Homemade Bastiladon

You might wonder why I often use other peoples' ideas. It is because it is easier, yes, but more importantly it all comes down to money: Whenever I browse GW's webstore or figurspel.se, there is always a sweeet monster that I would like to try to fit into War of the Ring and the corresponding fantasy world of Arda - the beauty of simply converting things and trying to make them suitable for LotR is always something I've enjoyed, but if you are one of the 65%, the reason why your wallet is sufficiently thick (for a simple working man (almost typed simpleton!) as myself) in a country with a 260% taxation rate, is you don't always allow yourself everything you want, instead, you go ways around or do them yourself.
     When I was musing on about large creatures, or rather the lack of them, for the good guys in War of the Ring, one very abstract idea came to mind: Pelargir Beast. I had no idea at the time what this would actually look like or what it's origins should be, but when I saw the Bastiladon, I thought: Fastitocalon, but smaller.
     Long story short: I wanted a Bastiladon but didn't want to shell out the money needed for a project that might turn out worse than okay, so I figured I'd make my a Pelargir Beast using the proportions of the Bastiladon and in the same time change some things to make it more LotR-y.

To make larger creatures in our 28-32 mm world, it is always recommended to use cheaper materials for the bulk of the model: Thick artist's cardboard, wood and iron wire... and Super Sculpey (or similar brands). It is really simple to work with, but I recommend using tight, thin rubber gloves (think doctor's examination gloves) since the plastic is in fact an irritant to mucus membranes, no matter how child friendly it is said to be.

Enter burnt poop. I always start by baking a dog shit in the oven for about an hour at 180 C. This time, I prompted to use Super Sculpey instead (I ate the dog after it'd eaten my DB-homework)... which of course bakes in 130 C, not 180 C - and adding crap to garbage, I walked away and did other things and much later remembered the burning shit and entered the kitchen in a hazy smoke of not-clump-foliage, but instead dangerous fumes from burning plastics.
    In the end, the burnt sausage turned out usable and another, protective layer of sculpey was added.

After the second basic layer was done, the legs were fleshed out. In the picture below you can see that one of the legs snapped. No worries, now it is time for the expensive green stuff. Green stuff is roughly 10 times more expensive than Super Sculpey (Super Sculpey costs, in Sweden, around 250 SEK/kg, which sort of translates to 24 GBP or 28 EUR).

Feet added. In contrast to the Bastiladon that has feet more like a tortoise, this Pelargir Beast will get swim-skin between the toes. Swim-skin likely has another name in English, heheh...


Projects

Now, one might wonder, how much am I doing at the same time? See below:

1) Renovation of Edheldu
2) Making two Rhûn Automatons.
3) Renovating Mordor Orc command, including two banners and the painting of these.
4) Sculpting a Pelargir Beast.