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The Sons of Sobek
So, what's a Sobek?
OK, now that we got that out of the way, what do we need to make some of them?
Basically, a "dollar store" crocodile and some figures. I got these from
The Big Zoo
online for $0.20 each; Note these are the Bulk Jungle Replica ones, not the Bulk
Mini ones. The reason I chose these ones is that they are bigger, and I am using
them with GW Ork pieces from
Hoard o' Bits
on EBay. I will likely want some of the Bulk Mini ones when I want to make some Judge Dredd
Klegg-like
scifi gators, as they are smaller and will fit into a spacesuit body better.
I assume you have the idea here. Assemble the figures. Cut the heads and tails off
the crocs. Then glue them on the figures. The only hitch I ran into was you really
need to cut a notch in the tail to make it fit with the figure's butt.
I assume this is orthodox GW heresy on a couple of levels: (1) I am using non-GW parts,
and (2) I don't think the different Ork pieces belong to the same type of Ork. Oh, well.
What was important for me in the design of these guys is the ability to group and regroup
them in different ways where the groupings have a visually obvious common characteristic.
The basic structure is a three man (croc) team with a team leader, times three. I should
have a squad leader for the three teams, but I lost my 13th croc during the project. I
will have to fix that later.
In terms of groupings, the team members all have a hand weapon and a spear. The team leaders all have a two handed weapon. Additionally, each team has a different hand weapon. Also, note that there are two types of spear - the basic, and the ornate. I put one ornate spear in each team, so I can identify a "lance corporal" as a senior team member, if I need to. Overall, this structure will let me rearrange things in a decent number of alternate formations like 9 brutes and 1 warlord, or six grunts, a chieftan, and a shaman.
Then you just paint 'em up. I used Krylon Fusion black as a primer. It is especially
nice at providing an even surface for painting on coversion projects where you have three
or four different materials in the figure. I painted the underbelly yellow, then layered
three progressively lighter colors of green on them. The pictures don't show this well,
but I have seven different shades of light brown for the clothes and weapon hafts.
Breaking with my normal "solid black" base policy, I used some lefover AT-43 bases I had
and painted them "desert". I am concerned about fielding these guys in a swamp now.
The final touch is one of my fortunate mistakes. A few years ago, I started sealing some figures with a can of Krylon flat, then realized I wanted them gloss, so I switched to a can of Krylon gloss while they were still wet. This gave them a thin white film. I was ticked, because this ruined the figures. I had to strip them and repaint. However, to make a thin layer of dust, combining these two works pretty well. Again, don't overdo it. Or you will get a solid white figure which you have to strip and repaint.
This terrain is a variant of the Atlantis modular terrain, described in the linked article. It uses the same parts, just a different paint scheme. I used sand in the paint as well as ballast for this one, and no flock. I actually used more different colors than the Atlantis project, but they were closer to each other, to create a sun bleached, sand blasted effect. As with the figures, I did the matte/gloss double coat to give a layer of gritty grime on top.
So, what happened to the rest of the croc? Well, funny you should ask ... more "ftagn" my name for general Lovecraftian monster things. I just took the decapitated and detailed(?) leftovers, added some tentacles and toothy marshmallow heads, and painted them up. This is a standard paint scheme that makes them consistent with my other versions of these type of monster. You can see a detailed tutorial on making this type of thing in my ftagn article.
And just in case you were wondering what you can do with a fistfull of crocodiles and a bunch of modular desert terrain, we offer up The Howling Desert for your enjoyment.