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Converting Ork Heads

15K views 7 replies 7 participants last post by  InkedDnA 
#1 ·
This subject is about converting Ork heads to make unique troops for your Elite units. Most Ork players will have a bitz box overflowing with spare Ork heads so why not make use of them and create some characterful units.

WARNING!

Although this tutorial is aimed at everyone it involves using very sharp blades and a fair bit of pressure...younger members of the site should get an adult to do the cutting aspect of the job otherwise it might get a bit bloody...the last thing I want is people lopping their finger tips off.



Tools

A good cutting mat and a fine pointed, sharp knife are essential for this job (I use #10A scalpel blades). You will also need some liquid poly cement and a brush for applying it.







Process

1.) Select a couple of heads for your conversion. I find that those wearing helmets are the best as the helmet gives a framework for the face swap and helps hide some of the chop-work. I have chosen a standard helmeted boy and the Ork with a cigar from the Burna boy sprue for this demo.





2.) Place your knife blade near the centre of the face and start cutting. I find rocking the blade back and forth whilst maintaining downward pressure is best. You will, of course, need to hold the head steady (My fingers were out of the way simply because I was holding the camera with my left hand).





3.) Once you have done the lower half of the face repeat with the upper half till there is a slit right the way down the face from brow to chin. The reason for doing this in two steps allows you to rock the knife rather than having to apply excessive pressure (possibly snapping the blade)





4.) Using a scoring action, make repeated cuts where the helmet sides meet the face until you have cut through each side.





5.) Next, place the point of your knife blade roughly just below the nose with the blade edge facing the right helmet side and push down until you have chopped out a piece of the Orks face. Repeat with the left side.







6.) Using a sharp pair of snips, chew up the remaining bits of forehead attached to the helmet then use the knife blade to scrape away anything left.







7.) Now for the difficult bit. Put the helmet and the replacement head together and get a rough idea of what needs removing from the replacement head to make it fit the helmet.





8.) The first thing you will find is that the helmet sides need to be made thinner so use a scraping motion to reduce the thickness.





9.) Do the same to the inside of the helmet to give a flat area to glue the new face to.





10.) Chop the replacement head just above the brow and remove the ears and sides of the face, being careful not to remove any facial details, then do another test fit.







11.) Keep making small adjustments till the two components make a good fit...it is better to scrape/file/sand away small amounts rather than guess and get rid of too much material in one go. Once you are satisfied, dab some glue on the mating surfaces and press together. Check that the two halves look correct then run some liquid poly glue into the gaps on the back of the head and let it dry.





12.) The finished 'cigar chewing' result next to the original version.








Other Conversions

This Mekboy is probably my favourite conversion. The screaming Ork head from the Boyz sprue lends itself really well to converting. Here, I lopped off the top half and very carefully carved away the bottom half of a Burner Boy mask then glued 'em together.





Burner Boyz





Nob Biker





This last image is probably the most difficult I pulled off. I used the Original Mekboy head and the Burna Boy with the cigar for this conversion. If you look closely you will see that the remains of the Mekboy head has been rotated through 90 degress so that the occular implant is now over the right eye rather than the left.




A swap of the cigar for a bolt completes the look.



Cypher
 
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