Ravener-esque bodies? Ideas/Sources

[bugguy]

I am thinking of making my swarm to be legless as much as possible - think of  HT with a Trygon lower body. I'm really stuck on the lower "ravener " bod8es for my warriors and stealers. Does any9ne have any ideas? Also trying to make their heads as Cthulhu-like that I can.

Reaper Minis have some good choices in their Bathalian and Kulathi lines.

Thanks


Edit: corrected typos. Thanks yoritomo for pointing them out.

[yoritomo]

Okay, first off, your keyboard has vowels on it. Using them instead of numbers would make your post much more readable.


As your your actual question, it is surprisingly easy to turn the lower bodies of most larger tyranids into ravener tails. So long as the upper body isn’t hunched over it is a straight forward process of making a tapered tube of green stuff and gluing the fat end on the body. The real trick is that the green stuff won’t support the weight of the model, so you will have to come up with some kind of armature to bare the weight. I would use a wire coat hanger and blend it into the green stuff. The first few may look a little rough, but you’ll get it down quickly.

Cthulhu heads do look good on tyranids, and they are easy to do. Aside from several heads actually being modeled as such, all that’s really required is to add some small tentacles hanging from the upper jaw. Some models, such as the warrior heads, have the mouth as a separate piece. Just leave that piece off and go to town. Others, like the hive tyrant, have a mouth so wide open all you need to do is snip that lower jaw off and add tentacles. I’ve found that about six will fit in a warrior head and look good. As with the tails, it will take some practice but you should get it down in no time.


If you go my way you’ll be using quite a bit of green stuff. That’s not a bad thing but it could get expensive. You may want to look into a cheaper alternative. Any kind of epoxy putty will do. Depending on how good your hobby store is you may be able to find it there. Other places to look would be hardware stores and model train stores. And, as always, when you are working with green stuff (or any epoxy putty) be sure to wet your hands and tools. You’ll get better results and leave less fingerprints that way.

[mortequin]

Regarding tentacle faces: I once saw a demon player using dryad heads upside down. But you have to decide if this looks tyranidy enough.