mo-mo-mo-moooooonster March!

Yearly, Swordmaster hosts a painting challenge, called #MonsterMarch. The idea is to paint a monster (or anything monstrous) in the space of a month. I’ve been part of MonsterMarch 3 and MonsterMarch 4 doing a dragon and a phoenix respectively. Once again, thanks for hosting this one, mate!

This year, the MonsterMarch challenge coincides with our own local campaign’s hobby phase, so there’s an opportunity to work on both goals at the same time.

This year, I want to scratch-build a Goreblight. I’ve always wanted a good-looking goreblight for my undead army. Currently, I use my flesh golem when I want to field one, but I have never been content with the model proxy. Though I love the Mantic model, I think it’s a bit small. Moreover, I think I can do as good myself and it’s a grand opportunity for modelling.

For our campaign, Jarvis could use some support. And what’s not to love about a multi-part necromantic Ikea package?

Converting the model

For the first time in my hobby time, I started out with no idea how to start aside from raiding my bitz box for parts. And, as any seasoned hobyist can testify, our bitz boxes get larger every year.

As the Goreblight is a large creature of necromantic magic crafted out of the remains of multiple creatures, the sky is the limit. My first ideas revolved around a creature using one “humanoid” leg and a horse underside as another leg, then green stuffing a large bloated body over it with rat ogre arms and a giant skull for a head. This might have been a good idea, but the troll leg I wanted to use was far too small, and sculpting a whole body from green stuff was a bit harder than anticipated.

Fortunately, I found a few GW chaos spawn in my bits box. The largest of these proved to be a much better starting point, so I went with that one. I added a zombie troll’s head over a green stuffed neck and the model was of sufficient height to represent a monster!

After I cut all chaos bits (eyes, eight pointed stars, etc) save for one arm’s tentacle, I went to town with green stuff and general undead bits to expand the model. The result (here basecoated) is more or less what I wanted.

I’m really content with the results, making for a huge undead monstrosity. I just need to postion the model slightly angling upwards on the final base, as it looks to have titties at first sight. (The zombie heads over there cover removed chaos eyes). And, if this does not improve the first sight, it’ll be the first female goreblight I’ve ever built!

Pictures from the sides and back:

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I’ll be painting the model using contrast paints (green) over a plague green basecoat. At that phase, I’ll have to find out what other colours to use. Probably neutral colours, green and brass, as these are the colours I use mostly in my undead army!