Shattered Titan Leg

The base is made from a sheet of A4 plasticard, 1.5mm thick. To this has been glued (with a hot-glue gun) some old Citadel plastic craters (sadly no longer available - these vacuum formed craters were sold by Games Workshop back when W40K was a brand new game in packs of 5 - A4 sheets with 7 craters per sheet for around the princely sum of £4.00). The craters have been coated with PVA and sand, spray-painted black and the sand drybrushed up with layers of grey-brown. The remaining areas were painted green then coated with PVA and flocked (painted first to help cover flock baldspots). The wall was constructed from polystyrene, cut into brick-shaped pieces and painted.

The Citadel Miniatures Vacuum-formed craters

The model's base, undercoated

The model's base, painted and flocked

The Titan leg itself was a full-blown "Womble" project, made from cast-offs and rubbish. I'd had a notion to build a shattered Titan leg for a while but had been stumped about where to start. I was in the bath one day and about to wash my hair with some "Mint Source" shower gel and inspiration struck - the bottle was exactly the right shape to for the core of the leg. The front armour plate was added (thin plasticard cut to shape, the raised lip around the edge being another layer of plasticard). The main leg-stay was salvaged from the aftermath of some local kids' home-grown fireworks display in a nearby park - I think it was probably a launching tube for a rocket. The "toes" are made from foamboard with some layers of thick card on top to represent steel plates and some Poundland non-slip rubber mat on the bottom for "tread". The toes are attached to the leg using matchsticks covered with the bendy-bit from a flexible drinking straw, which has been glued into a small rubber-ball (the really bouncy kind) that was super-glued to the end of the tubing. Details were added using bits of wire, drinking straws and the plastic sticks from cotton-buds. The top of the tube was distressed by tearing at it with a pair of pliers.

The Titan Leg, unpainted

The Titan Leg - finished (Angle 1)

James (my son) and I made two of these in parallel, one for ourselves and one as a gift for Mike (which can be seen in the Imperial Guard vs. Necrons Battlereport). With hindsight, the overall effect would have been enhanced if we'd contrived a way of burying a portion of the leg into the ground, but the way we have built it (we haven't attached the leg to the base) means that there is a degree of flexibility in how the model is used - the leg can be used to adorn another scenery piece (some ruins for example) and the base used on it's own as some difficult terrain. I would also have used something more durable than matchsticks for attaching the toes.

The Titan Leg - finished (Angle 2)