Yes boss SIR!

The flu struck over the first half of this week, and for once it wasn't even the World Cup (A colleague asked me over MSN if my disappearance was due to soccer action. I blankly replied 'who won?').

Anyway, there's nothing like two days cooped up at home to get stuff done up.

So here's a bunch of pics of my freshly converted Ogryns, in the same vein as the test model I did up about a year ago now:



First up is my original test model, with a few added tweaks. I'd decided that his ripper gun was somewhat too long and tapering at the end for an Ogryn weapon, so I cut the autocannon back further to give it an ugly pug-nosed snout. Also, I gave everyone's shoulder pad an Imperial eagle (never can have too much eagle), as well as a strap to actually hold the silly thing on.

Honestly, it's not as if the thing confers any real protection, it just reminds the other soldiers the huge smelly monsters are on their side for once. Also, it makes the models look a little more 40K, something that helps them blend in with all the more realistic stuff in the force (like super tanks and giant lasers).

Also, reviewing my earlier work made me decide on one thing. I wanted more Ogryns holding their weapons like actual rifles, and not like one handed pistols... Also, poses had to break away more from the original 'Ogre' look. So with these in mind, I converted two troopers to carry their guns two-handed:





Now, as anyone who's ever converted Ogres to Ogryns would tell you, this is something of a holy grail for Guard players. There's pretty extensive remodelling on their arm muscles, in order to get the models to break from their somewhat static original poses, with their arms held by their sides clutching weapons (appropriately enough, like angry diners when the food is late). Also, I had to build hands from scratch in order to get them to clutch their rifles properly.

Now this wasn't actually possible to do with every Ogryn, but I guess half of the rank-and-filers would be pretty good already. Besides, I realised that if you angled the hands a bit on these dudes, they actually started to look a little more wicked:



The other plus is that two-handed poses tend to be somewhat limited after a while (barrel up, barrel down) and tend to make Ogryns look like giant Ork shoota boyz, due to their chunkiness.

Anyway, I've saved the best for last, the Bone'ead - complete with giant chainsword:



This pose I do like a lot, since it makes him look as if he's imitating the poses of my squad sergeants. Adding the brain-enhancing circuitry to his head was also lots of fun. Hopefully he stands out enough now.

Originally he was supposed to be the only dude with an eagle on his shoulder pad, but I liked the look of it so much everyone got one. Hence the need for a suitably commanding pose.

Hope you like 'em!

With them through to to the painting stage, all my models intended for August's Apocalypse game are ready for painting at least.

It was a really big load off my chest to get these guys put together actually... Since I was uncertain how long these guys would take to convert, I was wondering if I'd complete my challenge in time.

Now I'm pretty certain I can finish =)