Probably the single biggest inspiration for all of my ork builds are the orks from the
Beast Arises series. I’ve always liked orks, but I absolutely love the massive and brutally
cunning orks from that series that brought the Imperium to its knees in a matter of months.
In them any of the goofiness or comedic relief that lingers in
the normal representation of orks is banished and replaced with horrific xeno strangeness.
While my larger orks are good representations of meganobz or warbosses from the Beast’s waaagh, I
wanted to try and convert something that was more of a rank and file boy or nob. For that a normal
ork boy simply wasn't going to work as a base, so I instead started with an Age of Sigmar bullgor.
They’re big fellas, though in this case I’dalready lengthened his waist before I started shooting.
They’re honestly pretty terrible looking minotaurs, but their roided out muscles
and lack of digitigrade legs makes them perfect for an ork conversion.
I decided to start from the bottom up by replacing his feet with those of a meganob.
Next I greens stuffed on an ork nob head to get a better sense of his pose and character.
It looks hilariously tiny on it’s own, but a jaw plate makes it marginally better.
Honestly when you’re making big orks there are essentially no good, sustainable options.
To be able to fit a breastplate on him later I shaved off the manboobs of the bullgor.
My basic plan for my nob was to armor the front of him and leave the back relatively
bare so I wouldn’t entirely lose his roided out muscles. It also makes sense that an ork
would prioritize armoring his front since he’d never retreat and need it on his back.
Once his chest was shaved down I went back to his legs and started fitting on these L
shaped gun pieces from the flash gitz kit as power braces to mimic the look of a meganob’s.
For the thigh braces of both legs I split a killa kan’s arms and used the piston sections.
I added arms to the torso of my nob and dry fitted it in place to see how it looked. What
I realized was that because of the added height from his waist it was looking too narrow now,
so I took it off and used this handy line down the spine as a guide to saw it in half. My guide for
this in terms of proportions was this screenshot of an old game called of Orcs and Men. I love
how ridiculously wide and muscled his torso is. I also sawed my nobz legs and widened them, though
not as much as I had his torso so that he would have a hulking V silhouette. I replaced the tabard
I’d cut off with the armor tread from the bullgryn kit, and glued a shaved down armor plate above it.
This is the front of a redemptor dreadnought I expanded with a plasticard sheet. I originally
thought it would work well as a breastplate, with the little out branches connecting to the
leg brace hips, but ultimately it looked too flat and squarish. I tried replacing it with
this shoulder section from a deff dread. It too unfortunately was a little too large and awkward
and fitting his arms on would’ve been a pain. I went back to the drawing board and decided
to base his breastplate on a flipped over killa kan jaw plate.
I also added a mechanical bit at the bottom to add some visual interest and make it look less flat,
and a pair of spike bands to connect it to his shoulders. It was more complicated than the boxy
look I was originally going for, but works well. Moving on to arming him, this is the rifle from
the nobs kit, but barely looks like a pistol in my nob’s hand he’s so huge. Unfortunately giving him
a bigger gun would require changing his stance, so he’d have to make do with the pea shooter.
I’d originally intended to give him a power klaw in his other hand, but I dry fitted on one of the
original bullgor’s hands and really liked how it looked. The original axe was perfectly serviceable
for a fantasy setting, but to bring it into the grim darkness of the forty thousandth milenia I
replaced it with the chainaxe from the nob kit. It looked good, but a little undersized. I liked
this mace for him better, though the wooden haft I’d later make more techy by replacing it with the
handle from a terminator power maul. Still not happy with the nob’s gun,
I decided to try and combine it with this killa kan leg to give it a bit more size and weight.
It… didn’t work well and I ended up just replacing it with a different nob rifle.
Both weapons finalized, I used milliput to sculpt his shoulders. Because the pose
of his arms wasn’t how they were originally intended, there were all kinds of gaps that
needed filling and smoothing over. I also used green stuff to make him a tabard for his back.
I’d taken off the shoulder spikes to sculpt his shoulders, and honestly liked him more without
them. There’s two main reasons. The first is that curved spikes like those always look kind of like
lua palm fronds, and the second is that I wanted to preserve as much as possible massive shoulder
traps which gave him a hulking and powerful silhouette. With the shoulder spikes gone
though he still needed something to hold his chestplate up though, so I snipped the chains
from a loota’s harness and anchored them on his shoulders. I’m not the best with greenstuff,
and didn’t want to cover up his muscles with a meh looking harness so we’ll just assume the
chains are attached to his skeleton or something. And with that my beast ork was done. In all he
stands around twelve or fifteen feet in height, twice the height of a normal human and only a
touch shorter than a deff dread. I’ll be making another pair soon, so subscribe if
you’re interested in those, and don’t forget to like this video. Thanks for watching.