Mournwolf rider progress

Time continues to tick by (as it tends to do). I now find myself with only 3 nights left before Empire in Flames, and I have a lot to do. I didn't post an update yesterday because the previous evening had been a write-off with no chance to make any progress at all. This meant I was pinning a lot on last night to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, I didn't come close to what I was hoping to achieve.

An ideal scenario would have seen me complete the Ogre riders for the Mournwolves, meaning everything was ready to be undercoated and painted. It sounds pretty unrealistic perhaps, but I was hoping to make use of moulds to clone certain components so that 3 riders would really be not much more effort than 1. Good theory, eh? Well, real life is never so simple. For starters, I didn't have enough cloned rider bodies. I had 3 bodies in total, but one of them was the master, and I try to keep the master untouched in case I need to re-make moulds with it later. I put in the green stuff to make another rider clone, but it meant that guy was never going to be finished.

Next I realised that I was about to run out of the arms I was planning to use as the base for my "Ogre knight" arms. As in, I was down to a single copy of each arm. And I didn't have moulds to make more. This was a big problem, and saw me immediately melting down other moulds to free up enough Instant Mold, making moulds of these last few arms, and throwing some green stuff in immediately. Then at least I had some backups on the way, even if I was about to basically break my own rule and modify my master copies. Ah well, time was short.

The moulds I was frantically making last night, complete with their first cloned components.

Having wasted a considerable amount of time on achieving nothing other than fixing some logistical issues, I was finally able to look at making some armoured arms. As usual, keeping an eye on how to copy things made things more complicated than I might have liked. I put thick pins into the rider's shoulders and hooked the arms on with these (and no glue, which meant they were moving around, making my life harder). I cut both the arms at the wrist and pinned the hands on so they could be rotated, then drilled through them to pin a weapon handle made of plastic rod. Once this was done, I started with the green stuff

I had planned to make the arms with bulky knight shoulders (like a normal Empire Knight) and armoured forearms (like a White Wolf). I've used this sort of hybrid on my Wolfygryph riders. However, I forgot this plan partway through, and ended up looking at a normal Knight for the whole arm. So it's got gauntlets and elbow plates, and is basically fully armoured. I may go and make some of the other version later - and actually remember what I'm doing that time. Anyway, this is how it looks now...

The armoured Ogre continues to emerge. Kinda looks like an over-sized Black Orc, now I look at him. I think it's the gauntlets.

Another angle. Haven't yet decided exactly how I'm going to make his weapon head. Probably a massive axe made of plasticard.

From the left. Here you can see the gauntlet and elbow guard that were not part of the original plan.

From the back. Not that you'll be able to see this view once a cloak is in place.

And from the right, showing how he sizes up with his furry steed.

Before I go to clone anything, I'll try to sharpen some edges and reduce the round, bubbly look to the shoulders. I'm still not great at making armour, but presumably I will continue to improve with practice (and leaving myself more time for future projects). The hands are attached to the weapon haft, but not the arms. I will probably end up giving 2 of the riders in this first wave identical arms (maybe different weapon heads), and the third guy will get modified arms as he's a standard bearer.

So the arms are just about sorted. That leaves heads and cloaks. Each head will probably have to be unique, without moulding. This should be OK, as I'm only expecting to modify beards and maybe some hair on the basic plastic Ogre heads. Each cloak will probably end up being made from scratch too, simply because I may struggle to make a master cloak, let it cure, and then start making copies with the time I have available.

The other things I did last night were finding a Fenrisian Wolf to use as a Sabretusk and putting sand on the bases of all the models to be painted. If these Mournwolves were not so much work, I'd nearly be there...

The Sabretusk. Given more time I might have modified him more, but he'll have to do. I have plenty more I can tweak later.

Hooray, we're ready for paint!