Empire Ogre Swordsmen - almost there

Well another weekend has passed, and it saw yet more progress on the Empire Ogre unit filler front. I am right on the brink of being able to assemble the models and start painting now, which is very pleasing. Tonight I am hoping to be able to clean up the components and assemble the 3 Ogre Swordsmen I need for Cancon.

The Ogre production line drives on. 4 torsos, 8 sets of legs, 5 left arms, 9 right arms, 4 swords and 4 shields...

Above you can see the components I have available at the moment. Having 2 different sets of legs and 2 right arms (but 1 of everything else) means my production speed is not exactly consistent. Nevertheless, I have what I need for 3 models. Except for heads...

Ogre Swordsman head 1

Ogre Swordsman head 2

Ogre Swordsman head 3

Above are my first 3 attempts to create Ogre heads based roughly on some existing human styles. Head 1 has a helmet with a hat sat on top at a jaunty angle. The rivets on his helmet are a bit big, but they don't bother me. Head 2 is based on a guy with a pretty basic skull cap-type of helmet. Here the rivets do bother me, but I plan to trim them once the green stuff has hardened. The back of the helmet looks a lot less tidy in the photo, so I might go back and clean that up too. Head 3 is a helmet with a twisted ribbon or some such around it.

I have already created 2 moulds each of heads 1 and 3, and so I have 4 cloned heads ready to go. I have waited long enough to build complete Ogres in this project, so tonight I will work with what I've got. I may use some unaltered Ogre heads in future for some models, however all my Swordsmen have hats and/or helmets, so it would have felt lazy to put bare-headed Ogres into the unit. I figure everything I do here will cross over into other State Troop units later, so I have no problem converting quite a few heads.

In general terms, this project has seen me run completely out of Instant Mold. I had to break down the moulds for the right arms in order to copy the heads. This is annoying but hardly earth-shattering. Nevertheless I have ordered a few more packs of Instant Mold. Can't have my productivity heavily impaired by a lack of resources. I have also been churning through my putty stocks at an impressive rate, but I have good reserves there. I have generally settled on using green stuff for arms and heads, and Magic Sculp for the rest. I tried 1 green stuff sword, however it's pretty wobbly - don't think I'll do that again. I've also started including nails in the swords to save me having to drill into the finished product to pin them later.

So I'm nearly there! I'm getting quite excited now. I could be painting by tomorrow...