the best I could do in the picture above. It's not particularly evenly applied, but since I'd be wiping the bulk of it off with white spirits I decided that good-enough was good enough.

 

I took the opportunity to get some terrain rattle-can primed as well. You can see the Skyshield Landing Pad in the background. Also did a spare set of the orky terrain from original Kill Team box. Can't have too much terrain.

 

 

Here he is post-cleanup. I just used some makeup sponges and odorless white spirits to wipe the bulk of the grime off the surface, leaving it to shade all the recesses. It ended up toning down the highlights more than I expected. I probably could have mitigated that by using a pre-griming coat of gloss varnish instead of the matte I went with; will remember that for the next Squiggoth I paint. I think it looks fine on the green in spite of the dimming, and I'm really happy with the effect on the red. The jury is still out on the tusks though. They were already darker than I intended before the grime and now they're even darker. I'll wait and see how they look after I detail the face and get highlights on the armor. If I end up having to repaint them, it shouldn't be a big deal so meh either way.

 

Oh, I had to throw out that piece of heavy corrugated cardboard I've long been using as a airbrushing pad. Stunk of streaking grime.

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes

[andes]

Oof. Two years since my last update  Time to get this lil' fella finished.

 

It hasn't been completely mothballed for 24 months. I finished the Howdah and Supa-Kannon as part of the Call to Arms event last September. Here's the result:

 

 

I'm trying to clear out my pile of shame opportunity this year so I really want to get this done ASAP. More updates soon.

[LameBeard]

Love this (I particularly like the bases of the crew) and love the “pile of opportunity” rebranding. Consider it stolen.

[andes]

Thanks, Brother! I wish I could take credit for the "pile of opportunity" quip. Not sure where I first heard it, but it isn't original so no theft necessary... use as desired ;-)

[Firedrake Cordova]

That looks great - it looks a bit like a "modernised" version of the classic GW "red era" red? The chipping is extremely well done.

 

Am I right in thinking the Orks are Gorkamorka models?

[Grotsmasha]

1 hour ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

Am I right in thinking the Orks are Gorkamorka models?

Yep, they be Spannerz (sp?)

[andes]

7 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

That looks great - it looks a bit like a "modernised" version of the classic GW "red era" red? The chipping is extremely well done.

 

Am I right in thinking the Orks are Gorkamorka models?

 

Thanks! The red isn't quite that punchy in person, I find the iPhone camera really likes to bump up the saturation of certain colors. The look kind'a works on Evil Suns models, but it washes out shades and highlights on my Imperial Fists And yes, as Grot says, the ork models are Gorkamorka Spanners.

[ZeroWolf]

I'm loving how that looks. Seems sufficiently Orky 

[andes]

 

I spent some time painting the mouth, which was surprisingly difficult. It wasn't really the painting that was hard, it was getting the model into the various positions I needed it in to do the painting. It's really big, but also really heavy... like 5 pounds/2 kilos heavy. Imagine holding a spiky bag of sugar in your off hand while trying to paint details on it with the other. Can't really rest it on anything either, since its scuffs/scratches really easily. So, like I said, pretty hard.

 

All that said, I'm pretty happy with the progress on the mouth. I need to paint more discoloration on the teeth at the gumline and add a few more highlights but it's basically there I think. The tusks, however, need a complete do-over. I'm thinking more warm grey or ivory instead of the buff color.

Edited February 24, 2024 by andes
typo

[ZeroWolf]

Looking fearsome! As for the tusks, I'm wondering if the ivory colour will work better? It'll offer nice contrast to the rest of the miniature (can it really be called a miniature at this size )

[Firedrake Cordova]

It looks great - that purple has some serious pop to it!  

 

As for supporting it, would a zip-lock bag filled with rice or lentils help? It should be soft enough to not scratch/scuff the model, but firm enough to offer some support? (it's a old photographer's trick for supporting long lenses on things)

[andes]

5 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

As for supporting it, would a zip-lock bag filled with rice or lentils help?

 

That's a good suggestion, thanks! I think there are some places/angles where it would help a lot. There are others where, because of the size of the model and the height of the desk, I just have to hold it but still a good technique to have in the toolbox.

[andes]

Sunday morning... perfect for coffee, podcasts and sponge weathering squiggoths. Here's how it went:

 

 

I like to use a set of hemostats (cheap on Amazon) to hold the plucked foam. Using some kind of clamp really cuts down on hand fatigue. Since the squiggoth is so large, I used a pretty big (relatively speaking) piece of foam.

 

 

That's the starting point. Painted and shaded. I usually don't edge highlight areas I'm going to sponge weather since much of that work will get stomped on by the weathering. I'll highlight later on to define volumes as needed.

 

 

That's the first step done. I used black to better contrast against the red; on my Imperial Fists, I'd have used a reddish-brown (like Hull Red). I tried to focus on the edges using a up/down dabbing motion... no dragging. Also hit the areas that'd wear the most, like tips of spikes, particularly hard.

 

 

Time for the Steel (I used AK Natural Steel) color. I plucked a smaller piece of foam, maybe half the size of the first one, and clamped it in the hemostat. I wanted to be sure the metal dabs were smaller than the black ones so they 'fit inside' them. Then dabbed, focusing on the areas of most wear.

 

 

Next, Silver edge highlights with a normal brush. I used Vallejo Metal Color Silver. Hit the edges, being careful to not blast the nice random pattern I got from the sponge. Also was sure to get the tips of the spikes, and edges of smaller panels and patches to better define their volumes.

 

 

And done. Now, I have to decide if I want do to any rust... that's a much slower process.

 

Also, tusks are a problem. Can't find colors I like more than the Buff, which I really don't like.

Edited February 25, 2024 by andes
typo

[Firedrake Cordova]

Looks great