At this point, Yakface was a little worried that the Tyrant was too upright. We agreed a more hunched pose would be more fitting, as if he was slightly crouched from landing, or about to spring into the air.
So, after a quick spinal adjustment (ie, drilled a new hole in the waist for the torso pin) our Tyrant is now wearing a spiffy new hunch.
At this point, to try to give a bit of an idea of how he’s going to look, I have pinned the wings in place and tacked the tail on. The tail has also been re-bent to curl around to the front, rather than sticking out to the side. I’m looking at drilling into the end of the tail and adding a magnet, so I can do up some sort of spike that can be added to the end as an Implant Attack.
And a quick shot without the arms, for a better look at how the body goes together:
Well, we’re entering the downhill run now… right into the ‘finishing off the little details’ stage.
I finished off a bit of gap filling around the hips, and then made a start on the tail.
I wanted a different way of showing the Implant Attack to the Genestealer tongue version, as it needed to be removable… Yakface wanted the Toxin Sacs, Implant Attack, Flesh Hooks and Adrenal Glands to be optional if possible for different configurations. The Flesh Hooks became permanent, because they’re such a prominent feature of the normal Tyrant model and helped to add detail to the Fex’s bland chestplate… but I wanted to keep the others removable if at all possible.
So, here’s what I came up with:
I took a small piece of plastic (the bottom of a Marine standard pole, actually) cut it into an organic spike sort of shape, with an angled and hollow end, like a syringe. I drilled a 1mm hole in the other end, and then a countersink hole with a 1.5mm drill bit.
Then I cut the pointy end off a pin, and glued it in the hole so that the pin head sits flush with the bottom of the spike.
Next, I grabbed the Tyrant’s tail, drilled a hole in the tip, glued a small magnet in there, and puttied over it. The end result being a normal looking tail to which the spike can be attached. So now, he has a nice pointy bit that can be rammed into his target, with the claws on either side to hold it in place while he injects whatever unpleasantness he has stored up in there.
On the model, looks rather a lot like this:
Onto the Adrenal Glands. Yakface didn’t like the standard humongous Monstrous Creature Adrenal Gland. I’ve also always disliked the idea of just slapping it onto the back carapace… it seemed like it should be somewhere a little more functional.
So, I took a couple of standard Gaunt Adrenal Glands, sliced off the connecting tubes on the sides and flattened down the bottoms. Then, I added a couple of pins in the same way as I did on the Implant Attack spike.
Then I took the Tyrant’s head, and inserted a magnet on either side of the neck, puttied over in the usual fashion. This allows the glands to be attached on both sides, and removed when not in use. It’s not as huge and silly looking as the normal MC version, but should still be enough to show that they’re there.
The vent/vanes on the torso needed bulking up a little. I smoothed a layer of putty on around the back of the vent, and then when set, added a second ring off putty around the top to add a little height and extra bulk where it was needed.
The left side is finished, the right is still awaiting the ring around the top…
I added more putty on the wings. One more internal vane to go on the underside of one wing, and then it’s just the outer vanes and the wrist detail to go.
So, still to come: Finish off the second back vane, glue on the head and putty some detail in behind it, finish off the wings, and add some sand to the base.
Almost there…