I managed to sneak in the project that I wanted to do into the Golden Hat XVIII!. I had been sitting on both the concept and the model for a while, since I knew what I wanted to make, but was a little uncertain how to do it, as well as too scared to actually start it (the destroyer being somewhat of a centerpiece for the army, and all that jazz).
I caved when @Reaver sent me this amazing head piece for me to use at some point. I first started with the neck and the head, since those would most likely be the focal point of the model, and decided on a cooled-lava flowing skin look in order to match the detail on the massive turtle head. After that, I gave the head a couple of horns, cause k’daai destoyers need horns. So I assembled the rest of the forgefiend kit, made him a massive tail wrapped around a metal wire. It was then time to make tiny little rocks of cooled down magma on it. The process was the same as that for the neck and the body. Once that cured, I added some flames to the end of the tail to add some flair.
For the minotaur, the idea came from our very own @chitzkoi’s Among the Wicked Dawi description of the bull centaur getting a “fire-spirit” to submit. This brought me to finally decide to repurpose the Rat Ogre I had lying around that originally belonged to a screaming bell, and turn him into a minotaur to lead the k’daai to the fight. So i shaved down the face, getting rid of almost all details on it, shaped some hooves for his legs, then moulded the snout, followed by the rest of the head. Finally, I gave him shoulder-plate for armor.
I then started working on the base with the ambitious desire to combine flowing lava, grass (my first attempt at static grass, I’ll add, which was exciting in and of itself). I found that using a balloon worked decently well as straightening the static grass, so that the applicator isn’t quite necessary.
For the painting of both the base lava and his skin, I started with a yellow basecoat, followed by white lines to show where the hottest lava flows would be, then proceeded to alternate between staining the outer edges with a blood red and re-highlighting and wet blending in the orange and yellow colors.
The cooled down lava was then repainted with black drybrush or detailing (especially for the head).
So, finally, below are the photos that I used for the GH entry.
Hope you liked seeing this as much as I loved building it!!