For the upcoming campaign I wanted to try something new so I decided to try my hand at scratch building a Blight drone. This model is a based off of the Forge Model normally used for Apocalypse games (in greater numbers of course). Looking through a lot of Death Guard and all Nurgle lists and noticed a lot of people fielding these.
This model was built based off a few different tutorials. The one I found most helpful was
Animerik's at the Papa Nurgle forums. He really does a nice job of modeling and explaining the steps. If you're interested in making one of these please check his tutorial as it's pretty detailed :)
Every model I build I try to use the cheapest or common materials I can find.
Tools used:
- Tin Foil
- 12 gauge planting wire
- Hobby knife
- clay sculpting tools
- never dry modeling clay
- air dry modeling clay
- green stuff epoxy
- Plastic card
- 3/8" solid rod
- Hot glue gun
- Soldering iron
- and anything else laying around :)
Total material cost: about $15. Not bad considering the plastic card and green stuff would be the majority cost. They could be replaced with cheaper alternatives, but I suppose it's opportunity cost at that point; spend a little more for better quality materials and save time in the long run. Still, $15 is decent considering the original FW model costs over five times that amount.
I was lazy this time, so I didn't take pictures of the process, but for the most part it's identical to the tutorial up to the assembly point. The only big difference is I twisted 12 gauge wire to make the ties and such.
The problem with this model is all the modeling clay was making it tough to keep it mounted. The cheap clay I used underneath was too soft to glue the rod to and the GS had to much flex to keep the model in place.
The solution was to break out the soldering iron and melt some plastic to the model. It cools fast and creates a rock solid surface to work with. I melted plastic up the base to the bodem of the Blight Drone. After that I used hot glue to texture the model and tie everything together (and more importantly hide mistakes lol).
I used a black primer then gave it a light amount of brown followed by a dark green over that.
I started adding boltgun to the metal areas like the cables and gun components and Goblin Green to the slime areas.
I'm satisfied for the results, especially since it was finished before the Campaign. The hardest thing about this model was getting the cheap air-dry clay to stay in place so I could tie in the GS over it. It worked out, but if I were to make another one of these I would probably try a better alternative.
It may not look like it, but there was very little GS used. I stretched it out as much as possible to cover just the top layer and add a stronger surface to detail. To put it in perspective, I could use a full $15 tube of
Green Stuff to make three of these and still have some left. That's not bad considering that these models are $75 a piece from Forge World!
