Project brief: King Ghidorah HelDrake

As I said in the post about the Nurgle Mecha-fly, I truely dislike the HelDrake model. And like the Nurgle Mecha-fly I discovered a bit of inspiration for a new HelDrake conversion, though this bit of inspiration did come from a... somewhat different source then the last one. This source of inspiration... well was Godzilla. Yeah I'm a Godzilla fan, but seriously is anyone even remotely surprised by that? So am I going to build a Godzilla style HelDrake? Well.. not exactly. Rather, I'm looking at this guy:

So for the Kaiju fans out there, yes this is King Ghidorah. Arguably Godzilla's archenemy. His origin has varied from series to series, ranging from being a Space Dragon under the control of Aliens, to being the deliberate development of time travels to being an immature Tiamat Dragon. Origins aside, I like the three headed Dragon and I want to build a HelDrake inspired by him.

So what am I planning on doing? Well obviously I'm going to need 3 heads and necks. The larger wings without a question. The tail... that one I'm a little less certain about. In order to accommodate the scale and size, think I'm going to use the the body from a Forge Fiend. In order to get the curved necks into it, I will have to completely scrap the neck from the kit itself and build a series of 3 new ones. But I think I know how I'm going to do that.

It all starts with a length of wire coat hanger that's been built into the approximation of the curve of the neck in question (how often is it I have to take about more then 1 neck?). Anyway, starting with a length of wire coat hanger that's been cut to the desired length. I can then attack wooden/plastic balls of the appropriate diameter to one end of each section. This will give me a foundational armature to build up the rest of the neck around. I can then build up the details of the neck by laying in lengths of cable and wires and the like. Once I have the wires and such down and secured, I can come back with either stripes of kneadite or maybe strips of styrene and afix them around the wires and cables. With those in place, I think I can fashion a series of armor plates from styrene and then affix those over the back of the neck. With the plates in place I can cap off the entire neck with a second ball of the needed size.

Actually, this might make more sense. It is a little animation I put together showing what I am talking about.

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Something gribbly...

I've made no secret of my disdain for the HelDrake model, here after to be referred to as the 'Helturkey'. It's always struck as being 2 half thoughts that were mashed together into one model, and with neither idea flushed out leaving us with this... half formed, incoherent... thing with wings and a mouth. It's kind of a dragon... sort of, but it's a fighter... 'cept it's not. Yeah, I just can't stand it. So I've been very keen any time I heard "HelDrake conversion".

I found one super great example of a HelDrake conversion that was just a home run for me. It was such a well thought out conversion that is perfectly executed to the model. It was done by a member of the DakkaDakka community who goes by the screen name of GuitaRasmus. He doesn't open many threads, rather continually updating one thread with whatever he's working on. He's got some really amazing conversions, but his Nurgle fly buzzer thing, that he built before the release of the HelTurkey mind you, is what caught my eye.

Built from a conversion based around the Warhammer fantasy battles Arachnarok Goblin monster, it's a flipping daemonic mecha-fly of chaos! It looks utterly creepy and disgusting! Both big pluses. As soon as I saw this I was like "I WANT ONE!!!!" So I've started work on my own Mecha-Fly.

Here you can see the slightly converted Arachnarok model. The body and head are all standard built from the kit. The legs I had to shave down the locking stubs in order to reposition them. But honestly, that's the extent of the conversion at this stage. I am debating about getting a second set of mandibles and affixing them to the lower section of the mouth area, just to give it a sort of Prederish look and to help carry the 'Warp Spawnedness' of the monster.

The rotors were an interesting challenge. I wanted to get the same circular fan blade sort of look that GuitaRasmus did on his model. Thankfully GuitaRasmus did provide a partial explanation of how he went about making his. So I was able to use that information and then extrapolate out from there. I started with cutting a circle of styrene that was slightly less then 1 1/2" across. I then cut out a second one. I then measured out 6 points around the perimeter of the circle at equal-distant points. I used the second circle to mark out curved lines from the center the circle to each of the points. I then repeated the process with the second circle using the first as a guide. I then cut out each of the 12 blades. I glued 2 panels together to form each individual blade. Once I had the blades made I was able to affix them to a length of styrene rod.

For the rotor housing, I used 1 1/2" PVC tubing. I just cut off the junction pieces and used those as the actual housing. I mounted a section of styrene plate to the side of each of these. I had to use a rasp to gouge up the space on the pvc to give the super glue something to adhere to, so once I had the space prepared just a couple drops of super glue was all it took to hold the plate in place. From there I used a pin vice to drill out 2 holes and essentially pin using 2 lengths of styrene rod. This was all in preparation for mounting these rotor assemblies on cut down defiler arms.

Here is an image of the model with the rotor housing mounted on the defiler arms, which are in turn mounted on the body of the Arachnarok. In order to secure the arms to the body I had to go a couple levels of crazy with pinning. I used a series of 8 pins in each joint and then used plasti-weld cement to fuse the plastic of the Arachnarok body to the base of the armatures from the defiler. And even then, I used a drop of super glue to help

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Kit review: HelDrake Part 1

Initial thoughts:

The HelDrake has been a model I’ve been dreading and dreaming of since I first heard of Chaos getting a “Dragon” more than a year and a half ago. The idea of a Chaos dragon is an enticing one, and combine that with 40K Dark Goth... well the idea of it is enticing to no end. But then I have to remind myself that this is a GamesWorkshop kit. GamesWorkshop has historically not shown to be terribly great with dragon models (The current Dragon models being the departure from this). So… we’ve got a company that’s making a mecha-dragon who has repeatedly shown itself to be largely hit or miss with making Dragon models that is going to be making a chaotic mecha-dragon… I really don’t know what to think.

So when the HelDrake was released there was no question about my getting it if for no other reason than to see how GW went about creating a “Chaos Mecha-dragon” . One thing I am going to be very upfront about is the base. I AM NOT going to use the Games Workshop flight base. I have used it on 3 other models even going so far as to modify my HellShrieker design to make use of it. And I am utterly and completely fed up with it. No matter what I’ve tried the base is only a so-so option for mounting the flying models That come to prevalence in the last couple months.  Instead I am using the 6” flight stand on a scenic base purchased from Dragon Forge Studios.  I’ll be honest, if you’re going to be building a flying model I highly recommend spending the $14 to get a base and flight stand from Dragon Forge. It will be $14 well spent. 

So, let’s get started. 

Unboxing

I purchased the HelDrake the same time I bought the Fiend model, which I reviewed previously.  I opened the box, and much like the Fiend and Storm Talon models I was depressed at the relatively large amount of empty space in the box. Even in the relatively shallow box, the vast majority of the model occupies less than ½ the inner space. The one and only  part that rises above that line is in fact the flight stand and even then that’s because it rests atop the other parts.

The model itself comprises 2 sprues. Unlike the Storm Raven model the part density is fairly high and I didn’t feel cheated on that point. It honestly does feel more like a real model with real options to it.

Construction: Day one

So I unboxed the model and washed the parts to remove any mold reside. As I stated I am absolutely refusing to ever make use of the GW Flight Stand if I can possibly avoid it. So that was the first thing I had to attend to. So I took a piece of ½” PVC piping, tested it’s fit with the acrylic rod and was happy to find it fits rather well. I quickly cut off a piece about ¼” deep and using a lump of green stuff and some superglue attached the improvised mount to the inside of the body. Using a combination of hobby knife and files I carved out the hole for the mounting rod. Since I’m working with green stuff, I need to let it dry so I went to work on the other part of the body.

One thing I do have to give GW credit is numbering both the instructions and the parts on the sprue. After dealing with the Fiend model this was a welcome change of pace.  However, the early instructions for building the body are somewhat unclear with details. I’ll show you why.

The instructions show attaching the first set of wings to the main body:

But the parts themselves look somewhat different then the illustrations. The instructions make it look like the edges of the Wings line up with the edges of the body. Looking at the parts themselves you’re left wondering if you’re building it correctly. I finally had to resort to going to the 360 spinner on the Gameworkshop site to see what that showed. The model image did show that these wings do not  actually line up with the edges of the body.

Now I’ve worked with Green stuff enough to know that when I need to wait for it to dry properly before I move on with it. And that’s what I need to do now. Leave it to set over night. So that is exactly what I did. When I returned to it the next morning the green stuff had hardened pretty well and I was able to assemble the central body. I don’t know why, but seeing the model at this stage just kind of tells me “This would make a great conversion for a Disc of Tzeentch!” I’m not sure why or what else would be needed to accomplish it, but there is that mental note for you to chew on.

So far this model is looking to be a decided step above the Fiend kit. Firstly, the instructions are a lot clearer. It’s amazing how the addition of numbers can make that work huh? The second thing is how cleanly the parts go together thus far. Excluding the winglets alignment question there’s little question about if a part has been assembled properly.

I must confess to feeling a certain air of mystery while building this kit. Unlike the Fiend, where you could already tell where everything was going to go by step two, the HelDrake is much more involved kit with many parts working on top of one another. There’s a lot of “How does become that thing on the front of the box?” about its construction.

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