It was on Brillig that Magos Sly V. Toathe and his servitors Gyre and Gimbal finally cornered the experiment that had escaped so many years before. His servitors stripped to the bone within seconds, Toathe found himself alone. Armed only with his Warp Coil sword, specially constructed for this day, he bravely stood against his own foul creation: the Jabberbot.
This was constructed for an online competition in the Inq28 community entitled the Dogs of War. The brief was to create a creature of some sort that fit into the 40k background. As always, this build evolved as I created it.
The starting point was some spares given to me by a friend. An old empire griffin, and a shedload of undead bits and pieces. All I knew was that I wanted to extend the legs - I was thinking of Francis Bacon (
who inspired Stilts) and his influence on John Blanche, I suppose.
To that end I picked up some styrene rod and made some hydraulic ones.
As the shape of the creature evolved, I sort of became aware of the similarity to the shape of the
Jabberwocky, at which case the vignette started to suggest itself. That of course led to the design on the neck and the sort of flappy jowls thing.
Once I knew I would have a 'knight' fighting the creature it became obvious I needed a scenic base. First off I did the fairly copious greenstuff work and added the piping using the old favourite of guitar string.
Creating the base seemed like an opportunity to try out some crackle paint which I'd been meaning to do for while. I wanted to give the feeling of a mud crust over the copper sulphate so I painted the cork tile base a very light blue green and then slathered the crackle paint all over.
The magos was knocked together out of bits and then I added my usual rust and weathering. For the first time in ages I also used some decals, making sure to weather over the top of them.
Overall, I'm very happy indeed. Fun little build and an effective vignette.
