In a previous video I showed the process of converting an Age of Sigmar bullgor into an ork.
Specifically, one from the Beast Arises series. The orks in that series were massive, boyz the
size of nobs and nobs the size of warbosses, and their armor and weapons brutally sophisticated.
It was a fun conversion, and in this video I’m continuing it by converting another.
For my second beast ork I wanted to base him off this piece of concept art I’ve always
loved since it really brings the dark, brutal aspect of orks to the front. Unfortunately,
it’s also mostly black space, so it took some interpolation to figure out what’s going on.
As with the first nob I started by expanding the proportions of the original bullgor.
This time though I cut the sheet in the center of his chest on an angle so
that his shoulders would be hunched inward which would make his later stance easier.
The arms of the bullgor are too stubby otherwise to reach to the other side of him.
I shaved down his chest and gave him feet, then started work on his chainsword.
A space marine chainsword might seem like the logical place to start converting, but they’re
too small for a nob of this size. Instead I opted for piecing together three ork chain weapons,
and added some techy bits. It didn’t really look like the original, and worse, once I put
it in his hand I realized that I simply wasn’t going to be able to replicate the concept art.
The chainsword arm looks too static, and hunching inward simply isn’t that strong or tough a stance.
I started anew by bashing together my nob a dakka rifle. For the grip I cut up a flash
gitz rifle and sawed off the barrel. I replaced it with this gun from one of
the ork vehicle kits. It fits pretty seamlessly and is an appropriately large dakka dispenser.
For the nobz new pose I wanted him to have the rifle hefted in his right hand.
It was tricky to position correctly as the original arm is doing more of a pumping
upward motion. It wasn’t terrible, but also not quite what I wanted. To fix it I cut his arm open
and repositioned the elbow. This worked pretty well, and giving the rifle a stock also helped.
The next big decision was what armor my ork was going to have.
I tried out a couple of different plates for the chest, but wasn’t quite happy with any of them.
Breastplates are really hard to figure out since they have to match up with the chest
pretty tightly or they look awkward. A little of that is ok for an ork, but the orks of the
Beast’s waaagh are described as having more sophisticated armor than the normal ork,
so I wanted to avoid a scavenged look as much as possible. The other challenge is
that unlike with my first beast ork where his chest was tilted downwards and his arms inward
so his breastplate isn’t particularly visible, for this one he standing and tall with his arms out,
meaning the breastplate would take center stage and had to cover all his chest.
Eventually I settled on this breastplate from a skaven stormfiend. It’s a little bulbous, but
I sawed off the shoulder flares and also cut off the skaven symbol, leaving me with this. Fitting
it to my ork’s chest took snipping away the back and shoulder portion until it fit snugly against
his chest. The one downside of the breastplate is that it didn’t really leave room for a jaw plate.
To fit it I’d have to raise the head, and that just looked anatomically inaccurate.
After a lot of fiddling I realized I didn’t quite like how the chestplate had turned out. It had
a little too much of a heroic and unorky feel to me. It actually really reminded me visually of the
necromunda Palatine Enforcers. Ultimately I fixed some of the issue by scraping the breastplate
clean, giving him a more defined abb area beneath, and clearer clasps keeping it place. The smaller
clasps I liked better than the pauldrons because while huge pauldrons are a mainstay of ork
visual language, and really all warhammer, they would’ve covered up his shoulder muscles which
are important for his hulking silhouette. To finish up his armor I used this killa
kan arms and flash git gun parts to create leg braces just as I did with my first beast ork.
To add just a little more muscle this time though I glued these mini pistons on top.
With his armor complete, it was time to arm my ork with a close combat weapon. The one I had in mind
was this contemptor dreadnought power claw. It has a really powerful, shearing look to it that
I love. My plan was to cut off my ork’s forearm and replace it with the claw for a bionic limb.
Unfortunately, it looked kind of... terrible. The problem isn’t the claw, so much as his gun is
already the focal point of him, and adding such a huge weapon unbalances where your attention flows.
On top of that, the pose looks silly with him holding one weapon up and the other down.
Luckily I have plenty of other bullgor arms and just swapped the one I cut out for a new one.
I also replaced the claw with a power axe. It’s a little puny, more hatchet than axe,
but all the nob chain axes were too big and took away from his gun as a focal point.
I’m not entirely happy with it, but sometimes you just have to compromise.
In all though, I’m fairly pleased with how my second beast ork turned out.
He’s just as hulking and huge as the first one, but this time with a more dakka focus.
Let me know what you think in the comments, and like this video if you liked it. I’ll be
converting one more beast ork, so subscribe if you’re interested in seeing that when it comes
out, or check out my previous beast build. I also have a patreon, so go check that out if
you want to contribute to the channel and get a say in what I convert next. Thanks for watching.