Tracking Down the Dominatrix and Heirophant

I was finally able to track down the origins of the image of an old retro Heirophant in my Epic Scale Heirophant! Entirely thanks to a helpful comment at the very bottom of this article by Mr Pink, I was able to find it on the internet archive; But, for the sake of posterity and hopefully a little more web-search-ability, here are images of that specific article and a transcript for searching and accessibility readers!

 To see a full-res image, right click and select "Open image in new tab". This is true for all images on the blog, too.

He's A Madman! Warhammer 40,000 Tyranid Dominatrix By Matt Meek

Now I know what you're thinking, either this guy's incredibly talented or he's a complete nutter! Well he's obviously both!

 

Matt, 19 from Peterborough, is studying chemistry at Norwich University and in between lectures (I certainly hope not during!) enjoys playing Warhammer 40k, for which he fields a Tyranid army (naturally), a Chaos army and The Emeralds of the Imperium (his own Chapter of Space Marines for which he's done plenty of conversions). He also loves painting and modelling, and has entered the Golden Demon awards before.

Understandably intrigued by his creations, we asked Matt, why? & How? He told us he wanted to do something that no-one else would consider doing and 'cor blimey' was he right! Matt drew up the plans and started collecting off cuts of patterning wood to use for the main body and sheet steel (!!!) for the chitinous plates. The model took, on and off, one year to build and then about a month solid to paint! Matt had to carve the wood into a recognisable shape using: lathes, bandsaws, chisels and sandpaper of varying grades. The detailing; horns, veins, fangs etc. was achieved by painstakingly sculpting modelling putty.

Matt had a few materials left over and was planning on making a Trygon, but decided to go one better......(see inside back cover)

Matt's Warhammer 80,000 Tyranid Hierophant, Bio Titan

This is what Matt decided to make instead of the Trygon. Making a Tyranid Bio Titan was a heck of a lot more complicated than Matt had first envisaged.

The method of construction was much the same as with the Dominatrix, except whereas that was a one piece model, the Hierophant had to be constructed in as many as seven parts. These parts were pinned together in a complex manner using steel rod (it certainly was complicated, it took me bloody hours working out how it went together!- Ed).

Being a much bigger project than the Dominatrix, invariably it took a lot longer to complete. The Hierophant was more than two years in building, which was limited mainly to during the holidays and took about the same length of time as the Dominatrix to paint!

We asked if Matt had ever used them in 40k. He replied that he had fielded them one, but it was just too silly!