The Dark Beneath the World (part 4) project completed!!

OK so for anyone that follows my blogs you may of seen my rather bold attempt and journey for creating 1 simple troll character from a article posted in white dwarf many moons ago. this article was taken from a gotrek and felix short story.

if not please take a look at the previous parts

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3

i kind of enjoy posting up my journeys of creation. i think a good portion of the fun is delving into the various influences and direction. kind of like an adventure in itself.

well if youve read parts 1, 2 and 3 then youll know all i needed to do next was paint that SOB
Which i did!

of course i have to provide the obligatory action shot. (Trollslayer very clearly wanting first cut!)

A few things to point out on this. whilst again i decided to go above and beyond to fit my very fickle needs for characters to be as specific as possible. i really had no idea how i was going to paint this guy up.

originally i wanted to go proper crazy with the colour scheme. which i did try. but it just wasnt rocking the multiple weird colour look that i would associate with chaos. so i ended up sticking to what i know. so i kept it dirty and earthy in tones.

A first for me on this figure was that i actually made use of a wet palette for the very first time. and boy i should of done this years ago. i seem to save so much paint as a result of it staying wet, my wet palette is sealable, and my paint mixes stay wet for about 2 days. as well as allowing me to mix the paint to a better consistancy. i cant believe i didnt do this a long long time ago. but all in all very glad i finally took the bounce.

Another first. is that i finally bought myself some good brushes. as well as stocking up on a new set of GW brushes. i also bought myself a size 1 and 0 winsor & newton series 7. and again..jeez why didnt i do this earlier? far far superior brushes and im hoping this will start to assist with my painting as i move forwards

 I chose to go with classic troll colours overall. but with a grey/brown skin tone. due to the size of the miniature (this is definately no miniature) it made it hard to paint. so i chose for simple washes on the fleshy areas with the odd blemish to break up the boil covered areas, whilst going for a harsher sharper edge on the hide.

 kind of happy how the spine infused with warpstone turned out. i really wanted it to look like to root of the trolls deformities. the thick heavy pustules surrounding the warpstone kind of help give that impression. the claw itself was the last part of this model that got painted. and in fairly sure you can see i didnt give as much love to that.

 Another first i attempted on this mini was the use of UHU glue for saliva dribbling from his mouth.
it didnt really turn out great. and its hard to see in the shots. but it also seemed to be removing the paint. so i kept it very minimal around that area. because i wanted after finishing the paint job. was for it to be ruined by the final touches.

 the baby head mutation turned out pretty decent. from the sculpt itself, it was looking too human. but once i stated applying the paint. it became evident that thick heavy veins streaming into the facial area would give it a nasty chaos esq look. whilst the head itself looks totally out of place. i guess that sums up all that is chaos. and really wished i had the balls to of gone all out on this figure in that same approach

 one final thing that i feel is missing. would be to add some glossy varnish to the boils just to give that wet vile look..but i dont have any. so this will have to do until i can get my hands on any.

so a project that started about a year ago finally gets finished.
im happy how it turned out as a figure. however i do wish i had of been a little more daring.
this has opened my eyes to more chaotic goodness. and im already cooking up a few ideas going forwards. so hopefully this is the beginning if a new direction for me.

whats next for me? gotta finsih them doors off. and my pile of unpainted minis has piled up quite a bit since i started plying all my spare time into this project. so it looks like ill be keeping things simple for the next few months. a bit of unit painting with a few characters thrown in.


anyways. hope you all like. and hope you enjoyed my journey.

The Dark Beneath The World (pt3)

well looks like it's time for my first post of the year. now i did vow to post more this year. but so far ive opted for doing more rather than posting it thus far.
as a result i think ive hit a pretty solid milestone in the sense that. ive actually done crap loads on the troll from these posts

The Dark Beneath the World (pt 1)

The Dark Beneath The World (pt2)

now without pattering around too much you can see from the previous parts to this project, the journey, the planning and the beginnings.

and its been a while since i last posted anything on him. so over xmas i just decided to blitz him out of the way. so i have now completed the sculpt and its ready to paint

 from the descriptions i managed to get quite a lot of the explained details onto the model

- Horn-headed. (got the big sprout on one side and a few stubby spikes on the other)
- Hideously changed. the one side of his face being heavily distorted, the other being more drawn towards the horn)
- Gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours. (check check)
- Three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw. (got the pincer in there and three arms, albeit a little straggly)
- Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes. (got the baby head)
- Huge leech mouth set below its neck. (managed to get this in, although it probably looks a little like something else other than a mouth..haha. very chaotic!)
- Chain warpstone (here i went for 2 huge chunks of warpstone. 1 chained around him hanging beneath the head. and another hammered into his spine)

 so you can still see he is a troll..whilst i did want him to look more disfigured than this. but i pretty much made up the head as i was going.
im still happy that he looks like a troll, albiet a pretty disfigured one. I didnt want to go too far chaos warped. never go full chaos warped! but basically i didnt want to lose the fact that he is a troll.
you can make out the baby head, i decided not to go the total recall route and took a completely different path there (20 internets to the first person that spots where exactly copied the baby head from)

the leech like (vagina) shaped mouth i managed to squeeze onto his left pectorial.

 here you can se the less disfigured right side of the face. the ear only remaining as a stub as the horn sprouts from his head

 i put loads of pustules and boils/sores all over him, not really holding back there much.

 here you get a good view of the huge bullnosed pincer. i decided to go for something more brutish than sharp like you would see on slaneesh

 here you can just make out the warpstone hammered into the spine. i literally puts loads of huge bubbling boils all around the warpstone to make it look like its festering and the route of the spawn

i kept the lower half pretty much as it was to signify the change in the troll. i didnt want it to look like this chaos troll was a product of any chaotic breed.
whilst it has warpstone agonisingly hammered into its spine and hung around the neck, you could assume it was a product of skaven experiments.
whilst the boils and sores sugges Nurgle.
the pincer screams Slaneesh
the head and leech mouth point towards Tzeentch

the only one not really covered here is Khorne. and lets face it, they have had their fair share of coverage since the release of age of sigmar. so no need here.

but the point being is that i wanted to keep it somewhat of a mystery as to its origins from troll, to mutated beast. and i think ive somewhat succeded on that front.

so as far as i am concerned...its ready to be painted.
im unsure of the colours but im kind of leaning towards blue/grey/purple based. this will help the greens of the warpstone really pop out. but im quite undecided yet on how i am going to paint it. im totally open to suggestions or references if anyone has seen anything cool out there.
i just weant to make sure that i keep it looking like he live in the dark beneath the world

first post of the year done
YAY!

The Dark Beneath The World (pt2)

so ive taken my first few steps. in creating the immense chaos troll that i wrote about in part 1.

firstly absolutely butchering a GW river troll that i had already glued up ready to be painted..but decided it would be best suited for this project.
pinned in a 3rd arm and roughly worked out what else i was going to be doing so here is the first few steps ive taken thus far.

as you can see. i have my arms in place.
also made a start on the 'gnarly skin as you can see on the forearms and over his right shoulder. this will continue over his back and shoulders
the chains are roughly in place. but not secured over the left shoulder as its still waiting for the gnarly rock like skin. ive decided that this troll was once a stone troll. it seems fitting for a dungeon dweller after all.
the chain will also be in place to hold the hammered warpstone into his flesh. and im hoping to get some nicely grotesque looks around these. possible with warpstone coursing between the rocklike skin like veins.

so my next steps will be to continue covering that skin up and then adding the details to the pincer to make it look like it was formed from chaos magics.

i may possibly add a few rough uneven spikes down his spine, sprouting through the rock like hide.

ive filed down some areas in readiness to add the boils and sores described. and once all of the skin is complete i will then be able to add further details like the baby head and so on.

now you will notice there is no head...because im going to sculpt this from scratch using a mish mash of ideas that have skipped by me over the last few days. these consist of a weird mash up of familar designs. but ultimately its all in aid of capturing that tortured beast look. pain wracked with agony. hate etc etc ill reveal more later once i get a better form of how it is going to pan out.
but for now heres a quick mock up of where i will be going next.

The Dark Beneath the World (pt 1)

I remember many moons ago, whilst in my early teens. and we were playing AHQ. White dwarf 125 to be exact, had a quest in it that captured my imagination.

"The dark beneath the world" 

whilst this was also my first exposure to Gotrek & Felix, whom would go on star in many books from the black library. it was one particular character from this quest that caught my imagination.

the description itself had my imagination running. some vile creature so distorted I'm sure even descriptions would fall short.
For years I always sought out to proxy this troll. but alas like many of my proxy ventures in the past, it never quite satisfies my soul.
so of course. now. whilst many more moons have passed I've decided to make my own.

now whilst the picture does show a pretty repulsive looking creature, I still don't feel that the image provided with the quest properly fit how my imagination perceived from the description.

so after reading the actual short story that the quest was created from, i decided that this whole creation of a chaos troll is going to be an adventure in itself.


"I have found it," he cried. "The lost blade, Karaghul. I have found it! Sigmar be praised!"

From behind the heap of treasure a huge horn-headed shadow loomed, twice as tall as Aldred, broader than it was tall. Before Felix had time to shout a warning, it tore off the Templar's head with one sweep of a mighty claw. Gore splashed the ancient stones. The thing lurched forward, pushing through the mound of treasure with irresistible power.

Felix had heard tales of trolls, and perhaps once this had been one. Now it was hideously changed. It had a gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours and three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw. Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes. It chittered horridly in a language that Felix could not recognise. Pus dribbled down its chest from a huge leech mouth set below its neck.

The bestial head roared and the echoes reverberated through the long hall. Felix saw an amulet of glowing greenish-black stone hanging from a chain around its neck. Warpstone, he thought, placed there deliberately.

He did not blame Faragrim for running. Or Belegar. He stood paralysed by fear and indecision.

From beside him he heard the sound of Zauberlich being sick. He knew warpstone had created this thing. He thought of what Gotrek had said about the long-ago war beneath the mountains.

Someone had been so insane as to chain warpstone to the troll, to deliberately induce mutation.

Perhaps it was the rat-men, the skaven that Gotrek had mentioned. The troll had been down here since the war, a festering abomination changing and growing far from the light of day. Perhaps it was the desecration of their tombs by this warpstone-spawned monstrosity which had caused the dwarf ghosts to walk? Or perhaps it was the presence here of the warpstone, of pure undiluted Chaos.

The thoughts reverberated through his mind as the roar of the mad thing echoed through the vault. He stood unable to move, transfixed by horror, as the monster came ever closer. Its stench filled his nostrils. He heard the hideous sucking of its leech mouth. It loomed out of the gloom, its pain-wracked, bestial face hellishly underlit by its glowing amulet.

(From Gotrek and Felix - Trollslayer)

That is pretty much all the description we get. so why do I feel so compelled to create such a little written about character?
God knows. but it sounds like its gonna be pretty cool.

so a little chop down on the descriptive features

- Horn-headed.
- Hideously changed.
- Gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours.
- Three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw.
- Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes.
- Huge leech mouth set below its neck.
- Chain warpstone

thats plenty to go off right?
plus I like the idea of a description like this. it allows the mid to run wild. and with that. im going to allow my chopping and putty skills to go wild also!!


so lets break down the descriptions into something visual.

Horn-headed.

Nurgle Bile Trolls

now these are quality models. that. by any means would be the nearest proxy possible for this character. however. I aint about to spend 50 quid on 3 trolls. But I like how the horn sprouts out of the side of the face giving a horrendously distorted look. so will take some sort of approach like this.

Hideously changed.

I think as long as i stick to something along the design of the forge world figure above. then this should be cool

Gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours.

so first thing that springs to mind here would be Throgg the troll king for the gnarly hide

that rough textured skin mixed with the odd spike with sore and boils like something seen on a nurgle creature would work really well.

Three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw.

ok 3 arms is easy..the pincer?

im thinking something along the lines of Slaneesh deamonettes and keeper of secrets

Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes.

OK- straight away i think of 1 thing here..then get thrown off scent.

firstly i am not going to be putting a "obscene fruit" anywhere on this figure. but i will put a babies head. and the thought here was of this thing/dude

yup Kuatu from total recall. that should do the trick.

but definately not sprouting from some obscene fruit. (ill let your imagination help you decide why i wont follow the exact description here lol)

Huge leech mouth set below its neck.

ok so this confuses me. it could be a second mouth like seen on throgg's stomach. or it could simply be a huge lumbering jaw that hangs down from the head.

yet the 'leech like' description throws me completely off scent. i think i will go for the 2nd option here 

but leech like? im not sure.

mierce miniatures have a few models that in my mind fit this leech like description

but alas. im still unsure. so i think i will be playing this one by ear and seeing how it goes so this will most likely be the last thing i do on it. as i will want something that 'fits' so seeing how it all pieces together will be a better option.

Chain warpstone

there are a few options i could take here. throwing a chain around its neck with some warpstone amulet. but this would be relatively hindered by the head and the mouth.

chains wrapped around the troll with warpstone embedded would add to the whole tortured and transformed beast.

IF skaven had of done this. they would of hammered warpstone into the troll.

so im going to keep it relatively ambiguous on this front. I like the idea of chains wrapped around the troll. but i also like the idea of tormenting it further with the warpstone.

so i think ill go for both with the hammered warpstone. held in place by chains!

i feel this will give an overall. "slave to chaos" sort of vibe.

so where do i go from here.

firstly. im not going to sculpt this from scratch.

as i already have some river trolls sitting doing nothing in my vault of mini's

this will be a heavy modification of a river troll.. but as you can see these are good models. and its always good to have a good foundation.

over the next few months ill post updates on my progress and see if i can infact create this creature that has been lurking around in the deep for so so long.