For the Golden Demon Competition of the German Gamesday 2004 i was not allowed to bring a entry for the Blood Bowl Category as i won a prize in this category last year. But still i wanted to make something " Blood Bowl " stylish ...

I´m getting the newletter of Forgeworld every few week. Months ago, when i saw this Orc stickbomber, my first thought was: hey, that´s something, i can convert into a Blood Bowl mini ! And I also remembered the cover of the first " Blood Bowl compendium " of 1997, where the selfportrait of Gary Morley as Blood bowl player is shown. For those, not knowing this person, Gary Morley was the sculptor of the 3.ed BB minis.

The first stage was to remove the 40K stuff of this Orc. All the weapons and ammunition packs had to disappear. As this is a resin mini it was quite easy to remove these parts. Well, at last easier than drilling metal parts like last year. The resin base was cut also to get a better angle of the miniature as a Blood Bowl player. Also the 40k grenade throwing arm had to be cut for a better angle to hold the ball later.

The second stage was the " greenstuffing " part. This was the most time consuming part. I learned the hard way just to greenstuff a single area only per day ! After one hour work i finished a buckle on the back and started another one at the front ... and just guess, where i put my fingers around first... i was not happy ! Hm, and i was quite loud :-)
At first i just wanted to convert the existing 40k shoulderpads into Blood Bowl pads. But it looked not good. So i use one marble of my marble collection as base for forming the round shoulder pads. The chainmail, well, not a easy part, too ! After checking some website and asking the helpfully Steve Buddle for informations i tried and retried this part a few times. I´m still not pleased with the result, but it´s not easy to sculpt chainmail, and even more difficult to do it in this scale. One bad spot i covered with a " repair plate" on the back. Removing the ammunition packs left a flat area on the right leg of the trousers,too. I greenstuffed some cracks of the trousers to cover this area. Sculpting the fingers of the ball hand with parts of the cut fingers was a mistake as i learned later. Next time i will sculpted a full new hand !

The third stage was, after building a base out of pflaster and priming the whole thing black, painting the miniature using my "old " colorschema again.Again i learned, its not easy to paint large plain areas without details ... at last as long as someone isn´t used to do this. Maybe a kind of "basic airbrushing" would be better. After repainting some parts a few times ... thanks to the critical views of my girlfriend and the kids ( " no, thats looks not good... no, thats looks not like bandagea ! Hey, THAT should be leather ? NO !...") i cut and painted the battle damages last.

The fourth stage was building a nice pedestal for the miniature as the angle and the posture of the body wasn´t good enough to keep the base flat for presentation. I didnt paint the wooden pedestal as i like the plain wooden look of it as contrast to the colored painted miniature. For viewers, not knowing about Blood Bowl, i added the the sign made of Slater plastic fonts.

I entered this miniature at the German Gamesday 2004. But i entered it in the wrong category as a " Inquisitor style and size " miniature. And, in my personal opinion, my entry couldnt compared with the other great Inquisitor entries. Unluckly the GW staff didnt realised my mistake, too. The right category would had been the " Open Category ". A bit bitter taste after over 10 weeks work... Anyway another project finished, up to the next ! :-)

September 2005
Finaly my "Blood Bowl BigOrk" made it into the Games Workshop Specialist Games Online Magazin issue #30.

Sculpting the ball and, after cutting the arm and fingers of the throwing hand, resculpting the fingers.

Greenstuffing the shoulderpads with the help of a marble and fixing the pads

Building of the wooden pedestal and using the plastic letters for the sign

.... and finaly the picts of the finished miniature from all angles.

.... some more detail picts.

.... and more detail picts.