Guest Post: Tzeentch's Gift

Since I'm clearly not doing any modeling these days, I thought I'd open the floor up to the person who actually got me into this hobby in the first place. We're going to be keeping it in the Pink family, though. May I introduce for his blogging debut: Brother Pink!

Or, you know, PinkPonny {sic}, as he prefers to be known.
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Never did I think I'd find myself devoting time towards the ruinous powers of chaos... but I got commissioned, sorta. I was paid in advance with this army case.

Our older brother had a friend who was into 40K, but he no longer wanted this case, so our brother asked if I wanted it, and I said sure.

I assumed it was a freebie, but when I opened it up, I found the following note:

As I'm always willing to accept a challenge, and I love to model/kitbash, I took on the project. 

I call these guys "Tzeentchs' Gift." The idea is Tzeentch makes his old buddy Nurgle some bile-spewing pretties. Nice thing about modeling for Nurgle is that you never have to worry about symmetry. I have an old saying: "Everyone assumes symmetry." I'm a tau/space marine player, and I'm pretty finicky about attempting to get my models symmetrical. It is very time consuming. Pinky chose well starting out with Tyranids; they're a little more forgiving when it comes to symmetry. When you don't need to worry about that asthetic doctrine, you grant yourself greater freedom with your creativity (The man speaks the truth! I can only claim to be able to sculpt because I sculpt gribbly, asymmetrical space horrors. Secret's out, kids! - Pinky)... I needed a break from symmetry.

I remember when the plastic zombies were released a million and a half years ago. I was going to summer camp, and Pinky and I decided we'd go halvsies on our first purchase in the field of fantasy. I had no clue what I would use zombies for but I was just so impressed that they had cast individual fingers in plastic (again stemming from deep-seated issues of symmetry) that I had to have them... or at least half a box of them. Having a bunch of zombies and no real goal in mind lent itself to my then budding interest in screwing around with kit bashing. I bashed together some Baalite Natives, which was a ten man squad of bolter toting post apocalyptic refuse. They have since been primed and then dismantled.

So I was asked to make seven Bile Spewers, I knew I'd build off a zombie base. Why? Because they were readily available. Originally I was going to put a devourer on each arm. I wasn't too sure what I'd use for heads. I was thinking of using a bit from the chaos mutation sprue that was a beefy arm with a gaping maw on the end. Well, I tried it and it looked awful. As one of The Germans would say, it was "basically shit." I tried attaching the devourer on the arms they came with (cutting out the niddy stuff) but they were too difficult to glue onto zombie bodies and required putty work that was a mega pain.

Then I tried using the devourer as a head, basing it on the design of the Alec Baldwin's attempt at being frightening in the movie Beetlejuice. He shoves his hand in his mouth and yanks his nose down, and it looks something like this:

I tried something similar on the Bile Spewers, and it looked great. I had the aforementioned chaos mutation arm maw and, as an after thought, I split it in half and gave my nose-headed uglies a lower jaw. I used both upper and lower halves of the maws as lower jaws for the 'Spewers. 

When I ran out of Chaos mutation sprues, I used tyranid warrior mouths.

Some of the heads are built directly into the shoulders of the zombie torsos, and others are more like actual heads (with the semblance of a neck) The lower jaws determined how I attached the heads to the bodies. The tongues were from bloodletters mostly. 

I knew that I needed something on the back of the heads. I tried horns, but with the no-necked variants I needed some sort of detail I could easily carry over to all the dudes:

Brains!!! or some sort of sack on the back. Mr_Pink showed me how easy it is to make the brainy bulges with a tool with a small ball on the end. The more I got carried away with some of them, the better they looked! (Sorry! I snapped the pics before he'd added these. Will take some more. - Pinky)

I got to use the zombie arms I'd always loved, with their dynamic hands, and they were a good fit with the heads. I also had to use a couple of the object-wielding hands, including one challenging hand that had originally grasped a cord with a drum on the end. However, I did a pretty good job converting it to look like it was holding the hilt of a knife.

Another arm I thought was pretty cool was an atrophied skeletal arm I got from the Ghouls set, and I used apoxy sculpt to build some torn flesh over the bones. I added some bloated bellies to the bare chested torsos that didn't have guts spilling out of them (will get shots of these for the next post). The idea is that these gifts from Tzeentch start out all-in-one-piece, and over time the corrosive juices they spew start to eat away at their bodies, starting with their guts. Nurgle doesn't mind.

The legs are from ghouls as well. They're pretty dynamic too, I shaved off all the scars and bone spurs. I considered putting a tail on them but noting looked good, so it was scrapped.

Mr. Pink has encouraged me to add spines onto these dudes, but I've got to work on my actually armies which have been collecting dust for some time. These guys are basically finished. I might send them off to my 'Commissioner' but I have not been paid, nor do I feel like I owe this guy anything, but I have no use for them personally either.... Meh.

And thus ends my happy tale,

- PinkPonny


Perhaps, if this rant proved captivating, you may hear from me again. Next subject: my attempt to improve on the design on the Storm Raven (also involving extensive Rhinoplasty and symmetry)