The Siege Oliphaunt: A Skorne Siege Animantarax Proxy

 

Even though we're in MK4, and the legacy factions seem doomed, Skorne is my only non-Cygnar faction. I'd been wanting a Siege Animantarax for a long time, but outside of overpriced fully painted models for sale on EBay, you can't find a Siege Animantarax anymore. So I decided to make a proxy.

After a bunch of hunting on Thingaverse and similar sites, I found an excellent elephant model. And it was free! This post is to chronicle the saga of my construction of this proxy.

The initial model came unassembled. The head, tusks, body, and all those shields and plates were separate. There was a long way to go.

The head and tusks glued on rather nicely, although I had to make sure to properly score the surfaces first to make sure the glue had the best possible contact.

Afterwards, the only gap that really looked bad was the primary neck junction, so I added Green Stuff to fill in the gap. After paint, it would look perfect.

In the meantime, I hadn't yet looked at the other half of this model - the howdah which would sit on the oliphaunt's back. I first primed it with Golden raw umber paint, and then dry brushed with Golden burnt umber light. There was a eight-pointed compass-looking thing on the side, and I filled in the center with Green Stuff, then painted the top of that red.

I had plans to add Skorne models to the top of the howdah, and after looking through my options, it was starting to look like one of the keltarii would be the best choice, although their spears were far too short to imagine them reaching the ground from way up there.

The next most obvious step was putting some Skorne red on that elephant head armor, and then painting the trim gold.

By now, I was realizing that I was missing two very important elements. Firstly, a base. And secondly, a primary weapon. A friend and I spent a day or two scouring the 3d printing sites before settling on a gun to mount on the howdah. He found a desert base for me, and I swung by his place after work one day to pick them both up. The painting was quick, and in no time, I'd mounted both.

 I would also need someone to man that gun. Fortunately, I had an extra Aptimus Marketh kicking around, and he would do nicely.

Painting up the new gun took very little time, and the eight-pointed compass-looking thing on the side transitioned nicely to a Skorne symbol with just a bit of paint.

After cracking Aptimus Marketh off his base, I realized that his staff wasn't going to work if he was manning a gun. So first, I clipped off both ends of the staff entirely, and then I broke off his other arm. I'd need to use a bit of Green Stuff to create that puffy sleeve bicep and make his newly free hand rest on the mounted gun. Fortunately, it worked out well.

Next, I painted a Skorne symbol onto that circle of red I'd put on the side of the howdah, and finished up the tusks with P3 Jack Bone and some P3 Gun Corps Brown on the weird segment of tusk that for some reason looked furry. I also painted the triangular fastenings on the side of the howdah gold, and drybrushed some lighter brown onto the entirety of the howdah's wood.

In the background, you can see that I'm prepping some flags which I had leftover from a number of other Skorne models. Now that there are no leader models in MK4, I had no reason to use the flags on the new Ferox which I picked up at CaptainCon for ten bucks.

Next, I glued on the weird graboid trunk. This elephant, for whatever reason, has human ears and a trunk which has some kind of odd tentacles. Hey - don't ask. They're Skorne.

As previously mentioned, the keltarii's spear just wasn't long enough. Lengthening it took longer than many other portions of this project.

I had initially struggled to find something to extend the shaft of the spear. Finding somethign the appropriate diameter was tricky. My first attempt was a toothpick, but when I tried to drill a tiny hole in the slipped toothpick with my pin drill, the wood split. So instead, I looked to the four poles that had come with the 3D printed elephant. There was a pair that were identical, so I clipped the head off of one and used the shaft to extend the spear. Drilling into the resin of the 3D print was far easier, as the resin stood up to my pin drill far better than the wood had.

I mounted the completed keltarii along with the remaining poles and flags onto the howdah. I had to drill through the foot of the keltarii to properly mount him, and I made sure to position him such that the spear would not protrude too far over the edge. I've learned through experience with Warmachine models that they break. The spear would still not be nearly long enough to reach the ground, but there was no real way to make that happen. It's an abstraction.

At this point, I also painted all the tiny shields that came with the 3D printed model. After putting a base coat on them, the detail which had previously been invisible came out, and I highlighted what I could with Fulgurite copper, Skorne red, pig iron, and jack bone. Gluing them on was quick and easy.

When combined, the oliphaunt and howdah looked quite nice. I next had to add chains to hold the howdah to the oliphaunt. I'd previously bought a cheap jewelry chain from Walmart, maybe two years prior, in anticipation of needing it for something like this. As you can see from this following shot, it works quite well.

Now we were entering the final stages. I had to chain the ankle spikes in place. So I cut lengths of chain that would wrap twice around the ankle, and I glued them in place.

Atop them, I glued the spike plates in the North, South, East, and West positions.

With all four legs complete, the entire model was close to done. All that was left was to paint the eyes, the toenails, a few rings on the head armor, and the rivets on the howdah. But the 3D print had also come with three tiny hooks. The example photos of the 3D print left no clue as to what they might be used for, but this was Skorne. Hooks? I mean come on. They must be used. So I painstakingly attached them each to a length of chain. I mean, it was a massive pain in the ass. Seriously. 

The hooks at the ends of chains got attached such that they'd be dangling down each side of the elephant, with a third one near its tail. I think of these like a messed-up Skorne version of spurs, only these ones draw blood, because Skorne.

The resin loop at the end of each hook and the steel-hard chain links? I had to try to clip them all with my clippers, and those chains really required ripping more than clipping. It was difficult. So in the end it was mostly super glue that held everything together. 

I also had some bases I'd previously purchased which included a bison skull. By clipping off the bison skull, I was able to include it on the oliphaunt's base.

In the end, that along with some wasteland tufts and tan-colored rocks made the base look kind of okay.

The end product was very nice. Now all I've got to do is design some kind of storage solution for this thing which works well and looks nice. Wish me luck.