Nurgle Heldrake - Blight Drake – Coversion WIP: Carapace

After my short excursion with my Raven Guard I am back on track with the Blight Drake. After finishing the body I started working on the carapace. As a first step I mapped out how I want to create the carapace using Photoshop. Doing some mock ups digitally gave me a good idea on the ideal number (and size) of segments as well as on the concavity of the carapace.

I then started modelling the carapace with green stuff, starting at the very with a small segment as a proof of concept. To make sure I am able to reproduce the same "hammer finish" look of the armour of the original drone I bought some ball-shaped pluggers on ebay. I was quite happy with the result of the armour. Something I wasn't happy with at all were the edges of the carapace segment. The resin parts are too thin and fiddly to reproduce them with Greenstuff in a proper way (at least for me).

So I went back and segmented the carapace of the Blight Drone using Plasticard. It took some time to get the shape and size of all the different archs right, and a little bit of more time to actually to fit them into the back, but it spending the time was worthwhile. Now I not only have a proper template for each segment, the Plasticard also helps to reproduce the same look and quality of carapace of the original model. 

Next step is actually (and finally) start modelling the carapace. I am really looking forward to it, especially when it comes to modelling all the corroded elements - I assume it will just as fun as working on rotten flesh (this sounds weird).