Quickly, I found a creative use of the Warwalker cockpit in an upside-down position; it would be the seat structure. I hacked merrily the top of a weapon platform to close the seat, binding myself to this set and the Warwalker one to finish the creature as two plastic sets for a single Exodite Lord would be enough. The Warwalker "pelvis" components allowed an interesting modelling idea too (keep the plastic chutes in the holes!) but the Carnosaur was still a bit bare. Then I had the intuition of a power array on the back of the Carnosaur, relying on side components of the weapon platform remnants. Not only it would look neat, but it would fit with the beast's movement and the seat, and balance the carapace distribution over the whole body. You can see a step-by-step evolution of the prototype:

Still, something was missing. The Carnosaur looked more like a beast of burden than a predator. After some reflexion, I thought this impression was coming from the armor plating itself: it didn't offered much protection. I scratched my head on how to improve on the natural abilities of the creature, and came up with some extra plating for the forearms, creating a specific piece from the Warwalker leg and weapon shield. The join between the two pieces was neat, clearly because they rely on the same curve (a common side-effect of computer-generated miniatures where the same design is applied to different pieces.) With some tooling and using the pelvis pieces as a basis, I created the impression on a mechanical exoskeleton for the Carnosaur front limbs.

The riders' seat was completed with a bunch of green stuff. A small gem-like artifact (taken from a plastic missile launcher) was placed in the center of the weapon platform base, while its original weapon support was placed behind, on a cusion-like form which is actually the upper part of the Warwalker pilot body. The barrel of a Shuriken Catapult provided a short structure for the upper seat, made comfortable with the addition of several green stuff balls.

Here is a picture of the tooled components before they were attached to the Carnosaur body. You can see that arm armor platings are not symetrical; that's because they are supposed to be articulated, and each is adapted to the position of the Carnosaur limb it is supposed to protect. The warwalker pelvis components have been properly tooled, corrected with green stuff where I carved in excess.

Tooled components (two saddles shown)

Details of the upper part of the carapace.

After all this modelling, it was time to address details. The internal faces of the Warwalker cockpit were thickened with the addition of a layer of green stuff. Both riders received stirrups/footrests in form of glued plastic pieces under their feet. Some green stuff joins were modelled here and there (to link a footrest to the armor, or the power array to the pervis component) to improve the consistency of all those plastic pieces.

Since I wasn't planning to have two laser lances, I needed extra arms. Eldar gunners from the Weapon platform sprue provided them. Some green stuff improved their thickness, more in line with Shining Spears arms. Finally, I cut a left Shining Spear arm (palm placed on some jetbikes controls) to give the impression the Exodite driver controls the Carnosaur mind through some strange Xenos device.

Painting and detailing

The Carnosaur have been painted very early - before I even knew how I would model the whole thing. I didn't want to bother with unreachable areas. The finished miniature features a number of "elements": Carnosaur, carapace, and riders. For some time, I've weighted alternatives on how to paint each. The Carnosaur color was already defined, but what should the rest should look like? I had two options for the remaining elements, either linking them to the creature with a matching shade, or using a very different color to make them stand out.

Painting every element with the same style would have been boring. On the other hand, and despite all my efforts, the armor was a heavy conversion work and appeared a bit as such: I'm not sure the Exodite Lord would have looked very good if all the odd details of the carapace were highlighted through a white or yellow paint job. I therefore decided to keep the carapace in line with the creature it protected, using a close - but different - shade of green. On the other hand, to add variety to the paint scheme and to highlight the difference, I chose a light grey pattern for the Exodite riders.

Games Workshop Studio's Shining Spears are already in white but once again I feared not to use a close shade (grey instead of blue). My Exodites have a darker body, the lightest shades are used only on arms, torso and shoulders. Then, I painted the helmets in a dark green and addressed gems and such. The yellow of the laser lance is the only touch of color apart from gems. After that, I only added a few decals.

The banners are the last addition to the miniatures. I wasn't sure of their effect and frankly, I'm still not fully satisfied. When the paint job was finished on my prototype, the result was great but lacking some color. Yet, I could not make my mind on some exotic patterns to apply to the armor. The solution, I thought, would come from banners and such. But I wasn't sure of the best place to attach them. There were two obvious choices: as a back banner, or as a pennon attached to the laser lance.

A pair of monsters on patrol.

The back banner was fine but it had the drawback of changing the profile of the miniature, making it higher, and this wasn't desirable. Yet, I struggled a lot to find a suitable lance pennon without finding one. Either it was too small, or it went in the way of the rider's face or the beast's. I finally opted for the easiest solution, the back banner, using the plastic item I had first planned to use for "mundane" Exodite Knights. I may change my mind in the future. No matter how, those banners were a mean to add some color - with restraint - to an otherwise rather plain miniature.

Variants

As there is only one Carnosaur miniature, I had to work on my three copies to make each one different from the others. One has been artificially lowered, by playing on knee angles, and his maw has been closed with pliers. I also worked a lot to curve the neck to have it face left, and tried as much as possible to change the position of the front right limb, all in order to get more variety. The miniature has been damaged a lot in the process, but, on purpose, in places that would be hidden by the capace afterwards. I can only conclude that tooling Games Workshop's "White Metal" is awfully hard.

The last one, made for the Exodite Lord, has on the opposite been made as impressive as possible; once again, I worked on the knees to have it almost standing. I tried to open the maw more but only managed to damage the teeth, forcing me to repair them with green stuff!

Once the Carnosaurs have been altered, playing with their position on a stand allowed the three creatures to have different stances. I was happy to see that the carapace design I made for the first mount was perfectly fitting with the new attitude of the alternate pose Carnosaurs; those Exodites are skilled engineers indeed! Sure, seats were leaning one way or another, but within the tolerance margin of the the riders' torsoes.

A lord among Exodites.

From the start, I wanted the Exodite Lord to have a back banner (at that time I just thought it would be the only one.) To this end, he received a slightly different seat structure, where the rear would not be made of a shuriken catapult barrel but of a High Elf metal piece from my bitz box. It's an old Warhammer Fantasy component for High Elves, but I can't remember from which kit. With the heart on top, it was very Biel-Tan like. That would be the only difference Carnosaur-wise, I didn't want him to have an upgraded carapace on his monstrous mount. Yet, he needed a better equipment for himself.

The Hunt.

A stronger lance was in order... and what could be better than a Falcon Pulse Laser?! I was afraid of giving him an unrealistic weapon (how much is supposed to weight such a thing?) but in the end it looked okay, the Pulse laser blending quite well with the Carnosaur size. Warhammer 40'000 is full of far more unrealistic miniatures; it's a lame excuse I know, but we can always imagine that Exodites have some anti-grav devices handy to help the Lord lift his weapon. I didn't manage to come up with a suitable idea for a Pulse lance support anyway. For the left arm, I used a Dire Avenger Exarch arm with a force field. All was made to give a higher status to the Exodite leader while keeping him in line with his fellow Carnosaur mounted nobles.

The back banner was my last work. The Exodite Lord's one had to be impressive; it started with a complicated paper shape, allowing two attachment points on a custom banner pole. I stayed clear from the usual orgy of runes to paint something suggestive of Exodites; my first thoughts of an Eldar visonary in front of an interstellar landscape became what I'd call "the Shadow of the Eldar", where an Eldar ghost seems to embrace a planet and its moon. It looked good but wasn't impressive enough, so I added the traditional row of runes to improve it a bit and "frame" the picture.

In conclusion, I'm a happy player with those three Exodite Carnosaurs, an excellent kick off for the whole project!

published on 01 May 2007
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