Pudding Wrestler's Perfidious Projects: Easter was a long time ago now.

Easter was a long time ago now. I'm still slightly under the weather - my cold ran for at least five weeks and I managed to cough hard enough to pull muscles, so it was not pleasant. Of course, we're back in the heart of the school term so I'm not getting as much hobby time. A project I was hoping to get done in two weeks of frenzied 16-hours a day hobby is now in it's seventh week.
Ah, but what progress I have made since last we spoke!

A mighty cannon takes shape! I used three different sizes of tube for the barrels and a lot of other rods and things for the frame. This was quite exciting to build, and the largest gun I have scratchbuilt. Of course, it will be eclipsed by the Deff Kannon in due course...

Why yes, that IS a nose cannon! I was thinking of building some sort of nose shaped casing round it, but I rather like it like this. Plus I can't figure out the right nose shape, so here we are.

By this point, all the paneling and riveting on the body and moon is done - apart from some along the top of the lower part of the crescent. There'll be a gun emplacement there, so I have left things fairly blank until I install that bit. I'm planning of doing all the weapons at the same time near the end of the project, so this will stay fairly blank until then.
Note also that the legs have been started. I worked them out on paper. Or I worked out parts of them on paper and trusted to luck like a true Mek.

Here are the upper legs. They are about the same size as the body on a 2nd Edition Rhino, although a bit thinner. There are large holes cut into the other sides so they can slot over the PVC hip joints. The large spaced armour plates are not glued on - they will stay seperate to facilitate painting.

Here we see it again (and my thumb it appears...) at Hampton Games Club on the weekend. I started the basic leg shapes the week before, but all of the plating, rivets, armour etc. was done between Friday evening at the Hoodling's Hole and Saturday arvo at the club, with a little bit of final riveting and detailing at the Hoodling's Hole on Saturday evening.

Carefully balanced on a tin containing some sort of Game on Saturday evening so I could check how the legs looked at the correct angle. Note the spaced armour has been removed here.

These are the legs on their own. The large notches in the lower legs will be filled with hydraulics. And yes, that is a different cutting mat. I have worked on this beast in four seperate buildings by this point.

Here the lower legs have been added, and to my amazement the forces of friction are enough to hold everything at the right angles so the beast can stand up. At this point you can start to get a feel of the size - here it's a bit under 12 inches tall.

Because the Hoodling complained about the Morkanaut having normally jointed legs, I shot a pic with chicken walker legs. The balance does not really work for this build, but when I build a Gorkanaut it will have chicken legs. I have sworn mighty oaths both to and at the Hoodling.
 

And here we have the basic feet added. These are being detailed up with armour, plates, Adidas style stripes... and also gun emplacements. 

 Okay, so by this point it's pretty obvious that I'm building me a Stompa. A very large Stompa. It's currently a little over 13 inches tall (GW's embarrassing upside down plat pot is about 12 inches tall, and 7 inches across the bottom) so it's a touch large. It's the biggest thing I've ever built as part of an army, and it gives a fair number of terrain pieces a good run for their money in terms of size too. Now that I'm feeling better I'm hoping to get a lot more work in on it - both in the hour before work and when I get home in the afternoons. I should be able to start on arms and weapons pretty soon, and then shall come the mammoth task of painting...
I'm planning on keeping the stompa modular for transport - the legs and hips will form one part, the torso another, and the arms will be detachable. Of course,I'll also need to build a transport case for it at some point...

Now if you will excuse me, the fluff squig is making pointed remarks about dinner time.

Ten Incomprehensible Years

Today, Terrain For Hippos celebrates it's TENTH BIRTHDAY (as long as you don't count it's very brief time as a subsection of my website which was replaced by the blog version after about two days)
A lot has happened during our ten years. We've built a lot of terrain, branched out into modelling and painting tutorials, changed art styles, changed graphics packages and recently switched over to really just occasionally showing off whatever orky scratch building project I'm working on right now. We've also seen the introduction of a youtube sort of companion show, the Terrain Crusade column in The Campaigner magazine, and me launching about eight other blogs (although a bunch of those are for various classes I teach). Grot's changed shape. Scale Reference Cat has been adopted and made a few cameos. I've moved house twice. And all of this has been achieved without anyone ever understanding a word Grot's said.
Here's to ten more incomprehensible years.

GeekFest 2019 Paint+Take survey

Will this be the miniature you paint?
Vote in the survey to choose!

The ever popular Paint+Take returns for 2019, and as always YOU get to choose the miniatures!

You'll find a survey here which will let you choose your favourite minis (don't worry if you change your mind - you can edit your responses after you've entered them)

The survey will be open until May 29th.




What is Paint+Take? It's simple! We supply a whole bunch of miniatures, paints and paint brushes, and YOU get to paint them - and you also get to take home any miniatures you paint!

But wait, in the immortal words of Tim Shaw, THERE'S MORE! There are also painting contests with fabulous prizes!