Stormboys done differently, A conversion idea: Stormboarderz Options

[Spacecat]

"Stormboyz are efficient, disciplined and regimented, dedicating their lives to the martial disciplines of drilling and marching..." Well, not mine, my stormboyz are thrillseeking gloryhounds and unrepentant showoffs!

I'm a guy who loves kitbashing and converting figurines (the whole reason I picked the ork army), and for my stormboyz I wanted to veer off the typical 'rocket strapped to the back' approach. I was thinking I'd make ork boyz riding missiles while wearing cowboy hats for a while, but when talking to a friend about what to do with looted fish'ead equipment, inspiration hit me...



Quick, to the mek shop, I made myself a proof of concept, nicknamed 'hoodie'. Quickly followed by the flying nob 'Tony Ork'



It works! I've made a few 'Stormboarderz' already, and they're a cool enough conversion that I want to share it with the rest of the world: feel free to loot the idea! And hey, if someone swoons over your cool 'boarderz and you tell them 'Some guy nicknamed Spacecat thought of it' I'll feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I'll show you a rough step by step in my next post, but first here's a few general tips if you make your own:

1-Look at skateboarder pictures and imitate poses, spread those arms!
2-Use boyz-in-a-box rather than AOBR boyz, the legs are more flexible.
3-Make hoodies, scarves, goggles, cool fashion for them: Greenstuff is your friend.

[Spacecat]

How I made my hoverboards

The fish'ead hoverboards are the key to these conversions, so I'll give you maximum detail on how I made mine - and since I'm only a so-so painter and builder, you guys can do better! I started with some fish'ead drones, obviously. Hacked off one gun and a little off that round bit under the drone to make room for a homemade rokkit engine.

The rokkit was done quick and simple: Run a wooden rod through a pencil sharpener to get a truncated cone, cut that off with a saw, glue to a cylinder made with the same rod and paint to taste. Note that you'll get a much better result using a -plastic- rod, as you won't be stuck with a wooden grain after painting. To get rid of the wood grain I tried varnish, but it takes multiple coats to even reduce the grain, so that's a hassle. For my next rokkits I'll just wrap some paper around it and white glue it in place, easier.

Next, I glued an actual skateboard 'plate' on top of the drone. I used tread-plate styled styrene sheet, love the stuff, use it all over my tanks. Bit of chainmail mithril paint to make it all aluminium shiny and it's pretty much done. Paint and decorate to taste (checkered pattern on the rim of the drone looks neat, no?) Notice that I haven't riveted the skateboard plate directly on the middle of the drone, I set it a little on the side where the rokkit engine is, it's a silly unbalanced rokkit thing, but at least that way it suggests the flyer might have a -chance- to keep his center of gravity aligned with the rokkit engine and not spin crazily out of control.

Oh, for the record my skateboard size is 24mm long by 8mm wide, and the exact 'tread plate' I used was 1:48 scale 'O gauge' from Model Builders Supply (Item TP-50 ordered from my local hobby store) aaaand it was too thin, I glued a half-millimeter thick styrene sheet under to stiffen it a bit.

[Bloodsbane]

Nice!

Strap 2 on the nob and call him a rollerskater?

[radegast6]

I like your idea - I had similiar flying disc from dark panzees but yours is better to me honest - I like it more.

[Spacecat]

@Bloodsbane: It's a thought, just two fings about twin drones: They're a wee bit big for using one of each shoe, and they cost a good deal of teef! (I got other projects for my spare drones, just finished a count-as-trukk 'assault barge' using four drones as lifty-plates. mwahaha) So, I settled for giving my nob's drone the coolest paint job.

@radegast6: Dark panzee floating disk? Now I wish you could show me pictures...


Ahem, but back to my tips and hints and general don't-make-the-mistakes-I-did... Research, and pose your figurines smartly!

Looking at various skateboarders on the web, I noticed they usually have a very 'arms spread out' stance. (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... an ork?) And unfortunately the figurines we got tend to have the biceps fair close to the body. Thankfully there's a great article on dakka dakka about adjusting arm angles easy: Basically treat the shoulder like a half-sphere, slice an 'Orange slice' off it, and glue that slice to the untouched flat part of the shoulder to alter its angle greatly.

I doubt it's polite to link to another forum here, but I'll say it was made by Teek and his article is called 'Assault on BLAND Reach, Easy Ork Conversions!' great tips.
My boy on the left demonstrates arms spread out using teek's technique. (It's not a gob of green stuff! It's just a bit of liquid green to hide the slicing scar, I swear!) The boy on the right shows how you can tilt the legs weirdly if you use 'boyz in a box'... Maybe not very apparent but when he's hanging from a drone he'll look like he's hopping one footed from the ground.

And one mistake I did: Trying to make the left boy with legs tilted back to the max, so his 'plank' is almost parallel to his back buuuut I used legs that have a -folded- foot, completely messes the effect. beh.

Freebie, say hello to one boy doing a grind on some random junk:

[LuciusleTroll]

ahah ! Impressive It remindes me of Back to the future

[killercroc]

Consider this idea Looted

I was thinking about some Stormboyz but didnt like the idea of $5 a boy, but this ia a lot better, and more fun!

[Spacecat]

Hehe! Thanks for the vote of confidence killercroc! Make sure to show us pictures when you made some, hm?

As a finale, I'll say that this design is nice for 'humorous' models... Like orks doing handstands on drones, one being pulled by a scarf snagged on his 'board... Or something like Crash here:



By the way, notice how his jeans look good? I happened on the color mix by accident: it's a Shadow Gray base with a highlight and dusting of Space Wolf gray. Those two colors is denim made easy.

[Ruff]

I am liking this idea a lot.. lol..

[Mad Mek Snowfyre]

ha ha that's really funny idea
does remind me of one of the dark panzee units.

and love the crash-boarded idea.