Digital Sculpting a Big-Yell-Slashy Boy

In continuing with my Retro Tyranids and flush with the newfound excitement of a successful 3D printing escapade, I almost immediately started working on a Screamer Killer. I've talked about in my Tyrant Mechanicus list briefly about kitbashing and clay-sculpting a modern (ish) Screamer-killer Carnifex, but I always thought the elongated head and whole goofy look of the old one was absolutely charming. I also wanted to make it modern scale - the 1992 rogue trader sculpt was roughly the scale of a Dreadnought (It was intended to simply be an alien Dreadnought). The modern Carnifex... is not that scale. But we can make one that is!

Much like before, I gathered a bunch of reference images. Instead of how it comes on the original metal sprue, I separated my sculpts by it's head, it's body and carapace, and then the legs and hips and claws. This meant that I only had to sculpt 5 unique parts (I felt like a clever old GW employee, making the least amount of molds necessary). I made the legs mirrored so they could just be re-used, and then also the claws could simply be used four times around the body. 

Since this was such a large creature, I also did some funky things with the interior. I wouldn't want to print the entire cross section, even with a low infill. Instead, I hastily modeled an inner cavity shape to carve out from inside the creature. I cut this out, intending for it to make the final print lighter and faster to print. I wasn't sure how that would work out. It has - by necessity - a little hole near it's bum so the boolean operation works out correctly - I planned on simply plugging this with some glue or green stuff.

But hey, we got him all printed up! It's an especially large 84mm tall so as to be comparable with the modern Carnifex models. Once I get him all based up and primed, it's onto painting. More on that later!

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for lots more Tyranids and other miniature adventures.

- Miss Captain Bear