My son loves his dinosaurs and regularly plays with them out in the garden, the long grass being a perfect environment for him to create his own little world to play with them in. He wasn't happy with me though a few months ago; one because I cut the grass and two because one of his dinosaurs had been left out there and lost the bottom of a leg in the process of mowing. It could have been worse. So I calmed him down by suggesting I can make his dinosaur a new, robotic leg, which placating him and excited him. The injured Dinosaur was moved to my workbench and stayed there for a while untouched. My son and I having forgotten about it. And then I noticed that there's a competition over on The Emporium of Rogue Dream:Old School Gaming Facebook group to create an entry for the Rogue Trader Bestiary. I don't have much Sci-Fi stuff, but somehow my mind linked the two together and over the past few weekends I started rummaging in my bits box, researching "cyborg dinosaur" and imagining what I could make. Eventually I made this:
This was my first time working with a toy. A couple of things to note. Mold lines are always a pain in the arse, but on these they were even worse to remove, partly because of all the textured wrinkles on the skin but also because of the rubbery plastic material it is made from, not easy to cut off. It took a lot of patience with my scalpel. I also invested in a new tool specifically for this project (I hope to use it again though) - the Greenstuff World putty roller which helped me make all of the cables seen here. A joy!
For the Cyborg components I used a lot of Necron bits that I had accumulated from somewhere, a few Ork bits (jaw guard/claw), a bit of Lego, circuit-board and some styrene tubing. This is how it looked mid-conversion:
And then with all the greenstuff applied:
The painting stage was quick and nasty. Primed grey, flesh washes applied to the undercarriage, blended into some green and then that blended into some darker green the further up the creature. All of this was done wet-in-wet on the model with the help of a bit of acrylic retarder. The rusty areas were completed with my usual approach of metal, multiple washes of browns and oranges and then a final, textured application of red earth pigment in some matt medium. Possibly no more than an hour solid painting. The base looks a bit small, but that's all I had.
Now he's been photographed, he's gone back to my son and takes pride of place amongst his dinosaur friends!
