Gargantuan!

I’ve recently started work on an Ork great gargant and it got me looking around at other people’s work.

Obviously with the release of Apocalypse big scale models aren’t now half as scarce as they were. From my purely modelling point of view I think this is a great thing. How they effect games doesn’t really have any bearing on me. But with such a massive model there’s huge opportunities for a modelling tour de force.

Many people seem to approach then in the same way. A big roughly square box, then detail the hell out of it. This can lead to varying degrees of success, I guess the ultimate example of this was the one on used in the Battle of Big Toof River games day board. Some pics can be seen here. The detail doesn’t look tacked on and looks structural and integral. I suppose it’s the whole “realism” aspect. Orks wouldn’t just fasten bits of junk on their gargants, they’d make the whole thing OUT OF junk.

Then there are the lucky few who have the old armorcast gargants. Whilst detail wise they were somewhat limiting, you can’t deny the character of the upscaled epic models. Obviously from the days before GW gave the meks set squares. I’m sure some of you will remember KrOOzA hyperdetailing one of these, Waaagh thread with awesome results. Inspiring stuff.

Finally my favourite take on the gargants has to be mousemuffins work on his Mekboy and previously his stompa. They exude character with their round, bubbly appearances. The immense level of detail and style really shines through.Check out his stompa on CMON. The shells for the kannon I think exemplify the thought he put into them, the movement matching the whole models and the detail levels. Genius.

Which is obviously why my gargant is inspired by mousemuffin. I’m hoping to pull together the best bits of all the gargants I’ve seen and end up with something highly details, but full of character. Most of all I want to trigger that reaction where you want to grin and go “woah” at the same time. We’ll see how I get on.