Hello everyone! Cadaver here from Home Of CadaverHas it ever happened to you, having a unit from your codex that you absolutely love but on the other hand you hate the model that is available for it?
Well that's exactly what happened to me with the Helldrake unit from the latest Chaos codex, I totally despise the Helldrake model... I know its highly detailed and really awesome kit but I don't feel the connection with the whole feeling of a chaos army... at least not in my mind!
To make a long story short (hardly since I have already been mumbling geek stuff for the past paragraph :P ) I have decided long ago to make my own version of the Helldrake and since my love for Papa Nurgle is always strong, the image I had in my mind was already there...
...and then all of a sudden I saw something in GW's blog one day and it blew my mind! This was exactly what I pictured for my own Helldrake... a giant fly... that flies... and now I have the model I need for my conversion!
Next thing I knew, I was ordering an Arachnarok giant spider! The conversion was pretty straightforward. I assembled the spiders body as in the instructions and repositioned its legs to look like they are just hanging.
the model finished and painted
That was the easy part, The hard part was the engines. I decided to create a turbine kind of propellant like the Blight Drone, totally from scratch.
The model now needed something to combine its organic nature to its mechanic parts. I needed cables and a lot of them. One great and really easy way to make various shapes and sizes of cabling is with some old combs and some greenstuff. The following picture gives u an idea, just make the greenstuff in the shape of a thin "worm" and roll the teeth of the comb over it until it gets the right shape.
The finished model before the painting booth looked like this, The flying base is from Dragonforge (just the clear rod actually)
I created the scenic base in the same way as the bases of my Caestus and Stormtalon, using some dry clay chunks PVA glue and lots of gravel. I added some bits and pieces too to make something more scenic.
Painting was done using my trusted airbrush, Valleho air colors, black and brown oils for weathering and Mig pigments for rust (these things are so cool!). The finished model looks like this;
I would love to hear your opinions and your comments, take some time to check my blog for more pics and models from my personal projects and commissions I've done so far!
Take Care
Mihalis "Cadaver" Skalkos