Written by Im going to take a break from my Tyranids for a bit to show a project i had a lot of fun with, My Chaos Spawn.
There was no specific inspiration or artwork for this project, just a chance opportunity that left me with few other options. A few years back when gamesday was still called gamesday, i went with a friend for the first time. We had a lot of fun and i got to have a surprise chat with Dan Abnett. Sadly my memory is terrible so i will just have to hang onto the material possessions i acquired that day. One of them was a space marine scout i ended up turning into a caricature of myself at the time.
He was part of a game where you built and named a scout, but before the glue set, he was dropped through a tower several times, depending which doors he fell out of wrote his life as a space marine, including his war wounds when he came out missing an arm. Fortunately mine retained his and lacking a space marine army to induct him into, he became an inquisitorial henchman.
Another friend i made that day was a Chaos Sorcerer. It was part of a game where like, more than 20 of you sat around this hollow square of tables. The staff opened up random boxes of models and sprinkled the contents all around the tables, on top pf all of the other bits left from previous rounds. You had, i think, 20 minutes to build a model that would be entered into a competition under the theme “spell caster” or something.
I dont think there was any real prize, just bragging rights for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The REAL prize though was opportunity. Opportunity that some people took by the throat a squeezed every last drop of life out of it, with zero shame. We were being given free bits to make a model with no restrictions other that if you wanted to win. The only other restriction was how long your arms were.
I saw what looked like a shield golem, someone clearly having access to a few too many shield sprus from fantasy, it was probably the size of a wraithknight and mostly just shields. On another table think there was a similar game making scenery, from there i saw a guy whose “scenery” amounted to a five foot staff made out of Balewind Vortexes.
Not featured: Smug dude and the other 19 Vortexes
I wasnt above thise behaviour either but i like a game, so for nineteen minutes and fifty seconds i tried to make a genuine model… Then stood him roughly on some dead terminators (which later tuned out to be reletively uselsess and incomplete deathwing). For my final ten seconds, no clever tricks, i grabbed a handful of interesting looking bits and pocketed them, which kind of felt more like honest stealing.
What i took was a mishmash of bits, of which i think three became the basis for my spawn. I had two warhammer fantasy boar halves that didn’t match, and what looked like a beefy arm for something like an ogre. From there, i got given some spare spawn bits, glued them together and did what i could filling the gaps with green stuff.
I used a birdlike spawn head because both my Daemon and Chaos space Marine Armies are Tzeentch aligned, the sculpted the saggy turky neck in so it wasnt just weirdly jammed into the body. Can a spawn be too weird? I pit a little mout where his belly button would be, surrounded by tenticles like a sarlac pit… So i guess not.
Where some orks or something would ride, there were smooth parts on the back for a saddle or legs, so i had to sculpt some matching fur and i took the opportunity to throw in some eyes for good measure.
Again i had to hide a join in the armpit of the beefy arm. On a spawn though, this just spells opportunity for more weird stuff, so… Armpit mouth. The end of the arm was trickier, i could have done anything with the blank stump but in the end i chose a clawed hand. I made a wire hand out of staples i think and greenstuffed the rest.
So there you have it. I really like him… It… I just wish i had more opportunity to field it in a game. Please leave a comment if you like it or have some feedback that could help me or others in the future!
~Pandora’s Bitz Box~
Painting In The Dark 