Hey everyone ! So somewhere last orctober, I as obviously in a greenskin mood and somehow decided I needed a huge piece in my ork collection (probably because some of my gaming buddies were getting big pieces for their own armies).
So I went looking around and remembered those fansculpts inspired by the epicast and epic lines and starting looking for a Stompa and perhaps more....
This is when my mate Goulven, who has sworn heretic vows to make me paint armies for 2nd ed 40k when I only want a skirmish force, showed me this :
As much as we'll agree I won't do much with a yellow plastic tube, I might be able to save that little fella in the back from gathering more dust...
So when the stompa arrived at home, I took it apart for some preparation, careful sanding and everything.
I started playing around with bits but the very first thing I as sure of was that I wanted it to sport a large grinning bear trap jaw like any ork robot should, I also went looking for a different eye because it's also a graphic staple in my mind.
I'm not gonna lie, the casts were far from good on some parts so there was a lot of bubble filling and resculpting involved, using milliput and milliput juice. I didn't fix all the spots though as some parts were suitable texture for corroded metal and were thus working my way.
After all parts were cleaned, sanded and fixed, I also scraped the joints beteen the armour panels clean for some better definition and started ading a belly gun to echo the shape of the great gargant (and because what's more orkish than more guns right ?)
The next parts was to add impacts, scratches and damaged edges to give a bit more details to the flat surfaces and to start detailing the parts with glyphs and cables
At this stage I was ready to prime the whole Stompa in Zandri Dust and that was a huge relief, everything as silky smooth and blended together nicely like I intended, all the preparation effort really paid off at this stage.
Now it was time to build the base colours so I took the airbrush out and built a nice top/down gradient on each section :
Then can the time to add the mandatory checkers EVERYWHERE (avoid circular checkers if you care about your cortisol levels) and flame, dog teeth and orkish patterns everywhere (everywhere).
Weathering over those really nice and smooth panels was kind of heart breaking and frightening but it had to be done and despite my tendency to overdo this part, it ended up pretty good or at least right like how I meant it to be for once.
Not gonna lie, by that time, my left arm was like Hulk's at that point, despite making both arms sub -assemblies, I still hd to hold the whole body while painting and this thing isn't a lightweight.
It might not be as big as titans or gargants but I find it's already quite a good size and certainly quite a leap from the rank and file which should make it stand on the battletop.
I cannot thank my mate Goulven enough for this kind gift and I hope I did it justice, I certainly had a lot of fun working on a very unusual project for me.
Happy painting to all !
