Making Krälgor: Part 1

Now that I have uploaded a very lengthy bio for the Legion of Carnage I am going to start uploading everything I have done such as painting, sculpting, kit bashing, building terrain and anything else that I happen to do along my journey in the 40k hobby.

So I think the best place to start would be my Commander Krälgor The Herald of Carnage. This is a bit of a tutorial as well as a show case.

A little background

***Nothing in this part is vital for the tutorial/showcase of the model, so if you don’t care about the background feel free to skip this part***

I got into the wh40k tabletop when a friend who has played for years went in half and half on the dark vengeance starter set (Yeah, I haven’t been in the hobby very long). I knew I wanted to do a World Eaters Khornate army, so I got the CSM and he got the DA. I started out with only two GW paints (Sycorax Bronze & Wazdakka Red), and had really no idea of what units were good or bad. Long story short (will post how I got into 40k and such maybe at a later time) I played my first few games and loved it, but I wanted to really flesh out my army and my leader leader more. I knew I wanted a Chaos terminator lord rather than a Daemon prince (I do plan on getting/making one though someday) because I had started to formulate an idea of how I wanted Krälgor to look. Throughout my time getting into this hobby I quickly fell in love with the modeling and terrain aspect of it all (if I’m honest I almost like do that more than actual wargaming aspect), so I started trying to learn as much as I could and get ideas on how to make mode interesting models and such by sculpting, painting and kit bashing. So when I was looking on GW’s site for models that had interesting parts I would like to get to kit bash I decided to look at WHFB models as I had seen many other people make some amazing unique looking units with WHFB bits. I had already seen, loved and decided I would use the FW Zhufor the Impaler model for the base model to build upon but I wanted to make my leader unique so I didn’t want to use the head. I came across the Vampire Counts Vlad model and was immediately inspired from the head, namely the hair. So to quickly get to the point here is what my original raw concept was: I wanted my leader to be a complete fanatic to Khorne, so he would almost be a mix or a WB Dark Apostle and a Khorne Berzerker. At the same time I wanted him to be very fair in features that would almost come across as handsome to offset the nature of the character. As you will see I later changed this concept some, but I still kept most things from it. One I wanted him to have long flowing hair, and I wanted it to be super pale white. Two I wanted him to have extremely almost deathly pale ashen skin. And lastly I wanted him to have traditional world water gribal/gladiatorial tattoos like Angron. As far as armour went I wanted him have tons of trophies, and to signify his more barbaric WE past I wanted him to have either a fur cloak, or have fur draped over his cloak and armor. Lastly I wanted him to have two chain axes would make him stand out. So now that that is out of the way I’ll dive into the making of Krälgor the Herald of Carnage.

Phase 1: Pose

Before I started any work on Krälgor I wanted to see how the model would fit together in the pose I wanted him to be in. To do this I cut everything that would need to be adjusted from the standard models pose and stuck it together with blue sticky tack. Since the Icon of Khorne on the top front of his armour would not be needing adjusting I went ahead and glued in in place to get an idea of how it would look.

Phase 2: Sculpts

Next I sculpted the details I wanted on Krälgor, as well as filled in gaps, and did sculpting to fit the pieces I had cut and re-positioned on him. I was greatly inspired by the Khorne Daemonkin codex, so fill out the character I sculpted a book to be a tome of slaughter bound in human flesh. I used to pieces of shrunk Shrinky-dinks with a blob of greenstuff (GS) in between that I used my hobby knifes to make groves in it to form the pages. then I put on both sides and sculpted the cover.

Next I sculpted a the other parts, as well as a lip around the base so any Blood for the Blood God paint (BFBG) would be able to pool.

At this point I had attached many of the bits I would use, making sure as best I could that they all would flow in a logical direction like the wind was blowing it, as well as the awesome looking axes from puppetswarminiatures which they sadly no longer carry last I checked. I also sculpted a back on a chest piece so I could use it for a skull loin cloth on the back. lastly I took one of the God-awful khorne berzerker champion heads and attempted to make it into a noise marine head. I was ok with how it turned out, but I ended up not using it as it did not fit on the base in a way that I was please with.

Next I sculpted the hair and the butchers nails on the head. Then I started on sculpting the fur for the cloak, and exhaust pipes, some chains to wrap around his arm later and some strips to be flayed flesh that would chaotic mockeries of the purity seals.

Phase 3: Final Touches

Finally I glued on the bits and put them in place, as well as added more fur and skulls to the cloak. At this point I had everything in place and was ready to begin painting.

Phase 4: Priming

This next phase was really straightforward but I am including it to point out/share two things. One is that because I had do so much sculpting and and had so many small details I did not do what I usually would do which is use black spray paint. Instead I hand painted him to prime him. The second thing I want to point out is the most important painting lesson I have learned, and that is to thin your paint, and do multiple thin layers to make sure you do not cover up any details. I highly recommend making/using a wet pallet.

I will end this step-by-step here and save the painting of Krälgor for the second half . I hope you have enjoyed this. If you have any questions or would like me to clarify anything please feel free to ask! Until next time!