Screaming Skull Catapult Kitbash, Part 3

In this week's post, I tackle the basing and crew for the catapult (and a few other details).

 

 

As I had mentioned previously, the base will be covered with skulls to conceal the tabs at the bottom of the front columns. I begin by gluing some skulls around the bottom of the machine, taking care to only stick them to the base and keep any glue off of the catapult itself.

 

 

Once I have the catapult's "footprint" all set...

 

 

...I add more skulls to fill in the void underneath and create the illusion of the war machine having been drug forward across the carpet of skulls.

 

 

The catapult plugs into the sculls seamlessly, allowing me to paint it and the base separately.

 

 

The final touch is to cover the rest of the surface with fine ballast and a few bits of coarse ballast. I make sure to leave the machine's footprints clear of sand so it can be seated properly after the painting.

 

 

For the crew, I use the basic crew from the Screaming Skull Catapult kit, with some modifications. I replace the leader's sword with a pointing hand, made from a skeletal hand cut from a weapon. His pointing index finger is sculpted over a bit of wire inserted into the hand.

 

 

For the second crewman, I gave him the hands and hammer from one of the Mortek Crawler's crew. The trio also now have hand weapons, taken from the original Kroot Carnivore plastic kit.

 

 

On the winch operator, I extended the length of the tool so it lines up with the winch crank on the catapult. I also propped up his left foot on a skull to get the tool in position. This gave him a backward lean, requiring his head to be cut off and angled downward so he is looking at what he's doing.

 

 

As I am photographing the crew next to the machine, I realize that the hammer doesn't look that good, and decide to swap it for the shovel from the Mortek Crawler kit:

 

 

I think the crewman integrates with the machine much better now, like he's shoveling skulls rout of the hopper and onto the throwing arm.

 

 

Another last minute change is this modification to the counterweight– My initial sculpt had the skulls blending right into the plate on the side, which implies that it is also made of bone, running contrary to my non-bone fabrication rule. So, I re-sculpt the connection points to delineate the large panel as a separate piece of metal, and add some styrene rivets to enhance the appearance.

 

 

Here's the machine, assembled and crewed:

 

 

The only question that remains is what to do the skulls and spikes at the top. I found the four-piece head from the statue on the Ossiarch Bonereapers Bone-tithe Nexus. It's about the right size, with a decent level of detail. The best part of them is that I have four faces, so I can build a second catapult without having to track down another pair! I do a little bit of scraping to clean them up and shape the foreheads:

 

 

Then, I glued the crossbar in place and cut off the top of the catapult. There's no going back now!

 

 

In other news, my favorite hobby store, AAA Hobbies and Crafts in Magnolia, NJ is closing. This place carried everything, and has been my go-to for terrain supplies basically since I started in the hobby back in '97. As part of their "everything must go" closeout sale, they are also selling off all of the fixtures. I was able to purchase one of the Evergreen spinner racks from the store. So even once it's gone, a little piece of AAA Hobbies will continue to live on in my studio.

 

 

Over the years, I've accumulated quite a selection of Evergreen and Plastruct styrene pieces: 

 

 

I'll have to start ordering direct from the companies' online stores, but now instead of struggling to keep all of the different styrene packs organized on a shelf under my work table, I can stock everything on the spinner rack. Every time I spin it looking for a particular size of plastic rod, I'll be reminded of the decades of good times browsing AAA's shelves.

 

 

'Til next time!